Allan Zeman was born into a Jewish family in Regensburg, Germany; and was raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, where his mother worked in a hospital.
When Zeman was seven years old, his father died. He started working at the age of ten. He dropped out of college, and by the age of nineteen, while working for a lingerie company, he had earned his first US$1 million.
Through Lan Kwai Fong Holdings Ltd, of which he is chairman, he drove the development of Lan Kwai Fong to be one of the most important bar and night life districts in Hong Kong. He is said to own 65 percent of the district's properties. In July 2003, Zeman was appointed by the then-Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, to become the chairman of Ocean Park. He managed to raise visitor numbers despite the opening of rival Hong Kong Disneyland. By 2007, Forbes magazine dubbed him “Hong Kong's Mouse Killer”.
KEY QUESTIONS ASKED:
0:00 - Introduction
2:33 - My typical day
5:20 - How I keep track of different priorities
9:03 - Why I was late for a meeting with George Bush
11:48 - Why I started work at age 9
14:26 - Being positive will get you ahead in life
17:00 - How I deal with challenges
27:38 - How I stayed ahead without technology enablers
33:49 - I look at things for what they could be