For
many entrepreneurs, the most difficult risk is the first—mustering the
courage and self-confidence to go it alone.
John Cheung, who received his undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees from the University, would agree with that assessment. Cheung is the founder and chairman of OMAX Corporation, a manufacturer of sophisticated precision water-jet machining equipment, headquartered in Kent, Wash.
But when Cheung talks about that audacious first step, he isn’t referring to the day he and his business partner decided to found OMAX. It’s the decision he made 45 years ago when he was a teenager in Hong Kong.
He took the biggest risk of all when he left his family and home for a remote place called Minnesota in order to study at a university he’d barely heard of before. It was a gamble in every sense of the word, but Cheung succeeded brilliantly.
“Being a foreigner and leaving home as a teenager trained me to be less sensitive to what is called risk,” said Cheung, who believes his early training in self-sufficiency helped him make the switch from engineering researcher to independent entrepreneur. You might say it was simply a matter of doing what followed logically from his education in the University’s Institute of Technology.
“My previous company used water pump technology to set up new companies. When [my partner and I] got the idea of [using a] water jet as a machining tool, it wasn’t a big leap of faith to say, ’We’ll do it on our own.’ So we started a business.”
Although Cheung never formally studied business administration, he said that his education (bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering, 1965; master of science in mechanics, 1967; and doctorate in mechanics and materials, 1970) gave him important tools for a business career.
In studying science and engineering, Cheung said, students learn how to solve a problem using the fundamentals—a technique that transfers well to the business world.
“When confronted with any new problem,” he explained, “I say, ‘What is involved and what is a logical approach to handling it?’”
After earning his doctorate, Cheung worked at the U.S. Bureau of Mines, where he researched high-speed water-jet technology as a method of breaking rocks for mining excavation.
OMAX was born in 1993 when Cheung recognized the technology’s potential as a precision tool that could hew a delicate butterfly from a block of stone.
Although most of OMAX’s business involves machining parts for industrial applications ranging from automotive components to medical appliances, Cheung is delighted that his equipment is also used by design studios for intricate stone, metal, and tile inlays and for other decorative fabrications. Several Las Vegas casinos and Princess Cruises are among the customers that have used OMAX machines to produce decorative art. On working with design-oriented clients, Cheung said, “It’s fun for us.”
He acknowledges the importance of his engineering and science background but also remembers a critical lesson in human relations he learned from his undergraduate advisor, aerospace engineering and mechanics professor Robert Plunkett.
In their first encounter, Plunkett asked the young student where he was living. Cheung, who had resisted the temptation to create a little island of home by rooming with other Chinese students, replied that he was living with some American graduate students.
“Great,” Plunkett replied. “Otherwise, [if you were living in a Chinese-speaking environment] I would tell you to move out right now!”
Cheung said his advisor was right: “That way I could learn American ways. It was great business advice.”
When it came to his personal life, however, Cheung made his own decisions and married a woman from Hong Kong. They now have three children and several grandchildren.
When he isn’t working, he likes to practice another skill picked up in Minnesota. “I learned to fish by catching bass in Lake Minnetonka,” he noted.
It’s been a satisfying life, said Cheung, and there’s one thing that makes him proudest of his success as an entrepreneur. “I [was] able to get into the business side and still maintain my integrity.”
