今天是斯坦福的Deadline，严格应该说是明天凌晨六点。
一篇一篇看着学员越写越好的what matters most to me，我从其中深深感受到很多的力量，也看到了很多人独一无二让人惊叹和敬佩的经历。每一个人，背后都有着一些力量推动自己向前，让自己在微光中看到希望，在荣耀中看到现实，让自己在“被选择”的人生中成长和独立。
分享一篇劲波几年前的what matters most to me给大家，其中包含着BeBeyond所希望给大家的力量。
—— Mandy
What matters most to me is the company I started in 1999, BeBeyond.When I started the company, I felt I had a great idea in hand and it met all the important criteria I set for my own company: first, it is socially meaningful -- it helps Chinese to understand how to succeed in a completely new environment, the western, modern value oriented free market; second, it has the potential to be an extraordinarily successful business; and thirdly, it is very challenging to do, to the degree that most people thought ridiculous.

I was also very confident and optimistic. I told my friends, in three years, you will see me on the cover of Business Week. Of course, that was 1999, the year of "out of mind."
Our first office in Jianwai Soho
For the next two years, I was running BeBeyond with 1 single employee (her name is Elline) and we didn't make a penny. In the third year, the year I was supposed to be on Business Week, we made a revenue of 87,000 RMB. However, I was happy, very happy. I was doing something very new for Chinese, very meaningful that many people became inspired by our ideas and we indeed helped change some people's life. Both Elline and I worked extremely hard, yet our training product was hard to sell, even with incredibly low price, as Chinese had no idea what we were doing -- we train them to understand themselves which will help them become successful, to the degree that it will overcome shortage in academic performance, an idea until today diffcult for Chinese to truly believe. But the biggest difficulty was to find any one who would consider joining us. Who would join a 2-person company with an office in the living room, with very low pay but easily working until midnight?

So, I was hitting on almost anybody I met, asking them whether they might be interested in joining a great company, BeBeyond. I asked so many people that, later on, all of them realized that the initial honor they felt from a charming person inviting them to join a fantastic company was offered to everybody almost non-discriminantly. There was only one person whom I didn't ask. She was a typcial Shanghai lady and was about going to the US for her Master's in Finance with full scholarship and a visa in hand.  One day she joked with me: "Jinbo, how come you asked everybody in our team to join you, except me?" I said: "Oh, are you interested? If so, I will invite." Her reply was: "I might think about it." The next thing I knew, after she had been "house arrested" at home by her parents and through a series of other things, she had decided to join us. I was scared! I even secretely wished her to change her mind at the last minute. I remember I said to myself that this is no longer my own company, for which I can open or close at my will, and I had to make it happen!

Until 2006, with more people more or less like this girl joining us, we still hardly made progress. For many years, we had 7-8 people; we literally worked days and nights yet we were still handing out flyers at the gate of New Oriental School. I felt thrilled in the first three years but I experienced the most difficult time in my life in the next 3-5 years. I don't remember the details now. But I remember the time when I felt completely lost hope and the time I literally felt that wrinkles were forming on my forehead second by second. If I persisted, it was because I didn't want people like her going back empty-handed and their parents or friends would say to them: "I told you!" I wanted them to go home one day and their parents would feel proud of them. The idealism wins and "stupidness" pays.
I still have not gotten on the cover of Business Week yet and I doubt that I still want to be. When I look back at the three criteria I set for the business and with much more experience and knowledge about what we do, I find it still holds. If BeBeyond is successful, it will change the mind of millions of Chinese, their view on themselves, their attitude towards other people (more with respect than judging people by status, more valuing individuality than comformaty, etc.), their self-confidence level, their possibility to understand and expose their talent, their easiness, their being themselves, and more. All are much needed for Chinese in today's China and many decades to come! So, it indeed worthes my life for!

And life there goes!
Our office now
其他有关于BeBeyond的文章
继续阅读
阅读原文