Chapter 1226: The Debt-Free Father

Zhao Fusheng never concealed his fondness for children.

In his previous life, he had no children. In this life, the child he had interacted with the most was Fan Beibei. In Zhao Fusheng's view, education could never be overlooked.

After all, in childhood, a person is like standing in a train station—it's uncertain which train they will board next or in which direction they will go. No one, not even parents, sometimes has the right or ability to choose a child's life path, but as elders, they can still guide them in the right direction.

Zhao Fusheng felt it was his responsibility and duty to steer Fan Beibei's life in the right direction.

Holding the little girl in his arms, a smile appeared on Zhao Fusheng's face.

...

...

Long ago, Zhao Fusheng had understood a profound truth: no matter how well you anticipate everything, the script never develops as you imagine.

So when people encounter situations that are inexplicable or hard to express, saying 'That's fate,' 'That's football,' 'That's basketball,' and so on becomes the best answer.

And now, sitting on the sofa at home, Zhao Fusheng also wanted to complain: 'This is damn fate!'

'Dad, so you're saying you don't owe the bank money anymore?' Zhao Fusheng asked his father helplessly.

Originally, he was in a good mood coming home, but one sentence from his father at the dinner table left him speechless. According to his father, Wanda had expanded rapidly over the past half year, with high profits. After reselling the land he had purchased earlier, he had completely paid off all bank loans, achieving a zero debt ratio.

Looking at his father's beaming face, Zhao Fusheng felt like he was going crazy.

In this day and age, running a real estate business and still thinking about not owing the bank money!

Dad, are you a model youth of the new era?

Although he wanted to complain about the phrase 'born under the red flag, raised in the spring breeze,' Zhao Fusheng also understood that his father probably felt that running a business while owing the bank money was inappropriate—that the bank might cut off the loan at any time, leaving him constrained.

But the problem was that their family was now in real estate, not Lao Gan Ma.

Not everyone had the personality of Lao Gan Ma's founder—no loans, no financing, no IPO. The reason she dared to do that was that, ultimately, her cash flow was sufficient, and she was in the seasoning business, which didn't require considering capital recovery cycles like a real estate company.

For the current Wanda Company, having no debt ratio meant they could only develop the market step by step.

Just like his father was doing now: first establish a foothold in Ninghai, then next step Binzhou, then the next city...

Thinking of this, Zhao Fusheng felt quite frustrated.

For him, it wasn't that he thought this was bad, but rather that developing this way was simply too slow. By the time his father secured the market in Longjiang Province, housing prices across the country would likely have already started to rise.

By then, a company like Wanda, with weak backing and insufficient capital, would not find it as easy to get a piece of the pie in this big wave as it would now.

In many things, opportunity often lies in a single moment; miss it, and it's gone.

"What, you think it's not appropriate?" Father Zhao saw Zhao Fusheng's reaction and understood—it seemed his son was quite dissatisfied with his current approach.

Father Zhao was now both proud and somewhat defiant of his son's abilities. After all, they say a hero's father begets a hero's son, and his son had become the pride of the entire family. But the problem was, Father Zhao always felt he should be stronger than his son.

"It's not that it's inappropriate," Zhao Fusheng explained to his father with a wry smile. "Don't you think the company's expansion is too slow right now?"

"Slow?"

Father Zhao frowned. "We've already taken over five surrounding cities, built five Wanda Plazas in various places, and..."

"Nearly a year," Zhao Fusheng waved his hand, cutting off his father. "Dad, you need to understand that at your current pace, it will take you at least three to five years just to break out of the three northeastern provinces. By then, what do you think the domestic real estate market will look like?"

Father Zhao's words caught in his throat. Clearly, Zhao Fusheng's words made him realize that his son's ambitions were greater than he had imagined. Or rather, the development plan he had considered before was evidently insufficient in Zhao Fusheng's eyes.

"Dad, do you know what the essence of real estate is?" Seeing his father silent, Zhao Fusheng thought for a moment and decided not to let the old man lose too much confidence. He resolved to give his father some guidance.

Father Zhao was taken aback. "What is it?"

"Using other people's money to make money for us," Zhao Fusheng said calmly.

Hearing these ten words, Father Zhao was stunned, unable to speak for a long time. Clearly, Zhao Fusheng's statement was completely different from his own business philosophy.

In other words, Father Zhao had never thought of such a thing as robbing Peter to pay Paul.

But in Zhao Fusheng's view, if one didn't have this mindset in real estate, they would eventually be eliminated by the market. The industry was too deep; relying solely on one's own cash was simply unable to support a large real estate company.

Even with his own backing, Zhao Fusheng was not optimistic about his father's current business model.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Teaching his father how to run a real estate company was the most important thing.

Doing business actually goes through several stages. At the beginning, it's often like gambling—win and you're in the club with pretty girls, lose and you're back to working at sea. But once things get on track, the development of a company often requires stability.

Of course, this stability doesn't mean going step by step like Father Zhao, but rather seeking progress while maintaining stability, ensuring the company's core interests.

"Take out loans, then acquire land, and develop Wanda Plazas in second-tier cities in the three northeastern provinces," Zhao Fusheng succinctly proposed to his father, and finally said seriously, "You have one year to capture the market in the three northeastern provinces. Also, I can introduce you to two people—your partners."

At this point, this was the only way.

In his previous life, Zhao Fusheng had heard a saying: life is like a certain kind of pain; since you can't avoid it, you might as well choose to enjoy it. The person who said this was actually an idiot, but in Zhao Fusheng's view, since things had come to this, he might as well let his father become a real estate developer with a conscience.