Jack Ma: The rise of Jack and Alibaba

In my podcast, I did a short episode on the famous Chinese entrepreneur named Jack Ma. Jack is a hardlined entrepreneur who had a sketchy start within the business world. He had a rough start with being denied from college 3 times, and struggling to upstart his most successful business for years named Alibaba. In the podcast, I mainly explain the values and disciplines that kept Jack in line when forming his company. Something else that Jack talks about is how to maintain a successful business, and some of the other values such as having emotional intelligence and learning how to turn your failures into lessons to grow from.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning everybody. My name is Alex, and today we're going to be talking about a very well-known entrepreneur by the name of Jack Ma. Now, Jack Ma is an entrepreneur and the founder of Alibaba, which is a well-known e-commerce website that a lot of other websites, a lot of modern websites, take inspiration from. Now, uh, Jack Ma is a Chinese-born entrepreneur. He was born in China in 1964, and he was known to be a little bit of a trouble child. You know, he had issues with school, issues with friends, you know, issues with teachers, issues with everybody as it is. He was a very troubled child. But when he turned 18, he actually applied for college. Now, when he applied for college at the age of 18, he actually got rejected for scoring way too low on his math. So afterwards, he applied as a waiter with his friend at a hotel, and even then he got rejected from that. Now, later on, Jack Ma ended up applying for the second time for the college entrance exam, and he failed again. Now, the second time around was he failed because of his math scores again, primarily, but there was an increase and an improvement in his mass scores from the last time he took it. Since the first time he took his mass score, his mat his uh his college entrance exam, his mass scores rose 18 points. Initially, he only had what got one point on his college entrance exam, but he ended up the second time around getting a 19. Still not enough to hit that standardized uh median, that standardized uh uh threshold for the um for the entrance exam, but he is still improving. Now in 1984, Jack took the exam for the third time, still failing again, but gaining an 84 earnest math score, scoring five points below the standardized benchmark. You know, the first time around, he only got a one. The second time he got a 19, and then the third time, major, major, major improvement, just barely missing the standardized benchmark from the test. He got an 84. After some time of working and trying to study and improve his test scores, Jack actually got very, very lucky. And Jack actually ended up attending college after failing the past three college entrance exams due to the fact that people not enough people were actually in to school. Not enough people got into the school. So what the school ended up doing was accepting previously denied applicants into the program to fill in that roster that they had to fill up. And obviously, Jack was one of them. Now, when Jack actually got into the school, and when he actually got into the college, he got placed into English major. Now, with this English English major, Jack was able to build up his confidence. He was able to excel, build up his confidence through the merit and recognition that he was um uh gaining from his education and from his college. And with all this confidence and all this merit and all of this knowledge that he's gaining in, at some point in his academic career, even Jack was even um able, Jack was able to become a chairman of the student union at his college, which is a very, very, very good accomplishment in his terms, which um gives him enough experience, a lot of experience in leadership, which is something that's a very, very vital and important when it comes to entrepreneurship and the creation of a business, because without leadership, nobody has a person to fall behind. If nobody has a person to fall behind, there's no direction within the company. Now to start off Jack's early business career, which can be um can be accredited to his knowledge education and experience that he grained he gained from uh college, you know, things such as the chairman, um, you know, the education which he was gaining, he was able to uh uh to implement those ideas and that knowledge into a discovery that he found, which was the internet. Now in 1994, this is around the time that the internet was starting to pop off and a lot of people were starting to utilize the internet for the start of their business or the creation of their business and things such as that. Jack actually found the internet and then he created a website based in translation, you know, kind of using that his English major to use. So yeah, he um he was working on he's worked on his uh website on translation, particularly Chinese to English and English to Chinese translation. And even after a while, he began traveling to the US and became a translator for his website in the US, and even became a spokesperson on behalf of his website in the US. But as he was in the US um for his website, he actually noticed something that was quite particular uh uh quite peculiar in a sense. He found a gap in the market for Chinese website and ideals in the US. You know, Jack would go to um, you know, he would look up certain things like Chinese cooking, Chinese, um, you know, Chinese products, Chinese food, Chinese culture, and compared to other cultures that are readily available in resources such as textbooks, you know, and um even on the internet, there was almost nothing that could have been found regarding Chinese stuff. So what Jack did was is that he filled in that gap for Chinese sources. So, and what happened is that Jack actually founded another company called China Page. China Pages. Alright, so um he decided to make this Chinese news agency named China Pages, as we discussed, and it actually raked in roughly$1.18 million in the span of three years, just by filling in that gap that other agencies are in a sense refuse to um to go into. Um he mainly covered things such as Chinese news, uh small Chinese news, big Chinese news, uh trends that are happening, and um anything that people such as me and you may find per uh per uh you know interesting, such as cooking ideas, traditional ideas, or anything of the such. Now, following in that in 1999, it was actually the year that Jack Ma founded the company, the major e-commerce uh online business called Alibaba. Now, Alibaba was was founded in an apartment with 18 other of his friends. And at the time they really only had um$65,000, which was about$500,000 in uh Juan, and you know, some other little uh pinches of money from friends, but for the most part, he had roughly$65,000 to only$70,000 in initial investment for his company, which still is a lot, but it doesn't, that shouldn't ever stop the fact that you know you really don't need an investment. If you have a great idea, I mean that investment will cover itself. The people would be your investment. You invest in your product, and the people will pay you back that investment with your hard work and your care for them. Now, in January 2000, roughly a year later, Alibaba ended up earning$25 million in American venture capital, which is well over the$65,000 investment that they got the year prior, and which in terms was a huge success for Alibaba. And after a while, he actually became the um he became the executive chairman and revenues for the Alibaba uh e-commerce business ended up hitting a revenue stream of roughly two billion dollars. Some early struggles that Jack Maul faced on his journey of creating Alibaba and his just overall entrepreneurial journey. I mean, the biggest one would have to be just the funding for the company in the first three years. Before that initial investment from his friends, the initial$65,000 to$70,000 that the company um gained in that investment, he had zero dollars. In the past three years prior to that, he was struggling extremely, extremely hard. But thankfully, his friends came around and he did get that$65,000 to$70,000 that he could that he did put towards um Alibaba. But another issue and another uh early struggle that came with his um with uh with his uh Alibaba creation was a lack of online payment system. Now, this was an issue that um really plagued, especially early online companies and websites, was a lack of a structural online payment system that allowed companies to move their business to online. This is particularly hard for almost every e-commerce uh company, such as you know, Amazon, eBay, Alibaba. So that lack of online payment systems really put a nail in the coffin for the meat for the uh time being on creating this e-commerce idea. But another huge elephant in the room when it came to the creation of Alibaba was the state regulations and policies that that Jack had to abide by when creating his company. Now Alibaba is a Chinese company, Jack Ma is a Chinese citizen, and therefore he had to follow under the state's regulations and policies regarding commerce and just overall business because because the way that a lot of these companies are are faced, a lot of how these companies are set up, is that the representatives of the Chinese government. So the Chinese government doesn't particularly like um what you're doing with your company, the ideas you're bringing forward for your company, they may just scrap it, and at the end of the day, they're the ones who ultimately have the final say. So those are some really um early struggles that uh Jack Ma had to face, but luckily um those are struggles that he was able to overcome with his strong discipline. Jack Ma has uh repeatedly mentioned that a part of his success and entrepreneurial journey is accredited to his discipline. Now, when Jack talks about his discipline, he often mentions that it is important to be resilient and strong and to never give up. And that is that is a discipline that is very evident in the way that Jack uh formulates his his mindset, the way that he goes about his life. Because even early on when Jack was applying for school, he never gave up. Every single time that he applied for his college entrance exams, he probably knew he wasn't gonna pass, he probably knew he was gonna fail. Who knows? The only person who really knows is him. But one thing that is certain and that cannot be uh denied is that he was resilient, he did not stop, did not give up, and he did not buckle. He would he did not stop working towards what he wanted until he got it, and eventually he got it. And another thing that he likes to mention is that it's very important in the entrepreneurial and business world to have a strong emotional intelligence. And this goes back to the idea of leadership. If you don't have a person, like we said, if you don't have a person who is there to lead the business towards a common goal, then that's a business that doesn't have any growth in mind. Every business and every entrepreneur needs to have a leader in mind or be that leader that their company or their people need. Circling back to that, emotional intelligence is very important when it comes to entrepreneurship because the whole thing about business is it's run by people. Uh the people buying your stuff are people, the people working at your place are people, everything about business is people. We're integrating personality into something that has none of it. Putting people into warehouses, putting people into positions, putting people, getting people to buy your stuff. It takes a lot of emotional intelligence and a lot of leadership to actually unlock that potential and understand why that emotional intelligence is important. Because a big part about business is emotions and people. If you don't know how to read people, if you don't know how to give in to what people want, i.e. in the market or your own employees, your business is gonna fail. So Jack Maul deliberately verbatim um has mentioned that emotional intelligence is extremely important when it comes to the success, the future, and the growth of any company, whether it's your new company or a company you work at. Another discipline that Jack Maul holds uh very close to his heart is the idea of embracing failure and learning from them and growing to be better. Now, this is something, this is a very good skill that anybody can have, right? It's easy to embrace the failure, then get mad at it and try to correct it. But it's another to actually learn from it. Why did it happen? How can I prevent this? How did this affect others? How does this affect me short term and long term? You know, every single failure and even every single accomplishment is a learning opportunity that everybody should take uh into account. You know, whether you're doing great in school, why are you doing great in school? How am I doing great in school? How is my business making so much money? Where is this coming from? How is this affecting the market? How am I benefiting the market? My employees say they hate their job. Why did they hate their job? Are we creating an uh um an unproductive, uh, an unlikable, an unfamiliar work environment to where our people don't want to work anymore? It's things like this, it it it even the smaller things, the big failures, the small failures, the big accomplishments, and the small accomplishments are all something that should be taken into account when it comes to improving yourself and growing as not only a leader, but as an entrepreneur and as a person. Because having that self-awareness allows you and opens you up for those opportunities to become a better person, not just two weeks from now, three weeks from now, four weeks from now, but even tomorrow, the next day, and the next day. And you become a better person every single day until you become the person that you want to be. Now, in terms of physical accomplishments, you know, it it happens. The way that Jack Ma failed, he kept failing to get into college over and over and over again. And it comes back to that mindset. If you do if you give up now, then you'll never have a chance to actually make it. And that's kind of exactly where Jack Ma is coming from in the in this sense. Because if you would have given up, if you would have given up after his first attempt or a second attempt into college, he may have never even created Alibaba. So it's that idea that just keep going until you get what you need, because if somebody else can do it, then you most definitely can too. And also with these failures, Jack also has this strong mindset of always doing better every day. As we mentioned before, every single day you'll want to do better. Now, Jack has this 1% mentality where if you could and if you can be better every day, even if it's 1%, that's still 1% better than you were the day before. How would you look 100 days from then? How would you look 200 days from then? You'd be 100% better, 200% better, 300% better, 365% better. And that's the minimum. Improving on yourself every single day is what you need to become successful in this world and successful in your business, and it's successful in general. Because if you take a step back, then you're not you're not growing. You're I don't want to say you're dying either, but you're definitely not growing. But it's just something that when it comes to entrepreneurship, you must have. Taking a step back, even if you have to revert a change, always build upon that change and learn from that change. If you if you learn from your mistakes, you're not really taking a step back because the next time it comes up, you know you're gonna knock it out. You know you're gonna do a thousand times percent better because you've learned from it before. You didn't take a step back and said, Oh my god, I'm not doing this again. No, you took that one percent that that one percent step forward minimum and you became better from the from the situation that arose. Something else that Jack also holds dear to his heart is the idea of discipline over talent. Now, when he says this, what he's meaning is that he believes that discipline beats talent. And as talented people often fail to be consistent, disciplined people such as ordinary people like me, you, and others, we can extreve extraordinary things just because of the discipline that we hold. Now, I may not be the most talented person, I may not be the smartest, but if I know it how to keep myself going, if I can keep this momentum up and not stop until I get what I need, I will be, I more than likely I'm gonna overcome. I'm gonna overcome the person who has talent because they have something that's stopping them, they have a barrier. They have a they have an opposite goal in mind of what I have. They may have money in mind, but I have reputation in mind. I have the future in mind. And I'm not gonna get that future if I give up now. Think long term and not short term. And finally, some other disciplines that Jack uses to encourage the growth in his business and his entrepreneurial mindset is the value of the people that he has to his disposal. Empower your team. Always look for opportunities, not only for yourself, but for the people around you. That way you can build trust with them. Because if you have a team that trusts you, they're gonna be willing to go beyond uh beyond for you. They're gonna go to hell and back for you if they truly trust you and you have a vision for them. Um and just be yourself, really. You know, just be yourself, don't be fake around these people because the focus on people and values is very important, especially when starting a business. As we mentioned before, having that emotional intelligence and value your people, the very people who are the foundation of your company. And if you don't value them, if you don't show them that you care, then that business is is guaranteed to fail from the start. Because as we mentioned, the whole point of business is trying to morph personality around something that has no personality, morphing these people around a business structure, around a structure in general that really wasn't meant for us. So we have to integrate our personalities. We have to make people show that uh show people that they care. You know, a lot of the time these people they're they're at they're working for the company more than they are with spending time with their family. They're spending more time with the company than they are with their family. And we spent we talk about all this, like, oh, your family, this is your home. The best way to make them have pride in what they do and have pride in where they work and have pride in you is to make sure that they know that you care about them and then make sure that you know you're gonna go above and beyond for them because if they know you'll do that, then they'll do it for you, right? Now, some uh in the end of the podcast uh advice that Jack Maul regularly gives young people is that just to take risks, you know, take risks while you are still young and learn from the mistakes that you make along the way to grow as a leader and as an entrepreneur. You know, again, this is something that he holds deep to his heart and he pretty much only ever talks about. It's pretty much his number one value. Take risks while you're young. While you're still young, make those mistakes because you have the space to make those mistakes. You have the time to make those mistakes. You don't want to be 30, 40, 50, just now getting into this entrepreneurial, this growth mindset, this positive growth mindset, and you're making these mistakes that'll cripple you when you could have been making these mistakes when you were younger, and you had that backing, you had that uh that safeguard to fall back on. Make these mistakes while you're young and learn from them. Because who knows? Maybe you may be the next Jack Ma, you may be the next uh richest person. Because I'm sure when Jack Ma, if Jack Maul would have given up on his first, second, third, or college entry exam, he probably would not have been the founder or co-founder of the Baba. He probably would have just been another worker. So just the end of here, um, you know, just do what you believe is right, take chances, learn from those chances, whether they're good, whether they come out good or bad, everything is a learning opportunity, and don't give up and pursuing what you believe is right and the dreams that you think is gonna bring you success and other success. Because at the end of the day, things and changes made for making decisions that you don't believe, or some people may not believe, is the right decision, but prove them wrong. Alright, so that's all I have uh for today's podcast. Thank you again for listening, and everybody have a good day. Thank you.