Oct 13, 2024
Inspiration
Jack Ma's Ultimate Advice for Students & Young People - HOW TO SUCCEED IN LIFE
Summary
Career and Personal Development
At different life stages, focus on: making mistakes and enjoying life in your 20s, leveraging your strengths in your 40s-50s, and investing in young talent in your 50s-60s.
Future success depends on creativity, imagination, and independent thinking, not just knowledge, as machine-like thinking will become problematic.
Adapting to Change
The world will undergo significant changes in the next 30 years due to technology, making LQ (Love Quotient) crucial for success and caring for others.
Resilience and Perseverance
Jack Ma's journey exemplifies resilience: failing twice in primary school, thrice in middle school, applying to 30 jobs unsuccessfully, and attempting Harvard 10 times without giving up.
Success Strategies
Success requires a unique approach, solving complaints rather than complaining, as demonstrated by Alibaba's growth from 19 people to 800 million users in 19 years.
Timestamps
00:00 Make mistakes and learn from them when you're young, focus on your strengths in your 40s and 50s, and support and invest in young people when you're older.
01:00 In the future, success will depend on creativity, imagination, learning, and independent thinking, as machines will become more human-like, making wisdom and experience more valuable than knowledge and manufacturing.
01:47 Focus on developing your emotional intelligence and caring for others, as success comes when you support and uplift those around you, even in the face of multiple failures and rejections.
03:20 Believe in what you're doing, love it whether people like it or not, and be simple, just like Forrest Gump.
04:11 Young people should work hard as a team, stay hopeful, and seize opportunities, as success is possible even without financial support or influential connections.
05:22 Keep working hard and stay balanced, as there is always a possibility for success; view business as a fun competition rather than a battlefield, and never give up or complain, but instead reflect on and learn from your mistakes.
06:57 Jack Ma faced criticism for his ideas, but he didn't care as long as people used them, and now 800 million people use AliPay; he was called crazy, but he believes being crazy is good because they know what they are doing.
07:58 Believing in your own ideas, finding solutions, and staying optimistic despite setbacks is the key to success for young entrepreneurs.
Transcript
00:00 My advice to the young people 25 years old, make enough mistakes, don't worry. You fall you stand up. You fall, you stand up. Enjoy it, I mean, 25 years old. Enjoy. The show, enjoy the show. From 30 to 40 years old, you have to think very clearly. Were you working for yourself if you really want to be entrepreneur. So 40 to 50 think about, how can you focus on things that you are good at. But when you are 50 to 60 years old work for the young people because young people can do better than you. So rely on them, invest on them making sure they're good. So 25 years old Don't worry. Any mistake is an income, is a wonderful revenue for you.
01:00 In the future, it's not about the competition of knowledge. It's the competition of creativity, it's a competition of imagination, it's a competition of learning, it's a competition of independent thinking. If you think like a machine the problem will come. In the past 20 years, we make people like a machine. In the next 20 years, machines will look like people. So in the future it's not knowledge driven, it's the wisdom driven, it's the experience driven. In the past it's the knowledge driven and it's the manufacturing driven and in the future. It's the creativity driven. I think next 30 years the world is going to change a lot. The new technology is going to change every aspect of the world. So this is what we think the world should be focusing on.
01:47 Not only the IQ, EQ but also focus on LQ the Q of Love. Because only when you care for the others, only when you care for the others that succeed and are more successful than you are. You have the chance. 10 years ago internet was so good when nobody believed internet was so good. Now internet is so tough because all the smart people go to internet. So you should go to the off ground. I fail for... Funny things like I failed in a key primary school test for two times and I failed like three times for the middle school, middle schools. No. I tried, there is an examination that young people if you want to go university. You have to take, take the examinations. So I failed three times. When I graduated from university, and before I, you know, for three years I tried and failed in the universities. So I apply for jobs for 30 times, got rejected. I went for police, they say “No, you’re not good”. I went to even the KFC, when KFC came to China, come to our city - You applied? -. 24 people went for the job. 23 people were accepted, I was the only guy. And we went for the police, 5 people, 4 of them accepted. I was the only guy they're not receiving. So to me, being turned down, rejected Oh, by the way, I told you that I applied for Harvard for 10 times, rejected.
03:20 I learned so much about the Hollywood movies. Especially the- Forrest Gump - You love Forrest Gump? -. I love Forrest Gump. Why do you like him? Simple. Never give up. People- people thinking he's dumb but he knows what he's doing. And I was very depressed the day... the year 2002 or 2003 in the States. I was very depressed when I could not find out a way for the internet and then I watch the movie in my friend's home Forrest Gump. When I see him. I think, "This the guy we should learn from.". Believe in what you're doing. Love it whether people like it or don't like it, be simple. And like the words, "Life is like a box of chocolates". You never know what you can get, right?
04:11 I never knew I would be here talking to you, I never know. But today I made it. I told my people in my apartment 18, 15 years ago "Guys we have to work hard not for ourselves, if we can be successful. 80% of the young people in China can be successful. We don't have a rich father, a powerful uncle, we don't get one dollar from bank, one cent from government. Just work as a team. I worry about it today, young people, a lot of young people lose hope, lose vision and start to complain. We also have the same problem, when I got... It's not a good feeling being rejected by so many people. We also depressed but at least later we find... that the world has a lot of opportunities. How you see the world? How you catch the opportunity? So... and Hollywood gives me a lot of inspiration. I, at the beginning I never thought... I thought when I was young I said, "Everything is possible".
05:22 Now I know not everything is possible. When you have something you have to think about you have to consider about the others, you have to consider about the customer, society, your employees, the shareholders. There are so many things that I think if you continue to work hard there's... there's possibility. It's not... if you don't do it. Nothing is possible. If you try to do it at least you have the hope. Calm down, there's always a way out. And keep yourself balanced. And meanwhile, don't try to... because business is a compt... Competition is fun. Business is not a battlefield, you die or I win Business... even if you die I may not win right? So it's about, it's about fun. -. Yeah, - Tell them the story, and tell them that if Jack... I don't think in this world. A lot of people be rejected more than 30 times. If we, you know, the only thing we never give up, the only thing like, we’re like Forrest Gump. We keep on fighting, we keep on changing ourself. We don’t complain. Whether you are successful or not successful. I find that when people, when they finish the job, if they make a mistake and they fail, if they always complained to others, this guy will never come back. If the guy only check himself, Yeah. Something wrong with me here, something wrong with me there.
06:57 This guy has hope. So many people I talked to at that time for AliPay, they say "this is the stupidest idea you have ever got.". But I say, "I don't care if it's stupid or clever as long as people use it". Now we have 800 million people using this AliPay. 1999, year 2000 and even at the Yahoo. Time a lot of people say, "This Jack is crazy. He's- he's doing something that we don't understand.". And a lot of venture capitals give you money because there is such a American model already there. But they say, Alibaba we don't see this kind of model, right? -. They say Jack's crazy - yeah. This is crazy guy. I mean I remember my first time in Time magazine. They call me crazy Jack and I, I think crazy is good. We are crazy but we're not stupid. We know what we are doing.
07:58 But if everybody agree with me, if everybody believed my- our idea is good. We have no chance. So that's... the money we raised, we're very thankful. So, when our investors make a lot of money, I feel proud and honored. Everybody is made unique and different so you must have a unique and different way. A lot of people today have a lot of complaints say, "I don't have opportunity.". I complained a lot when I was young. And suddenly I realized complaining does not solve any problem where the opportunity always in the place where people complain. There are so many, if there are so many opportunities in the world in this world because there are so many complaints. If you can solve the complaint, one of the complaints that’s the opportunity.So this is what we- we made. I think young people if my advice is to be an entrepreneur don't be scared of failure, of setbacks and don't give up. When we start the business, we had 18 founders including me 17 of them, most of them my students and most of them... Well, today people think, these 18 people, the smartest people in China. We don't think we were smart. Honestly, we all graduate from the very poor schools. The only thing we did we were very united, we all believed in the future, we are all optimistic, and we learn through mistakes, we never give up. If you graduate from famous university please, respect the people who graduate from the poor schools. Those people like us graduate from poor universities. Please respect yourself. We have chance we came today to...now. We made so many mistakes. People say, "You are lucky". Yes, we are very lucky. We took only 19 years to today's size. But we have gone through so many tough situations. We made so many mistakes that people cannot even imagine. In probably 19 years, you have gone through so many tough experiences and that will make you different.