Burn

Prologue

When I first landed on American soil in 1991, I had little money and even less direction. Precisely 21 years later, in 2012, I sat next to President Barack Obama at a roundtable discussion with fellow CEOs, sharing my policy recommendations about American entrepreneurship and manufacturing.

During the intervening years, I created a company in America and built a factory there to manufacture its products, realizing my version of the American Dream. In this book, I describe how I did it. As I hope to convince you, the American Dream remains vital and accessible to all of us, so long as we're willing to burn—igniting that flame within and pursuing our passion with courage and creativity, innovating and adapting to our constantly changing society.

It took me a while to activate and stoke my own internal flames. Growing up, I'd trained in China to become a diplomat. After this career path became impossible, I secured a visa to the United States with dreams of becoming a journalist. The best job I could find after graduating with my master's degree was for a medical device company, performing low‐end administrative work for $19,000 a year. I could only pivot to a new life of purpose when I followed the path of many immigrants to America. Mobilizing my experience, savvy, intuition, and professional skills, I became an entrepreneur, creating products that filled a specific market niche.

Like many immigrants, I succeeded in business by using my cross‐cultural background to ...