Why Do You Want to be Successful?

Profile on: Peter Chung, President and CEO of the Eminata Group, a multi-million dollar education-based company.
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Few preachers’ kids can say that the best advice they ever received from their father was to become a businessman rather than a missionary. But that is certainly true for Peter Chung, President and CEO of the Eminata Group, a multi-million dollar education-based company headquartered inVancouver , British Columbia .

For most of his early life, Peter rebelled against Christianity, angry that his father’s low-paying job as pastor of a small Korean church in Los Angeles meant that his mother had to work long hours to support the family. “I was bitter towards my father, because I felt that he should provide bread for the family, not my mother,” says Peter.

After leaving home, Peter enrolled in mathematics and computer science at UCLA. However, it wasn’t long before religion made its way into his curriculum as well. “My brother’s roommate was a very faithful Christian,” says Peter. “This guy turned on the light at six in the morning, read the Bible, prayed, then went to school.” As a preacher’s son, Peter thought he knew a lot about Christianity but after attending a few Bible studies with his brother’s roommate he realized how little he really knew about God.

Peter’s knowledge of God moved from the academic to the intensely personal after he survived a car accident that should have been fatal. This really spoke to Peter, to the point that he finally decided to become a Christian. Peter was so enthusiastic about his newfound faith that he wanted to become a missionary. But his father encouraged him to consider a career in business instead. Ever since Peter had arrived in Los Angeles at age fourteen, he had displayed a remarkable aptitude for making money. Whether it was going door-to-door drumming up odd jobs or starting his own Tae Kwon Do studio during high school, it was obvious that Peter had a knack for recognizing business opportunities and making the most of them. Peter’s father recognized this gift and persuaded Peter to pursue it.

After working at a couple of respectable and yet ultimately unsatisfying jobs, Peter evaluated his talents and realized that if he wanted to go into business for himself, the best place to start would be teaching computer programming, a field that was drawing a lot of interest at the time. Seeking to test the market, he rented a single classroom and started advertising. Ten students responded and Peter’s fledgling business was up and running.

Three months later, Peter’s student body doubled. Meanwhile, the company he was working for during the day was going through some tough times, so he asked his boss to lay him off. With his safety net gone, Peter threw himself into his teaching enterprise, increasing it from one classroom to four and hiring a couple of teachers. Soon he had expanded the school to several locations as well.

Building on his initial success Peter expanded and diversified his business even further, opening more schools, getting into importing and exporting, real estate development, and other enterprises. At his peak, Peter was operating fourteen separate businesses and he wasn’t above sampling the fruits of his labors. “I used to go to work in a limo, fly to Washington on a private jet, things like that,” says Peter.

But as with every rapid rise to the top, there is a price to be paid. In Peter’s case, it was paid by Peter’s wife Stephanie and their five kids. “I didn’t know how much money he had,” says Stephanie, whom Peter had married years earlier during a visit to South Korea . “I wanted us to spend time together as a family.” Pride had also become an issue for Peter; “We were running into some political pressure from public institutions because our budget was getting very, very big.” Thinking he could take on the government alone, Peter launched into a battle that wound up devastating his business. When it was all over, his asset base had dwindled down to five percent of what it used to be.

This defeat led to a lot of soul-searching on Peter’s part. For the next three years he traveled, read the Bible, reflected on his life, and got reacquainted with his family. Near the end of this time, Peter made a fateful trip to Vancouver, Canada . While there he read a headline about the high unemployment rate in BC and immediately recognized an opportunity. He began a small private school that worked in conjunction with the government to train people for employment. Bringing his wealth of experience to the enterprise, it wasn’t long before Peter had built a business with revenues of $50 million per year.

Although Peter is riding high again, this time around, things are different. For one thing, he has made his family a priority. But perhaps more importantly, he has a much better sense of what true success—and true happiness—really are. “The advice I give to young people is this: If you want to be successful, first of all you have to figure out why you want to be successful… You have to search your soul and discover why you want to go in that direction. You can’t just be doing it for the sake of money, because money does not bring you happiness. You’ve got to understand what happiness is first, and that can only be found in God.”

Why do you want to be successful? Let Jesus show you what true success is. If you don’t know Jesus, we encourage you to pray the following:

Lord Jesus, I want to know you personally. Thank you dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of my life. Make me be the person you want me to be.


Is it the desire of your heart to make this prayer yours?

If yes, pray now and according to his promise, Jesus Christ will come into your life.

You are success
Abraham Ekedum