Joan Chen 13/14 | Asian American Personalities

Asian American Profiles

HEAVENLY AND EARTHY JOAN CHEN

PAGE 13 OF 14

Q: Is Yue Sai Kan a competitor?
A: I don't know whether she has a perfume or not. The factory that I work with, all the products are on the shelf, they are existing products. I can go and enhance it. The perfume is 60% mine. The other projects we do, they've already got the products down.

Q: They're paying you?
A: No no no no. I'm going to go in with them and do things based on their original things. They've been on the shelf way before Yue Sai Kan, but they didn't have me.

Q: So you have business ambitions.
A: Maybe, I don't really know. This is only one thing that I'm doing. I don't feel as frustrated if things go wrong there. I would feel frustrated if a movie is not going very well, so my passion is still there. You know, lose a little money there, it didn't seem to bother me that much, though I do try to manage it so that in the long run it's gonna be successful but it's not really my greatest love.

Q: Is reading Seven Habits of Highly Effective People part of your effort at becoming a tycoon?
A: No no no no no--a better person. It's a book I would recommend to anybody. Really, most of the book is just how to be a better person.

Q: Do you read many self-improvement books?
A: No, I only read two in my whole life. One is The Road Less Traveled, about love, and this one.

Q: What did you feel you needed improvement in?
A: These books were recommended to me by people I highly respected, people I emulate.

Q: Who?
A: Not in this business. They're just very together people. Very well organized, successful in their own field. They're good with people, they make good conversation, and they're well-rounded, and they're good people. Since I respect them I started reading the book and found I learned a lot.

Q: What areas of your life were improved?
A: I think Road Less Traveled defined love very very well. When you were younger, you fall in love, you wonder what's going to happen, you broke your heart, you broke someone else's heart. And whether or not through all this you really learned to love, whether or not one has ever loved, truly loved. These are important things, and I thought Road Less Traveled was extremely good. It defined a love that was noble yet doable.

Q: Did that help your relationship with Peter?
A: Very much. The romantic love that we feel toward the opposite sex is probably one extra help from God to bring you together, but that's it. All the rest of it, the true love, is the test. The love is really the final test of anything, of all the rest of the other work, all the failure, is just preparation for that word.

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Q:What about the other book?
A: Seven Habits. It's a very well written book because it teaches you how to set up a constitution, like the Constitution of the U.S.A. There are exercises for you to do and you think, Yeah, I basically do the right thing, but once you set that constitution and you match your behavior toward it and you know there are distances. It has been very helpful because it makes you strong, it makes you sure and secure and strong that you're doing the right thing. And by doing the right thing, you are a stronger person, you are not sneaking around, making dubious deals. Your energy is very well directed. You just don't waste them on thinking these other routes. You block yourself and just think right and it was very effective, it was true.

Q: What did it do for you specifically?
A: A few things. I found very very good is teaching you the relationship between people, that you can help other people that other people can help you. Now I understand how to use all the people that's around me, and how to offer my help to all the people that's around me. That makes life a lot more effective, and I thought that was really really good. And to reach that you have to first learn how to be independent which is very very difficult. Another thing I thought was very very good was when he talked about friendship or with business associates, about the deposit and withdrawl. You have to keep depositing, a little kindness or help or whatever you have, into these banks. Later on maybe you make one mistake, you will be forgiven, you will still come out to be good. You have deposited so much you can make a withdrawl. One day you make a big mistake, you say I'm sorry and you mean it and you will be fine. And that's one good thing to learn from that book too, so you always make sure you are a considerate person, you make your deposit. PAGE 14

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