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Study Abroad & Migration Diary — Season 2, Episode 2
When I first arrived in Australia to study, I often heard established migrants who had already settled comfortably say,“Back in the day…” A few years on, and now it’s our turn to say the same…
Just as there will always be wave after wave of newcomers arriving fresh, there will always be wave after wave of people who settle in and then look back with nostalgia.
And no matter where life has taken them, many will say:“Back when I first arrived, I couldn’t do anything, I had nothing, and I knew nothing…”
From starting with nothing, to finding your footing, to building something to be proud of — that journey is a remarkable life lived, and a remarkable story for others to hear.
Today, we hear Jennifer’s story — a story of someone who,armed with nothing but the advantage of youth, rose to become a top real estate sales performer — a journey that began with the words: “Sure, why not give it a go and see if life can turn into something remarkable.”
Introduction
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“Sure, why not give it a go and see if life can turn into something remarkable.”
Hello everyone, I’m Jennifer. In 2009, I boarded a plane from Nanjing to Sydney, where I enrolled in the accounting programme at the University of Wollongong — quite simply because it was a field of study that could lead to migration.
From 2015 to today, I have been working in real estate sales at Dingfeng in Australia, primarily promoting projects, supporting my team members in client meetings, and resolving all sorts of day-to-day issues. Back in China, I studied a teacher-education degree, and after graduating from Nanjing Normal University, I had the opportunity to become a teacher. That was when my father said to me: as a young woman, if you become a teacher, you’ll probably find a decent partner, have one or two children, and your past and future will look exactly the same — no change whatsoever. Every day would be a nine-to-five commute to school, with pleasant summer and winter breaks, but your life would have no ripples, no challenges, no real difficulties, and everything would sail along smoothly,and my father said that shouldn’t be the shape of a young woman’s entire life. In his eyes, there was no difference between girls and boys, because you are an independent person, and you should create something different.
So my father asked me whether I had considered going abroad for a challenge. At the time, it wasn’t that I absolutely had to go overseas — it was more thatI said: sure, why not give it a go and see if life can turn into something remarkable — and so I ended up being bundled off to Australia by my dad, almost without knowing what had happened.
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““I told the boss that if someone had to go, it should be me — not the other person — because the mistake was mine.””
The reason we chose Australia at the time simply came down to America’s gun laws. A shooting incident occurred in the US a few months before I was due to go overseas, and my mother spent several nights unable to sleep, so she said Australia was the better choice — at least guns are not freely available there,and on top of that, my father had studied maps of every region,and felt that Australia was the safest island — it is essentially an island unto itself, after all.Even the choice of the University of Wollongong had a reason behind it. I had received offers from the University of Sydney, UNSW, and Griffith University, but in the end chose Wollongong because my education agent told my father: UNSW and the University of Sydney are both in the city centre, and from what I can see of your daughter’s personality, she seems quite outgoing and easily distracted — not the type who will buckle down and study hard. So the University of Wollongong is an excellent choice for her; it’s a more remote, industrial city with very little in the way of entertainment.
During my studies, just like every other ordinary international student, I worked a great many part-time jobs. I cleaned clubs, having to get up at 4 in the morning. I also did nail salon work — starting at 9 am and finishing at 9 pm, twelve hours a day. I still remember my wage at the time: as an apprentice, twelve hours of work would earn me roughly $20 a day. After finishing my degree, I went on to complete a pathway programme, which came with an internship opportunity. I was very fortunate — my internship was at Moutai, the Australian arm of Moutai, the iconic national spirit that you’ve all heard of. Over the roughly two to three years I worked at Moutai, I handled accounting work — accounts payable and accounts receivable — but I’m sorry to say I never once got my figures right. Until one day I pushed my accounting supervisor too far,and he went directly to our general manager and said: either he leaves or I leave. That was the most awkward professional situation I had ever encountered in my working life.But I held my ground. I told the boss that if someone had to go, it should be me — not the other person — because the mistake was mine.
But I realised my personality probably wasn’t suited to sitting quietly and carefully working with numbers. The general manager, seeing the sort of person I was, said: with a personality as active as yours, would you like to try your hand at selling something?. As everyone knows, Sydney Airport didn’t carry Moutai many years ago — at that time, we were the exclusive distributor making our very first entry into the airport.
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“Sales is simple — it all starts with being a genuine person first. If you’re not embarrassed, the embarrassment belongs to the other side.”
But my performance remained quite ordinary. Two months later, my manager sent me another letter saying: Jennifer,if you still can’t make sales at the airport in the coming month, you’ll really have to go.It was at the airport that I met the first truly significant person in my life — Sophie, with whom I now share a wonderful working relationship in real estate. The two of us were on the floor of the airport shopping precinct; I was at Moutai and she was at Penfolds — both in the wine section — and we young women would often chat,and she taught me a sales philosophy I still use to this day. Put simply:if you’re not embarrassed, the embarrassment is on the other side —Sophie also taught me a specific method. She said: Jennifer,sales is simple — it all starts with being a genuine person first,so I watched how Sophie operated and learnt from her. How had she made it to the top of Penfolds sales? I discovered she was extraordinarily warm and helpful at the airport — never the type to push products straight away. And really, she didn’t need to: every Chinese traveller heading home already knew they wanted a bottle of Penfolds. Instead, she did things no one else bothered with — patiently helping people fill out tax refund forms, guiding them on how to board, pointing out which gates had duty-free shops nearby. She was incredibly warm-hearted, and I saw her smiling almost constantly. Everyone who interacted with her left feeling wonderful. So I started doing the same — helping people carry trays, preparing trolleys, filling out forms.
One customer, a lady from Beijing, couldn’t speak any English. After I finished helping her with her forms, she was delighted. She looked at me and said: young lady, what are you selling? I said I was selling Moutai. She said: oh, is it China’s Moutai? I said: yes, really. She said: no — I’m asking whether your Moutai is genuine. I said: the Moutai is genuine. And so her entire tour group — about twenty or thirty people — all bought from me. That same day, I received a message directly from our floor manager, who had sent the boss an emailto say that Jennifer’s sales that day had met the team’s entire month-long KPI in one go. That moment truly ignited my passion for sales, and what came next was a genuine turning point.
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“We have no real advantages in Australia — our only advantage is that we’re young.”
By 2015, the Australian property market was picking up momentum, and I had started thinking about whether to invest in a property. That was how I came to meet Dingfeng. A manager from Dingfeng had a meal with me and we chatted for about 40 minutes. She had known my husband for more than six years, inviting him out for tea and conversation every year — and he never bought. She knew me for 40 minutes, and I bought a property from her. So the manager said to me:Jennifer, talking with you is actually quite comfortable, and you’re very direct — have you considered working in real estate? And she offered me a position.I didn’t dare accept it rashly, because at that point you really did need to secure your livelihood first before thinking about further development. But then my husband encouraged me, saying: since we’ve come to Australia, why not challenge ourselves to live a different life? The worst that can happen is you end up finding another similar job — so why not give it a go? And so at that point my husband offered me a line,saying: we have no real advantages in Australia — our only advantage is that we’re young. Those words have continued to push me forward ever since.
So I gradually got started, using spare time on weekends to learn how to sell property. Of course, you encounter a great deal of scepticism, cold shoulders, and rejection — I’m still being rejected to this day. When you change industries, especially going into real estate sales, every newcomer faces the same most daunting challenge:you have no clients. And I had no clients either.So at that point, my husband and I decided to set up a display stand — the classic route for almost every new salesperson. We grabbed a discarded banner from Dingfeng’s marketing team, the kind they no longer wanted. My husband was quite a character about the whole thing — the two of us went to Hurstville, Homebush, and Bankstown, stopping at every Chinese supermarket to ask whether we could place a banner out the front. Hurstville, to be frank, was really quite expensive — many Chinese supermarkets there said that if we closed a sale, we’d need to give them half. As a newcomer, you simply don’t have the money or resources for that. Eventually I came across a shop owner near Auburn who said: don’t worry, just put it out front. He said: if you manage to close a deal, give me a small cut — and if not, it doesn’t matter.He said: seeing you like this reminds me of my wife and myself, perhaps twenty years ago when we first came to Australia.So every time, even if I hadn’t closed a sale, I would make a point of taking something back — buying oil, soy sauce, or something else from his shop. We looked after each other.
Around that time we were distributing flyers,and my in-laws had flown in from Hong Kong to visit me, only to be taken straight from the airport by my husband to Auburn to help hand them out.My husband said: by yourself your reach is limited — but with me and both my parents, there are four of us to help you. So my father-in-law stood right by my side and distributed flyers together with me. He was brilliant — speaking Cantonese, English, and Mandarin on my behalf. And my mother-in-law was even more impressive — she went into the supermarket, did some shopping, and drew various ladies out to come and chat with me. There’s a saying from Luo Pang, isn’t there,that the harmony within your family is the absolute soft power of this modern era. And in our household, nobody ever put down the sales profession — not once.In our family, not one person ever raised a voice in opposition. Nobody would say: Jennifer, you’re never home — where have you been? Did you close a sale today? Did you bring money back? If you didn’t bring money back, why did you go out? They never questioned me once. They wouldn’t even ask whether I’d made a sale. And sometimes I’d come home absolutely thrilled — I made a sale today! — and for my in-laws, the response would simply be: oh wonderful, let’s add an extra hairy crab for dinner tonight,because they wouldn’t pin expectations on you because of your achievements, nor would they put you down because you hadn’t yet produced results. That is what family truly means.
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“All you need to do is check whether today’s version of you has moved just a little further ahead than yesterday’s.”
Every salesperson has walked a hard road to get here. I honed my skills in Auburn, then moved on to World Square, where they said: you’ve got experience now —come and give it a try. On one occasion I closed 3 sales in a row to complete strangers, and afterwards I asked one of them: why did you buy from me?He said: simply because I walked past you and you were smiling so genuinely and joyfully,and I was curious about what could make someone so happy on a Wednesday in what felt like a very quiet shopping centre — I just heard this person laughing away. But nobody knew that the reason was actually because there were no customers at all, so my colleague and I had been playing a game to see who could tell the worst cold joke — because that was the only way we could keep our spirits up.
This industry sees a constant flow of people coming and going —every year, many people post on social media: hi everyone, I’ve just started in real estate, please look after me — and just as many quietly delete those posts, close off their last six months of experience, and formally announce that they’ve returned to being a full-time mum.So I encourage the members of my own team: don’t look at others — focus on yourself. You don’t need to compare yourself to however impressive another salesperson may be; that’s their performance. All you need to do is check whether today’s version of you has moved just a little further ahead than yesterday’s.
And my colleagues know we are a driven team. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, our team took home Dingfeng’s top performance award — $165 million across the whole team. Was that Jennifer’s work alone? No. Our team had 24 members, and at peak we had 35,and every single one of them helped each other — that’s how we worked together to reach $165 million.
I worked alongside Dennis — he took me under his wing from 2016, right after the birth of my first child, and I am deeply grateful for that. I skipped the traditional postnatal rest period and went straight to learn from Dennis. I believe he taught me some of the most important things I carry regardless of whatever industry I work in, namely:first, you must be extremely, absolutely reliable;, and second, my mentor always said to me:do not fear difficulty, do not run from it — shatter it, face it head on, no matter how large the obstacle, because there is no hurdle that cannot be cleared and no situation that cannot be worked through;, and third,you must have absolute, unwavering follow-through.I learnt so much from Dennis about how to conduct yourself and get things done. The boss always said: Jennifer, never ask where the clients are — that’s the Dingfeng house rule. Don’t ask whether you have clients; ask yourself whether you have friends.
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“Because if you don’t strive when you’re young, I think it’s a bit of a waste of these years.”
I am someone who simply cannot sit still — I didn’t even want to observe the traditional postnatal rest period after having my children. You can imagine that if you asked me to stop and stay at home, I would find it completely unbearable,and I truly believe Sydney is the most vibrant economic centre — almost any field can be found in this city, and if you’re willing to commit deeply, the development prospects are excellent. It all comes down to the sheer scale of the population base and the high level of activity.
When you’re in Sydney, you’ll find time is never on your side — every day seems to pass in a flash. My first manager at Dingfeng said: when you’re just starting out in the working world, particularly as someone in the first home buyer demographic, how can you get ahead of your peers? There is only one way, and that is your time —only by cutting down your commute can you increase the time you spend working, and only then do you have any chance of getting even a little further ahead than everyone else,and I genuinely took those words to heart. I made the decisive choice to give up my first home buyer grant — which at the time was $15,000 or tens of thousands of dollars, a great deal of money for us — and I did it without hesitation. I converted my Penrith property into an investment, rented it out, and rented a place of my own in North Sydney instead. That way, North Sydney to Dingfeng was barely two stops. Looking back, my husband and I both agree that 2016–17 was the year I moved the fastest.
It’s something I believe can be an inspiration to young people, or those who have just entered the workforce:do your best to shorten your commute and spend as much time as possible on your work — because if you don’t strive when you’re young, I think it’s a bit of a waste of these years.
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Closing Thoughts
So,
you who are in the prime of your youth —
isn’t right now the perfect time, with every opportunity to strive and
all the capital of your youth at your disposal?
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