When we think about e-commerce, the first thing that comes into our minds is Amazon
or eBay, these are the places were we mostly spend our time when we want to buy something
online.
But there is another internet giant that has more users than Amazon and eBay combined - Alibaba,
its a Chinese version of Amazon but it also has a taste of eBay and Paypal, with over
500 million monthly users, its the biggest e commerce website in the world.
And the founder of this internet Conglomerate is Jack Ma.
and his success story is absolutely fascinating, he failed more times than you even have tried
and his failures are absolutely miserable!
When you think about an internet billionaire, you think about some kind of a genius who
was introduced to computers and internet in early ages and somehow he ended up coming
with that unique idea that made him a fortune.
But Not Jack Ma, because when he started Alibaba, he had absolutely no experience with computers,
leave alone the internet.
But what makes him to stand out from the crowd, is his ability to learn from his failures
and move on.
Not matter what a horrible failure you went through, I guess Jack had a much worse experience.
First of all, he could not graduate from primary school because he failed his test, and it
was only after the third attempt he succeeded.
But that was just the beginning because after graduating from school, he struggled to get
into the college.
For more than 3 years, he failed the entrance exams and could not even get into the college.
In fact he applied to Harvard business school, yes you heard it right, he applied to Harvard,
not once or twice but 10 times.
And guess what happened, exactly he was rejected every single time.
Anyone else in his place would have already given up, but not Jack.
Think about it, it has been 3 years that you are trying to get into the college, but every
time you try, you get rejected.
Around the same time, He was also looking for a job.
He applied for the local police station but I think you can guess already how it ended
up.
Exactly, he was rejected.
According to him he applied to 30 different jobs, each and every single of them has rejected
him, but the worst rejection he probably went through was his attempt to work at KFC.
Out of 24 applicants who came for the job interview, 23 of them were accepted.
Jack was the only one who was turned down.
Imagine what he has been going through, just count the number of times he has been rejected,
thats enough reason to give up already!
Luckily, he could get into a university and graduate.
This time he could get a job and became a teacher, although that his salary wasn’t
impressive at all, I mean 10 dollars a month isn’t the kind of salary you would want
to have.
Yes you heard it right, 10 dollars per month, not per hour!
Of course, that wasn’t enough at all so jack tried to make money on side by trying
different kind of businesses, Unfortunately nothing has worked, he went from one failure
to another.
In 1995, he visited United States where he was introduced to the internet.
It was something like magic to him since he hasn’t seen anything similar to that, he
barely knew what computers were, but he quickly realised the potential of the internet.
He tried to search for for anything related to China, but he could not even find general
information, thats when he decided to Launch “ China Yellow Pages” to enlighten people
about China in this new world of internet.
Compare to his previews projects where he failed miserably, this one was pretty successful
and he finally started making some money.
But Jack’s ambitious didn't end there.
He realised that the future of business is out there in the internet, so In 1999, he
launched another website and named it alibaba.com.
He picked this name because it’s easy to remember it and it was the first Chinese e-commerce
website.
But things weren’t as great as they sound.
People didn't really know what internet was, therefore didn't trust it, so in order to
make people believe that Alibaba is reliable place to trade, they started buying by themselves
whatever was sold in their website.
And thats when things started kicking off slowly, because When people realised that
they can actually sell through Alibaba, everyone jumped in, and the website quickly started
gaining popularity.
Despite such a rapid growth, Alibaba didn't make any revenue in the first 3 years.
Especially when the dot com bubble bursted in 2001, people lost faith in internet companies
and thousands of them went bankrupt.
Fortunately Alibaba survived and after that, the company started growing dramatically.
Its valued almost at a half a trillion dollars and its expected to grow to a trillion dollars
by 2020, and Jack’s net worth is over 41 billion dollars at the time of this video.
The Moral of the story is that, you do not fail until you quit.
Jack kept trying over and over, he didn't give up when he failed to get into the college,
he didn't give up when he was rejected every time he applied for a job.
In fact he started Alibaba at the age of 35.
So if you are 25, who is stuck in a job that you absolutely hate.
Never think that its too late for you.
Remember, failure is a choice, as long as you keep going, you are not a failure and
you will eventually succeed!
And now its your turn, What was your worst failure!
Lets me know in the comments below!
And as always, hit that like button if you have enjoyed this
video and if you don’t want to miss the next video, then hit that subscribe button
and the bell besides it.
Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one