Su Yang did not interrupt Wang Dong's absent-minded state. Instead, he looked into the man's eyes with confidence.
When Wang Dong came back to his senses, the expression on his face turned bitter, and then he seemed conflicted. In the end, he smiled bitterly at Su Yang and said, "Brother, are you kidding me?"
Su Yang shook his head. "No, I'm serious."
Wang Dong pointed at Su Yang, his finger trembling slightly and he could not find the appropriate words to describe his feelings.
"You don't believe I can form my own company," said Su Yang simply.
Wang Dong nodded.
Su Yang did not boast about his dream anymore from this point onward. Selling a bloated dream was necessary, but it would be resentful if everything was just talk. He switched to a sincere and honest look and said, "Brother Dong, what you said a few days ago inspired me a lot, and the talk with Ms. Jiang gave me a lot of ideas as well. Her words moved me.
"I've been thinking ever since I got back yesterday. Are people from poor backgrounds, like us, destined to settle at the bottom forever? Can't we have our own business? I don't believe it. I don't believe people have pre-destined classes. I believe hard work can change fate, so I want to gamble and have my own business.
"Like what the people said in ancient times: are all nobles born with blue blood? No! In our current internet lingo, don't bully a poor young man! If they can do it, why can't we?!"
Su Yang looked at Wang Dong with an honest and sincere gaze. "Brother Dong, help me! I need you in this. Don't you want to fight for your own future while you are still young? Do you want to give up just like this? I'll guarantee you that I'll pay your salary every month, so it won't affect your livelihood! Three months! Three months won't take up a lot of your time. If you still don't see hope in my company in three months, you can leave. But if we bet on the right side, our lives will be rewritten!"
Wang Dong looked at Su Yang in silence, seeming a little absent-minded.
It was not because of how badly Su Yang was pitching to him. On quite the contrary, Su Yang's speech was incredibly tempting. He realized that ever since Su Yang sat down, the young man controlled the conversation from start to end.
If Su Yang had blurted out everything as soon as he sat down such as how he wanted to form his own company and invited him to join him, Wang Dong would have turned a deaf ear and walk away.
However, Su Yang did not. He stated all the terms one by one and moved Wang Dong. Then, he waited for Wang Dong to accept the terms before revealing the truth.
Wang Dong did not feel like he was cheated. Instead, he felt impressed for whatever reason.
'Are there people who were born to do great things? This negotiation technique, this ability to direct the conversation, this confidence...not everyone can have something like this. Maybe he can really pull it off…"
Wang Dong sized Su Yang up carefully. With his young and delicate looking face, the smile on his face was confident.
'Was I like him when I'm younger? If I had taken the risk in my earlier years, what would I become now?'
Wang Dong could not help but be carried away by his own thoughts.
After a long while, he smiled. He could not change the past anymore and since there was another young man who was taking an entirely different path than his and even promised to pay him his salary, why not? He could just treat it as taking three months off from his usual job.
After all, Wang Dong did not have any company that he wished to join at the moment.
It was just three months! Why not take the gamble with Su Yang? Maybe they might achieve something through this gamble.
With that, Wang Dong finally made up his mind. He regained his senses and stuck his hand out and said, "Please take care of me in the future, President Su."
Su Yang smiled when he saw Wang Dong's hand. He shook the hand and said, "Let's work on this together."
Su Yang actually had decent insight in judging people, and Wang Dong was really a good employee.
Since Wang Dong made up his mind to join him on his entrepreneur journey, he started to request for more details from the perspective of an employee. He wanted to know what Su Yang wanted to do and how he planned to operate the company.
However, when he heard that Su Yang had not even registered the company, he somehow felt like he had embarked on the wrong ship.
Since he was already in this, he might as well make the best out of the situation. If he backed out now, it would not be decent of him.
The two of them talked about the company over lunch.
As a boss, Su Yang of course needed to state everything clearly. "Brother Dong, your first mission is to continue our collaboration from Junqing and make it happen. My goal is simple. Since you've been working in Junqing for so long, you should understand how they operate. If I'm not wrong, Junqing usually outsources their job to outside companies, thus it should not be a problem if they outsourced it to us. Try and see whether you can hook us up.
"I'll continue to recruit students who want to do part-time jobs. My campus has 35K students, and at least 10% of them have worked part-time before or want to, so I'll roughly have 3.5K manpower available.
"We don't need a lot. If we can gather all the students who want to do part-time jobs, the commission alone will be enough for the company to grow."
Wang Dong put a piece of meat into his mouth with his chopsticks and said, "Do you know why I contacted you for a part-time job that day?"
"Why?"
"Because students are a mobile asset. The seniors will step into society after three to four years and have a real job, so they won't be doing part-time jobs anymore. So, the turnover rate of part-time students is quite high. You might be able to gather them from the campus now since you are a student, but what if you are no longer a student? How will you continue to gather the students? Or is our company only going to last for three years?"
Su Yang smiled. He had figured this point out a while ago. "I'll take care of that. You don't have to worry."
Since the boss was this confident, Wang Dong did not say anything else. He was not the person in charge anyway since he was not even a shareholder yet. Thinking too far ahead would be useless. His goal would be to make the company last through the first three months.
A little pause later, he started to tell Su Yang about his job, "I can settle the matters with Junqing. I am quite close to my manager, so I should be able to get the jobs that I used to work on from him."
Su Yang ate some rice and said, "Manager Zhang? He seems to have some prejudice about me. Will it affect the collaboration?"
Wang Dong shook his head. "It's just how Brother Zhang is. He is not a bad person. He just likes to vent his emotions at people. The collaboration with you was called off because I was fired, so he tried to vent it out on you. I'll go talk to him. It shouldn't be a problem."
"Okay then, I'll leave it to you," said Su Yang. He ate a piece of meat and said, "We will take jobs from Junqing from now, and after this week, we should both go expand our own clientele base. That's what keeps a company alive."
Wang Dong smiled and tapped his chest. "Don't you worry about that. I've been working in Junqing for over two years. I've got a lot of client sources on my hand and some of them have cut ties with Junqing, but I kept their contacts. Some of them will have the need for manpower. All we need to do is call them."
…
The two of them got closer over lunch and they treated each other more like part of a team.
After lunch, Wang Dong headed to Junqing Intermediary while Su Yang took the subway to the Shanghai Administration Bureau for Industry and Commerce to officially register his company.
On the way there, as he stared at the flying signages outside the speeding subway train as his thoughts slowly floated away.
He was finally starting his path of being an entrepreneur and Wang Dong was persuaded to join his company. Even though the reason behind Wang Dong's participation was mostly because of the bloated dream Su Yang sold him, who said that a bloated dream could not come true?
Back then, when Jacky Ma presented his dream to his partners-to-be, did he really believe that he could create a gigantic e-commerce empire?
Probably not.
Everyone should have a dream, and sometimes, even a bloated one could come true.
Maybe, in a few years, Wang Dong would thank him for the offer that changed his life.
Comments