Alex Deng | CEO of Successful Properties Group
Entrepreneurial journey told by six students
Story written by Zixin Feng
When I was a child, I did not know who I wanted to be. I thought of becoming a lawyer, a doctor, or a pilot. I wasn’t aiming to be an entrepreneur, in fact, even now I do not consider myself to be one. I just thought of myself as someone who sets out to do things and does them. It is the mentality of thinking “whatever I set out to do, I will do it,” that has led me to where I am today.
The journey was not easy. People thought I was crazy for leaving my original job as an engineer. This was especially so since I was in charge of a thirty million dollar project. At the same time, this was right after the financial crisis of 2008. Who would be insane enough to jump ship and go out on their own? Yet I saw an opportunity back then that other people did not and I was willing to gamble on it. I did not let the uncertainty of the time get to me, instead I chose to capitalise on it. Hence I ventured into real estate investment.
I did not succeed out of the blue. Success was a result of experimentation and continuous trial and error. This was very difficult as my small team had to do everything ourselves. We had to fund the firm ourselves and grow before money ran out. We made many mistakes along the way before we found direction. There were a lot of growing pains before we decided to take a look at land instead of just apartments as most people were doing back in those days. More so, it took us a while before we started looking at areas that other people were not looking at.
To overcome such challenges, I had to make sure I had the right people with me and that I approached the right people moving forward. Yet even with the growth and success of the company, I understand that I cannot be at ease. The industry gets more competitive as the years pass. Thus I retain the same mindset at the start of it all. I keep in mind that I need to be open to learning and to personal growth to keep up and more so, to stay ahead.
Story written by Jiayi He
Fourteen years ago, I quit my job as an engineer working for the city council and decided to pursue a career in real estate. One project I was in charge of as an engineer at that time cost $30 million, so people thought I made the most ridiculous mistake in my life. But I don’t worry about other people’s opinions, I want to pursue what I want to do, so in 2009, just after global financial crisis, I founded a real estate venture Successful Properties with my family.
Back in 2009, people were still mostly limited to investing in the stock market and had not yet seen real estate as a worthwhile and sustainable investment, and this was an opportunity for me to look at real estate investment. One windfall was that the Australian property market at the time was very popular, especially for foreign investors. I used my background as a Chinese national to market most of our products back into China. We also had some local buyers who didn’t have an effective long-term sustainable investment option, so we sold property as an investment product to those people. To conclude, what we are trying to do is to build a business to properly promote new properties to investors.
However, the venture has not been smooth sailing, it is a trial and error. In the first few years, we barely made any profit and had to rely on our previous savings to went through the hard times. When we first started in 2009, we were selling apartments, just like everyone else. We were doing projects in Hurstville, but there was no competitive difference in projects like that, so we started thinking about future value, which is, what makes an apartment appreciate over time. The answer from general public was location, but our answer was land. Starting in 2011, just a year or two after we were founded, we shifted our focus from selling apartments to selling houses, land and townhouses. We became the first Chinese company to actually enter Australian houses and land market. In those days, people would think those houses are so far away that hard to see the value. But over time, we proved that the land we sold appreciated much more than those apartments in the city center or elsewhere. The price of land and houses skyrocketed in Hurstville. That’s how we got chosen and we’ve been doing it for 12 years now.
Story written by Jessie Rentong
I remember the first time I noticed the word entrepreneur I thought it was a French word for artist or designer. I didn’t quite understand how what they were calling entrepreneurship related to business except in the most general ways. Reams of buzzwords, excitable spruikers, talkers rather than doers. I thought. My work began with my civil engineering projects for the local council; I learnt that details were important but also that people were the lifeblood of all business activity. I learnt a lot, but also felt restless, and eventually realised that I wanted to act, that I wanted to bring into being a way of acting that was my own.
When the Financial Crisis hit in 2008 everybody was scared, and what had always been taken for granted was suddenly thrown open to doubt. Was what I was doing indispensable, and how prepared was I financially for an uncertain global economic outlook? Land, property, it’s almost a cliché, I know, but if it felt solid, secure; wouldn’t people turn to what they trusted most in times like these? I knew real estate, but I was an amateur; I approached the problem like an engineer, learning everything I could about the technical dynamics of the real estate market, applying what I knew about council and the development more generally. The conclusion was clear. Property had been battered by bad press, by sub-prime collapses, and animal spirits had done the rest. The market was in tatters, globally, but the Australian market had weathered better than almost any. I had woken up to this reality slightly earlier than others and understood that quick, decisive action was imperative.
In 2009, I bravely launched my real estate venture, drawing on my engineering background to grasp market dynamics. Despite real estate’s perceived risks, I sensed untapped potential. Early days were rugged – no track record, no staff. Credibility was earned painstakingly, financed by my savings. Networking, cold calls, and flyers fueled our visibility.
Initial successes validated my competence, igniting positive referrals and gradual growth. Agents and resources joined steadily, fostering expansion. We specialised in marketing novel properties and house/land packages, carving a niche with income-focused investors. Empowering my team fostered trust and resilience through learning.
Today, after 14 years, we’ve navigated market fluctuations with a team of 70+. Yet, the hunger for fresh challenges persists. It’s the thrill of realising ideas that propels me, not monetary gains. Self-discipline, resilience, and motivation are requisites in this journey I wouldn’t trade. When passion drives, work feels like fulfilment.
Story written by Ziqi Su
Steve Jobs once said “Do not let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
It’s very important for me to be myself and not care about what other people are saying about me. Because a lot of what you do, people don’t agree with. Before I started my own business, I wasn’t just a civil engineer, I was an engineer working for the city council. I was in charge of a $30 million project in those days. When I quit that job to become a real estate agent, a lot of people laughed at me and thought I’d made the most ridiculous mistake of my life. But, hey, that’s what they think. I do not want to be an engineer for the rest of my life. I want to make the right decisions. I need to be myself.
So, in 2009, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, I started on my entrepreneurial journey as an entrepreneur in the real estate industry. The prevailing view at the time was that real estate was a stagnant market, yet I saw an opportunity. My confidence in the long-term value of Australian property drove me on this journey, and through trial and error, we shifted our focus from selling apartments to the house and land market. In those days, my practice approach of entrepreneurship was unheard of. People would think that those houses or land are too far from the city center that they could not see the value of them. But over time, we proved that our client’s land holdings appreciated much more than those apartments in the city centers or other places.
Looking back, the initial phase of my startup after the global financial crisis was not an accident, but a keen response to an untapped market. In my 14 years of entrepreneurship, I have been questioned by people around me countless times, but I have inspired myself again and again to follow the choice of my heart.
I am now the CEO of a real estate company with an annual turnover of 300 to 500 million dollars. So don’t worry about what other people think, do what you want to do! Failure is not terrible, what is terrible is that you have never tried.
Story written by Xin Wu
I think I’m a person of action, and when I think of something, I do it. In 2009 I gave up my
engineering job and moved into real estate. Many people around me advised me not to do so, they worried that I would fail and regret it. Only I know what kind of person I am and what I want. I never regret my choice. I only regret not doing what I could have done at that time. In that year, I established Successful properties Group. I didn’t have much time to make preparations. I just found an office and started to work. At first, money became the biggest problem, we didn’t know how to let others know us and trust us. Building trust is a difficult process. The first step is to let others know us, if others do not know us, how can we go through our services and products to make others trust? So we did everything we could, we advertised on the Internet, we sent out flyers in the mall, we put up small advertisements on the wall. It was a tough time, but fortunately, we made it. Through publicity, we had our own partners and started making money. After that, I started thinking about how to give my company a competitive advantage over other companies.
What I came up with was land, so I shifted the company’s focus slightly from selling apartments to selling land. As a result of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis, many Asians, including the Chinese, began to think about what can be a long-term profitable investment. At that time, because I am of Chinese descent, I walked into their vision with my project, and Successful properties Group became the first Chinese real estate company to start land asset sales. In a few years, the company’s business began to develop rapidly, and I also carried out another cash flow project – property leasing. We take commissions as cash flow, so that no matter what the sales are, at least we have a certain amount of cash flow to keep the company running. And the sales after that, that’s net profit. During the Covid-19 period, it is often impossible to sign contracts face-to-face. We find that signing contracts online is much more efficient than offline. Because offline, you need to face 200 pages of contracts to keep signing, which is a tedious process. Now, we are focusing on electronic contracts, hoping to provide customers with more efficient services.
Story written by Mengzhe Xu
It was Alex Deng, the CEO of successful properties group, a real estate company in Sydney. Fourteen years ago, in 2009, the global financial crisis had just ended. In the economic downturn, I gave up my stable job as a civil engineer and focused on land development with my family. I also became a real estate agent, which was a completely different role, although was still in the same field.
After the financial crisis, the investors were worried about the investment environment and misunderstood the real estate market. They lost confidence in the banking system and needed long-term stable investment projects. Most people expect the property market to be as depressed as it was after the Asian financial crisis in 1997. But I realized that foreign investors are still very enthusiastic about Australian real estate consumption. And I am Chinese, which gives me easier access to foreign investors. This made us realize that this was our opportunity, so my family and I resolutely entered the real estate market to give these investors a stable and positive capital flow investment opportunity. Such opportunity, while common now, is new in 2009.
It was very difficult at the beginning, in which we didn’t have enough cash and we didn’t have enough real estate agents. During that time, we had to use our savings to cover the running costs of the company. That was probably the biggest setback in these fourteen years. I could have given up, but I didn’t. I see myself as someone who can deliver, and if I want to do something, I’m going to see if it turns out the way I expect it to. Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you succeed or not and whether the results meet your expectations. I won’t regret what I did, but I will regret what I didn’t do.
I am not an entrepreneur, but I get up every day will be full of vitality. Even in the face of failure, I will quickly pack up the mood, optimistic to face the next customer. That’s what I ask of my employees. It was also the experience of that time that gave us a stronger belief to go on, because failure is nothing but nothing like the early days of entrepreneurship.
Fourteen years later, many real estate companies have failed, but we are at least a lot more successful than before. We have a staff of about 70 people and manage more than 1,000 properties, while we had nothing fourteen years ago.