We don't make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies.-walt disney

Great entrepreneurs think differently. Instead of seeing money as an income, they see it as an outcome: An outcome of pursuing their purpose and a means to continue to.

"We don't make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies." ~ Walt Disney

Samsung , No. 1 Smart phone company ?

How many times did Samsung pivot their business before becoming the No.1 smart phone seller in the world, beating Apple at their own game? 13 TIMES! Here’s how...

START HERE - Lee Byung-chull launched Samsung to sell groceries in South Korea in 1938

PIVOT No.1 - By the early 1940s, in a competitive grocery market, Lee changed tack, went vertical and Samsung began producing and selling their own noodles

PIVOT No.2 - By 1950, with the Korean War ruining his business, Lee left Seoul and turned Samsung into a sugar company with its own sugar refinery

PIVOT No.3 - After the war, in 1954, Lee switched Samsung’s focus again, launching the largest woollen mill in Korea

PIVOT No.4 - As Korea developed, Lee switched to cater for the growing population, focusing Samsung on selling insurance and securities.

PIVOT No.5 - By 1960, Lee had switched Samsung again to focus on electronics, with its first electronic product being a black & white TV.

PIVOT No.6 - By 1980, Lee moved Samsung into telecoms, producing telephone switch boards and fax systems

PIVOT No.7 - When Lee died in 1987, Samsung separated into four companies - Department stores; Chemicals & logistics; Paper/Telecom; and electronics.

PIVOT No.8 - By 1980, Samsung Electronics decided to focus on international investing, investing in plants and semiconductor facilities around the world.

PIVOT No.9 - By 1990, Samsung began moving from investing to property, and became a world leader in construction, with building contracts on 3 of the world’s tallest buildings: Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Taipei 101 in Taiwan and Burj Khalifa in UAE.

PIVOT No.10 - In an attempt to rationalise during the 1990s recession, in 1993 Lee’s son, Lee Kun-Hee, began downsizing, selling many subsidiaries and merging the rest.

PIVOT No.11 - By the late 1990s, the merging of electonics, engineering and chemicals in Samsung led to the company becoming the largest producer of memory chips in the world

PIVOT No.12 - As memory chips became more competitive, in 1995 Samsung switched to liquid-crystal displays, and over the next 10 years became the world’s largest manufacturer for flat screen TVs.

PIVOT No.13 - By 2010, with liquid-crystal displays becoming more competitive, Samsung launched a 10 year growth strategy, with smart phones being a key focus. At this point, they were already providing Apple with many components for the new iPhone.

END HERE! (For now) - This year, in 2012, Samsung became the world’s largest mobile phone and smart phone maker, outselling iPhones two to one.

With so much change, what remains the same? When Lee began his company all those years ago, he called it ‘Samsung’ which means ‘Three Stars’ in Korean. His three meant ‘big, numerous, powerful’ and the stars meant ‘eternal’. From the beginning, his vision for Samsung was to leave a legacy as a leader in whichever market made sense at the time.

That strategy has led to Samsung having sales today of over $250 billion and producing about a fifth of South Korea’s total exports.

How many times have you pivoted your business onto a new wave of success when things aren’t going your way? What is the bigger purpose you are pivoting your business around?

In fast changing times, take Samsung as an example: Set a bigger purpose, with long term vision and short term results, and have the courage to switch when you need to.

It takes courage, it takes commitment and, as Samsung says in their most recent ads, ‘It doesn’t take a genius’.

DiDi Chuxing

Jean Liu is the 37 year old President of Didi Chuxing, the company that today just raised another $6 billion - just one month after Apple invested $1 billion at a $25 billion valuation.

Now, with 300 million users, and 14 million rides each day, Didi is far ahead of Uber in China and is calling itself “The World’s largest mobile tech-based transportation platform.”

How did Jean, at 37, get here so fast?

When she was 17 years old in 1996, Jean was inspired by Bill Gates’ book, “The Road Ahead” where Bill predicted in the future “We’ll find ourselves in a new world… in which market information will be plentiful and transaction costs low. It will be a shopper’s heaven”

Inspired to be a part of this "new world", she followed in Bill’s footprints, leaving China for Harvard, and then working her way up the banking industry until approaching Chinese ride-sharing company, Didi in 2013. As Jean says, “I was quite intrigued by the fact that they had so many investors chasing them.”

Jean joined the company when it was only one year old, and as President she grew the team from 700 to 5,000 staff in her first 18 months.

She also merged it in a billion dollar merger with its main rival, Kuaidi Dache in 2015. That move gave Didi a big advantage over Uber, and Jean sees their market strategy as ahead of Uber’s, saying:

“I think Uber has a short-term strategy to subsidize heavily to get drivers and passengers. But, if I were them, I would think very carefully. It is a highly competitive market. It’s already a healthy ecosystem. We have five million car owners; we do insurance, car sales.”

While Uber is competing, Didi is collaborating, and works with the China taxi industry instead of against it: “We are trying to serve every Chinese in every situation. We launched our taxi service three years ago, and later we figured [taxis are] in such a big shortage that there is a lot of unmet demand on that platform. Then we provided a private car service to fulfill those demands.”

“Then we figured there are a lot of drivers who want to earn extra money. That’s why we launched the chauffeur business.” Didi also helps you find private buses and shuttle buses.

“So our philosophy here is you don’t really need seven individual apps to fulfill your commute need. You just need one. That one app will make sure you will get a ride anywhere in three minutes.”

Because of this focus on serving the customer more than fighting on price, Didi will reach profit far faster than Uber. While Uber is losing $1 billion a year in China, Didi is already profitable in 200 out of the 400 cities it operates in.

Jean said at the recent Code Conference, "I find it quite cute because I've never seen a company put their competitor's brand on their own homepage”. Uber advertises their pricing on their app as 30% less than Didi’s. "This is a very strong proof to show that we have better service, and I'd like to see this more often.”

Jean’s forward thinking is also what drives her team. Inspired by Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean in”, she has created a vibrant culture in Didi’s workplace, saying: “To be a great company you need not just the best product but also the best people. We aim to get the best young talent from many different fields and make sure that they have the feeling that they can have a huge impact.”

20 years ago, Jean read a book that altered the course of her life.

Today, her company has 87% of China’s private ride sharing market, 100% of the taxi market, and another $7 billion in the bank.

What book might change your life today?

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” ~ Joseph Addison

What is meaning of P.A.T.I.E.N.C.E ?

Perseverance
Agility
Tolerance
Intricacy
Empathy
Nimbleness
Care
Endurance

P.A.T.I.E.N.C.E. is a multi-dimensional mix of flexibility and steadfastness. Keep the balance and know that however tough things get, provided you're patient, everything you visualize will happen in time. In nature nothing is rushed, but all is accomplished.

“Genius is eternal patience.” ~ Michelangelo

What does an English teacher know about math? Plenty, if your name is Jack Ma.

Jack raised $4.5 billion (the largest private tech investment ever) for Ant Financial: A company he created in December 2014. The company has gone from zero to $60 billion in value in just 16 months.

Jack Ma has never taken no for an answer. In September, 2014, when he was not able to list his company, Alibaba, in Hong Kong, and with China banning any foreign ownership of its companies, Jack got around the rules by setting up a Cayman Island shell corporation which would receive a percentage of the profits of Alibaba.

He then listed the Cayman Island company on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $25 billion in the largest IPO in history - without giving any of the shares in his China company away.

Before the listing, he took the payment side of the business, Alipay, and moved it into a separate, private company that he controlled, called Ant Financial. As Alibaba has been making headlines over the last year, Ant Financial has been quietly growing as Jack’s second billion dollar business.

Ant Financial now reaches 450 million users (More than the population of the US and UK combined), and has given out 20 million loans to entrepreneurs in China. Alibaba receives 37.5% of the profits from Ant Financial, but does not own any of it. Jack has managed to spin the business off entirely from Alibaba, and then grow it alongside Alibaba while entirely under his personal control, from zero to $60 billion in value.

This has allowed him to pursue his vision of helping the small guys while raising the money he needs from the financial markets and without losing control or giving away any ownership.

Jack’s next step? The former English Teacher plans to list Ant Financial on the China stock market later this year, which is likely to double his current net worth of $22 billion.

While too many entrepreneurs get caught up in how much of their pie to give away, Jack understands that when you own the bakery, you can always make another pie.

How can you create partnerships and raise financing creatively, while keeping true to your vision? How can you organise your own resources smarter? Take a tip from Jack, and never take no for an answer.

“They called me ‘Crazy Jack’. I think crazy is good. We’re crazy, but we’re not stupid.” ~ Jack Ma

Remember You network is your net worth

How valuable is your network? The Paypal Mafia is an extreme example of the phrase “your network is your net worth”.

When eBay bought Paypal in 2002, the founders of Paypal had an average age of 30. With the opportunity to go out and start again, they decided to stay in touch and share their strategies, experiences and connections as they launched their next businesses.

The result?

Elon Musk launched Space X and Tesla (Now worth $30 billion+)
Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn (Now worth $25 billion+)
Peter Thiel launched Palantir (Now worth $20 billion+)
Steve Chen and Chad Hurley founded Youtube (Sold to Google for $1.65 billion)
David Sacks launched Yammer (Sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion)
Russel Simmons and Max Levchin launched Yelp (Now worth $1.6 billion+)
Dave McClure founded 500 Startups (Invested in 1,300+ companies)
Premal Shah became president of Kiva (Crowdfunded 1 million+ microloans)

The founders sold Paypal for $1.5 billion 13 years ago, but as a result of sharing their journeys after that, they now have a combined net worth of over $20 billion.

Between them, they have created 7 billion dollar companies and invested in many more, generating over $100 billion in market value.

Supporting each other was the intention from the beginning. As Peter Thiel recalls, “When we started PayPal, I remember one of the early conversations I had with Max was that I wanted to build a company where everybody would be really great friends and, no matter what happened with the company, the friendships would survive.”

Your success will be determined not by how much you want to be successful, but by how many of the right people you connect around you who want you to be successful.

Your network is your net worth.

What can you do today to improve your network?
What can you do to add more value to the one you’re in?
How can you grow network value everywhere you go?

Today we live in a networked world. So thinking about growing network value is more important than ever. As Reid Hoffman says, “In the Networked Age, we’re all like the little kid from The Sixth Sense. If you’re not seeing networks when you enter a room, you might want to check your pulse.”

Have you ever been rejected for a job?

Have you ever been rejected for a job? Brian Acton has. After 11 years at Yahoo! and out of a job at 38 years old, Brian went job hunting... first to Twitter (rejected) then to Facebook (rejected).

What do you do when you’re 38 years old, competing unsuccessfully against 20-somethings for a job as a systems engineer? If you’re Brian, you go out and play frisbee...

Two years earlier, he had travelled South America playing ultimate frisbee with Jan Koum, who he had met while working at Ernst & Young as a security tester. Now, in the midst of his job rejections, he met up with Jan again for a game of frisbee.

It was while playing, Jan told Brian he was working on a start-up to create a new kind of mobile app, but he had run out of money. Jan had lived on welfare with his parents when he first arrived to the US from Ukraine. Not wanting to go back on food stamps, he asked Brian for advice on whether he should quit and start looking for a job.

Admiring Jan for his courage in starting his own company, Brian replied “You’d be an idiot to quit now. Give it a few more months.”

The topic turned to Brian’s success in getting a new job (which was non-existent) and it was only a matter of time before Jan (who had previously been rejected from a job at Facebook) had turned Brian’s advice on himself.

He persuaded Brian to quit the job hunt and join him on his start-up, creating a new messaging app, “WhatsApp”.

Brian and Jan had one thing in common - Ultimate Frisbee. Other than that, they turned out to be complimentary to each other in every other way. As Brian says, they are “Yin and Yang, I’m the naive optimist, he’s more paranoid. I pay attention to bills and taxes, he pays attention to our product. He’s CEO. I just make sure stuff gets done.”

In a job hunt, all your weaknesses are exposed. In a start-up, your weakness can be supported by your team member’s strength. So becoming an entrepreneur is easier than being an employee.

It took a few months of convincing but Brian finally decided to take the step, reject the rejecters, and join Jan.

Brian managed to raise some funds to keep the two going, while they worked out of the Red Rock Cafe in Mountain View. With no office and no overheads, they put 100% focus at growing WhatsApp as the messaging app with “No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks.”

In the first year, revenue grew to only $5,000 a month, but user growth boomed. Brian and Jan would switch from “free” to “paid” for the app (charging $1) when users began growing too much. When they saw people would even pay for the app, Brian said “You know, I think we can actually stay paid.”

The company stayed on an exponential growth path and, four years later, Facebook - the company that had rejected both founders - bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, making both Brian and Jan multi-billionaires.

As a symbolic gesture to their difficult beginnings, the two signed the purchase papers on the steps of the building where Jan’s parents would pick up their food stamps.

And Brian remembers a second thing outside of Frisbee that the two have in common, and which led to their success: “We’re part of the Facebook reject club.”

It took 4 years from ultimate frisbee and ultimate rejection to Brian and Jan’s $19 billion success.

4 years from now will be the year 2020. Where will you be in 2020?

Where you are in 2020 will have everything to do with the decisions you make today.

> Are you focused at finding a job instead of adding value to those already around you?

> Are you chasing opportunities instead of seeing the ones that are right in front of you?

> Is your latest rejection hiding a doorway behind it? A doorway to an entirely new, more exciting adventure?

Sometimes, it just takes a change in focus.

“Sometimes the best gain is to lose.” ~ George Herbert