It’s 7 am, but Li Jun, a 2013 graduate in international economics and trade from Hubei University, is already dressed in a suit and on his way to work. Li looks no different to other graduates, but the 23-year-old is already the CEO of a plant wall (see box) company that makes 2 million yuan in profits a year.
清晨7点，湖北大学国际经济与贸易专业的2013届毕业生李俊便已经西装革履，走在上班的路上了。尽管看上去与其他毕业生并无二致，但23岁的他已是一家年盈利达200万的绿植公司的CEO了。
Li set up his company in early 2012 when he was still in college. With ambitions to start his own business, Li had already begun making preparations when he started university. He has been successful because he chose the right start-up direction, built an effective team and obtained an independent technology.
2012年年初，还在读大学的李俊创办了自己的公司。怀揣着创业的梦想，他在踏入大学那一刻起便已开始积极筹备了。他的成功之道在于选择了正确的创业方向、组建了一支高效的团队并持有自主技术。
Early bird with lots of ambition
雄心勃勃的“早起之鸟”
Coming from a family with little fortune, Li never concealed his ultimate career goal - setting up a business and making lots of money.
李俊出身于一个并不富裕的家庭，他始终不放弃自己的终极职业目标—创业致富。
With this in mind, he looked into different businesses while he was at university.
怀揣着这个梦想，他在大学期间考察了不同的行业。
“I once worked in six part-time jobs after school in exchange for 50,000 yuan. I believed that as long as I kept preparing, I would have a chance to start my own business,” he says.
他说：“我曾经在课余时间同时做六份兼职，赚得5万元。我坚信，只要做好充分准备，终有一天我会创办自己的公司。”
Despite putting so much effort into part-time jobs, Li didn’t abandon his studies. Instead, he made the most of the economics and trade courses to equip himself with knowledge that is essential for a business manager.
尽管李俊花很大精力去做兼职，但他并未放弃学业。相反，他充分利用课堂上学到的经贸知识来武装自己，从而为做老板打了下坚实基础。
Competitive differentiation, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analyses, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - what seemed incomprehensible to most students became part of Li’s everyday life.
差异化竞争、SWOT（优势、弱势、机会、威胁）分析法和马斯洛需求层次理论——这些令大多数学生头疼不已的课题，现在却成为李俊每天的生活内容。
He even regarded Yu Minhong, founder and CEO of New Oriental Education and Technology Group and other well-known entrepreneurs’ biographies as bedtime reading.
他甚至将新东方创始人兼CEO俞敏洪(微博)以及其他一些知名企业家的自传作为自己的床头读物。
Finding the right idea
寻求最佳的创业理念
The success of a business depends on the idea behind it. Li wasn’t sure about what he would do, until he discovered a business opportunity in building plant walls.
企业的成功取决于经营理念。李俊在发现植物墙这个商机后，终于不再为前途而感到迷茫了。
That was in his sophomore year when he went to the Shanghai World Expo.
大二时，李俊去参观了上海世博会。
Before that, his business ideas were confined to the university, such as selling bicycles to students. But the expo made him see the bigger picture — 80 percent of the pavilions had vertical planting, which meant that great importance had been attached to this technology.
在那之前，他的经营思路还局限在校园内，例如向学生出售自行车。但世博会让他看到了更广阔的发展前景—80%的场馆都拥有立体绿化，这也意味着该技术已经引起了充分重视。
He also realized that there was little competition in this field.
同时，他也意识到这个领域可谓“零竞争”。
“I walked around Wuhan without seeing any plant walls. And I asked my friend in Beijing, who told me that there weren’t many plant walls there either. So I believe this is a promising business worth trying,” he says.
他说：“我在武汉没有看到一处植物墙。我询问在北京的朋友，他们说北京的数量也并不多。因此，我相信这是一个很有前景的项目，值得一试。”
Building an effective team and technology
打造有效的团队和技术
When it comes to setting up a business, selecting the most effective team and having a core technology are the most important things, says Li.
李俊说，对于创业而言，最重要的是选择最有效的团队并持有核心技术。
He was surrounded by a group of people who were also interested in setting up a business. So when he mentioned the plant wall project, many of them joined. Li chose several friends he trusted the most to form the core management team.
他周围有一群同样怀揣“创业梦”的人。所以，当听到他口中的植物墙项目时，许多人都加入其中。李军和几位死党组建了一支核心管理团队。
“I selected my partners based on their ambition, interests and behavior. I considered their personality and strengths carefully before assigning work to them accordingly,” says Li.
李俊说：“我根据个人志向、兴趣和能力来挑选自己的合作伙伴。在给他们分配相应的任务之前，我都要仔细考虑到他们的性格和长处。
As for the technology, since Li and his team members were new to the field of plant walls, they spent half a year learning about them. They read foreign academic papers, learned from Chinese plant wall experts, worked out their own drip irrigation system, and finally found a suitable planting base, glue and plants.
说到技术，李俊和他的团队是植物墙领域的新手，他们花了半年的时间来学习相关技术。他们阅读了国外的学术论文，同时向国内植物墙方面的专家拜师学艺，自主研发出一套滴灌系统，并最终找到合适的种植基地、粘合剂以及绿植。
It may sound simple, but grasping the technology required a lot of experience and research. “We finished all these tasks in a relatively short period of time not because they were easy, but because we were fully devoted to them,” Li says. With their devotion, he and his team members transformed their idea into a start-up company that made almost 2 million yuan in profits in the first year.
虽然听起来简单，但想要掌握这门技术，就需要大量的研究和实践。李俊说：“我们能在较短的时间内完成这些工作，并不是因为简单，而全靠我们全身心的投入。”李俊和他的团队为这份事业倾注了全部，最终实现了“创业梦”，公司第一年就创造了200万元的盈利。
“As long as we have a great team and good technology, we’ll keep this business going,” says Li. “Our team members from the post-1980s and post-1990s generation are beyond ordinary. Running a business is not only a dream for us, but also good for society,” he says.
李俊说：“只要我们拥有强大的团队和专业的技术，就能保证公司的良好发展。我们的团队中这些80后、90后绝非等闲之辈。创业不仅是我们的梦想，同时也可以造福整个社会。”