Jack Ma: Learn from Your Failures

Jack Ma - Change Yourself

Chinese business magnate Jack Ma shares his long history of personal failures, and urges people to learn from their mistakes and never give up.

Transcript:

"I had a lot of failure. I failed for, funny things that I failed in, a key primary school test for two times. I failed three times for the middle schools. You know for three years I tried, failed in the universities. So I applied jobs for thirty times, got rejected. I went for the police, they said, "No you're not good." I went to even the KFC, when KFC came to China, came to our city, people went for the job. Twenty-three people accepted. I was the only one who got rejected.

"We went for police, five people, four of them accepted. I was the only guy they did not proceed with. So to me, being turned down, rejected -- oh by the way, I told you that I applied for Harvard, ten times, rejected. I knew I'd be rejected, I just wanted to see.

"I think we have to get used to it. We're not that good. Even today we still have a lot of people reject us. I don't think in this world there are a lot people being rejected more than thirty times. If we, the only thing, we never give up. The only thing, we're like Forrest Gump, we keep on fighting. We keep on changing ourselves. We don't complain. Whether you are successful or not successful I found that when people, when they finish the job, if they make the mistake or they fail, if they always complain about the others, this guy will never come back. If the guy only check himself, yeah, something wrong with me here, something wrong with me there. This guy has hope."