Michelle Phan's Quotes

Let's see some inspiring quotes from Michelle.

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JACK MA

Jack Ma or fondly known as Ma Yun was born on September 10, 1964 in Hangzhou, China. Ma is a successful entrepreneur, founder of E-commerce giant Alibaba Holdings and a revolutionary. Ma is named as the richest man in China as of year 2014. In 1999, Jack Ma an IT illiterate partnered with 18 people to establish a business to business (B2B) site named Alibaba that links Chinese exporters with overseas buyers.

Alibaba's office in China.

The road to success in business is ability in getting through rejections and failures by taking calculated risk. Jack Ma learned from his failures from his education aspects and ventures in business. Failure is an option for Jack Ma as he learned to fail better and fail forward. Ma failed key primary school test twice, middle school thrice and failed the college entrance exam twice. 

         

In 1998, Ma graduated with a bachelor degree in English from Hangzhou’s Teacher Institute. Upon graduation, Ma was rejected for the jobs he applied. Ma was one out of the 24 applicants for KFC (YUM) manager interview but he was the only one that failed to secure the job. Ma tried to get a job at police force but it was an unsuccessful attempt. Ma applied for Harvard ten times but got rejected ten times. Ma is a proactive entrepreneur, during his early age, he always sought opportunities to learn English by riding his bike each morning to go to a nearby hotel and converse with foreigners to practice and improve his English. In the late 1990s after starting Alibaba, Ma tried to get venture capital funding in Silicon Valley for Alibaba and got rejected for running an unprofitable business model. He eventually went back to China without funding.

In 1995, Ma was introduced to the Internet in United States and he was shocked there was no general information about China. Ma saw potential business opportunities of the Internet that could facilitate small medium enterprises in venturing into business with the world. Ma and his team of friends launch China Page that lists Chinese businesses and their products. Ma began to receive emails from people around the world requesting for partnership. Later on, Ma partnered with a government entity to get more funding but unfortunately the rigid bureaucracy led to Ma’s eventual departure. Thereafter, Ma took up a government position at the ministry of foreign trade and economic cooperation in 1990s.

         

  In 1999, Ma gathered his friends and convinced them to support him for the vision for the online marketplace called “Alibaba”. Jack Ma has a vision for Alibaba that is to build an e-commerce web portal that allows customers and businesses to do all aspects of business online. Sellers are allowed to post products listings so that customers can define the products' details to make purchases. This service attracted citizens from all over the world. The main aim of this site is to enable customers buy things directly from the site. Jack Ma started his first successful E-commerce company at the age of 31 even though he was an IT illiterate. The company had earned $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank in October 1999.

Jack showed his risk taker’s trait when he refused offer from eBay to buy his company. Instead of selling out his company to E-bay, Ma received 1 billion USD investment from Yahoo co-founding member- Jerry Yang in 2005. He is willing to take the risk to compete with eBay, and to make his company to become more successful and serve more small business owner. Ma’s business venture success was evident after Alibaba’s Taobao bested eBay in China, forcing the United State auction site to largely withdraw from China in 2006. All of his success proves that he has is visionary and able to overcome the pain of rejections and treat it as an opportunity to learn and grow. 

   In October 1999 and January 2000, Alibaba won twice in the international venture capital investment to improve the domestic e-commerce market and perfect an e-commerce platform for Chinese enterprises. Besides, Ma always is proactive and always source for untapped market as he wants to improve global e-commerce system. Ma founded Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Ali Mama and Lynx in year 2003.

Alibaba's ecosystem. Consent of Alibaba Group.

When Jack Ma set up Alibaba, he risked and challenge the status quo that was supported by many years of conventional wisdom about business and competition in the digital age. Maintaining the status quo means maintaining present situation and Jack Ma challenged it as it lacks of transparency and full of corruption. His unconventional way of thinking is to place customers as his first and foremost priority, partners as his second and lastly the shareholders which is against the norms of businesses as the top priority should be the shareholders. 

Founded groups by Alibaba. 

The outcome of his business philosophy successfully created millions of job and Alibaba's consumer-to-consumer (C2C) site Taobao features nearly a billion products and one of the 20 most-visited websites globally. Alibaba also successfully dominates the Chinese e-commerce market as Ma’s strategy of locking in shoppers at the beginning and end of their excursions has captured huge market share. Alibaba is able to control people going in and out of the retail platform- Tmall, and Taobao. Currently Alibaba serves more than 79 million members from more than 240 countries and territories. The September 19 initial public offering (IPO) of Alibaba, and its early run as a publicly listed company, was met with cheers as the $68 IPO price gave the company an initial value of $167 billion, which sets as the world's largest initial public offering ever. In less than two weeks, the market value of Alibaba rose to over $220 billion, exceeding that of even Facebook.

Jack Ma decided to go against the financial legal laws to develop the payment system. Initially when he decided to start his website ‘Alibaba’ there is about 1 to 3 years where the website only serve as an e-market for information exchange and there is no any payment involved. He decided to talk to the bank to develop an online payment system. However, he was rejected by all the banks and the banks think that he is crazy because if he launch this system he will be against the Financial Legal Laws as they have no license to run the system.

 By chance, he went to listen to a leadership discussion talk. He learnt that leadership is all about responsibility thus he decide to take risk and give it all out. He called his friends and asked them start to launch the payment system- Alipay. He risked his personal freedom to build Alipay without approval from the Chinese banking authorities. This is because he saw the importance of developing a reliable and trustworthy online payment system and currently Alipay facilitates more business globally than PayPal.

Jack Ma’s success story in setting up Alibaba Holdings is an inspiring story for people around the world especially entrepreneurs. Jack Ma possessed the traits of proactive as he is constantly sourcing for untapped markets and opportunities even though there was failures and failed business ventures he never gave up as there is a glimpse of hope. Ma’s unconventional way of doing business by risking himself and Alibaba proved to be fruitful as Ma is one of the richest person in the world.

The Entrepreneurial Traits

NETWORKED

Networked is defined as an interaction between people to exchange information and develop the contacts through their network.Networking is highly needed and applied to operate the business by the entrepreneurs. In order to improve entrepreneurial projects, entrepreneurial networks are offering different types of resource in business. The most goal that entrepreneurial networks wanted to achieve is to bring together a broad selection of professionals and resources that complement each other's company. Initially, a key priority is to aid successful business launches. Promotion of company with the network and out in the broader market will lead to the increasing of opportunities for all participants. The entrepreneur that have applied the traits of networked is Howard Schultz.

Howard Schultz is the president and CEO of Starbucks Coffee. Starbucks Coffee is well-known as one of the largest coffee store chains of the world. In 2007, there is a situation that will let Howard Schultz need to face it. The visitors of Starbucks complained about the coffee loss of the spirit of romance. Schultz had to make a number of strict measures to save Starbucks when economic crisis hits in 2008. The company closed down 600 stores in 2008 and 300 stores in 2009. Starbucks broadens its network by launching a rather interesting project in the Internet on March of 2008 to connect with the people and improve on services. He encourages his employees and customers to voice out their ideas and opinions through the project in to further improve the coffee stores. The company will discuss the ideas to make some changes and implement them. Through the online platform, customers can actively discuss about Starbucks. In return, Starbucks can easily know the things that customers desired. Because of networking and active engagement with customers, Starbucks Coffee has become a renowned household name.

 OPEN RISK TAKER

  

Open risk taker is a trait whereby someone took risks in their action or activity in order to achieve success or benefit.Michelle Phan a successful entrepreneur in make-up line. She is well-known through her uploaded make-up tutorial videos that gone viral in YouTube. Michelle is a co-founder of IPSY, owner of make-up line ‘em by Michelle Phan’ together with L’Oréal, partner of Endemol Beyond USA to build a talent network that will feature people from YouTube and create content for millennials, partner of Cutting Edge Group (CEG) to launch Shift Music Group. She had also launched a book together with Random House in October 2014.
Michelle is an open risk when she chose passion over stable life. She applied to be a sales associate at Lancôme make-up counter but was rejected by Lancôme because she does not have any related experiences in it. This does not stop Michelle from the make-up field. Michelle Phan quits her job as she doesn’t like traditional 9am-5pm job. She make up her mind to go full-blown by featuring make-up tutorial videos on YouTube. People thought she was out of her mind. However, she took the risk as she knows in order achieve success, one must get out of their comfort zone.

Michelle involved in different kinds of partnership, investments and co-founder in different types of field like network, music and make-up. These shows that she takes risk as she involved herself in the unfamiliar field. For being a YouTuber who just make videos about make-up tutorial to owning her own make-up line in cooperation with L’Oréal without having any knowledge about make-up line. She took risk and successfully produce her own make-up line known as ‘em by Michelle Phan’. 

Michelle also has partnership with different business entity such as Cutting Edge Group (CEG) to launch Shift Music Group. She partnered with Endemol Beyond USA to initiate a new premium lifestyle network which is known as ICON. This is an online global destination for the authorization of viewers the inspirational premium conversation, community and content. Michelle shows that she is an open and calculated risk taker and encourage herself to be involved in different kind of fields.

OBSERVANT

A successful entrepreneur must have the traits of observant. He should be able to observe the community and environment to get business ideas. Thus providing products or services that increases the standard of living and fulfilling needs of people. I would like to introduce an entrepreneur whom has this characteristic- Tanya Heath.

Tanya Heath is an innovator and designer in shoes. She was born in Canada but now lived and worked in Paris. She launched her brand called TANYA HEATH PARIS in 2013, the world’s first adjustable height shoes with removable heels. She got the inspiration for the start of the brand from her life. She used to have a tough time wearing high heels. It made her  wanted to create a pair of shoes that could take the heels off, and would go from a comfortable low-heel to a high-heel, and still made her look good. In 2009, she hired 14 engineers, shoe technicians, designers and master boot makers to innovate her first pair of shoes. She made observation in the process of innovation and failure to improve the innovation of the shoes. After two and a half years, she had succeeded to create a shoe that could remove the high heel and replace it with a low one, which can range from 9-centimetre elegant heel to 4.5-centimetre walking heel at the click of a button. Her observant made the innovation succeeded and she had made most of the women released their foot from the struggle of high heel.

FAILURE IS AN OPTION

Failure is an option can be defined as inevitable failures along the road to success. Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food chain was founded by Colonel Harland Sanders at the age of 66 years old. Colonel Harland Sanders worked a series of odd jobs, including stoking the steam engines of trains throughout the South, sells insurance and tires, make lighting systems, and operating a ferry boat in the early years of his life. He even sold his restaurant to cover his debts at the age of 65. He lived in his car for 2 years and before he found a restaurant owner who agreed to use his recipe, he was rejected 1,009 time but he never once gave up. By 1964, 9 years after he hit the road, his chicken was able to sell in 600 restaurants in the United State and Canada and Colonel Sanders sold Kentucky Fried Chicken for $2 million. In conclusion, Colonel went through rejections and failures along the way but with his determination and perseverance, he did not give up, this leads him to become a successful entrepreneur and proof that failure is an option.

VISIONARY

Visionary defined as the ability to see visions through dreams, ability to think and plan the future with clear ideas. With vision and by formulating necessary steps in the organization, vision will be turned into a reality.

Bryan Loo is a visionary Malaysian entrepreneur, master franchisor and CEO of Chatime brand in Malaysia. Passionate in business, he set his venture into food and beverage industry in Malaysia and resigned from his job. Beverage industry back then in Malaysia was dominated by coffee market such as coffee giant- Starbucks. Why coffee? Why not tea? The insightful young man had a vision, firstly is to bring the culture of drinking bubble milk tea to Malaysia and secondly is to cultivate tea drinking culture among Malaysian consumers. Countless endeavours along the journey as his business proposal to bring bubble milk tea brand to Malaysia was rejected by 10 top notch companies. Persevered and motivated, the meeting between the young entrepreneur and Chatime CEO- Henry Wang proved to be fruitful as Henry has a global mindset and is interested to expand globally. Bryan convinced the director despite being anonymous a couple of years back, he sold a vision.

Whenever there’s a vision it is followed by actions to be turned into reality. The first Chatime outlet opened at Pavilion shopping mall but the management did not have much confidence in this product. Through Bryan’s persistent, Chatime outlet in Pavilion was a success. Chatime’s vision was to expand throughout in Malaysia and currently there are 116 outlets in operation.

A successful entrepreneur sets his vision further. Bryan’s personal vision is to make Italian gourmet pizza accessible to Malaysian consumer thus he ventures into food and beverage industry with the opening of Tino’s Pizza Express at Nexus Bangsar South which serves Neapolitan style gourmet pizzas. Bryan and his team aim to open 15 new outlets by the end of 2015. To bridge the tea culture in Malaysia and make Chatime a household name, it adapted co-branding exercises with consumer brands such as coming out with Horlicks and Oreo to come out with different flavoured beverages.

Vision turned into reality is a proven success to Bryan Loo as he bagged two awards namely “Best Master Franchiser 2012” and “Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of The Year 2013”.

OPEN CULTURE

Open culture is a concept where knowledge should be spread freely without restriction by rules and the growth should come from developing and enriching existing framework on the basis of sharing and collaboration. Google is an organization that practices open culture and topped the list of Fortune 100 “Best Companies to Work for” for a total of four times. Google hires people from all walks of life who are smart, determined and share common goals and visions for the company. Google tries to maintain an open culture, whereby Googlers are active contributors that share information and ideas through weekly meeting- TGIF. TGIF establishes transparency and open-door environment where everyone is allowed to debate. Google lacks of top-down hierarchy structure that cultivates a more open atmosphere for employees to ask questions directly to Larry Page, Sergey Brin and other executives about company issues.

Offices and cafes are uniquely designed to encourage interactions between Googlers within and across teams. Employees work in open office environments where private offices are assigned only to selected few. Google created a work environment that attracts, motivates, and retains employees such as free gourmet food options, gym facilities, shower facilities, video games, on-site child care, etc. Outside of work, Googlers perform variety of hobbies such as cycling, Frisbee, volleyball and etc.

In addition, Google encourages employee to be innovative and take risks. One of the current challenges for Google is to expand to new fields outside of their Web search engine business. As such, Google’s engineers are advised to spend 20% of their time to brainstorm for new ideas. Google’s open culture is one of the most positive, influential, productivity-inducing environments.

TEAM ORIENTED

Definition of team oriented is a group of people organized to work together whereby everyone has contributing factor in the business operations and decision making.Brian Chesky a 34 years old American Internet Entrepreneur. Brian Chesky is the CEO and co-founder of the Airbnb that provides hospitality exchange service. Airbnb is a website where people can list, find and rent residential accommodation. It aims to provide unique local accommodation by living in the local home, apartments, villa and etc. From a loft with three airbeds on the floor to now Airbnb have been providing accommodation across over 190 countries and the company is valued over 25 billion USD dollar. This shows that Brian Chesky hits big success in his venture as an entrepreneur. 

Brian Chesky shows his team oriented trait when he started the Airbnb concept. He works closely with his co-founders- Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczky For example, Brian worked together with Joe and Nathan in designing the cereal packaging for the election. They worked together from buying the 800 boxes of cereal and design the cereal package into ‘Obana’s O’s’ and ‘Cap’n McCain’. From Brian and the team hard works together, they successfully sold 800 boxes of cereal at 40 USD dollar each and earned a revenue of 30000 USD dollar to kick start their business.

Brian also shows his team oriented trait as he fully cooperates with Joe and Nathan in succeeding their company. Brian and his team play a different roles respectively in running their company. For example, Brian as the CEO of the company, he drives the company’s vision, growth and strategy so that it provide the most unique experience for their user while Joe plays an important role in shaping the company’s design aesthetic, innovating future growth opportunities and crafting their company’s culture and Nathan focus on the technology part of the company. Nathan making his effort to build a world-class engineers in keeping their company at the top of this industry. No man is an island, formation of a team was a resounding success for Airbnb.

OUTCOME ORIENTED

Outcome oriented means individual or organization that focuses on the actual outcome or result.Henri Nestlé was a pharmacist’s assistant and became the founder of Nestlé. He is an entrepreneur and innovator. Henri Nestlé constantly experiments with the production from lemonade to cement before inventing Farine Lactee formula. In 1867, Henri Nestlé produced an alternative source for infant nutrition that is nutritious and affordable for mothers who are unable breastfeed. This new product, Farine Lactee Nestlé, first milk food, saved the life of a premature baby that rejected all other supplements. The main purpose of this formula is to combat the problem of infant mortality due to malnutrition.

            Henri Nestlé convinced the scientific community of the merits of its band new product and distributed pamphlets to doctors and pharmacist. In 1875, Nestlé product was sold worldwide across five continents. "Good Food, Good Life" is the slogan of Nestlé. Nestlé believes that good food is the foundation of a good life, because lack of access to food in terms of quality and quantity can lead to malnutrition and other complex issues. Nestlé aims to become the leading nutrition, health and wellness as well as a comprehensive reference for financial performance. Henri Nestlé had oriented the outcome of his products and make sure its quality. Over 140 years later, Nestlé continues the legacy of its founder and improve lives is contained in values and business principles Nestlé.

 PROACTIVE

Entrepreneurs have a proactive side to their personalities, when they possess a vision of what they want to do, they will work in a directed way to achieve it. Proactive means having the ability to spot opportunities and untapped market. Successful entrepreneur is good at sourcing for opportunity and then pursuing it relentlessly.

Indra Nooyi is the chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo. She is listed as the 100 Most Powerful Women in Forbes. She has led her company to record excellent financial results. For the last few years, PepsiCo, best known for its range of carbonated beverages tried to innovate a newer and healthier product than the previous product. The aim of Indra Nooyi to make the company grow in non-beverage business is by making large acquisitions of Quaker Oats and Tropicana. At the same time, PepsiCo has been focusing and consciously trying to globalise its brands to the fast-growing markets around the world. The company already gets around 40% of its revenues from outside its home market and Indra Nooyi is using inorganic growth to boost its profile. In conclusion, Indra Nooyi is proactive and always seek opportunities to expand PepsiCo and she will keep on pursuing until she get the results.