Chief executive, Smorgon Hartwell Recycling

Pennsylvanian Stephen Greer founded Hartwell Pacific in 1993 as a sole proprietor metals trading business. By 2001, he had opened nine recycling facilities in seven countries and sold a 22 per cent stake of the business. In 2003, Smorgon Steel Group bought 50 per cent and Smorgon Hartwell Recycling was listed on the Australian stock exchange. This year, Smorgon bought the balance of the business. Mr Greer remains chief executive of Smorgon Hartwell Recycling, the Asian recycling arm of the Smorgon Steel Group.

I was the neighbourhood paperboy from the age of nine. I had to make multiple trips on my route as the bag was too heavy for me to carry. I woke up every morning at 6am to fold and deliver the papers before school, which was not much fun when there was snow outside and it was minus 20 degrees Celsius. I still have the same alarm clock. It could wake me out of a coma.

I learned about meeting customer expectations and keeping track of accounts receivables. Can you believe people would late-pay a nine-year-old their weekly newspaper bill?

I always wanted to be independent and a businessman. I admired my father going off every day smartly dressed in his business suit to 'the office', which I imagined to be a very exotic place. He was a senior executive with the HJ Heinz Company.

The idea [for Hartwell Pacific] came to me while I was sitting on a couch in my shared flat on Robinson Road. There was an acute shortage of raw materials for the metals industry. The opportunity seem obvious to me. I started Hartwell Pacific in 1993, when I was 24. It was a challenge as I have a baby face anyway. I never told people my age. I would just say 'guess'. This was a serious concern because one of my key customers was, and is, one of the largest steel producers in the world, and I think the executives worried about whether 'this young start-up' could deliver.

The business was to supply China with scrap metal, a raw material in hot demand. When we started, we worked around the clock. I slept with a notepad and calculator next to my bed for years.

This year we are on target to reach US$100 million in sales, against US$88 million last year. Our corporate headquarters is in Hong Kong and we have metal recycling facilities in Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, and trading offices in India, Vietnam and China. The business employs more than 150 people.

Lily Chiang, 43

Founder, Eco-Tek Holdings

Having graduated with an engineering PhD in manufacturing, Ms Chiang wanted to run a business that was meaningful. A trip to Antarctica opened her eyes to the beauty of nature, and in 1999 she founded Eco-Tek Holdings, developing products and technologies for the environmental protection and health sectors. Today, Eco-Tek is listed on the Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market and exports its 'green' products to Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and China. Its turnover last year was $106 million. Company profits are returned to the community through the Wide Sky Foundation, set up by Ms Chiang in 2002.

I came from a very poor family. I have been working since I was in high school. In those days I spent the summer helping out in my father's factory for $1 a day. When I got a scholarship to study in the United States, my father gave me a one-way ticket and US$200. I worked four hours a day while studying.

Through hard work and industry, my father later became a very successful businessman who also does a lot of charity work. I learned from him that making money is not easy, but spending it meaningfully is harder.

For my father's generation, work was about survival.

While drive and ambition may be important, I believe that understanding one's self and finding one's inner passion is most important. When I started my own career, I wanted to do something that would help my own development as well as that of Hong Kong and China. I believe that capital health equals capital wealth and that sustainability is everybody's responsibility.

Starting a business isn't easy. It takes perseverance. The hardest thing starting out was gaining the confidence of others. I'm a mechanical engineer, and people were saying 'Hey, what do you know about the environment? How do we know you can deliver?' The banks would ask 'How many houses do you have, and what can we mortgage?'

We developed technology to reduce car exhaust gas by 50 per cent, and this is currently deployed with support from the Hong Kong government. We also have products based upon advanced environmental technologies that clean the air, clean the water, reduce noise pollution and save energy. I believe that these products are vital to our future. We have just patented an energy-saving device that will reduce electricity consumption by 80 per cent and is applicable throughout the metals, plastics and construction industries.

Raymond Lee Man-chun, 35

Chief executive, Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing

Born in Hong Kong and educated in Canada, Raymond Lee Man-chun founded his company in 1994, at the age of 23. Today, Lee & Man is China's second largest container board company, with three mills in China and one in the United States, offices in Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Hamburg, and 3,000 employees. Its annual turnover is $4 billion, and the company recently announced a first-half profit increase of 60 per cent.

My first pot of gold came from my father, who helped me financially to start the business. I have made many more [pots of gold] since then, but I still want to keep building. I am quite competitive by nature, and I see business as a game.

My father was a handbag manufacturer, and one of the things I observed as a youngster was that he needed boxes to export his merchandise. China's economy had grown so fast since the 1980s it was hard to get almost anything, including paper.

As it turned out, with so much now being made in China, and all needing some kind of cardboard packaging, my business has grown more than 20 times over the past seven years. We now have a 10per cent market share in China. The company made $309 million in the first half and has a market capitalisation of about $8 billion. It is probably one of the largest industrial companies on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

I never thought of myself as 23 - I considered myself much older. I take myself very seriously and, in business, others took me seriously too. I have wanted to build an empire ever since I made up my mind to be a businessman. I do not want to stop. I guess I am afraid to stop - if I do, people might take my share.

My advice to entrepreneurs is to start young. A lot of what you do in business and life comes from experience so the sooner you start, the faster you learn. Young people are also more willing to take risks, so if you get the opportunity, I say go for it. And be nice to people. You can be aggressive in business without being mean. At the end of the day, you need friends in this world, and you never know who is going to help you in the future.

At first, while I was working 80 hours a week and my friends were out drinking in Lan Kwai Fong, it seemed like a sacrifice. Now I am glad I did it - although I have scaled back my hours. As a boss, I am trying to develop a system so that a group of people can work together to make the business grow.

There are still times when I do not know what to do, and if I really cannot decide, I will flip a coin. So far, it has worked. I believe in luck. There are a lot of equally bright people who work just as hard as me but who have not been as lucky. I was in the right place at the right time.

Raju Harilela, 39

Chairman, Harilela Strategic Group

From a career in hospitality, Mr Harilela started the Harilela Strategic Group in 1990 at the age of 24 with the vision of creating a multi-tiered company offering products and services targeted at the hospitality industry. His company now consists of 18 business units with a combined annual turnover of about $200 million and 252 employees. The group's business includes hotels, hospitality equipment trading, spas, restaurants and food logistics, including well-known enterprises such as Dial-a-Dinner, Pure Fitness and Pure Yoga.

I'm usually up between 5.30am and 6am because the morning hours are the most peaceful, the air is the freshest and the universe is the calmest. It's a time to get myself rooted, find inner peace and focus internally.

My day proceeds on to an hour to 75 minutes of Hatha yoga, pranayama and meditation.

My [work] day begins with individual meetings with division heads, guiding them, understanding their needs and requirements, working with them to find solutions.

For the rest of the day, I tour around our offices, the restaurants and fast-food outlets, trying to understand any new challenges which have arisen or what improvements we could make.

I have always believed that, in order to understand the rules, I had to challenge them. My mother always said I was rebellious and stubborn as a kid. But I always saw things my way. I suppose I still do. It was a question of going to the roots of everything to gain a deeper understanding and, with that understanding forming the foundation of my knowledge, then taking that step to excel.

Being born into a wealthy family, I suppose I wanted to understand the meaning of wealth. I knew that I could not within the context of the family, so I chose the more difficult path of going out on my own.

I choose to educate myself and excel at university. I then chose not to join the family business and instead joined the Hyatt Regency Hong Kong hotel. I felt I could only learn if I was treated just like everyone else. This was one of my greatest lessons in life.

My first full-time job was as assistant manager - rooms division at the hotel, and I learned so much. When I received my first pay cheque, I remember having to make the first decisions of where each dollar would be spent and how much would be saved. I remember the hours I had to put in to make the $6,000 income that was my first salary.

I saved up $200,000, which was to become the seed capital for the Harilela Strategic Group in 1990.

The first business unit I created was Restaurant Management Consultants. Today, after 15 years, it remains the dearest to my heart.

Richard Tsang Lap-ki, 39

Chairman and managing director,

Strategic Public Relations Group

Richard Tsang started his PR firm focused on financial communications and investor relations business in 1995 with five employees. A series of expansions and acquisitions has seen the firm grow into a fully integrated public relations consultancy with offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Taiwan and Singapore, and more than 150 employees. Annual turnover in the year to end March was $78.7 million.

I could either have opened a small PR firm like so many others in Hong Kong or something big. I picked the second option. I also love Hong Kong and I wanted to build the first Chinese-owned, international PR network. I looked at the big overseas firms in town and asked: If they can be successful in this part of the world, why can't we be successful in theirs?

Looking back, I have always been a leader. In school I would organise class clubs with myself as president. I'm a Christian and have been chairman of my church fellowship since my teenage years. While studying journalism and communications at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, I chaired various societies and was in charge of advertising for the Sha Tin district newspaper.

My career began with a wonderful opportunity to start a PR department at a small hotel. After a year, I joined Burson-Marsteller, and later moved to Edelman to set up its first financial team in Asia.

I realised that if I wanted to grow with an international agency, my career opportunities would be limited by my desire to stay in Hong Kong. I set up Strategic instead. From the start I had four partners, who are minority shareholders.

I only hire top professionals, but they must be local. This is my first priority as I believe local people can provide the best, most in-depth PR services to a client. We have 150 clients on a retainer basis across the region, and that list is growing by 20 a year. This year, we may be looking at a record turnover. Good people are driving this growth.

Unlike many PR firms, the turnover of our senior management is low. I have 21 senior people in Hong Kong alone. Over the past five years, only three have left. Across the eight offices, we are even more stable. Our stability comes from us being a group of happy people, who are committed to a strong working relationship.

I believe we are a generous company. When we reach our target, we share the profits. We are also innovative. We are the only agency in Hong Kong with facilities for holding press conferences in-house. We also promote our branding, which is essential if you want to be a global name.

When I started working, I never left the office before midnight. But I was young and could handle that kind of life. I don't have any regrets. I am still married and have two sons, so don't feel I missed out. Today, I leave the office by 7.30pm, so that's a big improvement.