This article is Yu Minhong's latest speech at the "Chunguangli-Leopard Change 2018 Industrial Investment Summit" on August 17. He shared his thoughts on entrepreneurship, work and growth over the years. It is worth your 10 minutes to read carefully.

If you are really a managerial person, after grasping one or two main points, you should work in the company steadily, instead of trying to attract so-called investors everywhere with a business model.

1

Decide what to do

Be sure to go all out

1) Cost is the biggest price you give up

Do one thing, the cost is the biggest price you give up.

I have a calculation method for everything I do. I will consider if I don’t do this thing this hour and do another thing, will the other thing be more valuable?

What determines the value of this matter is not the matter itself, but how much you give up.

So this formed a concept:

Once you decide what to do, you must go all out;

Otherwise, it is impossible to get the best results, it can only be a waste of life, energy, time and resources.

2) Success requires temperament

Anyone's success requires a certain temperament.

Entrepreneurs don’t listen to all kinds of speeches, but find those one or two characteristics, support them obsessively with their ideals, and devote themselves to them.

For example, Li Bin.

Once we went hiking in the Gobi Desert and walked 120 kilometers in 3 days. Because the equipment was too heavy, we looked for a car to pull the equipment, and we only carried the water.

But Li Bin not only carried all his equipment on his back, but also installed 5 additional bricks, each close to two kilograms. As a result, he carried nearly 30 kilograms of equipment and walked first.

From that moment, I knew he would succeed in everything he did. I can’t do it for me.

So when he said to be a NIO, I did not hesitate to give him 30 million U.S. dollars, and said that I would recognize it if he lost it; if he made a profit, it would mean working with a great entrepreneur.

3) Entrepreneurship requires real thinking

I hope all entrepreneurs here can really calm down and think about whether their actions are right.

If you do it with others, maybe I will do it with a better mentality than others. It means that you don't understand or dislike this industry or career at all.

In this case, even if you get the investment, you are more likely to die than to survive.

In the education industry, there was a large number of O20s for a period of time. Four or five of them survived, but almost none of them became prosperous. Because they don't understand the rules of education at all.

Immediately afterwards, I started to do a lot of home tutoring services. While solving one pain point, it brought countless other pain points. Such a business model would naturally not be welcomed by everyone.

After the advent of shared bicycles, services such as shared benches, shared power banks, and shared umbrellas appeared in China. I don't know how big these shared needs are and how to manage the sharing behind it.

2

Don’t do things you don’t understand

Resolutely advance what you understand

There is a generation gap and changes between one generation of founders and another generation of founders.

1) Get in and study

I have a characteristic of doing things: Anything that I don’t understand but think has a huge relationship with the future development, I will dive into it for research.

For example, artificial intelligence, I have read any book about artificial intelligence. On the surface, you will find that New Oriental does not seem to have much to do with artificial intelligence, but I think anything that belongs to technology is a means to help you achieve your goals.

The goal that artificial intelligence helps us achieve in education is to improve students’ learning interest and learning efficiency, not that artificial intelligence itself is education.

Those who use the so-called technological means to fool and forget the purpose are all marketing colors.

The quality of education and the institutions that have not really improved, will surely face great pain in the future.

2）Intergenerational leadership transformation

In fact, the older generation of entrepreneurs like us are slow to accept new things, and it is not easy for us to fully devote ourselves.

There is a lot of money in New Oriental’s account. I found that investing all the money in artificial intelligence would not work, and New Oriental will follow suit;

But the investment cannot be abandoned halfway. The New Oriental stock market is 15 billion U.S. dollars. Once the New Oriental falls, investors will have no money.

At present, New Oriental's investment in artificial intelligence and technology is about 1 billion, which is equivalent to investing 7% to 8% of New Oriental's money in education-related research and development. We have done quite well in this regard.

And I still deeply believe that in two to three years, the products and systems made by New Oriental in the combination of technology, artificial intelligence and education in China will reach the top level in China's education field.

This is what I call the change of intergenerational leadership, and it is also my personality. I will resolutely refrain from doing things that I don’t understand, but resolutely advance the things I understand.

During the entire development process of New Oriental, there was no major problem, because I stepped on the punctuality every time.

The development of any leadership is the result of gradual and orderly progress. Anyone grows from a child to an adult, and any company has the possibility of becoming a listed company from a founding company. Anyone will never understand to understand.

Personally, I am a Peking University teacher. After I came out of Peking University, I opened a training class and recruited a few teachers and students.

At the beginning, I didn't know anything about dealing with the tax bureau and the street.

But slowly, it became a decent training company. To the establishment of New Oriental Technology Group in New Oriental, from the deployment of New Oriental branch schools across the country to New Oriental Education Group, step by step forward, every step in the middle is a process of learning.

After I got to the group company, I slowly learned to raise funds from outside, and finally 30 million US dollars went to New Oriental. New Oriental established an overseas VIE structure, followed by the establishment of an international group company by New Oriental.

In 2006, New Oriental went public in the United States, becoming the first Chinese education company to go public in the United States.

Before that, everyone thought that the industrialization of education was a very unreliable thing, and that it was absolutely impossible to go public in the education field in China.

Immediately after the listing of New Oriental, in 2012, it was attacked by the American Muddy Waters Company (research reports using some data to expose some companies).

During this period, we hired the world's most famous law firm and audit firm to prove New Oriental's innocence, and finally regained the trust of the US Securities Regulatory Commission.

You will find that this is a step-by-step growth process, and each step is an exercise of your mind and a test of you at the same time.

Because the final result of each step of growth is whether your own mind, vision, team building ability, and your own layout ability can keep up with the development of the enterprise. Once you can't keep up, the company will follow you to stagnate development, or even regress.

It depends on whether you are willing to keep changing. The mind can continue to expand, and the personality can also be changed. But many people can't do it, because the expansion of the mind and the change of personality is not an easy task.

As of today, my changes have not been very good. I came from a liberal arts background. I was born with a liberal arts gene. I am not so sensitive to high-tech and high-tech applications.

So New Oriental is indeed slightly behind in the high-tech era, but we are still catching up and surpassing, and we need a layout in the middle.

3) Technology and feelings are indispensable

I used to be less cold to science students because I think they are very axis. But today's era is obviously an era where science students and liberal arts students are combined. It doesn't work if you don't understand high technology or don't understand humanities.

High-tech is a means, and feelings are ideals and patterns. Both are indispensable.

So I stick to my ideals and pattern. There are a total of 6 people in the New Oriental Presidential Office. 3 of them are from science and technology, and they are getting younger and younger. The youngest is only in his 30s. Why?

Because the president's office is a decision-making level, it needs to maintain a three-to-three balance, compatible with arts and sciences, and combine arts and science thinking. Otherwise, both parties may have the right to deny the other's thinking.

This is also the reason why New Oriental's scientific and technological research and development has been developing rapidly for almost half a year this year. This requires your own layout, if you do not layout, it will not happen.

I also saw such a phenomenon in my eyes:

A large number of people are unwilling to accept the changes in the new era, leading to many difficulties for enterprises.

Some old entrepreneurs I have met have one characteristic in common: resolutely do not use smartphones, resolutely refrain from surfing the Internet, and resolutely refrain from reading information.

In this way, the company continues to lag behind the times and is on the verge of death.

There are also entrepreneurs who believe in the elderly, but there is not a young man around them. I once visited a company and found that the youngest one was 45 years old. There is no hope at the company.

If a 20-year-old person's acceptance of new things is 100%, it has dropped to 20% by the age of 45. Fortunately, I can still maintain 30% and 40% acceptance of new things in my 50s.

All in all, everyone's growth has a very difficult process, but an open mind and determination are very important.

3

Three principles for doing things well

1) Start with the end

What do you want to do in your life? What kind of person do you want to be? Must know.

In addition, what is the core point of this matter?

Take the education field as an example. Sometimes when you do it, you will desperately do marketing MLM, and even all kinds of deceptive behaviors will appear, and finally you will forget the core point.

This core point is the end. I found that 70% to 80% of companies in China have forgotten it.

2) Slowly do urgent things

Some western luxury goods, some Japanese craftsmen made products, make everyone feel very surprised, why?

Because they carve one thing intricately to achieve the ultimate state.

Many people say that "modern society pays attention to quantity rather than quality". This is completely wrong.

Quite simply, the companies that can occupy the world are platform companies, and 90% of the companies are product or content companies.

If it is a product company, it means that you have to achieve the ultimate in the product, to the extent that it is extremely humane, and then someone will continue to buy and repeat the purchase.

So the content you provide must be high-quality, and the polishing of high-quality content takes time.

For us, Doing urgent things slowly means that everything can speed up the process, but the process cannot be omitted.

That is, you can shorten the process of focusing on doing this, but you can't skip it.

3）Near and far away

The so-called near, happy and far away means that if you serve your people well, others will naturally come.

For example, you serve one hundred students and one hundred parents, and in the end they fully approve of you and feel that you are particularly powerful, one parent affects at least 10 parents, so one thousand parents will come.

"Wine fragrance is not afraid of deep alleys" is still effective today, we must achieve the ultimate in products and services. Of course, marketing methods are also needed, depending on whether you have a good product as a basis.

Serve thousands of people on the platform well, thousands of them will bring tens of thousands, and tens of thousands will bring millions of people; do what you are in front of, and everything will be fine.