The Interview of Jenni Wu - Essay Example

Name Tutors name Course Date When I set off to interview Jeni Wu in the morning hours of the morning, I set several guidelines for the conversation with her I would have liked to have about her personality and secrets behind her success. I was more interested in digging more on her success with regard to her age, race nationality and the nature of business she runs not forgetting the challenges and her perceived weaknesses. Those were the key themes I was going to pursue. Though I planned not to ask her more of gender related questions it became inevitable in the course of interview. In my thinking was simply to interview successful person who in this was a woman, rather than focusing on the fact that she was a woman. Because the topic on work- balance have been the center of attention for quite a while I decide to use a different approach and focus more on different topic by giving more attention to discussion on challenges that she as a women face at work. So I went to her place of work to interview the stories she had to share with me. It is always exciting to be interviewing a successful entrepreneur especially a woman who have achieved even more than she expected. My interview with Jeni wu was exactly that and she spares a little of her time from a busy schedule to tell me what motivates her, and what her days consist of. I choose to interview her because I have been for quite awhile interested in her growing business for some time now, and not only have I been inspired her creativity but also overwhelmed by herself drive and enthusiasm for running business. I arrived at morning hours then met with her outside her place of work, she welcome me with a smile and then I was impressed by this woman who seems from the first look like a person who had her way of doing things in a very elegant way. At that moment I felt like my lifetime interview had come she paid attention to whatever I was saying and asking prior to the main interview and always seem like she expect more and more questions from me. She is the kind of a person who paid a lot of attention to people. I paid attention to both what she said and how she said it. We entered the coffee shop the venue for the interview. When Jane her regular attendant saw her entered with me she hurried to attend to us. There was lack of words and to introduce and explain myself to her. Jeni Wu came from china to Australia 30 years ago she was sent by her parents to come and study and later seek for employment there but later ventured into business which she is now doing incredibly well (Weber, 2014). From then she has never given up hope for a brighter future. Her life speaks by itself.  Her incredible journey starts as a young Chinese girl who saw relocation to another country as the way to better her life and a life journey all the way to becoming an incredible business lady. She surpassed various hardships while growing up. She narrates the story of her life in her own words while I sit keenly to listen to. Her mother wanted to give her a better life and because of that she sent her to Australia a thousand miles away to live there. On arrival she started to build friends and quickly grew t love Australian life and culture. She learnt the language and within a short time she had passion and progressively improved on it. At her earlier times, she faced a lot of challenges especially given that she didn’t quite speak English and the culture shock as well (Bolton & Thompson, 2004). She had passion for business and she did some few courses on business and learnt about some successful people in entrepreneurship in her area of stay and she also attended seminars on entrepreneurship while at the same time confident that she will succeed in her passion for entrepreneurship a dream that was soon to come true. She later moved to a new town in Australia where her only son was born my friend and colleague. Three years later, after the birth of her son, they move again to settle where they currently live. Their son was enrolled in a private school during her younger age. Meanwhile she was settled for quite a while enough time to start business where she set up a small Chinese restaurant. She likes music together with her son and often spends free time practicing piano, guitar and later recorders. “Sometimes our house often sounded like a musical conservatory” she tells me. “You could hear us practice piano, violin, guitar, cello, clarinet, accordion, and later, recorders” she added (Tjan, Harrington, & Hsieh, 2012). They like also playing chase as family free time leisure. She also swims and like travelling. She likes watching baseball and football especially premier leagues. According to her son her mother thinks he is the best player if he takes his talent seriously. She at some point pressures her son to enroll in football talent class but the son was less reluctant. She has had life experience that is overwhelming. In china females venture into small service sectors with little returns but in Australia she saw a whole lot of opportunities. One of her personality is strategy. She is a great strategist especially in the way she positioned her business in very populous place. There was also very few Chinese restaurants in the place she relocate to, the relocation was strategic to starting her new business. Being strategist enables her to foresee the viability of the business and its future viability and she got it right on that (Tjan, Harrington, & Hsieh, 2012). She comes up with opinions on future direction of her business after accessing well the existing conditions and other factors based on her own research. She is someone who comes up with a bigger picture on the overall plan that will lead her to her intended goals. She took a lot range of techniques borrowed from both the media and local culture to come up with service best suited for her customers. She analyzed well her business environment and problems and designed practical solution that enabled her achieve her objective. One of the problems was lack of customer’s loyalty but trough her improved and now quality services it has been able to attract more customers majority of which remain loyal. Establishing a long term strategy for her business is her greatest strategy seeing beyond near term. Like Stephen Gibbs said “A strategist is somebody who looks at all the inputs that are of help to a business and distills them into the right solution for future success (Tjan, Harrington, & Hsieh, 2012). In overall her theme seems to be all about future thinking and coming up with solutions for challenges and problems. One thing I also noted about her being strategist is that she likes having the last word. She is always ready to defend her strategy always I fact I noted in the interview with her. In her personality is also patient. Coming from china when she had little resources to settle in new place and working her way up the ladder over years given that the journey had not been smooth. Patience enabled her not to give up and start thinking relocating back to her country of origin. Jeni Wu have never thought even for a moment that she can be a failure she had never think that whatever she started can fail and this gives motivation as she ventured into risks. She have had a lot of experiences in her life including having to endured season of low turnover with hope of never quitting and hoping for a better future. At first many didn’t know a lot about her business but with time through her engagement with marketing consultant she was able to put up a great team of marketers who help her market the new service in offer in the area. With thorough marketing and consistency the revenue was able to rise gradually over the years until the current level. Several times when she was unable to accept the low customers turning up in her restaurant she always had great mentors in her filed and often result to them for advice and the spirit keeps on (Ajagu, 2005). The son has been supportive in many ways and he never let down her mother especially given that he performs exemplarily in school. Jeni Wu is an extraordinary lady who has braved all odds in the entrepreneurial sector and saw her rise gradually over years to become one of the respected ladies in the business sector. Her personality is characterized by her ability to make tougher decisions including decision to relocate to a foreign country on her own (Wagner, 2006). She is a great strategist with ability to foresee future and to plan for future and not planning only for the current period. Her story is a story of a lady who start from a humble beginning and with patients was able to navigate her through to the top in business sector. Works cited BARTLETT, A. F. (1988). Profile of the entrepreneur, or, Machiavellian management. Southampton, Ashford Press Pub. AJAGU, A. (2005). The entrepreneur. Lagos, Betcy Media. HALLETT, A., & HALLETT, D. (1997). Entrepreneur magazine: encyclopedia of entrepreneurs. New York, Wiley TJAN, A. K., HARRINGTON, R. J., & HSIEH, T.-Y. (2012). Heart, smarts, guts, and luck: what it takes to be an entrepreneur and build a great business. Boston, Harvard Business Review Press HARPER, S. C. (2003). The McGraw-Hill guide to starting your own business: a step-by-step blueprint for the first-time entrepreneur. New York, McGraw-Hill WAGNER, B. (2006). The entrepreneur next door: discover the secrets to financial independence. [Irvine, Calif.], Entrepreneur Press BREM, M. L. (2013). Women make the best salesmen isn't it time you started using their secrets? New York, Crown Business. http://rbdigital.oneclickdigital.com. WEBER, S. (2014). Becoming an entrepreneur. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-596-0. BOLTON, B., & THOMPSON, J. (2004). Entrepreneurs: talent, temperament, technique. Oxford, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. DABU, A. (2009). The HR consulting entrepreneur: firm-builder, market-maker and diffuser of HR management knowledge in an emergent business system. Dissertation Abstracts International. 70-06. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. Read More