I want to share with you the story of how a man became a millionaire.
It’s not very often we hear of someone trying to borrow $330 million from his family and banks to go and buy a company and that person being told “No, I’m not giving it to you just because you're my son.”
That's the story of Walter Wang. He's the son of Taiwanese billionaire Y.C. Wang. How many of us wish we had billionaires parents, everyone does.
Walter’s story is not about inheriting billion as of dollars but like the title of my blog says, it's about a person fighting for every inch of his American dream.
Walter is such a resilient man and was able to do something as unusual as surviving stage 4 cancer and then right after he bought a company. This man has strong will and has the never give up attitude.
He could’ve lived a comfortable life under his father’s empire, a billion dollar plastics company called Formosa Plastics but he refused to do so and decided to go after his own dream.
Not many people will choose this path Walter chose, maybe it’s that internal drive to be something more than just the son of a great person.
This is one of the problems that rich and successful people's children face. The reach a point in life where they start struggling with the decision of either living in their parent's shadows or breaking out and creating their own success.
Walter, even when diagnosed with cancer, kept pushing to reach his goal. I can't say he did it all by himself. Cancer treatment is very expensive so obviously his parents helped him a lot.
This man pushed really hard with his vision. He offered to replace Flint’s lead pipes for free only to have the entire city turn him down for copper alternatives. That kind of failure will stop many from going forward.
But why would they refuse free PVC pipes when Flint was desperate for solutions? I wonder how Walter dealt with this question in his mind. He thought this would have been successful and they would have accepted it
Despite all that Walter went through, he still believes in America as the land of opportunity. Maybe that’s the lesson. We have the power to choose our own paths and we're responsible for our own success. It'll can with obstacles we need to fight through. So whether the system makes it easy or not, we shouldn't give up.