Do you know about this “comeback kid?” According to Wiktionary, “a comeback kid is defined as a person who repeatedly demonstrates the propensity to overcome downturns or periods of bad publicity and rebound to victory or popularity.”
Let me introduce you to Jack Ma. Jack is a Chinese business magnate, investor, and politician. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate.
Alibaba is China's largest online commerce company. The site has millions of users, and hosts millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more business than any other e-commerce company and is the most popular destination for online shopping. Transactions on its online sites last year were more than those of eBay and Amazon combined. However, before he became a big business tycoon, he was what you may call a supreme failure. Even he would admit it.
Let me explain. He admitted that he failed a key primary school test twice. He almost didn’t get into middle school but once in middle school he failed a test there three times. He also failed a college entrance exam two times by scoring a 1 out of 120 points on the math portion. He still struggles with mathematics to this day.
In keeping with those failures, he continued and failed even more. He was rejected from Harvard ten times.
He did eventually attend college but after graduating, he was rejected from 30 jobs. He even applied to be a police officer but they rejected him too. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, out of 24 Kentucky Fried Chicken applicants, 23 were hired; Jack was the only one to be rejected. Once he was hired somewhere, it was as an English teacher where he made $12 a month. You read that right, not $12 an hour but a MONTH! Finally, when he decided to start Alibaba, he couldn’t convince Silicon Valley to fund it. Even after he started it, it had major setbacks. Alibaba wasn’t profitable for the first three years. At one point, it became 18 months away from bankruptcy.
Today, Jack is listed in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and in Forbes Magazine as the 20th wealthiest person in the world. And, he is the wealthiest person in China with a net worth of over $42 billion dollars. If someone like Jack Ma can persevere and be the greatest comeback kid, so can you! Keep going!
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