“I Want to Help People Realize They Have So Many Choices”: Henry Fan on The Mobility Standard

Our guest on this episode of the Mobility Standard podcast was Henry Fan, CEO and Co-Founder of the world’s biggest investment migration company, Globevisa.

In this episode, we talked about:

• How Henry got started in investment migration two decades ago, and what the Chinese market looked like back then;
• His “biggest, stupidest mistake” in business;
• Why he wants Globevisa to be the Amazon of immigration, and what he means by that term;
• What Henry looks for in a local partner and an illustrative story of things going wrong;
• Why Henry considers himself more of an expert on business operations than on immigration;
• Why International investment migration firms have not been successful in penetrating the Chinese B2C market;
• Why compliance risk grows in parallel with company size, and how to mitigate that;
• Why so few of the huge Chinese immigration firms have tried to internationalize;
• Why investment migration companies going to China need to keep a low profile;
• Why the main factor motivating Chinese emigration right now is a feeling of insecurity;
• What philosophy drives Henry Fan, and how he finds happiness in everyday life.

Henry doesn’t spend much time trying to predict what the future of free movement will look like, but that he’s determined to do his job to enable freedom of movement for as many people as possible:

“All I can say is I will try my best to build a platform. And with that platform, I can help people realize they have so many choices. You don’t have to pay a huge price to do it; you don’t have to have a noble prize to do it. If you want it, the Globevisa platform will help you.”

He also acknowledges that he had to learn costly lessons before he was able to make Globevisa a global – rather than merely Chinese – investment migration behemoth.

“One of the biggest, stupidest mistakes I have ever made was to send my best Chinese staff to other countries,” he says about his first attempt to internationalize his originally Chinese company almost ten years ago. “I wasted a lot of money and several years’ time. I thought that was the way. But then I changed the strategy. Now, I just partner with the best local guys. We enter the market together, and we market Globevisa in a local way.”

Talking about the current state of China’s investment migration market, Henry laments the prevalence of short-term, low-integrity approaches to business:

“Right now, the competition is too hot. So, no one plays the long game. You just have to survive. And, for some programs, like EB-5 or certain golden visas, you can charge a crazy high price so that just a single client may be enough to keep a small firm alive for a whole year. So, no one is doing business in a decent way anymore. Everybody plays the short-term strategy. They try to find one rich guy, get some crazy profit, and then move on.”

Listen to the full episode in the player below, or search for “IMI Podcasts” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform.