Achieving the Impossible: Solving Big Problems

Good morning, Believe Nation. It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves. And my sincere hope is that if you see in yourself what I see in you, you'll be able to change the planet. So to help you on your journey, today's message is solve big problems. Over to you, Jack Ma. I wake up every morning and spread it so keep me going.

I wake up every morning We are not a company that normally China calls. We call ourselves a company running a platform, a company that is running an ecosystem. We are almost everywhere. People say, Jack, you know, you are in the B2B and B2C, and you're calling C2B on finance and online payment, logistics, cloud computing. You are everywhere. Not because we're greedy, not because we want to do it, because we have to do it. If we cannot, if we do not do it, China e-commerce in the years will collapse. I remember 9 years ago when I started Alipay, people say, Jack, don't touch the financing sector because it's illegal, you may be in prison. And I, we told ourselves if we don't do it, the China e-commerce will always like a chat room. Everybody say it's a good thing and I don't pay, you don't get the things. So I say, well, put me in the prison. Let's make sure that Alipay, the payment solution, works. And people say the payment solution is such a stupid idea. It's an escrow service. I pay you, hold the money, and you get the things. You pay the money, if you don't get the things you want, return the money. They said it's a stupid product. And I say, as long as it solves the problem, I like stupid things, you know. Let's make stupid things smart. Keep on improving every day. Today, we have over 800 million people registered using Alipay as the account. And Alipay now today solved the e-commerce problem. We are paying the electricity, water bill, and even taxi. And last week, I went to a vegetable market. Somebody said, we accept Alipay. Because they say Alipay will, you know, if they get the false money, and the Alipay can solve that problem. So we are actually building up an infrastructure of China.

It's hard to stay motivated when you're solving small problems. At least for me, I have a really hard time staying motivated, staying engaged if I see the problem is just really small and tiny. I had a call yesterday with a YouTuber who has a successful channel but hasn't posted in almost a year, and now, you know, she wants to get back and back on the horse and keep posting more videos. And she's so concerned about what happens in that first video, you know. She has a plan to make more videos, but all she's wrapped up in is, what do I do with this first video? And it's important, you know, to figure out what happens in that first video, but much more important is what's the consistent plan, right? If you want to have success on YouTube, it's about making regular videos. Like, how are you going to get to weekly videos and then multiple times per week and then daily? Like, the long tail, the long term is so much more important than what happens in this one specific video. Because how many of your subscribers are going to watch it? And, you know, it's just not as important. And so for me, I hate focusing on the little things when there's a much bigger problem to focus on. She really should be focusing on, okay, I make a first video, doesn't really matter. Like any single video I put up on my channel, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really have a huge impact. It's accumulation of every single video. And so I want to focus on the big things. I want to focus on the big problems. I want to solve that and not just this little tiny thing. And so it's why I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. You know what, it's a motivating, it's an inspiring goal. I like helping entrepreneurs. One-on-one. It gives me a lot of great personal joy and satisfaction, but I want to have a big impact. I know I can have a bigger impact. If you have the ability, you have the responsibility. And so that, that wakes me up energized to go out and try to do something. When I'm coming here making these videos for you, I'm imagining that I'm speaking to a million people, and I hope this message gets through because I want to have a big impact. And so when you work on big problems, you're more motivated. I think especially as entrepreneurs We want to do something bigger. We have that mind to want to go out and have a huge impact. And so we, we hate working on these little tiny small problems. The flip side though sometimes is it can be too big. And I remember having this where I thought, can I actually help a billion entrepreneurs? Can I actually change the world? Like, it's a noble thing, but can I actually go out and do it? And sometimes your goal can be too big and may even depend on the day. To be honest, some days you wake up and you're motivated and ready to go do it, and some days you wake up and say, "Who am I to be able to go off and have that big of an impact?" And so it's finding where's the edge of your comfort zone. What's a goal that's big enough to push you to say that's just beyond achievable? Like, if I push myself hard, I can go out and do that. I'm at the edge of my comfort zone. Because if it's too easy, you're not going to be motivated to do it. You're going to be bored. You're going to feel like it's a waste of your time, a waste of your talent, and you're not going to be engaged in it. And if it's too big or too hard, you're also not going to be motivated to do it because it's impossible and it's never going to get done. And so finding what that goal is at the edge of your comfort zone, solving a big problem that is meaningful to you, that is impactful to you, that makes you feel valuable if you can go out and reach it and solve it and help people, I think is really, really, really important to entrepreneurs. And I'd be looking at yourself, your life, your business. If you don't feel challenged, if you feel bored, if you're not growing, it's probably because you are not solving a big enough problem right now. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is the big problem that you want to solve right now with your business? Leave it down in the comments below, really curious to find out. And also, if you're leaving a comment within the first couple hours of this video going live, you have a chance to win one of two daily prizes. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Paul Benoit Duvoisin. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really, really, really appreciate it, and I hope you're enjoying the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

For Naveen, the billionaire formula is simple.

What makes a successful person? They go out and solve big problems. You know how to make a billion dollars? You solve a $10 billion problem.

Having already made his billions, he now unashamedly wants to use his business brain to change our world.

Let's focus on education, healthcare, energy, shortage of water, shortage of food, and I'm going to tell you how innovation and entrepreneurship can solve each of these problems. Let's look at education.

Imagine if you are able to use a $25 tablet and build some type of a game that's more effective than a private tutor, and it's more addictive than the most addictive video game.

Think about it. One day, a child is going to come to the mother and say, "Mom, can I just play one more hour of math?

Because I enjoy it so much." Naveen has a knack of putting people under his spell, making his mission to solve some of mankind's biggest problems seem plausible in space and on Earth.

What if we can build an artificial intelligence system that can be used used by a village girl, she'll be able to go door to door and able to diagnose the diseases where there are no healthcare, there's no hospitals, there are no doctors.

These are big ideas that could turn a big profit, but some of them seem a bit far-fetched.

What if we take a 3D printer on the moon and somebody can go out and send the DNA of a bacteria or a virus and we print it right there and leave it on the moon and watch it grow?

These ideas, they're a bit out there, aren't they, Naveen? Don't people think you're just a bit mad?

Well, the point is that the reason they think it's mad, because it's already— they don't know it's already happening. The things that used to be science fiction are now becoming science reality.

And I think, for all of you, there are many areas where there's leverage available in the world, where, you know, 1 or 2 people, a good idea, a lot of hard work can really make a difference. There's many, many things like that. And it's good not to forget that, but it's good to look for those things. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. And one of the things that surprised me— that's a very broad mission. It's a lot of work. We're not gonna achieve it anytime soon, right? It's almost an impossible task. But it's an exciting task and one that you can get other people excited about. And they can help you. And one of the things that also surprised me is it's sometimes easier to do something that's harder because other people get excited about it, and you can get much more resource. You can get tremendous resources to solve a hard problem, whereas you might only get minor resources to solve a small problem.

My, um, I, I like to say my management style is problem solver in chief. And so what I do in a given day is I have a set of problems that need to be solved, and I start at the most important and work my way down. And for the problems I don't have time for, somebody else gets to solve them. Now, if somebody's already solving another problem, solving a problem, I don't need to get involved if the problem's getting solved. But, you know, people go, wow, so your day's just full of problems. I'm like, yeah, I've got a lot of problems. But it's sort of like how a math professor thinks of problems. Is that think of a great math professor who has no math problems to solve. He's a very sad math professor. And so that's very much how I look at it. Solving problems is an— every problem is an opportunity for innovating and being creative and finding something new. And that's what I love to do, and I do it every day.