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Mark Zuckerberg

First and foremost, who is Mark Zuckerberg?

Source: The Indian Express

Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, the world's greatest social media platform.

Under Mark's leadership as its CEO, Facebook has vowed to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. This was reflected in the company's latest mission statement as Facebook reached 2 billion monthly users.

Based on his recent commencement speech in Harvard , here are 5 inspiring tips to empower yourself as an entrepreneur from Mark Zuckerberg.

Tip 1: Always Be Kind

In his commencement speech at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg reminded graduates why they should be nice to people.

He recalled that in the first lecture he attended at Harvard, he had entered the class with his T-shirt worn backwards - and was probably the reason why no one in class was willing to talk to him except for KX Jin (Kang-Xing Jin). They then partnered up to work on problem sets together in class, and subsequently working together as well on Facebook.

Mark then used the example of how they met as an attribution to Jin's major role in building Facebook:

I was late so I threw on a t-shirt and didn’t realize until afterwards it was inside out and backwards with my tag sticking out the front. I couldn’t figure out why no one would talk to me — except one guy, KX Jin, he just went with it. We ended up doing our problem sets together, and now he runs a big part of Facebook. And that, Class of 2017, is why you should be nice to people.

Facebook celebrating KX Jin's birthday

Tip 2: Help Others To Find Their Purpose

As a millennial, Mark Zuckerberg understood well enough that the generic speech about finding your purpose does not justify the role the younger generation has in today's world. Instead of telling us why we should find out purpose, he wanted to inspire millennials around the world to do more than just finding our purpose:

The challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.

Mark then cited his favorite story of John F Kennedy visiting NASA's space center and asking the janitor what he was doing. To which the janitor responded: “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon”.

From this story, Mark realized that purpose is the feeling that we are part of something that is bigger than ourselves, that we are needed and have something better ahead to work for. It is through our purpose, that we can create happiness within ourselves.

According to Mark, it is vital for us to help others to find their purpose. Flashback to the early days of Facebook, Mark falsely assumed that everyone in the company shared his vision of creating an impact rather than making money. This led to him not communicating Facebook's goals well enough to his team members, that evidently became disastrous a few years later. When Facebook was offered to be bought over by a big company, everyone in the team except Mark was determined to sell.

Without a sense of higher purpose, this was their startup dream come true. And it tore our company apart.

This became his greatest lesson in entrepreneurship, but also his hardest time leading Facebook. He admitted that despite believing in what Facebook was doing, he still felt alone because his team did not share the purpose to creating impact but to build a profitable business.

Source: Under30CEO

Tip 3: Just Start Doing

The reason why so many people are not doing great things, despite having great ideas because everyone is afraid of making mistakes. Sadly, Mark confirmed that this is indeed the reality we are living in. However, he remains optimistic and preached that this should not prevent anyone from working on their ideas.

To this, he added:

Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started.

He further elaborated that many of us are not willing to take action because we believe that we have yet to imagine the 'greatest idea of all time' - which he believes to be crap. According to Mark, the idea of a single eureka moment is a dangerous lie. This idea cripples society by making us feel inadequate because we have not had our 'greatest idea of all time'.

As an entrepreneur, he recalled that Facebook becoming today's tech giant was only possible through the many trials and errors. It was through their continuous work in connecting more people, that they are able to come up with better ideas to work on.

Source: CNN

Tip 4: Redefining Equality

Zuckerberg noted that while the previous generation had stable jobs throughout their careers, our current generation is more entrepreneurial because it is easier to try new ideas. He proceeded to cite examples of JK Rowling, Beyoncé, and himself (Facebook) - and explained that the greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.

However, today's world has a level of wealth inequality that hurts everyone. He believes that the ever increasing wealth inequality between classes is causing people to not have the freedom to take their idea and turn it into an enterprise. Mark was blunt about it:

Let’s face it. There is something wrong with our system when I can leave here and make billions of dollars in 10 years while millions of students can’t afford to pay off their loans, let alone start a business.

According to Mark, there is not a single person who gave up on starting a business because they might not make enough money. However, lots of people who have not pursued their dreams because they didn’t have the financial aid to fall back on.

Every generation expands its definition of equality. Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. Now it’s our time to define a new social contract for our generation.

Zuckerberg believes that we should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things. We’re going to change jobs many times, so we need affordable childcare to get to work and healthcare that isn’t tied to one company. As technology keeps changing, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives. He noted:

Giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn’t free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too. That’s why Priscilla and I started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and committed our wealth to promoting equal opportunity. These are the values of our generation.

Source: Vanity Fair

Tip 5: Building Communities

Last but not least, Mark observed that in a survey asking millennials around the world what defines their identity, the most popular answer wasn’t nationality, religion, or ethnicity, it was “citizen of the world.” Every generation expands the circle of people they consider “one of us,” and he believes that it now encompasses the entire world.

He noted that our greatest opportunities are now global - millennials can be the generation that ends poverty, that ends diseases. The greatest challenges need global responses too, like how no country can fight climate change alone or prevent pandemics. Progress now requires coming together not just as cities or nations but also as a global community. He noted,

But we live in an unstable time. There are people left behind by globalization across the world. It’s hard to care about people in other places if we don’t feel good about our lives here at home. There’s pressure to turn inwards.

Mark further emphasized that we as humans, get meaning from our communities. Whether our communities are houses or sports teams, churches or music groups, they give us the sense that we are part of something bigger, that we are not alone.

That’s why it’s so striking that for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter. That’s a lot of people who now need to find purpose somewhere else. But Zuckerberg believes that we can rebuild our communities and start new ones because many people have already done it. He noted,

Change starts local. Even global changes start small. In our generation, the struggle of whether we connect more, whether we achieve our biggest opportunities, comes down to this—your ability to build communities and create a world where every single person has a sense of purpose.

Source: Bravo TV

Reflection

Addressing the graduating class, Zuckerberg noted that before they walked out those gates one last time, he was reminded of a prayer, Mi Shebeirach, that he says whenever he faces a challenge. It goes,

May the source of strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing…..I hope you find the courage to make your life a blessing.

Love him or hate him, no one can deny the fact that Mark Zuckerberg and his team has indeed connected the world to be a closer home for everyone.

As a millennial, I honestly admit that he is an inspiration for me to accomplish success in my early twenties (I'm currently 21). However, the bigger takeaway from his journey as an entrepreneur is that we must always focus on achieving a greater purpose than just making money.

Take care,

M

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Click here to watch the full video that inspired this article.
This article is paraphrased based on the original source: https://yourstory.com/2017/05/mark-zuckerberg-harvard-speech/.
Shout out to @patrice for the clarification of plagiarism in Steemit. A detailed post will be out soon to help everyone understand better about plagiarism and how you can avoid ending up in a similar problem like I did!

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