Yu Minhong’s Entrepreneurship Story: Dream Chasing and Dream Making

Yu Minhong’s Entrepreneurship Story: Dream Chasing and Dream Creation

In the image world organized by the “Godfather of Chinese Study Abroad” and China’s richest teacher media, Yu Minhong was “deified”. Chasing and creating dreams, Yu Minhong’s story of entrepreneurship and wealth creation has been interpreted as a rare and unrepeatable legend.

At 19:00 on April 26, the Sohu Entrepreneur Forum entered Renmin University of China. Yu Minhong, Chairman and CEO of New Oriental Education Technology Group, delivered a keynote speech and interacted with the 400 people present. More than 10 college students had face-to-face interaction and communication.

Moderator (Zhang Yi, assistant director of Sohu Financial Center): Tonight’s lecture is jointly sponsored by the Business School of Renmin University of China, Sohu Finance, and the Blue Lion Reading Club. This year is Yu Minhong’s fourth zodiac year. We also try to condense New Oriental and Yu Minhong’s path to wealth creation in four words. These four words are: pursue dreams and create dreams. In March this year, CITIC Press published a new book of mine, "Yu Minhong's Management Diary". In the process of writing this book, I read all of Yu Minhong's internal speeches, public speeches and related reports in the past ten years. The moment I finished the manuscript, the words "chasing dreams, creating dreams" came to my mind. The so-called "dream chasing" means that all your efforts and struggles are to chase the dreams and examples in your heart; the so-called "dream making" means that everything you do and do will become the dreams and examples of others.

Two women influenced Yu Minhong’s life, one was his white-haired mother and the other was his married wife. If it weren’t for the stubborn persistence of the white-haired mother, Yu Minhong would definitely not be able to perform the personal legend of finally being admitted to Peking University after three consecutive college entrance examinations. He might not have been able to leave Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, and he could not get rid of his identity and habits as a farmer; if it weren’t for the knot With his wife's tenacious promoter, Yu Minhong spent his whole life just as an English teacher at Peking University. Two men once influenced Yu Minhong, one was Wang Qiang and the other was Xu Xiaoping. It was these two alumni and teachers from Peking University who helped New Oriental step by step break away from familialism and move toward capitalization.

New Oriental’s school motto: “Find hope from despair, life will eventually be glorious”, has a profound impact on many students. The story of New Oriental's entrepreneurship and wealth creation has experienced ups and downs and cannot be replicated. I would like to invite the richest teacher in China, Yu Minhong, to give a speech.

What is your dream after you have wealth?

Yu Minhong: Dear students, good evening! I am very happy to come to Renmin University. Five of New Oriental’s executives are from Renmin University. , I am no stranger to Renmin University. The topic I am sharing with you tonight is "Dream Chasing and Dream Creation? Yu Minhong's Wealth Creation Story". Everyone has dreams. I don’t have big dreams. My dreams come in stages. The New Oriental I have built now has exceeded my dreams. What I did not expect was that New Oriental would become a Chinese concept stock listed in the United States, and it would be one of the Chinese concept stocks that performed very well.

Everyone knows that people have two states: economic freedom and emotional freedom. The former means having a steady stream of wealth and the right to control wealth, while the latter means having free emotional choices. The most important thing for a person is economic freedom, and everyone's economic requirements are different. I have a college classmate who is now a doctoral supervisor at Peking University. He has his own standards: he has a house that is not very big, and he does not have to worry about his children’s tuition. He spends the rest of his time studying and living a life of looking up at the moon. , looking down at the leisurely life of flowing water. Until now, I still maintain a poor person's view of wealth. A friend encouraged me to buy a yacht, but I said that I can only play it a few times a year, and the yacht has no practical significance to me.

The outlook on life determines the values, and the values ??determine the outlook on wealth. Money should be spent in more meaningful ways, and the most important thing is to redirect your wealth as much as possible to help those in need. I spend more than 8 million yuan every year to support more than 2,000 poor students. I want to run a university that truly serves the poor. For this dream, I have bought 500 acres of land in Beijing. In this university, I hope that more than half of the students admitted will come from rural areas. Because according to our survey, we found that rural children have fewer and fewer opportunities to enter colleges and universities. The reason is simple. Cities are very rich in resources, and educational resources are tilted towards cities.

Some children have the opportunity to enter a good university, but they are unable to pay the tuition. The poor educational resources make more children have no chance to enter the university at all. This is the reason why I want to provide tuition fees for rural children. This is why I run this university. original intention. Helping hundreds of children every year is something I am very willing to do. When I get older and stop working at New Oriental, that university will be my spiritual home. I will work hard for this dream. If it really cannot come true, I think I will definitely donate the money to the country, and then return to teach on campus myself, teaching any subject I can teach.

In order to run this university, I have been working hard to learn capital operations, capital investment, and how Harvard University turns billions of funds into tens of billions. For public universities like Peking University and Renmin University of China, the national finance will continuously allocate funds, but the private university I want to run can only rely on its own funds and capital to operate. I believe that running a university well requires more than 10 billion in funds.

People who have material but no spirit are more desperate than people who have spirit but no material. China’s education focuses on the education of professional knowledge, but ignores the education of how to behave and do things throughout life. After I have wealth, what is my dream? It is to really develop this private university and have the most advanced teaching. I will pay the highest price to invite the best professors to take classes. In addition, I also have a dream and a lyric: My dreams are all packed in a suitcase. I hope that when I am healthy, I can travel around the world with a suitcase full of dreams.

There is nothing terrible about losing anything in this world. The only terrible thing is losing ideals and losing courage. Today, the development of New Oriental has become increasingly stable, and I have set a new goal for the rest of my life: to create a truly non-profit private university so that poor students can afford college. This university has nothing to do with New Oriental, it is entirely a personal ideal. It is my lifelong ideal to devote myself to education, and New Oriental is engaged in the education business, so I have a reason to continue doing it. With my personal wealth, it was impossible to run a truly private university, but I made up my mind and set up a foundation to run a humanities university.

If you want to run a good business, you must convey a kind of trust to others.

When Mengniu encountered a crisis of trust, Mengniu’s stock fell. Niu Gensheng called me and hoped to allocate a sum of funds from New Oriental to help Mengniu redeem its shares, and then return the funds to New Oriental when Mengniu's economic situation improves. The day after I received the call for help, I called Niu Gensheng with $7 million without any commitment or contract, and the other party did not promise any interest to New Oriental.

Why do this? The reason is very simple. In my opinion, Niu Gensheng is a good person. 1. Filial piety. He was raised by his adoptive parents, whom he respected and filially respected. 2. Loyalty. 3. Compassion. He used Mengniu's shares to establish the Lao Niu Foundation to help employees tide over difficulties when accidents occur. 4. Love nature. I visited Mengniu. There were trees planted around the Niu Gensheng factory. It used to be a desert.

If you want to run your business well and do things well, you must convey a kind of trust to others. This state of trust means that you don’t have to worry about anything you entrust, and there is no suspicion or hesitation between each other. . I believe it is right to help someone in their toughest time. Some people also asked me to borrow money, but I refused because I was worried.