Yu Minhong Of New Oriental: I Am Dragged Forward When The Company Goes Public

On November 6, CEIBS held a series of activities to celebrate its 16th anniversary, New Oriental Chairman of Education Group Yu Minhong Attend and publish speech Yu Minhong claims that his personality is from behind and can turn passivity into initiative. In his speech, Yu Minhong combed the development process of New Oriental, told about New Oriental's initial hesitation in listing, group transformation and talent management, and tried to show the audience his Successful experience And share with the audience the puzzles and solutions of New Oriental in its development.

Yu Minhong said that when New Oriental went public, I was also dragged forward. First of all, I was not interested in going public because I was a small farmer. I hoped that I could recruit so many students every year with peace of mind, and then improve the quality of classes. At the end of each year, the dividends were paid in cash. It would take several nights to count them, I particularly like this feeling. I think the reason for listing is that at least with my limited knowledge, once it is listed, it must ensure at least 20% annual growth to be considered a healthy enterprise. Generally, if you are regarded as a growth company, it should be more than 30%.

　 The following is an excerpt of Yu Minhong's speech:

It's true that until today, I can't really make a conclusion about who I am. The conclusions others give to you are often wrong, and my own view of myself is often wrong. Of course, according to general principles, negative is positive. When I finally look at myself, if I am positive, others look at you positively, I think that even if we are in a good state of life, it is another thing to be more or less positive. Since Mayor Huang Qifan has just talked a lot about China's major policies, I will not talk about this topic, and there is not much time left for me, so I will start from myself.

　 The personality of coming from behind

When it comes to doing things, what is the definition of success? First of all, how do you do things personally? Because everyone's personality is different, I will analyze myself first. My typical personality belongs to the type of coming from behind, that is to say, I am not very forward-looking. Understand this? Many things are made by others. When I see that they are good, you will follow them. I have been doing this since I was a child in school, until now.

So I analyzed the so-called leader's success, that is, after a leader's ten leading qualities, I gave the lowest score for my own foresight, and the fact proved that it was the same. But one of my advantages is that I usually come from behind. I think that when this thing is right, I will always be very patient to do it. I can see from my childhood that I don't give up myself too much. When I was young, my performance was at the middle level, but I never gave up learning. I know there are so many advantages to college entrance examination, such as leaving the countryside, leaving the land, eating public food, and so on. Because everyone knows that there were no migrant workers in the countryside at that time. As long as farmers went out of the land, they could be caught back. At that time, farmers were locked in the land, so I was especially grateful for the closed policy at that time, Because if it was the policy of migrant workers at that time, I would be a foreman. As there is only one road in Huashan, I took the exam for three years and went to Peking University unintentionally. It was really unintentional, because I didn't even pass the college entrance mark in the first year, and the same was true in the second year. But as long as you stick to the right path and give yourself enough time, you must have an unexpected result, which is Peking University.

In fact, when I became a New Oriental, for example, I started with a TOEFL class, and the smallest training institutions outside were those around me, with the minimum number of 500 or 600 people. In other words, if you want to share in the middle, it is completely regulated by the market, So my first class only recruited 13 students. But once I decided that this thing could be done, I would think about how to do it. So I started with 13 students, 13 students, 30 students, and finally created the typical big class, low price, and famous teacher of New Oriental. At that time, there was only one famous teacher, and it was OK to try my best to create myself. Basically, there was no cost.

But in this way, there are also some means to achieve the end. I'm not smart, but I can also think of some small ways. For example, if I don't have money to do market advertising, I would like to give you free classes. Anyway, you are not free and no one comes, right? It's free. You don't have to pay when everyone comes. Why? Because I said this myself, the time is over if you don't talk about it, so when you calculate the zero cost market, you are saying.

But in this way, it would be free. Everyone wanted to come. So after the students from Peking University and Tsinghua University came to listen, some students were willing to stay. Free lectures became a tradition of New Oriental. Until this year, I completely broke free lectures, because I felt that New Oriental would give free lectures when it was in its current state, I gave up New Oriental, because I was very excited outside. Tens of thousands of college students listened to me and looked back to see where New Oriental had gone. No more. Now New Oriental has encountered such a dilemma. This has something to do with a person's inability to give up the original customs and hobbies after he grew up, Even if this thing can kill you sometimes, you can't realize that in the process of enterprise management, some bosses manage the enterprise, which is caused by habitual thinking. And I am a person with strong habitual thinking.

No entrepreneur will be willing to destroy this enterprise. Do you want to know? No one is willing to fail, but you fail. Is failure an external cause or an internal cause? There may be external factors, such as the economic situation, financial crisis, national policies, etc., but more of them are internal factors, more of them are yourself, that is, your own nature, thinking, and habits have done this. So my habit is to give lectures from New Oriental just now. Now I go to other places to give lectures. It's a good feeling. Why? Because all the university presidents said, if you come to teach, I will close the whole school. How good is it to think that there are 20000 or 30000 people listening to you at once? Especially narcissistic. Later, I found something was wrong.

Then I will go back to the source and say that it is my personal habit of doing things. This habit is a small thing. If I think it is meaningful, then I will be patient to make it bigger. I will also use various methods that I think are appropriate to make it bigger. Of course, what methods are appropriate? Only you know that some methods you think are appropriate but do not meet social standards, and some methods meet social standards but have no effect, which are not appropriate.

I once had such a trick. For example, when the students of New Oriental came to apply for classes, I rented a small concierge at Zhongguancun No. 2 Primary School. When I arrived at work, I moved a small desk, a small desk and a small chair for primary school students to the outside of the concierge and sat there to recruit students. Students basically didn't come, I remember that three students came here and were taught by me for a long time and finally left their money. However, after 15 minutes, two students came back and said that we were still not at ease after thinking about it. Who knows where you went after you moved the table at night? You didn't even have an office. Finally, there was a piece of money left, This will happen.

In order to prevent this from happening, I did a very interesting thing. I signed up for each class and put the names in front of each class, because New Oriental wanted to enroll students at that time. Generally, the GRE classes for TOEFL at that time were all big classes, which were about 100 people. My list of about 20 people in front was all compiled names, That is, from the first to the twentieth are all fake, but the students do not look at it. When the student looked at the consumption psychology, he saw that there were already 20 people in front of him. He immediately felt that the first 20 people were also the first to be cheated, so the 21st person would pay the fees very quickly. Of course, when you finally recruit, for example, if you want to recruit all the students, you can just remove the 20 names in front of him. New Oriental will not need such a small trick later.

Later, when someone made a marketing analysis, he said that Mr. Yu was a typical cheat. I don't think so, because cheating means that I won't provide the services I promised him. Since I provide the services I promised him, and I can also facilitate enrollment, this is a marketing behavior rather than a cheating behavior, Of course, everyone will find excuses and reasons for themselves. Later, New Oriental's overseas projects gradually expanded. It has been achieved today. {page_break}

　 Listing of New Oriental

When New Oriental went public later, I was also dragged forward. First of all, I was not interested in going public because I was a small farmer. I hoped that I could recruit so many students every year with peace of mind, and then improve the quality of classes. Finally, at the end of each year, I would pay dividends in cash, which would take several nights to count, I particularly like this feeling. I think the reason for listing is that at least with my limited knowledge, once it is listed, it must ensure at least 20% annual growth to be considered a healthy enterprise. Generally, if you are regarded as a growth company, it should be more than 30%. Then my first feeling is that it is almost impossible for you to grow by more than 30% in an industry. What was the concept then? At that time, the total revenue of New Oriental's listing was 800 million, which meant that I would have 1.1 billion yuan in the second year. If the growth was more than 30%, it would have reached 1.8 billion yuan in the third year. I could not bear to go up like this.

The second is that everyone has a psychological feeling, which means that there is an end to your business. If you find that there is no end to something, no matter how much money you earn, you will be very painful, because I am the premise of doing things. I am not money centric. I think this thing has no end, and it will rise every year, In the end, the money was made by people who bought and sold stocks outside. I am tired to death. How much money do you need in your life? For example, someone once encouraged me to buy a yacht after New Oriental went public. I said I wouldn't buy it, but they said why not? I said that more than a dozen of my friends have yachts. If you buy a yacht and put it there, 10 or 20 days a year at most is a great time. If I don't buy it, can I borrow it from these friends without lending it to me? Right? Why not use other people's things? is it?

What do I say this for? As far as I am concerned, the listing of New Oriental is not based on money. If it is based on money, I will definitely sell the shares of New Oriental and play with children's funds. Now countless friends I know are playing with children's funds, but I have never played with children's funds, and New Oriental's shares have not been sold too much, so I put them there, Because I think I will sell the shares of New Oriental, and my blood relationship with New Oriental will be broken. It is the feeling that you were born, but not raised. It has nothing to do with you. So I put it there.

But when I was listed, I knew that if this thing happened to me, it would kill me, and everyone else in New Oriental could get away with it. So there were two problems at that time. The first problem was that after the listing, I was worried that my managers would really quit if they had more money. Generally, a senior management cadre could reach the minimum standard of more than 10 million yuan if New Oriental went public at that time. At that time, the listing price was 15 yuan, and the opening price was 20 yuan, Today, the price of New Oriental is more than 100 yuan. Up to now, the price is 100 million yuan or 200 million yuan. Although I know that the cultural cohesion of New Oriental is good, I have no idea whether they will stay in New Oriental and continue to work. However, it is very simple for them to leave, which is just a letter of resignation. Don't you let him go? impossible. So I knew that I might be left alone after this thing was finished.

But there is another reason why I do not want to go public, because I do not fully understand the listing itself. What will happen after the listing? What kind of relationship will emerge between you and investors? I don't understand at all. My personality is that I have to fully understand something and know where its destination is before I dare to move forward, but the situation was that I had to try.

Two reasons: First, from the inside. At that time, more than 400 teachers and managers of New Oriental had obtained the internal shares of New Oriental. At that time, the internal shares of New Oriental were 1 yuan per share. If you think about it, you will find that if I say you have one yuan per share, I will give you one point every year, For example, if you get 500000 shares and I give you a dividend of one yuan per share, you may only get 500000 in the last year, but everyone thinks that if you get 500000 shares to a listed company, the P/E ratio of 10 times will become 5 million, 20 times is 10 million, and the P/E ratio of New Oriental is 50 times. If you think about it, he will not be so stupid. I will distribute 500000 yuan to me every year. What he thinks is that if I get the 1000 yuan, I will pay more interest in the bank for one year than you give me. So you can't stop it.

I held a meeting inside New Oriental, and I said to my friends, are we not listed at all? It's also good to share dividends like this every year. They said Mr. Yu, I don't know how much money you have at home. Anyway, we don't have any money, so you can do it. There are three things you can't do in the world. The first thing is not to block other people's wealth. The second thing is not to block other people's love. Even love is not blocked. For example, you finally found a girlfriend and was robbed by another man the next day. Look at your feelings, if you are a little brave, you will be stabbed. The third is the food in the mouth. You can't rob when a person is hungry. So one thing we need to do now in China is not to rob the people at the grass-roots level of China of their food. In fact, our system and policies, intentionally or unintentionally, have the final result of pulling people's food, and the poorer the people are, the more serious the pulling is. This is China's social status quo. In fact, what will the final result be? It will form an extreme polarization of the whole society. On the one hand, the powerful and rich people will gather benefits and finally get more and more benefits. On the other hand, the people will eventually become extremely poor. Everyone knows that the people are the foundation. If the foundation is unstable, no matter how powerful you are, it will be useless. This is how China's 2500 year history came about.

So what I typically encounter in New Oriental is the first problem. I can't resist when others have made a fortune. For example, an employee could have received nearly 100000 yuan, but I found him. I said that I could only give you 80000 yuan for various reasons. He is acceptable, but if you don't give him any money, he will start to fight against you. What is the concept of New Oriental? The concept of New Oriental is that if it is listed, it can become a multimillionaire. If it is not listed, it can only get tens of thousands of yuan a year. Under such a huge wealth gap, you can't block people's wealth. Of course, I'm not saying that New Oriental people are vulgar, but that everyone will do so when they reach that point. So in the end, I was completely pushed up, which proves again that I do not have any forward-looking vision in fact.

So now that I have been pushed to a path that I have to take, I have one advantage: I can often change from passive to active, which is my personal advantage. I also changed from passive to active in the college entrance examination. Later, I ran training classes, which was not my initiative to start a business, but because the TOEFL GRE class in Peking University did not let me go to classes, Since the dean and professors were all in class at that time, I could not earn extra money if I was not allowed to attend class, so I went outside to attend class. However, after the June 4th Movement, there was a rule in Peking University that the teachers of Peking University were not allowed to go outside for part-time classes after the school's approval, so I went to class secretly. As a result, Peking University gave me a piece of administrative demerit recording punishment, which was broadcast on the loudspeakers of Peking University for half a month. So I was forced to leave Peking University.

Then I was forced to go out later and become New Oriental. Finally, I turned this passivity into initiative. Since don't make the wrong choice, why don't you continue on this road? So I have a sentence that can be used under my description. In fact, if a person wants to go far, it doesn't matter how long you go, but how long you can persist, It doesn't matter how fast you walk, but how long you can stick to it. If you stick to it for a long time, you can walk out of the distance that others haven't walked out. If you stick to it for a long time, you can see the scenery that others haven't seen. That's the concept. So I typically do things in New Oriental with this mentality.

So when it came to listing, it was also turned from passivity to initiative. It began to study how to manage listed companies, what problems they would encounter, how to do roadshows, and finally how to deal with investor relations after listing. It has been more than four years since New Oriental was listed, and it has always been safe, The stock is growing at a rate of 20% or 30% every year, so I learned it. So this is a way for me to do things. {page_break}

Transformation of New Oriental

Now, as I mentioned just now in New Oriental, the transformation of New Oriental has also been pushed. For example, we have a concept that New Oriental only does English teaching, English examination and English language teaching, plus at most some other language classes, such as speaking, German, etc, For this reason, the board of directors of New Oriental also held a meeting, and closed the computer training department, which was a popular department of New Oriental at that time, namely, Pure English brand education. So New Oriental put forward two slogans, one is called the place where New Oriental Chinese learn English, and the other is that language is power.

But in the process, I found that it was obviously not good, and it was pushed. For example, I had a good friend whose children learned English well in New Oriental, and suddenly one day they did not come. I called to ask, and he said that your organization only has English, and our children have other training in another organization. Although I know that the organization's English is not as good as yours, I might as well take him to that school to study. As a result, I found that if I didn't do anything else, others did my English. So I realized that it was not good for New Oriental to just do English, and it was also pushed. Since last year, New Oriental has carried out a comprehensive strategic transformation, which has two characteristics. The first feature is that the age group of New Oriental students is changing. It turns out that more than 80% of New Oriental students are college students, so we should move to high school, junior high school and primary school. In this way, the age group will decline. After the age group declines, your teaching mode will change. For example, adults will teach in teachers of this size, As long as the teacher speaks well, there is no problem. Many teachers are also willing to have such large classes because the price is relatively cheap.

After high school, junior high school and primary school, it is not up to the child to decide whether the child can go to the big class. Parents will say that my child's self-discipline ability is not enough, so you should quickly transform him into a small class. In the original class of 300 people, you must now transform into a class of 30 people before parents can send the child. So this is a transformation.

The second transformation is the transformation of subjects, because since the parents said that my child has learned English here, Mr. Yu, do you think our child can learn other subjects here? I didn't. Without me, I went to another training class. After I went there, he didn't come to learn English here. I mentioned this example, so finally I had to follow the transformation, that is, to carry out multidisciplinary education.

At present, the transformation of New Oriental is relatively successful, because the channel of New Oriental is well laid. In the past ten years, I have done nothing but build more than 40 branches across the country. At the same time, each of them has at least 10 teaching points. So New Oriental now has at least 400 teaching points across the country, By this time next year, there will be more than 500 teaching points. Each teaching point is that I only need one project to push out and design this project. When I recruit one student for one teaching point, I can recruit 500 students nationwide. If you recruit 10 students, there will be 5000. If you recruit 1000 students, there will be 50000. So last year, we launched middle school general education, By this year, the number of students of New Oriental has reached about 500000. New Oriental has taken a full course in middle school. The so-called full course is a combination of mathematics, physics and chemistry. This benefit will reach 500 million this summer. In the middle school full course project, it has scale benefit.

　 Only direct marketing, not chain

So I am very proud of what I said to Mr. Ma. I said that a casual person like me could build a management system of New Oriental, and the management system has not been broken up so far. In fact, I just adhered to the principle that New Oriental only does direct marketing, especially in big cities, I think the quality of the chain is beyond control.

There are more than 70 first level management cadres of New Oriental. I want them to study at CEIBS for one year. At least I have one right. I want you to come down today. You can't stay in this position tomorrow. You can't let go of this ability in enterprise management. Once you let go, he will never listen to you. So New Oriental is all direct marketing, and direct marketing is to have a good two systems. The first is a good salary system, that is, you can keep talented people in this system. Since he is not working for himself, he is working for you, how can you keep it in his position, and try to make him feel that he is working for himself, This requires the design of a lot of salary systems and capacity resources. Of course, corporate culture and personal charm can play a role. For example, if I call a cadre for a chat, he will be more energetic, but it cannot be guaranteed for a long time. I take you to study in Seaview Garden, which is part of the corporate culture. They will also feel happy in this place and can do more. But there are two aspects that can really make a person work here for a long time. One is his own salary. He can make him feel that it is worthwhile to stay here according to the comparison of similar people. The second is his personal growth. He is not only able to learn things here, but also able to make progress in his career. The third is that his work is consistent with his personal interests, which is a must.