Chapter 5 〇4. Lu Guanqiu: Realize my own dream

Lu Guanqiu, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Wanxiang Group.In 40 years, this native man has turned a blacksmith shop in the countryside into a multinational enterprise, and Lu Guanqiu has also been called "the evergreen tree in the family of Chinese private enterprises." In 40 years, Wan Xiang has straddled all of China's governance and rectification, macro-control and economic crisis, but it has always stood firm. It contains too much Wanxiang's survival wisdom. In December 1944, Lu Guanqiu was born in a small village called Tongjiatang in Ningwei Township, Xiaoshan County, Zhejiang Province. Since he was a child, his family was not rich. In order to reduce the family burden, he entered the society without graduating from junior high school.There is obviously no way out for farming. Although Xiaoshan is located in the south of the Yangtze River, a land of fish and rice, it is a small plain created by river sand, with a large population and poor land. The most famous local specialty is dried radish.

In the first 10 years of his personal business, Lu Guanqiu worked iron, rowed boats, repaired bicycles, set up a grain processing factory, and an agricultural machinery parts repair factory. In 1969, in response to the call of "the mechanization of the commune, and the maintenance of agricultural machinery without the commune", Lu Guanqiu sold all his belongings, took seven entrepreneurial partners and only 4,000 yuan to join the commune, and the turning point in his life began. . Over the past 40 years, Lu Guanqiu has created countless firsts with both hands: the first Chinese company exporting universal joint products overseas, the first domestic listed township enterprise, and the first township company to acquire a NASDAQ-listed company in the United States Enterprise, the first Chinese company to become a supplier of the Big Three U.S. auto companies, is also one of the largest Chinese companies investing in the United States.Lu Guanqiu has almost won all the honors of contemporary Chinese entrepreneurs. In May 1991, Lu Guanqiu appeared on the cover of the American "Time" magazine. The American "Business Weekly" called him "China's most successful and ambitious entrepreneur". Entrepreneur", "Wall Street" magazine called him "a national hero".

After becoming famous, Lu Guanqiu has not changed his true nature. Today, he still maintains his decades-long work habits, lives a simple life, is humble, low-key, and rarely shows himself in public, even though his business has tens of billions in sales a year. Um, but Lu Guanqiu still hasn't left the small town where he started his business. He has meticulously built his own business kingdom in an extremely traditional and stable way. Lu Guanqiu believed in hard work all his life. "Read thousands of books, travel thousands of miles, make thousands of friends, and create thousands of years of business" is his motto. He likes to say two sentences, one is "do as much as you have ability", Another sentence is "We must rely on strength to win, and everything is done."

Viewpoint: My lifelong career pursuit is to recognize one word: do it!Doing work is not to let others understand, nor will you stop pursuing your career just because others don't understand, but to change the reality of poverty and realize the ideal of prosperity. You can only use the word "dry" to explain everything and explain everything.There is no way out for complaining about others, being negative and pessimistic leads to a dead end, and starting from oneself is the only way out. You can have nothing, but you can't live without the will to live; you can also fail again and again, but as long as you have a breath, you must fight to the end.An extraordinary life must be fought for by oneself, and fate only favors unyielding souls.And this truth, Lu Guanqiu already understood it when he was a boy.

background of the crisis One day in 1962, Lu Guanqiu worked hard as an apprentice for three years at the ironware club in the county. Lu Guanqiu, who was about to leave his teacher, suddenly received news that due to three years of natural disasters and the country's economic difficulties, the ironware club had to be downsized. Personnel, I must go home.Lu Guanqiu just turned 18 this year. Although he has endless energy, the reality tells him that his dream of being a worker has been shattered.No one would have thought that this sudden encounter would be the start of the young man's entrepreneurship, and he has been working for half a century since then.

When packing his luggage, Lu Guanqiu did not shed tears. Although he was very reluctant, he held his breath in his heart. He swore that he would never be a farmer in his life. It's not that he doesn't know how to farm, but he just doesn't like it.I don't know since when, Lu Guanqiu's young heart has been burning with an unyielding flame, and now the time to test him has come. It didn't take long for the villagers to see a thin figure active on the embankment by the river, looking attentively at everyone who passed by.Every day just after dawn, Lu Guanqiu set up a small bicycle repair booth. The business was good and bad. In order not to miss any possible opportunity, he often squatted until late at night. Since then, he learned to smoke, Let the rain and the wind blow.Later, he simply moved the bicycle stand outside the flood embankment, because there is more space there, and he has a place to sleep at night.When he woke up one morning, he realized that there was a high tide in the night. Maybe he was too tired, and he didn't feel anything. Fortunately, he slept on the roof of the hut and escaped unharmed.But after the catastrophe, there is no good luck. I still can't make a lot of money repairing bicycles, and sometimes there is no one to patronize for a whole day.But Lu Guanqiu is not discouraged, he knows that gold will not fall from the sky, and it will not grow from the ground, and everything can only be done by himself.

Maybe Lu Guanqiu has other choices. After graduating from junior high school, he used to carry his father around town to practice medicine, but it seems that he is not a doctor, otherwise he would not go to the city as an apprentice.So what else can you do besides repairing your bike? A bolder idea soon came up. Lu Guanqiu, who grew up in the countryside, found that every harvest season, the villagers had to transport grain to the city for processing, so why couldn't he set up a grain processing factory?Thinking of doing what he said, he went to relatives and friends to raise more than 3,000 yuan, and quietly bought shelling machines, wheat mills, flour mills, electric motors and other items. He was not afraid of others cutting his "tail of capitalism" , but it’s better not to make too much noise, but at this moment, the motor fell from the support frame, almost causing death. The township leader heard the news and came, and his grain processing plant had a miscarriage before it even opened.To make matters worse, for this small factory, Lu Guanqiu poured all his heart and soul into it, but in the end it was nothing, and he was in debt. 3's original grid sold the machine, and finally sold a house in the family in desperation.Life is cruel. I wanted to make a name for myself, but in the end I became an out-and-out "prodigal son".

It stands to reason that Lu Guanqiu should stop at this time. He has suffered enough to start a business. Luck has never patronized him. Instead, he has been teased by fate again and again. The small blacksmith's shop opened again, and under the severe heat, the young man and a few companions clanged big iron hammers all day long, working day and night.What makes Lu Guanqiu feel the most uncomfortable is not the unbearable labor intensity, but that he often has to shoot a gun to change places, and he has moved to seven or eight places in a row. Whenever the wind is tight, his small private factory may close at any time .But half a century later, it was from this smithy that a multinational company emerged. When many visitors walked into Wanxiang’s headquarters, they would inadvertently pass by the original site of the smithy, which was less than 80 square meters. However, the sound of blacksmithing in full swing back then seemed to still be echoing around.

Many years later, when Lu Guanqiu talked about his entrepreneurial experience, he summed it up like this: "People say that 'there are three kinds of hardships in the world, you can grind tofu with an iron and a boat'. Except that I have never grinded tofu, I have suffered all the hardships. I deeply feel that starting a business really requires hard work and sweat. Whoever sweats more will achieve greater performance. No amount of hard work always pays off. Of course, if you want to continue to start a business, you must continue to work hard .” To this day, Lu Guanqiu’s body still retains the fragments left by the blacksmithing.

Viewpoint: A country, a nation, cannot do without spiritual strength, and so does a person.In most cases, what people lack is not ability, but courage; not wisdom, but confidence; not opportunity, but a kind of resilience. What is the secret to success?Lu Guanqiu's answer is simple: endure hardship and sweat!On the road of starting a business, we will encounter unexpected crises at any time, encounter injustice in the environment, have to make various compromises, and sometimes become depressed and depressed because of this, but as long as we don’t defeat ourselves , no one wants to knock you down!

background of the crisis In 1969, 25-year-old Lu Guanqiu finally ended his blacksmithing career in hiding in Tibet, and accidentally became the director of the original agricultural machinery factory in the commune. Regarding this sudden opportunity, Lu Guanqiu said something like this afterwards: "Modern society is a society that emphasizes efficiency and is also a society with fierce competition. Opportunities exist, but they cannot exist forever. More often, Opportunities only exist for a moment, and only those who have the initiative can seize them immediately, while those who hesitate and wait and see can only pass by the opportunity forever. Opportunities are always waiting for those who are prepared. If you don’t plan and prepare, the opportunity will slip away when it comes. When we were young, we fished, and the fish swims with the water. If you set up the cage in advance, wouldn’t it block the flow when it comes? If you are not ready, you will I’m in a hurry.” In fact, the reason why the leaders of the commune found Lu Guanqiu was because they saw that he had set up a “cage”. It is not easy to be the director of Lu factory, although he agreed without even thinking about it, and enthusiastically carried the 4,000 yuan he earned over the years, all the belongings of the blacksmith shop, and 7 business partners. He defected to the commune, but everything was just beginning. With a relatively stable career environment, Lu Guanqiu was free to work, but throughout the 1970s, he was not a lucky one either.In order to make a living for the small factory, Lu Guanqiu led everyone to swing a sledgehammer during the day, and produced whatever it seemed to make money, making coulters, making iron rakes, and later made bearings, wax-lost cast steel, and fuel injectors. , universal joints, but at night they have to worry about raw materials and product sales.Even so, in the era when the whole country stopped production and caused revolution, he was often ordered to stand aside by various inexplicable "economic problems". In the middle of the night, no matter how late, Lu Guanqiu had to go to the workshop. Some people advised him that he could not protect himself, and that he should take care of the factory affairs. After hearing this, Lu Guanqiu was always very disturbed. Know that patience is the only option until you are powerless to change reality. At that time, Lu Guanqiu often rode a tricycle around the city of Hangzhou across the river. When he saw a waste collection station, his eyes lit up. Collect some scraps that others don't like. These scraps are already treasures for his small factory. In order to save fuel, he will also go to the gate of the coal factory to pick up some cinders that can be used again. You know, The partners in the factory are still anxiously waiting for his day's harvest.Once, Lu Guanqiu received more than 100 catties of scrap iron for the first time, and he returned to the village without taking a breather. At the transition, he was already sweating profusely under the setting sun, and his forehead was shining. When the nearby farmers saw it, they clicked their tongues and said, "Ah Qiu's head is shining brightly, good luck!" In the spring of 1973, the agricultural machinery factory led by Lu Guanqiu finally produced a batch of coulters. The material of this batch of coulters is quite special. The steel was cut bit by bit by workers using electric welding.But after the production came out, the county's plans had already been saturated, and it was no longer possible to underwrite sales, so Lu Guanqiu thought of trying his luck in Hangzhou.When Lu Guanqiu rushed to Hangzhou Agricultural Machinery Company with a glimmer of hope, he was greeted with a basin of cold water. The other party refused his intention to come because the plan was full without even looking at the samples he brought.Looking at the coulter that he worked so hard to make, Lu Guanqiu felt uncomfortable, but he didn't complain, but carefully piled the coulter in a corner, and left quietly with a bit of reluctance.In the blink of an eye, it was the spring plowing season of the second year, and the supply of agricultural tools was in short supply. The agricultural machinery company was in a hurry, and then suddenly found the pile of coulters in the corner. They were of good quality and met the specifications. Only then did someone think of the young man who came to the door last year. As a result, Lu Guanqiu not only sold the coulter, but also took advantage of the other party's urgency to win the raw material quota of 50 tons of steel per year.If there is no such spirit of never giving up until the goal is reached, how can the auto parts kingdom with annual sales of tens of billions be imagined today? But troubles still linger on him at any time, it doesn’t matter if he endures hardships, what makes Lu Guanqiu most frustrated is not being understood, because in the eyes of some people, although Lu Guanqiu is a capable person, he is also not very law-abiding. "Dangerous element", an unreliable person. This is not the first time this has happened.Once, the factory engaged in automobile tire bolts and urgently needed a related processing equipment. Lu Guanqiu learned that the Xiaoshan Gear Factory happened to have such an equipment that could be transferred at a low price, so he went alone to negotiate.It was finally settled, and it was already midnight on the return journey, so Lu Guanqiu had to sleep at the foot of the mountain, and was stared at by horseflies all night, his face was deformed and his face was disfigured. When he rushed back to the factory, he was severely criticized by the leaders of the commune, saying that he was disorganized and disciplined, that he liked to make decisions on his own, and had arrogance.Lu Guanqiu couldn't help but want to argue, but then he thought, even if you don't do it for others, you have to do it for yourself. It's nothing to be wronged, so he swallowed the anger in his throat again. At that time, being an enterprise was not such a glorious thing, because Lu Guanqiu was not a party member, and sometimes he wanted to cry without tears.Once, Lu Guanqiu took more than 20 salesmen in the factory back to Hangzhou from Changsha after an order meeting. On the way, other passengers snatched their seats. The people who run social enterprises, and they are not party members, can't help being called into the dining car and reprimanded for more than 3 hours, and they didn't give up until Hangzhou.The opponent's logic is simple: either party members or bad people these days.Few people know that even in the 1980s, Lu Guanqiu's factory had some improvement, but due to various unreasonable reasons, he had to wait for 10 years because he wanted to join the party. After returning home, the well-meaning secretary arranged for a business trip to other places every time there was a general meeting of the factory's expenditure department. At this time, Lu Guanqiu could only find a place to get drunk. However, no matter how many grievances he suffered, Lu Guanqiu never stopped his career. He lived in the small factory of only 80 square meters for more than ten years, and his two children were born in the factory. Except for taking his wife to the West Lake once when they were married, they have not been there half a time in more than ten years. One day at the end of 1982, Lu Guanqiu took the initiative to change his destiny again.According to the usual practice, when the county held a meeting to deploy the work for the second year, a leader, when summarizing the results of the rural joint production contract responsibility system, said casually, "Enterprises can also engage in contracting." Lu Guanqiu couldn't help standing up and shouting: "Let me try!" For this day, Lu Guanqiu has worked hard in the commune for 15 years. Just after the Spring Festival in 1983, Lu Guanqiu signed a contract with the commune. In order to carry out the contract, he even mortgaged his ancestral house and flowers and trees worth tens of thousands of yuan. From then on, his life also opened a new chapter. Page. Viewpoint: You must be calm when you do anything, and you must have ideal goals, and then see if you have strength. Only the times make heroes, and no heroes make the times.Doing things has a starting point, but it does not mean that there is an end point. You must have enough patience, perseverance, and perseverance, so that it is possible to reach the end point.In the ebb and flow, whoever wants to win the competition must show strength. In fact, not everyone can realize the value of concentration from the very beginning. There is nothing in the world that is more difficult than concentration.As Lu Guanqiu understands, concentration is not only a pursuit and a spirit, but also a philosophy and a realm.In fact, there is not much difference in talent between people. Lu Guanqiu's experience tells us that all success is a function of time. background of the crisis Today, more than half a century later, Lu Guanqiu, who is nearly 70 years old, often likes to stand in front of the office window at noon, overlooking the staff cafeteria not far from the crowds of people. When someone asks him what he plans to retire , he always laughed and shook his head and said there was no timetable.At this time, Lu Guanqiu has become a legend in the Chinese business circle. At this moment, two out of every three cars in China use the universal joint produced by his company, and every 10 cars running around the world use the universal joints produced by his company. At least one of the cars also uses his products. It was still in 1979, when Lu Guanqiu made a decision beyond everyone's expectations - to cut off all other products in the factory and focus on car universal joints. It was this decision that pointed out a broad road for Wanxiang in the future. , but what is more unusual is that most of the former colleagues have long since died down. Only Lu Guanqiu and his Wanxiang Yiche have been established for 30 years. For a real man, a life without risks is worthless, and Lu Guanqiu is a person who likes challenges from the bottom of his heart. In the mid-to-late 1980s, with the recovery of state-owned enterprises, many township enterprises felt exhausted and dizzy, but Lu Guanqiu made such an interesting analogy: there is a term in nature called "ecological balance". Tigers can't do without monkeys!On this piece of land in China, if there are no township enterprises, there will be an imbalance in the "economic ecology". The "monkey" of township enterprises is not kept in a zoo for people to visit, but actually contributes to the Chinese economy. development has contributed.Some people worry that the "monkey" will be eaten by the "tiger out of the mountain".In fact, as long as you have "good kung fu", you can't afford it.As the saying goes, tigers can climb rocks, and monkeys can drill holes; tigers can run all over the mountains, but monkeys can climb trees!The Chinese market and the world market are so big, the "tigers" and "monkeys" can show their abilities and occupy their own side!My conclusion is that it is good for the tiger to come out of the mountain, but the monkey still jumps! In fact, Lu Guanqiu's Wanxiang wasn't even a "monkey" at the beginning, and could only follow other people's buttocks and do some work to fill in the gaps. One day in the spring of 1980, Lu Guanqiu excitedly led a group of people to load two trucks full of newly-produced universal joints for the first time to participate in the national auto parts ordering fair in Jiaonan, Shandong. Not eligible to participate in the exhibition, the reason is that township and village enterprises will not be accepted.Therefore, Lu Guanqiu had no choice but to set up a street stall at the door, and was splashed with face wash from upstairs.But Lu Guanqiu did not back down. After sitting there for a few days, he heard that the transactions in the trading hall were deserted. %, when the news came out, 2.12 million yuan was sold on the same day, accounting for more than 2/3 of the annual output value of the whole factory. Since then, Wanxiang's reputation has been greatly improved, and the whole industry knows that there is a Wanxiang called "Qianchao" in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang. Festival. What's interesting is that Lu Guanqiu's factory started from the production of imported universal joints at the beginning. The internationalization that people praise today is also forced out. The reason is very simple. At that time, the township enterprises had no For any advantage, no one puts a small Wanxiang in their eyes. Lu Guanqiu and the others want technology but have no technology, and they want strength but no strength. They can only survive in the cracks. By chance in the early 1980s, Lu Guanqiu learned from Beijing that domestic enterprises were unwilling to produce universal joints due to the large number of imported car models, small batches, high quality, fine craftsmanship, and low profits, and he was worried that he could not find a breakthrough. Lu Guanqiu's eyes lit up, and he immediately patted his chest to the relevant leaders.In fact, at this time, all the employees in the factory may have even touched the imported universal joints. It is simply a whimsical idea. Who can believe that a small township factory that is all farmers can make a name for itself in imported products? ? However, after all, the road is blazed by oneself. Now that it has decided to import car universal joints, the only thing left to do is how to complete it. The way everyone came up with was to draw paper according to the real thing.Lu Guanqiu found out that the imported cars were concentrated in Tianjin Port and entered the customs at that time. He tried to find out the actual whereabouts of the imported cars through the local customs, and then sent people all over the country to follow them. They were allowed to use the parking time at night to remove the universal joint, draw a sketch according to the actual shape, and then put the universal joint on before leaving the car in the morning.In this way, using the most primitive and laborious method, Wanxiang started the trial production of various imported car universal joints. Afterwards, they took the developed samples and sat down to find the driver. They asked to replace them with their products again, and guaranteed to come to the door. Service, free installation, only one requirement, feedback the usage to them for easy improvement.Today's entrepreneurial story sounds like a fantasy, but in fact Wanxiang started like this. Throughout the 1980s, Lu Guanqiu put the most effort into product quality. Cheap and high-quality products were his only weapons, but it was not easy to pass the quality test.The starting point of his farmer team is too low. There are only 2 high school students in the whole factory, and junior high school graduates are already highly educated.The reality is embarrassing. Many workers go to work while chewing sugarcane. Leftover sugarcane husks can be seen everywhere at the work site. Workers can’t understand the drawings and are not used to using micrometers and vernier cards. There is almost no quality inspection system and comprehensive quality management. Only one word is recognized in the three English abbreviations (TQM), and they are called "preserved eggs". When the waste products are afraid of punishment, they are simply thrown into the fields and river ponds.It is unbelievable that Lu Guanqiu embarked on the journey of internationalization in the future with such a team that had just washed their feet and went to the field. In the early spring of 1980, a major event occurred in Wanxiang that would later affect the development of the company.One day, Lu Guanqiu received a letter from a customer in Wuhu, Anhui, saying that "although the price of your factory's products is fair, but some universal joints have cracks." After some contemplation, Lu Guanqiu immediately decided to send someone to He went all over the country to search for all customers, brought back all the defective products, and replaced qualified products for free. Unexpectedly, more than 30,000 sets of defective products were recovered, piled up in the warehouse like a small mountain bag, worth more than 400,000 yuan. More than 400,000 yuan was almost an astronomical figure back then. Some people suggested that the price should be reduced after repairs, but Lu Guanqiu decided to use another way to deal with it.At the on-site meeting of scrapped products, Lu Guanqiu, as the head of the first factory, first made a self-reflection and asked to deduct his half-year bonus. , led by him, a long queue formed behind him.Due to this loss, Wanxiang employees did not pay bonuses for half a year, but it awakened the quality awareness of the whole factory. In the following years, in order to improve product quality and gain a place in the market competition, Lu Guanqiu almost tried his best: he drove all the employees into amateur cram schools with a whip, and slowed down wages for those who were unwilling. Even fines were imposed; talents were introduced at all costs to improve the quality of the workforce; in order to enter the ranks of the three domestic fixed-point production plants of universal joints determined by the Ministry of Machinery Industry at that time, Lu Guanqiu sent people to rectify the regulations and rectify them item by item according to the standards. According to the rules, as the only township enterprise that produces universal joints in the country, Wanxiang was not even eligible for the election. In 1984, Lu Guanqiu opened up the international market for the first time. Scheler Company, which ranked third in the field of auto parts in the United States, approached him and ordered 30,000 sets of universal joints. In 1987, this company proposed the future development of universal joints All export products must go through their company, otherwise the purchase volume of more than 200,000 sets per year will be reduced. Lu Guanqiu immediately rejected the other party's request.He doesn't believe in this evil, and he doesn't want to leave the fate of the company in the hands of others.Dramatically, one year later, Scheler came back again, and 16 years after the first cooperation, Wanxiang actually acquired this company and became the company with the most universal joint patents in the world. Lu Guanqiu's story does not end here. In the spring of 2009, under the shadow of the U.S. financial crisis, he deviated from his usual low profile and invested hundreds of millions to build an electric vehicle industrial park in his hometown. Building a car is his lifelong dream. It has been half a century of preparation.Looking back on the time when he came, he once said meaningfully: "It is difficult for others to defeat him in the things of the world, and he is afraid of being defeated by himself. History tells us that castles are often breached from the inside. When a company develops to a certain extent , it is very difficult to squeeze it down through market competition, because we are afraid that we will not be able to stand up. The key to future success is to rely on ourselves, our strong spiritual strength, and our never-satisfied attitude towards our career. Only in this way , we will surely realize our dreams.”