YouSaid · the spoken record

Bo Shao

lines on the record: 106
first: 2022-04-06
most recent: 2022-04-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And thing is, I didn't even know I spent it all. At one point my financial controller came to say, do you know that we have no more money that we're not going to pay with salary next month? Is it really? I didn't even know that's how little I know about really running a business. It's actually really thinking bad. It's pretty.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a constant roller coaster. So there are many moments, I would say, oh, this is working. But then the other moments, holy shit, this is not working. It goes up and down. You know, there'll be times when we raise, initially we raise, I think I'd raise a small angel around like a few 400k, but then we raise 6.5 million dollars, I think, in October of 1999. And that was a lot of money back then. These days, a series A of 6.5 million is really very small. But back then, it's actually a fairly substantial amount of money. So definitely I thought, oh, things are going well. But then... It turns out five months later I spent it all. Five months.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the way, for the listeners who do not know Chinese, I would say your Chinese is actually really good, your Chinese pronunciation is very good.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll have it all figured out in a few months. Everything out, it will be steady, it will be autopilot, and then I can go. I have no idea what he thought about my, I think his name is John Wong and what he thought about what I said at the time. But he was very generous and he said, okay, that's okay. And he agreed to it. I think he held my place for at least a year.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yes, I did, actually. I told BCG, their senior partner in China, that I will start the business for a few months. After a few months, the business should be in good shape. Then I'll go back to BCG.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think about 12 Chinese students in the Harvard Business School graduate class of my year, I think I was the only person going back to China. Now, actually a few years later, I think 10 of the 12 eventually all went back to China. That's a different story. But that was not popular back then. And starting companies certainly wasn't popular. I guess, well, take it back. I think starting internet companies in 1999, 1998, 1999 might have been popular choice. But I don't think it was driven by that. I think it was driven because I really saw an opportunity and I felt that it's such a good business and it should be created. I think there was this kind of belief that this is a business worthwhile to be created. And since nobody else is doing it, I should be doing it. Of course, I didn't know that back then several other companies were preparing to launch. So I definitely wasn't the only or even the first one to launch.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. I think I definitely could have made more than $100,000 a year at age 25. But I was preparing even a spreadsheet sort of listing the pros and cons. And I think one person I met was a senior person at BCG in China asked me a question, was like, what do you want to do? Putting aside all these pros and cons, what do you want to do? And that sort of stumped me, actually, because I didn't really. What I want. I want it. And all my life, frankly, nobody really asked me that question, what I wanted. Up until that point I think one big decision I made for myself was to be with my now wife than girlfriend. That was a huge thing for me, which we kind of go back to. But in terms of career, I was just going through whatever's the most popular thing was. BCG when I graduated from college.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was very rational for sure. As she for a while I was deciding between going back to BCG versus going to work for Goldman Sachs. And we're at some intern doing the middle of my business school.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like imagining my own kid giving all of that up, even including a green card in the US, which is this incredible, valuable, you know, entertainable thing most people view, to go back to China to start something in the startup thing, entrepreneurship is unheard of in China more or less in China back then. You know, if you're an entrepreneur, I guess you start a food store. You don't start companies, really, back then. Not to say anything to me, to question or not, I think it's still a big deal.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think he was incredibly proud of me for sure, winning so many mass competitions in China was a big deal when I initially was thinking of going overseas to study, we even got a call from the Shanghai government saying that, oh, they wish that I do not leave before my senior year because in senior year I have the chance to participate potentially in the Mass Olympiads and win gold medals or whatnot for the country and that will bring honor to the Shanghai government and all that. So he was very proud of me from that. And of course going to Harvard is a big deal as one of the earliest, I think another student from Shanghai and myself got the whole foreign student saying directly coming from China started. That was the first year. I think after that every year was two, three students getting full scholarships. So he was very very proud. Though putting myself in his shoes”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They work for us and work for me, I guess. So we have basically four employees, three employees and me. Then they built a website after, I think, two months, surprisingly, I just finished the website. Of course, as soon as they launched, they probably crashed. So it was a long, but things, my parents didn't say anything. They just said, oh, okay, like really to my father's credit particularly. He knew that he didn't know what he didn't know. And he trusted me to make my own decisions.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“1999 China. It was all dialog modems back then, by the way. There's some internet access, it was all dialog modems. My kids don't even know what dialomodems are these days. And yeah, I found two part-time programmers who work for the Shanghai electricity bureau. They never built a website before ever. They were IT maintenance people, but they knew some Microsoft ASP programming language. They didn't want to quit their jobs. And so they would go to their regular bureau jobs, government jobs, and work from 6 p.m. to like midnight every night to build the website. And then they'll go back to their regular jobs, good thing the job is not very demanding, so they could sleep during the day in the office and at night.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or to their credit, they didn't say a thing. I was living at home when I got back to China in 1999. I had an office in another apartment really. It's not an office, another apartment building. I couldn't find anybody to work with me, really. I didn't know anybody really, other than my high school classmates, because I was out of the country for what by then eight years. So the only people I knew were my high school classmates. So the first, my first recruit was a high school classmate of mine who was trading stock at home. So he didn't have much to lose. So he joined me. I couldn't find. Programmers back then building an internet website is not a thing.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But going back to China, not getting a green car from the US in nineteen ninety nine to start a company whose business model I couldn't even explain to my parents, I think I'm convinced to this day. They do not know what a business is. I don't even sell things. I didn't even sell things. I was building a platform for other people to sell things. I didn't have a store even. No departments. It's mind-boggling what that platform really means. So that was a big, big step and I didn't know what the hell I was doing whatsoever, despite business school.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We thought the eBay business model really is incredible. So I looked into whether anybody was doing that in China. And the answer was no in 1998. So I said, oh, okay, when I graduate, I will go back to start the online auction website in China. And that was a huge step for me because up to that point, I was this steady person. I was a mask geek. And then even when I got a job, it was from one of the most established and prominent firms. It's all very understandable. It's like a very steady thing. And also I also left my back door open, you know, there's a way to back because I actually got a deferral in a PhD program in physics when I initially took my job at BCG. So I had a backup. Always very safe and steady.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was definitely a turning point. I think I made a few big decisions in my life that all worked out. And there's a general theme of getting closer to who I really am versus what I was made to be by the environment. But one decision was starting a company and I was inspired by a field study that I did with a couple other students at the end of my business school studying what internet models worked at the time and which of those can be successfully adapted to Asia. And this is in 1999 really at the height of the internet boom in the US. What we discovered was that most business models didn't make a lot of sense. There was a lot of hype, a lot of bubble.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But by there's so many stories, and this is a period of time that is not often discussed, but I would say this whole country has PTSD. It's very hard to imagine going through that. I mean, war, of course, can be very traumatic in a physical form, of course, and very scary. But when a country goes through this kind of internal convulsion where people are betraying each other left and right every single day, it's hard to imagine the impact on the psyche of a generation of people.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And my father was put on for a few times because he came from a rich family and also because I think he helped this other person. He was put on a platform in front of hundreds of people denouncing him, spitting on him. He would wear tall hats that could be very heavy for hours while standing in front of hundreds of people denouncing, shouting things at him. He wasn't, you know, didn't get the worst deal. There are people who got more or less lynched thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people in millions. I think it was millions of people were sent to the countryside to do manual labor, to reform their thinking. It was really, this is all from secondhand because I was too young. I was only a few years. Someone happened before I was born, but other times was I was maybe one or two years old. So this is all through second.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Instead of being grateful and helping him, the other victim actually made up stories about my father to protect himself because the more you denounce other people and tell secrets about other people, the more protected you are, you show your loyalty. So during cultural revolution, many children were forced to tell on their parents. You can imagine them under distrust that creates amongst everybody.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that's right. You have to chant, you have to follow all the dictates. Don't cheer my mouth. In the middle of the night, you might be forced to get up and you cannot complain. If you complain, you are disloyal to go on the streets at 2 o'clock in the morning to march and to shout slogans at the top of your lungs. There's a real story that my father actually tried to help somebody, somebody who's a good teacher was denounced, not being loyal to the party. And he spoke up for this person. And then he got in trouble for it. And later on, much to his dismay and disappointment and anger, this person made up stories about him.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Race to show your purity, your ideological purity toward the sort of totalitarian, what do you call it, proletarian? What's the right? Proletariat revolution, so you have to chant the right things and you have to in every turn.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could start with something personal was in my family my grandparents family were relatively well to do. So when the cultural revolution came, red guards will come from house to house to search for all the valuables. You have to give them up every single thing you have. If the red guards want it, you have to give it. And there are stories of people as I was growing up heard that, you know, some people bury some treasures in the backyard because they don't want to give it up. And then Regards will come and pull water on the backyard. And when the water sinks in a particular place, they will dig it up. You know, obviously they will confiscate that and probably either torture or kill the people who try to bury it, imprison the people who try to bury it. So it was this incredible terror that happened to people. And then there was also this.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“went through some very tough periods after World War II. There's a period called the Cultural Revolution, and prior to that, there's a rightist movement, anti-rightist movement that lasted more or less for 15 years, that really traumatized an entire generation of people”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I'm suddenly one of them, develop certain views of oneself that we somehow think that there's something wrong with us, that we are not worthwhile, that we have no value other than the things we do. Just brush taking how much suffering there is, and I use the word suffering in the Buddhist sense, even though I'm not a Buddhist. And so MDMA and other psychedelic medicine that have huge healing potential that I feel really passionate about bringing that to the world, help bring that. And certainly I'm not the main person doing it. I can like to contribute where I can to bring that to the world, including China. And in China in particular,”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are trying to work on it, though, and I'm not sure how much progress we are making, but it's very worthwhile effort for us because in some ways people everywhere share most of the similar aspirations. And regardless of their color or social economic status, go through very similar traumas in some ways as I got to know many of my fellow countrymen over the years, particularly the successful ones actually, as they share some of the stories about themselves that they never told other people, that we all have so much hurt inside of us and everywhere, and these hurts could be, some could be very easily felt, some of it is deeply buried and maybe even subconscious. So many people, and I would say so many of us.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he was very confused. It's really good. It's amazing that you're writing so well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I said, well, put that right well. Why don't I get A minus? I was so focused on grades at the time.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll focus on grants. One of the first classes I need to take was expose, which is a writing class, which is supposed to be a hellish, difficult writing class for college entrants, the first freshman. And I did very well. I think my first essay was read to the class, which is pretty amazing because I never written an English essay before until that point, not counting the application essays. The first essay got an AA. But eventually my whole grade for the course was A minus. And I was very unhappy about that. I remember calling the professor and complaining that how he could give me a A minus.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I was so out of it. I was so unsophisticated that none of these thoughts much occurred to me. I was just so focused on studying. I just needed to study.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think I took the first train ride alone to go to Fam Shanghai to Beijing to meet him, to be interviewed. So I think he was the only non-Chinese person that I met. I might have met a cousin who was born in America who came back to China. But as far as a white person who was concerned, I think he was the first one.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I really spent time with was one non Chinese person. And his name was Nicholas Christoph as New York Times columnist. And now I think he just announced he's running for the governor of Oregon. But back then, he was living in Beijing as a journalist, and he was interviewing for Harvard.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I got to Harvard, my focus was on grades. I needed to be number one. So I remember taking as many classes as I could, the normal course loader was four courses.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the phone must have been full or something malfunctioning. So all the quarters are put into the previous phone basically went straight down into the return slot. But I didn't realize it. And it took me several days at least, probably longer to say, oh, one day, oh, that's what happened. She was taking my money”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Refuse to connect, and I put more money in, it will still refuse to connect. So eventually I became frustrated and I switched to the phone next to it and that payphone worked I put in a couple of dollars or something like that and connected and told them I was okay. And as I was on the phone a cleaning lady came by, was cleaning all the phones and she puts her finger into the coin return slot, which I didn't even know existed by the way until she put her finger in into the phone that I was previously using and she got out a whole handful of quarters, probably $10 worth of quarters. And she was so happy. She looked at me and smiled.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember vignettes might be illustrative was that when I landed in Los Angeles on my way to Boston, I needed to call home to make sure that they know that I'm okay. And by the way, just to, it's hard to for me imagine that my oldest daughter is off to college to imagine parents sending their kids off to college, knowing that they may never see him again. For them going to America, it was not just getting on a fight. Seriously, they might never see me again. The courage they displayed, the selflessness they displayed is breathtaking. When I caught home from Los Angeles airport, I was using a public phone, which is the first time I'm ever probably seen a public phone. I remember having putting maybe several dollars worth of quarters into the phone. But the phone...”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was too many things to count, really. I came from a country back then in nineteen ninety one where people didn't even have phones in their homes. Most people. When I had to call home, I needed to make sure, arrange the time with my parents over regular mail or over the previous phone call so that they can go to my neighbor who had a phone and they would wait by the phone when I call. But when I got to the US,”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rationality analytics is what I'm built for, and emotions just gets in the way and it serves no purpose. So I think for a long time until I was probably my, maybe the first time I met my wife, I don't think I had a many feelings. I didn't know what they were really”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is because it's memory, but also I want to make sure that if my parents ever hear this, they know that I love them dearly and they've done so much good for me. But there are certain things that simply one needs were not met and one of the situations was my father was angry and very demanding and very controlling to the extreme. And also he was physically punishing as well. So I was scared. I was scared I think to the end of my wits, I think. Some of this rage becomes at very unpredictable times. So I think I was constantly vigilant and constantly making sure I was performing. And also another thing in the five-minute dynamics was that there was very little attention paid to how I feel. So the feelings were for the longest time I treated feelings like an emotional evolutionary way. Product like an appendix.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so it's not a surprise that I developed this pattern of perfectionism that's always there that I couldn't control because I had innate inclination that's good. But then it became almost bastardized or misused to cope with a situation that was very, very difficult.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could even go one step further that if the reason I had developed this particular coping mechanism of pattern behavior perfectionism is because I have an innate inclination because people react to trauma. I use the word trauma not just referring not to just say one time big event kind of a trauma like abuse, but trauma could happen over a long period of time of a repeat exposure to certain stimulus that does not meet one's need. And I was exposed to a particular situation repeatedly. But however, my sister and I responded to that same situation differently because of our different innate inclinations.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I become lazy and all that. And I think subconsciously I was holding on to that pattern for fear of that happening. But as I connect, however, now with, I was just talking about this. Actually, you know, nobody forced me to do this. And I did it because there's an innate drive in me, I think, to do a good job, things I touch. And the more in some ways I get in touch with that innate drive, but it's not a pathological compulsion. Like in certain situations, it's appropriate. And certain situations not appropriate. It's a great tool in my toolbox. It's a great trait of mine. But if I actually have more confidence, this is within me. That's my inner quality. Then the more willing I'll be letting these other pattern go. Doesn't make sense.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I don't know why. This is way before even going to the US appeared on the roadmap. There's a part of me that just really wanted to be accident, I think. And this is actually a very important learning actually in the past few months. I'm starting to realize because we explain this is actually important. I have this sort of pattern of behavior that require me to sort of want to be perfect in every situation, which is a burden. And one of the reasons that I was unwilling, whether it's consciously or subconsciously to let that pattern behavior go, is that I'm afraid that if I don't follow this strict pattern, I will cease to be excellent. All the things have made me great or successful will disappear.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I basically was able to mimic. The speaker on the tape memorized without trying to most of the things that he was saying, and then after the summer my English just ceased to be a problem, became something I became very comfortable with.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that is correct. And remember, my English was always definitely I was very unsure and not confident about my English until one summer, maybe in somewhere middle school where I spent probably half the summer listening to a few tapes. It was a textbook called New Concept English, I think from the UK. And I listened to those tapes over and over again until I pretty much memorized it. I could even talk not just the text of the lessons, but also including the copyright, everything that the speaker was introducing the book and everything, Oxford Cambridge Press, whatever, all of those things I listened to so many times. I remember it was a little recorder, it was actually not a little, it was like probably the size of a laptop kind of, but several times thicker a recorder with these plastic buttons. And I'll click rewind, play, rewind, play, rewind, play. How many thousands of times during the summer”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chinese middle school and high school education have all this emphasized English as a part of core curriculum. So we did study English in middle school and high school. Now the teaching quality wasn't very good because most of those English teachers never, no, actually not all of them, none of them have ever been overseas and their accents are atrocious. We will learn grammar and all those things. So, I think I was able to probably read, I should know, I take it back. I don't think my English was that good. But then I get some cramming school outside of the regular school to learn English. And that helped me.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get a special name, so like millionaires or billionaires that we use now. 10,000 RMB is a big, big deal. So actually, even when we started applying for colleges, we couldn't even afford the application fees, which is like $35 or $50. We actually need to get waivers of application fees from these colleges. Really, thanks to him, I applied to 20 or so colleges in the U.S. when I was in junior high school and got into a bunch of them. And a number of them gave me full scholarship in Cunned Harvard. And off I went.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think I came to the US on my 18th birthday, if I remember right. This is largely thanks to my father. He saw it early that going to America for higher education will open up entirely different world of opportunities. So he started working on that very early. And back then, going to America for PhDs were relatively known. Quite a lot of people go because you get research assistants or teaching assistants so that you actually get paid to study. But for college, there were no such things. So you needed a full scholarship. The reason it needs to be full is nobody in China back then could remotely afford a college education in the US. Remember, you know, when in the 1980s, when the China economy initially opened up, people who got rich first were called one. Which means people who have 10,000 RB. That's considered to be very rich.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Perform start to dominate everything, including driving. Like I need to be always on the fastest lane. More importantly, perhaps, I always need to plot the most efficient route to a place. I remember when I initially got my Tesla, I needed to look at the Tesla maps. I need to look at Google Maps. I need to look at ways so that I can see which map provides the best route and I can look at postmortem and see, oh, which indeed, which one was more accurate? The next time I will use this map for this route, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, I gave a lot of pressure to my wife, enormous amount of pressure to my children. One of my deepest patterns of behavior.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I feel heaviness as I talk about it because it's such a burden. And it was a creative solution in some ways because indeed I became number one in many things when I was growing up, particularly math. I ended up winning first prize in dozens of national mass competitions in China. And I felt safe. That performance enabled me to feel safe. I think my impression is that actually I was treated better after that. My father had less of a rage. He was so proud of me. I felt my life change for the better, significantly better because of that performance. And then as I grew up, I needed to perform well in everything. It's not just mass competitions anymore, not just college or the first job. But this kind of almost compulsion to”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm still actually discovering how these imprints have affected me. My experience is that my understanding is that I was so imprintable as a child. All children are very imprintable that I carried away with certain things with me. And it's not his intention, I want to be clear about that, but it's nevertheless what I carried away with. And one of the impressions that I received was that my value comes from my performance. Thought specifically to be almost like number one, that's my value. And if I am not number one, then I'm a person with no value.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I develop a particular way of going through these cards, and I think I was doing Beijing more or less four or five calculations a second. And it turns out I should just later on as I understood a bit more about neurobiology is that it actually takes about 100 milliseconds for the brain to recognize an image, to be able to see the card clearly and take it in and then process information takes one tenth of a second already, or sometimes depending, one tenth to maybe one sixth of a second. So be able to add five cards in one second is probably close to the limit of human biology, I guess.”
2022-04-06 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #584: Bo Shao — His Path from Food Rations to Managing Billions, the Blessings and Burdens of Chasing Perfection, Building the eBay of China in 1999, Pillars of Parenting, and Pursuing the Unpopular · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT