Preface: The Dreams of a Twenty-Year-Old: The Size of Your Dreams Determines the Size of Your Life

Chapter 1: Take on the challenge with a beginner's mind

My first challenge was selling encyclopedias.
The moment you believe in possibility, the path begins.
Success gives the answer to the confidence that you can do it.
The passion of a twenty-year-old knows no fear
You win by doing what others don't do.
My challenger is yesterday's me.

Chapter 2 Change is another name for the future

The key to change lies in flexible thinking.
Beware of lukewarm temperatures
Innovation is the process of creating hope.
To jump higher, you must first improve your constitution.
Only education promises a better tomorrow.
The world is a sea of ​​teachers, learn from everything.
Yun Seok-geum, as spoken by celebrities:
Kim Seung-yu (Chairman of Hana Financial Group), Kim Shin-bae (Vice Chairman of SK C&C), Nam Yong (Vice Chairman of LG Electronics),
Park Won-soon (Executive Director, Hope Institute, Beautiful Foundation), Shin Sang-hoon (CEO, Shinhan Financial Group)

Chapter 3 Creative Thinking Makes the Way

Introducing a rental system: pioneering a market with creative ideas.
The habit of repetitive thinking is the power of creativity.
Creativity opens up future possibilities
When you see a new path, run without hesitation.
Different ideas create different results.
Differences start with the little things
Uncovering the potential of female workers

Chapter 4 Let the Wind Move You

The best gift given to Koreans, Shinbaram
Plant the miraculous genes that create a breath of fresh air.
Success begins with self-belief.
If you do your best in small things, you can become the best.
Specific ways to get inspired
Totto Sarang, which boosts the morale of employees
Yun Seok-geum, as spoken by celebrities:
Oh Myung (President of Konkuk University), Yoon Eun-ki (President of Seoul Science and Technology University), and Lee Eo-ryeong (Advisor, JoongAng Ilbo)
Lee Chae-wook (President of Incheon International Airport Corporation) and Jang Dae-hwan (Chairman of Maeil Business Newspaper TV)

Chapter 5: Affirm the positive

How you face adversity is how you face life.
The mindset that leads to success and failure
A closed door must be knocked on to open.
The power of positivity is strengthened when combined with initiative.
People with dreams don't give up.
Enjoying competition is also a skill.
The human mind is powerful

Chapter 6: Sincerity is Power for People and Business

The human heart is moved by sincerity
The hope of a company lies in its people.
The competitiveness of an individual is the competitiveness of a company.
An individual's spirit of challenge saves a company.
A leader is someone who carries more.
Discover the jewel within me
Individual Transparency Creates a Healthy Company
Healthy companies are resilient in times of crisis.
Yun Seok-geum, as spoken by celebrities:
Jang Ha-seong (Dean of Korea University Business School), Jeon Seong-cheol (Chairman of the World Management Institute),
Jeong Dong-il (Professor, Yonsei University Business School), Jeong Joon-yang (Chairman, POSCO), and Cho Dong-seong (Professor, Seoul National University Business School)

Chapter 7 The Environment is Our Future

Share your dreams with society
Efforts to save human life and water
A waterway of love that saves barren land
New-Green Management: Creating a Future Together

Conclusion: The belief that you can do it yourself changes the world.

Records of vivid business situations and
A book full of insightful wisdom for success!

Why Yoon Seok-geum now?

Yoon Seok-geum, known as the 'wizard of reverse thinking' and 'challenging gambler', is the chairman of Woongjin Group and is considered a leading second-generation self-made 'founding CEO'.
Starting with a publishing business (Woongjin Think Big) in 1980 with seven employees, the foundation of the current Woongjin Group with 14 affiliates was greatly influenced by the personality of one individual, Seok-geum Yoon.
As proof of this, Chairman Yoon Seok-geum ranked first among entrepreneurs in the 2008 Maeil Business Newspaper's "Korea's Management Masters," and was recently named 69th in the list of eco-friendly figures published by the British Sunday Times.
The 30 years of management experience of Chairman Yoon Seok-geum, a symbol of love, positivity, dreams, passion, and initiative, are not only the story of an individual who has grown through burning passion, but also the history of the company called Woongjin.
By examining the career and life path of Chairman Yoon Seok-geum, who has demonstrated his ability as a gambler who takes on new challenges with a positive attitude and finds opportunities in crises, we will examine key implications for why we should pay attention to him now.

The passion of a twenty-year-old, condensed with positivity and challenge, presents solutions for navigating an era of recession and crisis.

Chairman Yoon Seok-geum unhesitatingly cites 'positivity' as the biggest reason for his success as a manager.
He joined the Korean branch of Britannica in 1971 and took his first steps into society as a salesman. He sold the most encyclopedias in the world and received the Benton Award, given by the headquarters in the United States to the salesman with the highest performance among 54 countries.
The positive thinking and proactive attitude he acquired while working in sales became a great strength that supported him in running his business and building his life.
His philosophy is that the 'creativity' and 'passion' that he has always emphasized while running a business ultimately begin with positive thinking.
Chairman Yoon reflects on and practices the "My Creed" he personally perfected 25 years ago every day.
Just a few lines like, 'I believe in my abilities', 'I will always start something new as a beginner', and 'No matter how old I get, I will maintain the youth of a twenty-year-old', give us an idea of ​​his attitude towards life.

It is a time when the shadow of recession is looming large, with an economic crisis and a job crisis.
In particular, the disappointment and frustration experienced by young people in their 20s and 30s, who will be responsible for the future, is a serious problem that darkens not only the individual but also the future of our society.
Now, we need an attitude of positivity in life and constant challenge to achieve what we affirm, as Chairman Yoon said, “Positivity creates masterpieces.”
Beyond being a successful manager, Chairman Yoon Seok-geum's life, which offers insightful insights and practical guidance to those living in this era, proves in itself that he is a mentor who will lead the times.


A leading second-generation entrepreneurial CEO who values ​​process over results.

Chairman Yoon Seok-geum left his stable position at Britannica Korea and founded Woongjin Think Big with seven employees in 1980, which became the foundation for today's Woongjin Group.
Starting with its publishing business, Woongjin has grown steadily over the past 29 years, and as of August 2009, it has established itself as a mid-sized conglomerate ranked 34th in terms of assets, with 14 affiliates.
Woongjin Group, which is approaching its 30th anniversary in 2010, is continuously developing across diverse business areas, including publishing, home appliances, food, construction, and energy.

Dean Jang Ha-seong of Korea University's Business School clearly presents Chairman Yoon's position as a manager who led the growth of Woongjin Group, saying, "Yoon Seok-geum is a person who created a miraculous second-generation entrepreneurial legend in a barren startup environment."
He also said, “The first generation of entrepreneurial CEOs valued results over process, but Seok-geum Yoon values ​​process over results.
That is why we have maintained ethical management as an uncompromising principle.
Unlike the first generation, he valued people more than work.
That is why we have always sought the company's hope and competitiveness in people.
He added, “If the first generation of the development era achieved environmentally destructive growth, he opened the era of green management that views the environment as life.”
Woongjin is now venturing into the solar energy business and pursuing a grand dream of becoming the world's leading environmental company through environmental management.
This challenge marks the beginning of an era of green management that values ​​the environment as life, rather than environmentally destructive growth. It also serves as a clear example of the direction pursued by Yoon Seok-geum, a process-oriented manager rather than a growth-oriented, results-oriented manager.

Connecting with People: Creating a New CEO Role Model Unavailable in Korea

In this day and age, the importance of communication and empathy is being emphasized.
And at the center of it all is always ‘people.’
Chairman Yoon Seok-geum's circle is so crowded that it's nicknamed the "Yoon Seok-geum Clan." Why do so many people, regardless of age, gender, or occupation, gather around him? It's because he believes in the importance of people and sincerity.

Chairman Yoon said, “People love living things and life.
There are people who are alive but seem dead.
A dead person loses vitality and even drains the energy of those around him.
People don't gather around people like that.
But a living person brings people together by transmitting positive energy.” In this way, he was not only uplifted by positive energy himself, but also had an innate ability to spread it to those around him.
As mentioned earlier, Chairman Yoon stands out from other managers in that he values ​​people and processes.
He always found the company's hope and competitiveness in people.
The fact that he cites 'love' as the secret to corporate growth and that he values ​​'making employees work with enthusiasm and joy' through a new culture is also due to his philosophy as a manager who values ​​people and processes.
And a CEO who values ​​sincere communication through people like this will become a new role model for managers that has never existed in Korea.

Life and Management Wisdom from Yoon Seok-geum

"Positivity Creates a Masterpiece" is a book in which Woongjin Group Chairman Seok-geum Yoon shares the "wisdom and insight gained from his 30 years of management experience."
Here, Chairman Yoon Seok-geum, who went from being an ordinary salesman to becoming the head of the conglomerate Woongjin, has written seven chapters that condense the life insights and lessons he gained from the business world, as well as his passionate energy.

This book, which contains the success story of Woongjin Group Chairman Yoon Seok-geum, who started a publishing business with only seven employees and became the most influential CEO in Korea, is all the more meaningful as it is the book that he published after a long-awaited dream, having started his management career with the publishing business.

As Chairman Kim Seung-yu of Hana Financial Group puts it, this book is "a management book that captures Chairman Yoon's life as a manager, and at the same time, a philosophy book that records the great power of positivity."
In that respect, this book is clearly differentiated from autobiographies that chronicle Chairman Yoon Seok-geum's life or essays that list his personal experiences.
The content presented here centers around a self-help message about what we need to learn today through the character of Yun Seok-geum.
This is also why we need to re-examine Chairman Yoon Seok-geum, who went beyond just being a manager to becoming a mentor who led an era.

Through this book, young businesspeople in their 20s and 30s will learn what attitude they should adopt to overcome an uncertain future and difficult reality. Those who dream of becoming leaders or corporate managers will gain concrete solutions on how to lead people and organizations in times of recession and crisis.

Positivity and Challenge - What you think now is what you will be in the future.

Everyone is talking about crisis and recession.
In particular, economic instability and youth unemployment are instilling a sense of defeat in young people who should be running towards the future with a spirit of challenge, and are spreading depression in this society.
This is why a positive attitude and a proactive spirit of challenge are important right now.
Chairman Yoon Seok-geum, a man of conviction who never compromised with reality even in difficult situations, vividly tells the story of the positivity, challenging spirit, and creativity that led him from an ordinary salesman to the head of a large corporation with 14 affiliates in "Positivity Creates a Masterpiece."

He says he never thought he would be good at sales until he decided to go into sales.
He says that it is the result of thinking about how to do well in the process of doing work, and pouring passion into it with the thought that 'it will work out' rather than thinking that it won't work out.
And the source of such energy is said to be 'positive thinking'.
Representative examples include the anecdote of how, during his salesman days, he worked even harder to sell dictionaries on holidays when others were resting, and the enthusiasm he displayed during the launch of the English textbook "Mesle," which was four times more expensive than competing products, when he was doing business under the name "Heim International."
Through this and countless other examples, Chairman Yoon personally demonstrated that positive thinking can change a person's future and destiny.

“The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is how they deal with obstacles,” he says, suggesting that thinking “I can do it” rather than “I won’t do it” or “I can’t do it” actually produces different results.
If you think it is difficult, you have already decided that it is an unsolvable problem and you will not make any effort to achieve it in the first place. So, you should keep in mind the saying, “What I think now is my future.”
These attitudes, which he personally demonstrated, make us reconsider what we truly need in this jungle-like competitive environment.

Creativity and Innovative Thinking: Thinking Differently Leads to Different Results

If you look at articles mentioning Chairman Yoon Seok-geum, the phrase “reverse thinking wizard” is used quite frequently.
This means that he is a person who values ​​creative ideas and a change in perspective, seeing and thinking differently.
This mindset of his showed its power while doing business.

When the entire nation was in trouble due to the IMF crisis, the consumer market rapidly froze and sales of expensive products such as water purifiers fell sharply.
In this crisis situation, it was Chairman Yoon Seok-geum who came up with the brilliant idea of ​​'what if we rented out water purifiers instead of selling them?'
He pondered what consumers in difficult economic times would need, and came up with the idea of ​​lending products instead of selling them.
Considering these difficult economic times, we thought and considered ourselves as consumers, not sellers, and as a result, we were able to come up with the concept of "rental." Through this unique and creative idea, we were able to achieve remarkable growth.
Kim Seung-yu, Chairman of Hana Financial Group, recalled the time, saying, “At that time, our economy was experiencing difficulties due to a sharp decline in consumption and a tightening of the financial market, and Woongjin was also facing a major crisis as sales of its main product, water purifiers, had significantly decreased.
However, Woongjin, led by Chairman Yoon Seok-geum, was able to grow into an even bigger company by turning the crisis into an opportunity and implementing the creative idea of ​​a water purifier rental system,” he said, suggesting that his creativity made Woongjin what it is today.
This book provides detailed examples and methodologies of how extraordinary creativity and counter-intuitive thinking can be harnessed to create opportunities in crises.
And this is also a good example of what attitude one should take to overcome crises and difficulties, whether one is an ordinary office worker or a business manager.
However, he emphasizes that creative ideas are not created spontaneously by a brilliant mind, but rather emerge from the habit of repetitive thinking.
The more you think, the more thoughts you have and the better thoughts you have.
This is the basis of creativity he talks about.
For this reason, he places great importance on the creativity of his employees, consistently invests in employee training to enhance creativity, and strives to create such a corporate culture.

Love and Cheer _ Love brings greater profits and greater success.

From before Woongjin's inception to today, Chairman Yoon Seok-geum has considered 'love' to be important and a factor that has enabled Woongjin to achieve continuous growth.
And at the foundation of that love lies a new wind.
Chairman Yoon Seok-geum said, “Shinbaram is a bond that connects people and society, an energy that people want to share with others, and a vitamin that gives strength and encouragement to each other.
He says that through this new spirit, you can discover how to love your work and find ways to enrich your life.
He said that he kept the motto "Shinbaram" in his heart during his nine years of work life before founding Woongjin ThinkBig, the parent company of Woongjin Group.
In “Positivity Creates a Masterpiece,” he says:
“The greatest strength of Koreans is that when they are motivated, they display amazing abilities.
Also, Koreans don't like to do things that other people tell them to do.
So, if you make the company work voluntarily, efficiency will increase significantly.
Westerners work according to their hours and pay, and Japanese people work for the organization, but Koreans work for themselves or for those who recognize them, so the feeling of excitement is even more important.” This clearly shows how powerful excitement is in motivating people.
He also said that it is important to create a company where employees can feel pride and confidence, so that they too can love their work and their company.
When a company's life becomes one where people can feel a sense of fulfillment and pride in life, rather than simply an economic activity, the members of that company can produce and share the energy of a new wind with each other.
Woongjin's corporate culture can be summarized as 'Love Again', a corporate culture of love, love again, and love again that changes people and innovates organizations.
It also produces great results that we did not expect.

In this book, Chairman Yoon Seok-geum emphasizes the importance of people that he felt while managing a business.
In particular, as Woongjin has built its foundation through door-to-door sales and learning materials, it values ​​the value of each and every member of its organization.
A corporate culture that values ​​people and encourages enjoyable work will encourage performance-oriented managers in Korean companies to consider what truly matters in corporate management.

Social Responsibility: A Greater Future Opens When Everyone Moves Forward Together

Chairman Yoon Seok-geum's main areas of interest recently are ethical management and environmental management.
In particular, through this book, he strongly expresses his belief that companies should go beyond profit-making economic activities and fulfill their social responsibility by returning the profits they have earned to society.
Recently, advanced companies are focusing on sustainable management, and Woongjin is no exception.
Chairman Yoon presents ethical management as the first condition for sustainable management.
It emphasized that if individuals and companies conduct business unfairly and opaquely, it will be difficult to even hope for tomorrow's well-being, and sustainable management will become an impossible dream.
Chairman Yoon also recognized the importance of crisis management capabilities and has emphasized to his executives and employees the importance of developing proactive response capabilities. The most important principle of this approach is ethical management.
So, it justifies unethical and unfair behavior carried out in the name of 'customs' and strictly regulates competition in an unfair way.
From a corporate perspective, it is argued that if a business requires unethical methods to succeed, then that business should be closed.

Chairman Yoon Seok-geum is striving to create a transparent and healthy company by focusing internally on ethical management, while also striving to fulfill social responsibility externally.
Woongjin, which grew through the water purifier business, knows better than any other company the importance of water.
We started the 'Yugucheon Furniture Movement' with the aim of becoming a company that benefits from drinking water, and prepares for the future together with society by protecting the precious nature and making the water clean in return.
We are also turning our attention overseas and doing our best to fulfill our role as an international corporate citizen.
As Woongjin Coway's overseas business expands, we believe that sharing should go beyond profit-seeking, and are working on a project to build wells in Cambodia.
This is based on the idea that everyone has the right to a healthy life, and that it is a duty and responsibility of humanity to ensure that children, in particular, grow up healthy.
In addition, in a few years, the country's best natural ecological park, 'Woongjin Children's Village', will open in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province.
Chairman Yoon Seok-geum believed that the main reason for the deteriorating environment was economic activities that focused on the two axes of development and consumption promotion as the foundation of growth. He started this movement with the belief that it was time for companies that played a leading role in economic activities to fulfill their social responsibility to protect the environment.
He emphasizes the importance of environmental management, emphasizing that individuals and businesses will soon face the problem of survival if they do not pay attention to environmental management, while also strengthening the will to put it into practice.