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Chung Ju-yung

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2020-03-26

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2020-03-26

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1. “About to read you will give you an indication of the levels of ambition and the standards that he sets for himself. I rename my shop number one in Seoul and aimed to make it the best rice shop in all of the country. This was four years after I had run away from home. I was twenty four years old. I was relentless in my search for new customers. I dreamt that this shop could become the best in the entire country.”

   2020-03-26 · Founders · #117 : Chung Ju-yung founder of Hyundai (the most inspiring autobiography I've read) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Do it until nothing more can be done. Give it all, give it your all until the very end. This thought is the very essence of me as a person and the fundamental principle of my life. The important part here, too, is he's applying this as at simple task to be a rice delivery boy. And yet he does that same fundamental principle he applies when he's running a giant Fortune 500 multinational corporation. Two years passed, two years of doing this. He's happy as can be. And one day all of my work paid off. The owner unexpectedly offered to sell me the rice shop. Delivery boy has now become the owner. It's going to give you mind, you're going to see. Remember, he's, let's see, he's 24, okay?”

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3. “And he just worked circles around him. So he says, I realize that even simple tasks require patience no matter how small the task, such as delivering rice on a bicycle, I pour all my energy into achieving the best possible results. I need to stop there. He gets the job like, do you know how to ride a bike? And Chung never, he's never even seen a bike. He's like, yeah, I can do that. And so he stays up. He has to teach himself. And he does it within like a few days. For hours and hours and hours a night learning how to ride a bike just so he could keep this job. So he says I pour all my energy into achieving the best possible result. Half measures, compromises, cutting corners are being realistic. He puts those words in quotation marks. Do not exist in my world.”

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4. “A lot of things that he's learning during this time of his life. And so he's got a lot of good ideas. And he talks about he's going to give us some advice on taking simple tasks seriously. He tells us the fundamental principle of his life. And eventually all this toiling away, hard work is going to pay off. So he said, whatever I did, I never selected off. Compared to farming, the workload at the shop was nothing. Yet I threw myself into the job just as my father did on his farm. I made sure I was the first to arrive. He talks about he would do all, he's just supposed to be delivering rice, but he would be the first one to show up and he would do all these extra things just to make the shop better. I would sweep the entrance and sprinkle water on the ground to keep the dust down. Because his son was a lazy bum, the owner began to preach my work ethic. Okay, so this word lazy.”

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5. “Later in his life, he would say that was the first time his entire life he felt rich. Felt optimistic about my future. Every day was full of joy and excitement. Yet my heart ached at the thought of my father toiling alone on the farm. Three years passed until I finally wrote him a letter. By then my annual salary had increased to twenty bags of rice. His immediate response was, My son, you made it. I couldn't be any happier for you.”

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6. “I learned that a farm was looking for workers. They provided meals, a place to stay, and a daily wage. This reminds me of the situation that A.G. Gaston found himself in before he finally was able to start founding his businesses. He worked in the mines, but it's very similar. They would provide meals, they provide housing, and then a little bit of money. In no time, I was sought out by other people to do various odd jobs as stories of my work ethic spread. For the first time, I was able to save a little bit of money. At every opportunity I scoured the city for a better job. One lucky day, a rice shop hired me as a delivery boy. It was a stable job with great benefits, and what he's talking about there, the great benefits, he gets one free bag of rice a month.”

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7. “After I turn nineteen, I ran away from home for the fourth time. The fourth time ended up being the last. So now he's 19. This next section is going to cover his early 20s. He's on his own. These are the early jobs that he has to do before the birth of Honda. I worked for the Harbor Master and a moving company. I did any manual labor that a man could do. I was barely able to put food in my mouth.”

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8. “The sad reality of farming is that no matter how much one struggles to pay off never equals the amount of work put in. I wanted to leave my hometown and try anything other than farming. I wasn't sure, but I thought no matter what I did, if I worked as hard as I did at farming, I could make more money. Moving to the city was my only hope. I still, and here's what pushes them over the edge, and when he leaves and doesn't come back, he moves his family with him, but he never goes back to farming. I still vividly remember my parents' arguments were always about food. Their arguments would become more and more heated until the table was overturned and the food ended up on the floor. I murmured, I can't take this anymore. Any fleeting resolution to remain on that farm evaporated. I was determined to go to Seoul and succeed.”

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9. “So he talks about that a lot. There's no concept of free time. While toiling on the farm, I would think to myself, will I always be a farmer and never straighten my crooked back, a farmer who will never feel full for even a day, a life like this to suffer like my father? Is this all there is?”

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10. “I've always been scolded for being impatient. I've always been in a hurry. I've always been in a hurry that I would sometimes put shoes on the wrong feet. There was no concept of free time. So I want to pause here. When I'm reading biographies, it kind of builds like this model in your mind, almost like if you were able to have a discussion with them, you're able to ask them questions and kind of guess at what their answer would be. And when I was reading through this section, and this is something he talks about over and over again, he talks about the value and time from the beginning of the book to the very end of the book. And so if he were alive today and you were able to ask him how many hours a week did he work, his answer would be all of them.”

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11. “From then on, we barely managed to stay alive by eating tree bark, grassroots and wild herbs. As you can imagine, going through this level of struggle, it's going to shaped his personality. It would shape anybody's personality. And some people will destroy, but the people that succeed and don't give up, it's going to make them stronger. And so we're going to talk more, but I'm going to tell you more about a struggle and then why he's going to have to run away for the final time.”

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12. “So here's an example of that. Back in those days, human feces, they call it night soil, was the primary fertilizer for dry fields. Kids and adults made sure to relieve themselves at home to add to their essential stockpile. We were extremely poor. So let me back up there. Let's say you're at a friend's house or you're at school. You have to go to the bathroom. You have to come home because in order for your family to survive, they need you to defecate in a bucket. That's a different level of poverty. We were extremely poor, even though my father and mother worked their fingers to the bone to make ends meet. Back in those days, farming families were so poor that words cannot capture their suffering and destitution. After harsh winters, we would completely run out of food by the time spring arrived.”

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13. “Later, I brought him to Seoul to live together. At the time, my schedule consisted of working, this is an example of his father's love. At the time, my schedule consisted of working late nights, barely sleeping and returning to work early in the morning. Not once did my father tell me to come home. By simply staying awake and waiting until I came home, he demonstrated his unspoken love for me. So, the story of the life story of Cheng Juyong is not complete without understanding that he endured a different level of poverty. This is, as I read the section to you, I want you to keep in mind. This is a different level of poverty and the person writing this book eventually works his way up to becoming the richest man in Korea”

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14. “His soul is crawling with unemployment graduates of vocational schools. But you, what are you? A nobody. And a nobody like you isn't going to make it. You will throw our family out into the streets, blindly chasing after this stupid dream. I am old now, so you need to be responsible for looking out for the family. Since you refuse, we're going to have to turn to begging.”

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15. “Up a poor farmer's whole life. So he realized the city is where all the opportunity is. So he kept running away. His father would keep finding him. And finding the fourth time, he just couldn't take it anymore. But I want to talk about this time specifically. So he says, father caught me attending the bookkeeping and accounting school in Seoul. This is what his father said. And, well, it's pretty harsh here, but there's a reason for it. And so now the direct quote from his father. Are there any parents in this world who don't want their children to be successful? If you are successful enough to bring your parents and siblings to soul and look after them, why would this old man hold you back? But you better not forget what you are just a farm boy who only finished the sixth grade.”

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16. “Thought it would be meaningful for me to reflect on my life and better organize my thoughts and experience, so I agreed to write this memoir. The reason I'm writing this memoir is to reinforce my message to the younger generation who will shape the future of this country. With strong conviction and concentrated effort, everyone has an equal chance to succeed. Someone once said that time is a form of capital provided equally to everyone. I couldn't agree more. If I could be considered a successful person in my chosen profession, it is only because I was able to do my very best based on strong convictions and made the best use of this evenly distributed capital.”

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17. “I am over 80 years old now, and I've lived 20 years longer than my father. This year, nineteen ninety seven, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Hyundai. During these fifty years, Korea endured Japanese colonialism, national liberation, the Korean War, the Student Revolution, the coup d'etat in nineteen sixty one, the assassination of President Park, thirty years of military rule, and now five years of so called civilian rule. Hardly a day of tranquility existed in these fifty years of turbulence. Looking back to those times, I am very proud that Honda has held steadfast through the storms, survived, and matured to this very day.”

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18. “When I gaze across the farm, I am overwhelmed with grief that my father passed away before seeing this place. But I console myself in the belief that were he to be looking down from heaven he would be heartened to behold the vast farm created by the sun of a man who lived his entire life as a poor farmer. He was a farmer from birth to death and head to toe. He was the greatest mentor. He was my father. Though many people may view him as a run-of-the-mill farmer no different than any other, I venerated and adored him more than anyone else in the world.”

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19. “I was born with the ability to accentuate the positive rather than the negative, since I was ten years old I worked with my father under the scorching sun. His father was a very poor farmer. I worked all day, never taking the time to stretch my aching back. But in all that time never once did I complain or slack off. When the time came to take a short break in the shade, those precious moments when I could feel the cool breeze on my face were like heaven. Returning home exhausted I slept soundly and woke up the next morning ready to go. Now back to his son. He had the ability to remain unperturbed in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. My father lived a full life I miss his wisdom, his exuberant optimism, and his ability to rise to any occasion. Most of all, I miss him as only an adoring son can.”

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20. “He more than made up for whatever shortfalls through voracious reading. Now here's a direct quote from Chung. He says, even though my education stopped after the sixth grade, I've always enjoyed reading great books. If my first mentors were my parents, then my second mentors were books. From these books I learned that life is but a sequence of days. Just as important as seeking in the totality of life, it is perhaps more important to find meaning in daily life. Now back to his son, his son writes, he had a wonderfully positive disposition and a rigorous work ethic. If you had to summarize Chung with just one sentence, that's probably the best sentence to summarize him. He could see the silver lining in even the most dire situation. His recollection of the backbreaking work that he undertook under grandfather's direction on the tiny family plot illustrates this better than anything else. Now back to a direct quote from Chung.”

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21. “In 1973, when he was driving himself through the shipyard construction site in the early morning in a raging storm, his jeep fell off the breakwater into the sea. As the water started to pour into the jeep and he was trying desperately to kick the door open, he remembers thinking to himself If I don't make it, people will say that I disappeared because I could not handle the mountain of debt that I was under. His was a lifetime spent making possible seem the seemingly impossible. When someone said that a proposed project would be impossible, his famous response was, did you try? My father was a self taught man. All the formal education that he received was three years of traditional Confucian education at the village school and three years of elementary school.”

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22. “We forget just how much of a struggle it is to keep a business afloat. As my father said, you need to pour all your blood, sweat, and tears into trying to make it succeed. From when he was first starting his first auto repair shop in a small makeshift garage to when he was building the dry docks for what would become the world's largest shipbuilding company, it was a daily struggle against impending disaster. Trying to keep things going when so many things could and did go wrong.”

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23. “People with a strong will to succeed have unlimited potential. By bringing together all of this potential, the collective energy of a people can be unleashed. My motto is shorten the time. This was the surest way for improvement. If you search for a method it will come to you. If you can't come up with a method, it's because you didn't think hard enough. The Hondai of today was built by pushing aside all of our problems like a bulldozer. My performance as a bulldozer in thought, calculation, and prediction was the product of a modest intellect. But by thinking and trying harder than others, I continued to push ahead in all of my endeavors.”

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24. “It's time to implement these plans. It may look like I'm working off the cuff or even being reckless, but if I hadn't first sat down and planned everything out, the Hyundai group of today could have never existed. When attempting something difficult, people utter the words wrong or impossible. They said we couldn't build a highway so cheaply. They said it was crazy for us to build a shipyard. They said it wasn't possible to move heavy underwater equipment by barge. It wasn't just once or twice that I received this kind of treatment from people. People who only thought with their common sense and shunned adventure often found my ways of doing things ridiculous and ignorant. I am someone who believes that if a person limits themselves to the fixed ideas inherent in common sense, they will not be very creative.”

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25. “For a long time, I was known as the bulldozer. I don't think this nickname came from my hard driving work ethic. I imagine that comparing me to a heavy steel body that drives over piles of rubble was not meant to be flattering. It was meant to depict me as an uneducated upstart who dug up the ground first and thought about it later. It's obvious that it did not receive much schooling, but not receiving formal education does not mean one is lacking in wisdom. It is a mistake to think that broad and deep knowledge can only be obtained through formal schooling. I think harder, work harder, have greater courage, and am more active than others. Before starting any project, I spent an enormous amount of time and effort thinking, analyzing, and planning every detail.”

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