This 57 Year Old Chinese Billionaire s Advice Will Blow Your Mind YouTube

Everybody, we chase for the status, the wealth, the titles, achievements, until someday I realized that is an endless game. I remember when I was in the plan to fly to Beijing, I wish the plan can never land. If the drawing force is to make money or become famous, then there's hundreds and thousands of reasons you quit. No matter how successful you are, you may still feel something like a hole in your heart. Some anxiety never go away. You guys have loved seeing videos of self-made millionaire women on our channel, especially our good friend Janet. What about a self-made billionaire, though, who grew up in a small town in northern China? Today, I will be in Beijing, in China, sitting down with Diane Wang, the founder of one of the world's biggest e-commerce companies, DHgate, and I'll be asking her about her biggest regrets and about how she came from absolutely nothing and turned her life into something that every single person would love to replicate. How old are you? 57. But what does it feel like to be 57? Extremely fantastic stage. I found myself, I have that inner peace and inner abundance. The key is to find the truth of yourself. If you can find the essence of that, you have to clean up a lot of limitations and burdens, and especially some of the labels you think is right in the past. What's a label that you had put onto yourself that you've let go of? Perfectionism. I always feel I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. Until one day, I realized that's the limitation. If you can get rid of or let go of that limitation, you feel much lighter. Without, you carry the burden for quite a long time. It's like you're free. Why do you think that you had that mentality of that you were never good enough? Underneath, there is a saying, I'm not enough. I still need to work harder, but it's really hard for people to see something beneath. Just like the ice mountain, the surface is the behavior people can see, obviously. But there's a lot of things behind that that's really you, if we can have opportunity to see through that. How old were you when that changed, the letting go? I'm curious. Just several years ago. Yeah, in your 50s? Yeah, around that time, seven or eight years ago, I started to enter into the self-exploration journey. Did something happen in your life? In the past, I only see the first mountain, which is the material world. Everybody, we chase for the status, the wealth, the titles, achievements, etc. Until someday, I realized that is an endless game. No matter how successful you are, you may still feel something like a hole in your heart. Some anxiety never go away. Are there any greater power? Are there the so-called sustainable satisfaction over there? With that tiny question, I started to explore the answers along the way. I'm curious. Two reasons. One, you're 57. You look amazing. At the same time, I feel like there's a lot of lessons that people don't learn soon enough. They think that as they get older, life gets worse. What do you think people get wrong in terms of aging? If people are always chasing the outside things, there's no time for the inner peace, for the inner quiet. Only when people look inward, start this journey to find the true self. Then, I think we enter into the state with that inner abundance, inner peace. If you feel good, you actually attract people, good people and good things around you. I think the best is yet to come. Maybe 80 years old, there's still something fabulous will happen. That is interesting. For someone of your stature, the amount that you've achieved, material wealth or success that you've achieved, to say that the most important thing to enjoy that and to enjoy life is actually inwards. Do you think that you could be as happy as you are now with a lot less? Yeah, definitely. I think people used to think about, I need to do things and I have wealth, prosperity, etc. Then, I can become happy. That's wrong. I think on the contrary, let's become first. So, stay in a good status, being first. Then, you can have. Yeah, I agree. People always say, when I have this, I will feel this way. But in order to feel that way, I think chasing success and chasing happiness are not the same. You can be very materialistically successful but not happy. You can be very happy but not materialistically successful. What do we need to know about your childhood and about how you grew up in order to understand the version of you that we're speaking with today? I was born in Beijing. I'm the youngest kid in my family. I have one brother, one sister older than me. I think in my childhood, I'm pretty lonely. I lived in the countryside when I was in the primary school. I had to spend at least one hour to walk to the classroom. And along the way, maybe we met the boy bully us or some dogs chasing us. So, it's not safe. But what impressed me most is the flat land. It's extending far away. There's almost no limitation. It's so vast, so spacious. It's around seven years old. So, I have a deep connect with the nature. So, I think that's left me profound impact in my whole life. Because with the connection of the nature, there's no limitation for me. I can run. I can do things whatever I want. So, that's the connection with nature. And I think in my I'm kind of creator. So, I always like to think, dare to think and dare to do. And that's something I think related to my childhood. Yeah, that's the experience. That is so interesting. Like, it's not wealthy. It's more... It's pretty poor. It's pretty... Yeah. Yeah. I remember if we can have a rice. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. Wow. Just white rice, plain rice? Yeah. Were you close with your parents growing up? You said you're the youngest and your childhood felt lonely. But were you close with your parents growing up? I think around that time, my memory is they're always very busy. They're always working, trying to take care of a lot of things. So, in my childhood, I don't have the so-called deep conversation or communication with others. So, I think that made me very independent and resilient. I'm also not sociable in school. Yeah. So, I remember I tried to hide my light in order to be not so stand out. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. Did you feel you were different than other people though? I think so. Yeah. I remember I write down diary. I talked to myself. And from the very young age, I started to make decision. Yeah. So, when I look back, I think through my life, like this independent, like this resilience is practiced through the childhood. Yeah. So, I really appreciate that my parents, they're so busy. So, I'm free. Right. From very beginning, I made all the decisions by myself. I think the good side is I used to listen to my heart and make decisions. But on the other hand, I realized later, I think maybe I cannot rely on any others. I have to totally rely on me. That's the areas later on I found I need to appreciate the trust. That's I learned from my husband. So, and later on, I built a trust environment for the organizations, for the nonprofit organizations they've built. Okay. Again, so for someone, again, first time that they're meeting you, so DHgate is probably the thing you're most well-known for. If you can explain what it is in your words. Yeah. DHgate is my second startup and we're the first mover in this cross-border e-commerce marketplace. I think about this like the Asian Silk Road. We don't have camel, but we have internet. So, people around the world that they can exchange products online, that will look like beautiful. Yeah. So, from that picture, we started to come up with the new business model, which is nowadays is pretty common. But around that time, I remembered a lot of people in the traditional trading business think this is nonsense. It's ridiculous. This cannot happen. DHgate right now cover more than 230 countries worldwide and regions. And yeah, we have more than 2 million manufacturers in China and they've reached almost 100 million global small business individual consumers. Yeah, right now. And you had that idea 20 years ago, correct? 20 years ago. What was life like for you from a career standpoint? Where were you? What were you doing before this idea came to mind? Before DHgate, I was the co-founder of Joyo.com. At the end of 1999, Joyo was one of the first B2C e-commerce platform in China. And Joyo was acquired by Amazon in 2004. So, that's my first startup. And before that, I worked for Microsoft and Cisco as a senior manager. And before that, I was working in Tsinghua University. You were a teacher? Yeah. What drove you to go from teacher to management executive? I'm curious on that. Every time I think I listen to my heart, this is not something I really want. Because I'm familiar, you also choose different career because you think that's not something you really want from bottom of your heart. Yeah, I worked at a bank before doing this. So, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. But when you don't know your dream, it's easy for society to decide it for you. So, my friends, my teachers, school, they said, go get a job in a bank. It's a good idea. And when I worked there for almost a year, I looked at my boss. I wrote it down on a piece of paper. If I become the CEO in 30 years, will I be happy? No. I totally echo what you're saying. So, that's something similar when I left Cisco. A lot of people have that feeling and they're still in that job. What's the difference between someone like you and someone like that? What my passion? What things made my eyes light up? If people ask that question, what we really want? But as you mentioned, although they get the answer, but they don't believe it. They don't believe it. A lot of people are interested in life but not committed. They're interested in the idea of what life might look like if they were more creative or they dove into that passion. But being committed to it, it's doing the work when nobody's watching you. It's doing the work when everyone is judging you. It's actually taking action. I think the trend I've noticed from a lot of interviews with successful people who are successful and fulfilled is action. A lot of people have thoughts. Everyone has thoughts. Well, almost. The first is really talk to our heart to find that aspiration, that passion. Secondly, if you believe it or not. Thirdly, if you really want to take action or not. That makes life different. Was it hard for you from a judgment standpoint? When you quit your job, were people judging you? Was it tough in that regard? That's a really good question, William. If that answer comes from your heart, the answer is so simple, so clear. You don't need to have any struggle on it. But once the answer comes from your mind, from the logic, it's a lot of calculation, a lot of struggle, back and forth. You couldn't make a decision. That's the key difference between the answer coming from your mind or coming from your heart. I always connect with my heart, so I don't have that kind of struggle. No matter how many people fight against it or say you are crazy, that's not difficult for me. That's so crisp. Just go for it. What would be your advice for somebody to take action? Yeah, I think in order to find the truth of ourself, we need to learn how to quiet ourself. I think there's many different ways for people to find that stillness. Because in Chinese, we are saying with that stillness, there's a wisdom coming from that. I think especially in nowadays, there's so many chaos, so many changes. So these badly-need human beings, we regain the capability to enter into that stillness stage. So maybe people can do meditation, can do dairy, can put themselves into nature. There's different ways. But I think this stillness is so important to let us see clearly from the chaos what's the key. This is why I journal. I think a lot of people don't understand. They don't know who they are, really. They don't know who they want to be, and they don't know how to make the two of those versions the same. So how do you turn who I am today into who I want to be? You need stillness. You can't find it while you're scrolling. You can't find it while you have notifications all over. You can't find it while your friends are giving their opinions. At the end of the day, it's your choice, right? It's your life. The sponsor of today's video, Masterclass Executive, is here to help you get started before it's too late. It's a 12-week program built for professionals who were not trained to lead through an AI-driven shift and are now realizing they need to get ahead of it and not just react to it. Instead of just teaching concepts, Masterclass Executive puts you through real business decisions, evaluates your thinking, and helps you build actual work that shows what you're capable of. The programs are AI native from the ground up, meaning the program will adapt in real time to each participant's pace, role, and performance. It works like a personal AI tutor while maintaining Chicago Booth's high academic standards and it only costs a fraction of what most higher education degrees would. The instructors include Indra Nooyi, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio, and many more. Enrollments will be closing soon and you can apply for free using the QR code or link in the description. Tell me about a failure. A lot of people will talk about successes, but I'm curious on a failure, a hard time that you experienced with this business that that you had to get over, that you had to deal with. Is there one that comes to mind there? I think as a startup, although I'm a pretty successful entrepreneur, but it's also really hard for me to get the funding. Especially I remember one investor, they already signed a deal with us. That funding is so critical. If we don't have that funding, we cannot launch our website. For quite a long time, I couldn't hear about something from that investors. I send something wrong, I give them a phone call, and he said he didn't want to invest. I can still remember his face. It's very cold. He made a decision. He doesn't want to invest this money. I remember when I was in the plan to fly to Beijing. I wish the plan can never land because I don't know how to face my employees, how to face issues over there. We have to think about the sell cars or sell house, etc. to support the company moving forward. That kind of situation, survival moment. What are you thinking at that time? I think there's one shift moment. This point is acceptance. If we ask a lot of why, why they treat me like this, why this is so unfair what happened to me, we put ourselves into that victim area. It will let you go down and down. I think the magic word is accept. Once you accept, immediately, there's a what. What solutions? What action items? What I can do next? That becomes positive. If you take action. Who can be an entrepreneur, in your opinion? The motivation. If the drawing force is to make money or become famous, then there's hundreds and thousands of reasons you quit. But if that's coming from the deep aspiration or passion, that's the strong, that's the endless energy to fuel you. And then I think that's a strong heart. You know, you failed again and again, but you back up. You back up. I think that kind of resilience is important for entrepreneurs. Having a business that starts as an idea and growing it to where you've grown in now, to be doing as much business that you are right now, what would you say are three key pillars of success? I don't want to talk about things. I really would like to say about people. We're so used to a system based on fear, based on competition, based on winner takes all, you or me, that mentality. But I think if more people shift to this system, where based on kind, love, collaborate, you and me, collective, we can become more successful, that kind of mentality. That starts from people. That starts from people with heart. It's no longer such a pressure, right? It's no longer the KPI. It's something from our heart. We enjoy it. It's within us, that essence within every one of us. Okay, so you mentioned you're married? Yeah. How long have you been married for? 39 years ago. I met my husband in university. He's my first boyfriend. And nowadays, our marriage is 32 years. Wow. Okay. We're doing the math here. Yeah, doing the math. So you are 18. You're 18, basically. Yeah. It's like we grew up together. 100%. Still very happy? Well, if you say no, then he won't watch this. But if you say yes, then he'll watch. But that's at different stages. He recognized me through his eyes. I recognize him through my heart. First day in our university, he met me in the bike shed. It's kind of love at first sight for him. But he's not my type around that. But I started to see him from my heart. So 39 years together. A lot of relationships, they don't last even close to that. What's the secret? Firstly, we don't see each other from superficial level. Something like the family background, the titles, the wealth, not like that. We see each other from a deeper level. His loving heart, this kind of person. And then I think the key is we support each other and give each other a space to grow. We never think about change the others. I think we allow ourselves to become ourselves. So you see some examples in the world where people achieve, they make a lot of money, they run a good business, and the marriage that they had ends. I'm just curious on your train of thought as you've gone through how success hasn't changed who you've been with and how you feel. I asked him the question in his heart, and the person never changed. Just the girl he met in the first day. And I think that's it. So I think he's a very smart man. Not only this, but he understands how to support his partner to bloom, to become herself. And then she can also build a beautiful garden for him. So both of us, we have the so-called safe habit. That's the warm harbor we can return to have that rest. Can you define the word love for me? I think you don't want any return. You just allow the others to become themselves. You are always there. You're precious. You are there. Your heart is there so they can feel this warmth. Yeah, just like honey. Now you filled out part of just a daily journal. And what's so cool, I mean, I try to show it in the camera another angle, but it's in Mandarin. If you can share what you wrote here. What's on my mind today? Chaos world. To become the stillness, to have the inner, you know, grounded is so important. I would like to remind me to be present, to remind me to connect with your highlight of the day and what you're grateful for. Yeah, and yesterday, I really enjoyed the conversation, the discussion, brainstorming with my team. We talked about to build the future. In Chinese, we talk, but in English, you can call this dream garden to make this inner peace, inner abundance with the outer success. So we're foreseeing that we are building the new earth, the sustainable earth. Yeah, our home garden. On the side of this journal here, you wrote one piece of advice that you would offer to anyone who were to read it. Can you read out what you wrote and explain why that's what you chose to write? Remember, talk to your heart and follow your passion. And along the way, always ask fundamental questions to understand who you really are and live it out. Thank you so much.