One of the world's richest man gives advice on how to be successful.
Last year, Jack Ma was the richest man in China but was edged out in 2015 by Wang Jianlin and dropped to No. 2. He’s still the 33rd richest man on the planet and the seventh wealthiest in the technology field. So, when Jack speaks, you may want to listen.
Ma knows a thing or two about being successful. He is the
founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a group of successful Internet-based businesses. Ma started from meager means, but is now worth nearly $22 billion.
When he was a child, Ma developed an early desire to learn English, so he rode his bike every morning to a local hotel just so he could speak to foreigners. For nine years, Ma would guide tourists around his native Hangzhou for free to practice English. After a while, he became pen pals with one of the tourists who gave him the nickname “Jack” because his real name was too difficult to pronounce.
Later, Ma failed the university entrance exam twice, but never gave up and ultimately attended Hangzhou Normal University (at the time it was called Hangzhou Teacher's Institute) and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English in 1988.
His education did not end there. Jack continued English and business classes at other colleges until he completed graduate school.
Now considered the “grandfather of the Internet in China,” his beginnings came about as he says, “in a Hollywood story” way. Ma traveled to the U.S. to help a Chinese company recover money owed by an American businessman who was the company’s joint-venture partner. Ma went to the man's Malibu mansion where he discovered he had no intention of paying his debt and instead, Ma claims, brandished a gun and held Ma in the house for two days.
He talked his way out of the situation by agreeing to become the man's Chinese partner by starting an Internet company in China, but there was a problem: Ma didn’t know how the Internet worked.
When he left Hawaii, he flew to Seattle where he told friends about the ordeal and asked them to show him this thing called the World Wide Web. Ma typed the words "beer" and "China" into a search engine and when nothing came back, the idea of creating websites for Chinese companies was born.
At the time, high-speed Internet did not exist and he was using a dial-up Internet provider. He said that, "The day we got connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house. We waited three and a half hours and got half a page,” Ma told The New York Times. “We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. But I was so proud. I proved the Internet existed."
To this day, Ma admits he doesn’t know much about how the Internet works. He has never programmed or written code, and doesn’t know how to use his iPad. So how is the “grandfather of the Internet in China” a multi-billionaire if he can barely send an email?
Because he is very smart and used what he could do well to his advantage.
Success: The accomplishment of an aim or purpose.
