Yu Minhong: 8 abilities that entrepreneurs must possess Yu Minhong’s video speech at the University of Toronto Entrepreneurship Forum
Dear students of the University of Toronto, good afternoon. I am very happy to speak to you, and I am also very sorry that due to work reasons, I cannot be there to communicate with you in person. The topic given to me this time is about college student entrepreneurship. I think college student entrepreneurship is mainly reflected in the following eight abilities. If everyone can focus on cultivating these eight abilities, it is possible to achieve success.
The first ability is the target ability.
First of all, everyone wants to start a business, and who doesn’t want to be their own boss? But you still have to ask yourself a question: Why do you want to start a business? What are your goals? What do you want to make it into? Status? We do not start a business for the sake of starting a business, but to do one thing well and make it bigger. And the premise is that after you conduct a self-assessment and find that it is possible, then you can start a business. If you have no goals, just a temporary impulse, and just feel that you should do something, and you don’t have much love for what you are doing, then entrepreneurship will just become a trend rather than a reality, and you will also You may not be able to achieve big things. Personally speaking, when I started New Oriental, I had a very clear goal. At that time, I resigned from my job as a university teacher at Peking University and set up a training institution. I hoped that I could become a truly meaningful training institution. , and it is precisely with this goal that New Oriental's training business is flourishing and moving forward. With the development of training, New Oriental's goals are constantly changing. From the initial goal of being a school to opening New Oriental schools all over China, we have now become a listed company in the United States. All in all, your goals will rise, but the foundation will not change. For example, when I first started New Oriental, the foundation was to build a training school with brand, taste, responsibility for the future of students, and that students would like. In essence, New Oriental is still like this today. So I think goal ability is very important for entrepreneurship, and your ability to love this goal wholeheartedly is also very important. In addition, one thing you need to pay attention to is: your goal must be something big, not just for your own entertainment. For example, if you like calligraphy, it is not easy to start a calligraphy company all at once.
The second ability that I think is very important is professional ability.
If you start a business without understanding a major, the possibility of failure is very high. Just like if you open a restaurant, if you are not a chef yourself and do not have strong funds to hire many chefs at once, it will be difficult to control the quality of your restaurant, and it will be easy for the chefs to fire you. For example, if you hire a great chef, he cooks very well and attracts many customers. At this time, when he sees that his status is very important, he will ask you for a price and refuse to do it unless you give him more money. If you get angry and fire him, your restaurant will no longer be able to cook well, and will eventually face bankruptcy. When I started working at New Oriental more than ten years ago, many training institutions around me were fired because of outstanding teachers. It was also because their classes were very good and the students were very satisfied, so the teachers began to ask the boss for a price. The boss himself did not understand teaching and could not swallow this. In the end, all the teachers went to other training institutions, and the boss had no choice but to sell the school. turned off. One of the important reasons why New Oriental was able to succeed in the first place was that I was a great chef myself, which meant that I could teach many of the courses offered by New Oriental at that time. Therefore, when my teachers received wages that they found satisfactory, they They will not make undue demands on me. They know that if I make excessive demands, I can teach them without causing too much harm to New Oriental.
So when you start from scratch, are penniless, or have limited funds, there is an important prerequisite: you must be an expert in the field in which you are starting a business, and a person who can control the professional situation. For example, if you open a software design company and you don’t understand software yourself, firstly you won’t be able to control the quality, and secondly you won’t be able to control the talent, which will be very troublesome. This is the second point. In principle, you must have considerable professional knowledge and reach a professional level in the field where you want to start a business, so that you can have the ability to control the profession.
The third ability is marketing ability.
Once you start a business, what should you do? For example, if your company is opened and a product is built, what is the next step? If no one buys the product, then the company is in vain. Well, there are countless companies that started but closed down in the end. One of the fundamental reasons is that they don’t know how to promote their products and their company brands. Therefore, what we have to do is to sell the company. One is to sell the company's products; the other, more important, is to sell the company's brand along with the sales of the products, which means to let the public recognize your company brand and let the public recognize it. Everyone knows that this product is sold by your company. This involves marketing, which is divided into two parts: real marketing and virtual marketing. The so-called real marketing, for example, when I work for New Oriental, I market New Oriental’s courses, telling students why they should take this course and what they can gain after taking it. However, countless training institutions have always been marketing courses, but they are still only small institutions. But New Oriental can become bigger. What is the reason? It is very simple, because we market the brand. That is to say, New Oriental began to have more and more connotations. In the end, people came to class not because they heard about the courses offered by New Oriental, but because they just heard the three words New Oriental. At this time, the brand marketing is considered successful. This is false marketing. . When running a business in China, brand marketing is often combined with personal marketing, which means that your personal image can sometimes represent the corporate image, so it is often necessary to combine personal ethics and behavior with the corporate ethics and behavior. For example, when people talk about New Oriental, they will say, New Oriental is Yu Minhong, and Yu Minhong is New Oriental. When talking about Lenovo, they will say, Lenovo is Liu Chuanzhi, and Liu Chuanzhi is Lenovo. Therefore, in China, the growth of personal brand is largely the growth of corporate brand, and the growth of corporate brand in turn also drives the growth of personal brand. The two together form a powerful virtual marketing for your company. In addition, your product itself can also be accepted by ordinary people, so that the product will be valuable. For example, a company that produces shoes does not have any reputation. Although the quality of the shoes is comparable to that of famous brand shoes, but the brand shoes sell for one thousand, the company may only sell one hundred, and the difference is nine hundred. Where did the money come from? It’s brand marketing. You don’t have a brand, so you can’t raise the price. Therefore, if a company wants to be successful, brand marketing is sometimes even more important than product marketing. The value of brand marketing is infinite. This is why our bags made in China can only sell for 1,000 yuan, while bags of the same material with the LV logo printed on them can sell for 100,000 yuan. Brand value is at work behind this. Therefore, using marketing capabilities to sell products, brands, and yourself has become an important means of enterprise development, and it is also an ability that entrepreneurs must possess.
The fourth ability is called transformation ability.
The first transformation is to transform science and technology into productivity. This is a saying we often say. You have technology and capabilities, but you cannot convert them into products and sell them. This is not okay. For example, if Bill Gates stayed in the laboratory all his life, I guess he would be a pauper. He transformed his research results into Microsoft products and sold them all over the world, and he became the richest man in the world. Therefore, it is very important to transform science and technology into productivity and product capabilities. The second is to transform your personal abilities. Generally speaking, there is a prerequisite for intellectuals to start a business, which is to be able to transform the professional knowledge learned in university into social abilities and management abilities.
For example, when I came out of Peking University, I had no idea what society was like. It would be more difficult to do things with the academic spirit and the simple thoughts and behaviors I had in school. This is true even in Western society. Not to mention in a complex complex like China. Therefore, if you cannot transform the professional abilities in college into social abilities and management abilities, it will be very troublesome. You may be able to manage yourself very well, but you may not be able to manage a group of people, so you need to learn how to manage them. Switch from managing one person to managing a group of people, which means converting professional abilities into comprehensive abilities and professional abilities into leadership abilities. This kind of transformation requires a very painful process. Personally, after graduating from Peking University, I finally felt that I had become the leader of New Oriental, and I was relatively comfortable in managing a group of more than 100 people. It took at least five years. Ability can grow. Now I am in charge of nearly 10,000 teachers and employees at New Oriental, and there are still no major mistakes, which shows that New Oriental's management capabilities have increased. Therefore, people's abilities are constantly transforming. The key is that you have to work hard to transform yourself. For example, many college students are very introverted and are unwilling to interact with people in society. If you want to start a business, you have to make these contacts. No. If you fight, you will close yourself and at the same time close the chance of success.
The fifth ability is social ability.
To enter society, you must first understand society and understand why others do what they do. For example, when I first came out, I didn’t understand the social customs and the three religions and nine currents at all. It was very difficult to deal with them. New Oriental’s development was also controlled by others. After a while, the old lady from the neighborhood committee came to scold me. The city management officials came and fined me again, and finally I couldn't do anything about it. I gradually learned to put myself at ease and understand the people in this society. Finally, when you start to mix in this society, and your thoughts and realm transcend this society, you will probably be able to do something. . You can't show that you are unwilling to deal with society, but your perspective on things transcends society. The big hermit hides in the city, the small hermit hides in the mountains? This is the concept. Only small hermits and hermits with no future will run away. Go to the mountains and live in seclusion, unwilling to deal with society. Those great saints and wise men are all people who deal with people in society but their ideological realm is beyond society. The same is true for running a business. If an entrepreneur cannot coexist with society but does not transcend society, it will be very troublesome. Therefore, I think social skills are very important for an entrepreneur or entrepreneur.
The sixth ability is the ability to employ people.
Just doing something by one person cannot be called entrepreneurship, that is called self-employment. So if you want to start a business, you have to find a group of people, your partners, your colleagues, your subordinates. These people, from the beginning You have to use it right from the beginning. If you pick people who are incompetent, they will eventually be unable to do anything. If you pick people who are overly capable, they will eventually rebel against you and always have trouble with you. You will not be able to do anything either. Recruit people. When you come in, you have to be convinced, so you have to show your personal charm, your judgment and design abilities, so that everyone feels that there is a future in following you, and everyone is willing to follow you even in the most difficult times. you. The success of Alibaba’s Jack Ma is largely due to his personal charisma. He has the ability to bring a group of people together, give them low wages, and promise them a future that will never be known in the end. It cannot be realized, but everyone will have an expectation. Therefore, the ability to employ people has great power, and it is a typical manifestation of leadership ability. When Liu Bang conquered the world and his subordinates asked him why he could do it, he said something like this: In fact, I have no skills at all, but I can use talents like Xiao He, Han Xin, Zhang Liang, etc. It is they who help me Conquer the world; Xiang Yu has Fan Zeng next to him, but he is incapable of making good use of him, and I will definitely catch him in the end. This reflects the important role of leadership. A person who works alone may become a hero, but he cannot achieve a career.
Liu Bang, whether he had fought in a war or not, he is still a hero and leader in our hearts, because he created an imperial dynasty that lasted for hundreds of years and accommodated so many people of insight. Therefore, the ability to employ people is very important to us. If New Oriental did not have a considerable number of talents, it would not be able to do what it is today. New Oriental has a saying: A country turtle is working here with a group of turtles. This country turtle is me. , and the turtles are the dozens of senior managers of New Oriental who surround me. Most of them have returned from studying abroad. As we all know, returnees themselves have a relatively high vision. Many people have eyes on their foreheads and it is easy to look down on locals. Therefore, I must have the mentality of serving them. At the same time, my own learning ability must exceed Strong, you must be close to or even surpass them in many aspects, then they will obey you and follow you. Of course, when you want to make a big career, you will find that there are more and more people around you, of all kinds. There are more and more people with different personalities and ideas. If you want to be able to unify them, you must not only use the leverage of interests, but also the leverage of emotion and career to perfectly combine them. It is quite difficult. Easy things.
The seventh ability is the ability to control.
Including several aspects, the first is the control of the enterprise, what is the development speed of the enterprise? What is the development rhythm? When should investment be increased? When should product research and development be carried out? And so on. The second is to control people. When a person walks into your company, he will measure what he deserves every day based on his own abilities and contributions. People will always look for a balanced relationship between people; There is another kind of relationship between us, that is, I measure how much weight I have in the other person's heart every day. When the other person feels that your weight is heavy and he has no weight, he will not come to argue with you. Wait until the other person When you feel that his talents, skills or leadership have reached the point where he can compete with you, if the other party doesn't bring it up, then he is a fool. Therefore, people are always in a balance, and this balance requires you to have a deep understanding of human nature, and to grasp everyone's trends at any time, meet their needs, and at the same time suppress their unreasonable desires. Demands and desires can make them stick with you and keep moving forward. In fact, the ability to control people, the environment, and the development steps of the enterprise constitute important conditions for the success of your business.
The last ability is the ability to innovate.
The so-called innovation ability refers to the ability to reform, renovate, etc., which means that you need to constantly remove old things, introduce new things, and carry out institutional innovation, institutional innovation, and technological innovation. innovation and ideological innovation. From the perspective of my own process of doing things, the process of growth of a person or an entrepreneur is a process of constantly denying one's past, acknowledging one's present, and pursuing one's future. Once you feel that this is good enough now and that it is good to do this, there will be no room for further development. I have experienced countless rejections at New Oriental. You see, New Oriental has developed from a self-employed business to a family store, then to a buddy partnership, then to a domestic joint-stock company, then to an international joint-stock company, and finally to a U.S. listed company. , every step takes off a layer of skin, because every change means a lot of interest reform and structural transformation, a lot of personnel reform and transformation, if you can't change it, the company may face collapse. Many of the people who worked in foreign language training classes at the same time as me are still mom-and-pop shops. This was my situation fifteen years ago, but New Oriental quickly transformed mom-and-pop shops into modern enterprises, training 1.5 million students every year.
Every reform is accompanied by pain, but it is also accompanied by development, and reform must be carried out carefully. If the reform is not done well or the reform is too drastic, the enterprise may collapse; but if it stagnates, it will also collapse. , this is like China's social, political and economic reform. If you want to achieve it in one step and modernize everything at once, it will be dangerous. But if China does not change, it will become outdated and backward, which is also very dangerous. Therefore, you have to be careful every step you take, but you have to take it. The reform of entrepreneurship is also very important. For example, in terms of technology, if you do not update, you will eventually lose the market and opportunities. On this point, I personally admire Steven Jobs, the CEO of Apple. He just started working in After Apple was kicked out of Apple, he went on to make cartoons, and the movies did very well. Later he started researching i-pods. When i-pods were still selling well, he started working on i-phones, and now i-pods are still selling well. -The phone is also selling well all over the world, so every step he takes, his thinking is advanced. Although Steven Jobs is ill and in poor health, he is still an innovative and innovative hero and a trend-setter of the times. If we want to be a business, we must learn from such people.
In short, the eight abilities mentioned above are the eight abilities that I think are the most important in entrepreneurship, and they are also the eight abilities that enable people to achieve great things. I say these words to encourage my classmates. I also hope that everyone can return to China to start a business after graduating from a world-renowned university like the University of Toronto. If you have anything, you can come to me. I wish you all success, thank you all! ;