Successful Failure: Jack Ma

Hello readers!

‘Inspiration’ is something that holds our courage, self-faith up and builds confidence in our bad times. Rejections lead us to be in depression, anger, lack of confidence and ultimately we lose. Who are the winners? They are normal human beings who always put extra efforts and never give up. Winners always have the inspiration and that keeps them going and going no matter how many times the failure has been the outcome. Winners never forget the failure but they carry it. My mentor cum best friend once told me when I was depressed due to failure, “Learn to carry the failure, it’s very important how you carry it”. In this article, I’m gonna talk about the person who is I think the perfect example of ‘Successful Failure’ and has been a great source of motivation personally for me. His struggle, failures, effortlessness has always helped me to get up and act when I’ve failed. I hope you too will find it inspiring.

Many of you may know Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group and the richest man in China. The net-worth of Jack is $38.3 Billion at the age of 55. The man who has impacted the entire e-Commerce industry and has a significant share in the growing Chinese economy  & SME industries. Alibaba worth more than Facebook and processes goods more than eBay and Amazon combined. Jack had no experience with computers, any programming language, not born in a financially sound family but still, he has managed to create the world’s largest B2B platform. So, as the title infers, he had a lot many failures and rejections while building Alibaba which he overcame and holds such a reputable position today. I’m not gonna talk much about him but just to list down some of his measure failures before he proceeds to build Alibaba.

1- He failed in key tests for admission in primary schools twice.

2- He failed 3 times in middle school.

3- Applied jobs for 30 times, got rejected.

4- 5 people went for the police, 4 were accepted, only he was rejected.

5- When KFC began in China, 24 people applied for the job, 23 were selected, he was the only one to be rejected.

6- He applied to Harvard for 10 times, got rejected.

and many more.

[PC: Brandriddle]

Born in 1964, Jack used the internet for the first time on his trip to the US in 1995. His first online search was “beer” and this captivated the idea of internet business in China because he was wondered to find that no Chinese beer appeared in the search results.

Despite the fact that his first two ventures failed, after he came from the US trip, he started again and managed to gather his 17 friends for the internet business in his apartment in Hangzhou, China. This was not adequate. Today, in 2020, many of us still prefer offline purchasing over the online one because of less trust. Imagine, in the 90s what might been the scenario. Jack once said in his interview given to Journalist Charlie Rose, at World Economic Forum at Davos in 2015, when he was asked about how he had build trust? When he started Alibaba, people started registering and listing their products to sell. But because of the absence of trust in online shopping, no one was purchasing goods online. There was no revenue for almost 3 years after Alibaba launched in 1998. In the initial time, they themselves started purchasing goods that were listed on their website. The rooms, godowns started overstacking, brimming with products. the ball started rolling and so as the trust. Sellers started believing in this platform and rest is history.

There is a very touching & practical saying about happiness which I read in Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***, “Happiness comes from solving problems”. Indeed obvious. One problem goes another comes, this is how life is. When we solve the problem, we become happy, when we don’t, we stay sad. Jack advises the same. Charlie Rose asked Jack, “What do you worry about?” Jack Replied, “I worry about people lose hope, lose vision, and start to complain. We also had the same period. It’s not good for anybody got rejected by so many people, we also faced the same at Ali, but later we find that the world has a lot of opportunities. How you see the world, how you catch the opportunity ”

Jack Ma follows the famous Tai Chi philosophy. Jack utilized it in his business. He says when he was asked about it; “Calm down, there is always a way out, and keep yourself balanced and meanwhile, don’t be feared of the competition. It will always remain there.”

Very importantly, talking on women, he said, “One of the secrets of Alibaba’s success is that we have a lot of women, around 47% of the total workforce is women, 33% of the management is of woman. We have a woman CEO, CFO, CPO. The woman thinks and cares more about others.”

This is why I kept the title, Successful Failure. Jack Ma always says, “Think Big” and he has shown the world how to solve problems by handling failures, rejections consistently.

I’m open to accept your hello and would love to connect.

If it’s not too much trouble, comment your views, opinions and get in touch.

Thanks for investing your valuable time to read this article.

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Sources and references: Business Insider, Forbes, World Economic Forum, Alibaba.com