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Text | Wendao Business Academy

Dong Yuhui went solo, and Yu Minhong didn't seem happy either.

Yuhui Tongxing, which was valued at more than 70 million yuan, along with the profits of more than 100 million yuan, were packaged and sold to Dong Yuhui by Yu Minhong.

After spending 200 million yuan, Yu Minhong did not feel heavy, but instead felt like he had unloaded a huge burden.

The short essay controversy, the phone-smashing incident, the suspension of the Eastern Selection, Sun Dongxu’s departure, Dong Yuhui’s lack of interest in live broadcasts…

The ending of the story has already been written. Yu Minhong chose the most dignified farewell.

01 In New Oriental, anyone dares to slam the table against Lao Yu

The protagonist of this article is not the popular Dong Yuhui, but Yu Minhong, who dared not say a word when faced with his employees banging their desks, and even smiled and gave them a raise.

For 30 years, he has been like this: remembering the old friendship and compromising.

One day in October 1996, Yu Minhong and Xu Xiaoping were so excited that they did not sleep all night because their old classmate Wang Qiang agreed to start a business with them.

Yu Minhong arrived at the airport early, holding flowers to welcome Wang Qiang, just to give him a surprise. Unexpectedly, Wang Qiang gave Yu Minhong a warning: "If one day I surpass you, will you still welcome me like this, Old Yu?"

Yu Minhong, who was a little embarrassed, just said: "I came back to make you a millionaire or even a multi-millionaire."

Wang Qiang gave up his job with an annual salary of one million yuan at that time, and Yu Minhong was under great pressure. In order to make money and share the money faster, Yu Minhong decided to implement the strategy of contracting all the employees, which was actually to let them act independently and make money on their own under the banner of New Oriental.

The new business assigned to Wang Qiang was oral English teaching. With his strong teaching ability, Wang Qiang increased the number of students from a dozen in the first term to more than 500 in the second term.

Xu Xiaoping is in charge of overseas study consulting and immigration consulting business. Catching up with the trend of going abroad, Xu Xiaoping said that he "has too much money to be intolerable".

Initially, Yu Minhong insisted on charging only 15% of the fees for each section to rent offices and promote enrollment. But he later found that if all the fees were added together, at least 35% of the fees would be required to operate. But in order to keep his original promise, he chose to bear it himself.

Five years later, New Oriental’s annual turnover soared from more than 10 million in 1996 to more than 200 million.

But making money is not the only thing. Yu Minhong's bigger goal is to go public. Yu Minhong set up a formal company and formed a board of directors. He holds 45% of the shares, while Wang Qiang and Xu Xiaoping each hold 10%. This result is a happy ending for everyone, but the price is that the partners' money must stay in the company and cannot be taken home as before.

At the first board meeting, Xu Xiaoping slammed the table at Yu Minhong and said, "You don't know how to hold a meeting!" The reason why both parties quarreled and parted unhappily was simple and realistic: the company's listing was nowhere in sight and they had less money.

Not only partners, but also employees in the 31 years since New Oriental was founded, especially in the early days of the business, often slammed the table or even flipped the table at Yu Minhong. Because in most cases, Yu Minhong would not flip the table, let alone any serious consequences.

Yu Minhong also admitted: "I have never dared to overturn any table. After the New Oriental people slammed the table for me, I could only sit there and look at them stupidly, and then I would give them a little bonus the next day."

Yu Minhong tolerated his employees flipping tables, which was of course partly out of a sense of grievance, but more importantly, he was considering business operations, recognizing his own shortcomings, and accepting suggestions from others.

Yu Minhong has done statistics, "My own decision-making accuracy is only 40%, but New Oriental's decision-making accuracy is 80%. The additional 40% is due to these people banging the table."

"At first, it was Wang Qiang and Xu Xiaoping who slammed the table, because they were my class monitors and league branch secretaries in college. Now the people who slam the table for me at New Oriental are 20 or 30 years younger than me, and they can do the same..."

This is especially true for Dong Yuhui.

Dong Yuhui was passionate about selling goods through live streaming in order to make a living, but after becoming famous, his interest in live streaming has greatly decreased.

As he himself admitted, "As a scholar, what I particularly like is to be pretentious, talk about books, and introduce culture. I have never liked the appearance of a sales host."

Seeing this, Yu Minhong took care of Dong Yuhui's emotions and tried his best to balance work and interests for him.

Oriental Selection has tailored for Dong Yuhui some celebrity interviews, cultural and tourism visits and other activities that are more humanistic than live broadcasts.

These changes increased Dong Yuhui's fame, but also made him more resistant to live-streaming sales. This is also an important reason why Yu Minhong and Dong Yuhui parted ways.

Yu Minhong helped Dong Yuhui solve a problem, but he also brought a problem upon himself: he couldn't keep Dong Yuhui.

Finally, Yu Minhong once concluded, "On the surface, I seem to be solving problems every day, but all the problems may be created by myself."

Not only is he tolerant of others, Yu Minhong can even accept that he is not the chairman of the board.

Because he always quarreled with Wang Qiang and Xu Xiaoping, Yu Minhong came up with a solution: let Wang Qiang and Xu Xiaoping take turns to be the chairman. Unexpectedly, the two of them couldn't stand it after two months and had to ask Yu Minhong to leave.

But on the other hand, Yu Minhong never shows mercy when it comes to principles and bottom lines.

In 2006, Yu Minhong slammed the table, which was extremely rare. This incident directly led to Xu Xiaoping's departure.

The cause of the incident was that Xu Xiaoping had already canceled a lecture for 10,000 students. This incident touched Yu Minhong's bottom line, "Either Xu Xiaoping leaves, or I leave!" In the end, the board members voted and Xu Xiaoping was out.

02 Born weak, produced more than 200 entrepreneurs

This character of Yu Minhong may be related to his growth experience.

Yu Minhong, who is not very courageous, has a nickname that is very inappropriate - "Tiger". However, his mother Li Bamei deserves the title of "Tiger Mom".

Li Bamei had been strict with Yu Minhong since he was young. When Yu Minhong made a mistake, he would tremble when he saw Li Bamei's raised eyes. This is not an exaggeration. Yu Minhong has been punished by "kneeling" since he was a child, often for half an hour.

It was not until 2000, when Yu Minhong was 38 years old, that he was exempted from this punishment.

Here is a small episode. It is said that when Yu Minhong started his business, he relied heavily on the support of his relatives: they provided money and people. For this reason, these relatives occupied important management positions in the early days, causing chaos within the company.

Yu Minhong swallowed the words that wanted to drive them away.

Seeing that there was no result, Wang Qiang and Xu Xiaoping began to "force the palace" on Yu Minhong: We can't stay in New Oriental at this rate. We will either be this person's brother-in-law or that person's sister. Either let the family members go, or the two of us will resign.

Wang Qiang and Xu Xiaoping encouraged Yu Minhong to be tough, but Yu Minhong fell to his knees again.

The early growth experience had an irreversible impact on Yu Minhong's character, especially in his later studies and work.

Yu Minhong once bluntly reflected on himself: "I am a particularly cowardly person. To this day, one of my characteristics is cowardice or submission. When I was a child, my mother was quite strong, and I submitted to her regardless of whether she made sense or not. Later, I developed a tolerant character."

But it is Yu Minhong's cowardice and tolerance that have made New Oriental great.

In 1996, New Oriental's turnover was only over 10 million. In 2001, New Oriental's turnover exceeded 200 million. A large number of millionaires in their twenties and thirties emerged within the company.

In the more than 20 years since then, New Oriental has not only become the Huangpu Military Academy of the education and training industry, but also contributed a large number of entrepreneurs and business people in the investment community and MCN.

Yu Minhong once calculated that more than 200 people who had worked at New Oriental had founded successful companies. Even two of Yu Minhong's bodyguards started their own businesses, one of them founded an agricultural company and the other a grassland resort.

Xu Xiaoping and Wang Qiang, who met at New Oriental, founded ZhenFund with Sequoia in 2011. Xu Xiaoping has invested in well-known companies such as Jiayuan.com, Jumei.com, Ehang Drone, and Miaya Baby.

Wang Qiang served as the Dean of the "Enterprise Soul Research Institute", helping people explore the true meaning of enterprises from a philosophical and humanistic perspective. In 2014, Wang Qiang also served as the chairman of YiQi Education Technology until YiQi Education went public in 2020.

Luo Yonghao's story is even more exciting. After failing two trial lectures at New Oriental, he became a teacher at Beijing New Oriental School thanks to the third chance given by Yu Minhong.

Luo Yonghao is very popular among students due to his humorous teaching style. His lecture clips were also uploaded to the Internet, forming "Lao Luo's Quotations", and he became the first generation of Internet celebrities.

After that, Luo smashed Siemens refrigerators, made Hammer phones and owed 600 million yuan in debt. In the end, he successfully paid off his debts by selling products.

Li Xiaolai, who joined New Oriental almost at the same time as Luo Yonghao, is even more controversial.

In 2013, Li Xiaolai founded the Bit Fund, focusing on angel investment in the Internet and Bitcoin-related fields.

Soon, he was called "the person with the most Bitcoin in China" by the Wall Street Journal, becoming the veritable "richest man in Bitcoin."

In 2018, Li Xiaolai talked about how he used his internet celebrity status and concepts to hype up "cutting leeks" in a recording, and even published a book "Self-cultivation of Leeks". This caused him to be controversial.

In comparison, there are more, more common and more successful entrepreneurs who left New Oriental and continued to work in the education and training industry. Entrepreneurs represented by Chen Xiangdong, founder of Gaotu, Liu Chang of YiQi Education, Sha Yunlong of Puxin Education and Hu Min of New Channel once became the mainstay of China's "education and training industry" and achieved success in capital.

In June 2018, Puxin Education was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In December 2020, YiQi Education was listed on the Nasdaq. It was also around 2020 that GSX's market value once surpassed New Oriental.

When they gather together, they are like a fire; when they disperse, they spread all over the prairie. For a time, New Oriental became the Huangpu Military Academy of the education and training industry, and Yu Minhong became the well-deserved president.

03 40,000 New Oriental people want to work together for a short time

But the popularity of education and training came quickly and went away even faster.

In July 2021, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse, and the national "double reduction" policy was implemented, and K12 online education was almost wiped out. Take New Oriental as an example, its market value evaporated by 90% overnight, its revenue decreased by 80%, and tens of billions of assets were wasted.

After taking out 20 billion yuan to refund tuition fees, settle the wages of tens of thousands of employees, and donate 80,000 sets of desks and chairs to rural schools across the country, Yu Minhong once had the idea of ​​retiring: "I want to stop working at New Oriental completely, even though New Oriental still has some business, anyway, that's it, I'm 60 years old.

Yes, Yu Minhong is no longer young. From then on, in his speeches at Peking University, Yu Minhong hoped that he could be "immortal-like". Yu Minhong mentioned several things he wanted to do most:

One is to travel around the world, like Master Hongyi or Xu Xiake. The second is to share the good books you read with people all over the country. The third is to build a farm and live a rich and secluded life like Tao Yuanming.

But the people at New Oriental disagreed with this choice. They said, "Old Yu, you can retire, but we can't. We still have 40,000 to 50,000 people...so keep going."

At the age of 60, Yu Minhong started a new business, which became the well-known Oriental Selection.

In 2023, Oriental Selection's net revenue increased by 651.0% year-on-year to 4.5 billion yuan, and its net profit from continuing operations was 970 million yuan, turning losses into profits compared with a net loss of 71 million yuan in the previous fiscal year.

By using Oriental Selection, Yu Minhong gave himself and the people of New Oriental a good explanation.

We all know the story that followed, until yesterday when Dong Yuhui split up. Affected by this, on July 26, the share price of Dongfang Zhenxuan plummeted by 20%.

Oriental Selection has reached its most critical moment again.

But the challenges this time are different from those in 2021. If 2021 was a strategic destruction for New Oriental, today is at most a tactical setback.

In 2021, everything was ruined, but New Oriental retained its most core talents. Today, the core assets of Oriental Selection - Yu Minhong and his team still exist.

However, Yu Minhong will inevitably experience the test of ice and fire again.

04 Yu Minhong's "Invincibility"

New Oriental CEO Zhou Chenggang said something very well, "Yu Minhong dug a hole for himself, jumped into it, and then climbed out, saying, 'Look how great I am, I climbed out of the hole.' But it turns out that he dug the hole himself."

Yes, Yu Minhong is responsible for letting Dong Yuhui go. A large part of this pit was dug by Yu Minhong himself.

But as Zhou Chenggang said, maybe Yu Minhong can still climb out of the pit!

Although Yu Minhong said that he is 62 years old and is very reluctant to be involved in daily work, and even less willing to be involved in conflicts of interest and disputes, he should have a "sage-like appearance".

But he also emphasized that once you embark on the road of entrepreneurship or running a business, it is rare to be able to get out of it unscathed, and it is enough to get out with your body intact.

"As long as you are on the road, you will always be on the road, and you should consider it an honor to die on the road, wrapped in the hide of a horse. I think the spirit of entrepreneurs should be the same as the spirit of generals on the battlefield in ancient times. A general dies in a hundred battles, and a warrior returns after ten years."

As one commentator said, "Even if everyone has left, Yu Minhong is still the godfather and can still hold up Oriental Selection."

We cannot predict the future, but we seem to be able to find some confidence from Yu Minhong’s experience over the past few decades.

In his lecture at Peking University in March this year, Yu Minhong shared some of his experiences in running a business:

First, benefit yourself and others. Second, achieve mutual benefit. Third, try to be "invincible". Fourth, stick to the right path. Fifth, do what you really like.

From the first to the third, Yu Minhong actually only expressed one meaning, which is "be kind to others and be harmonious but different".

Throughout New Oriental's 31 years, New Oriental has experienced the partnership crisis, the listing crisis, the muddy waters attack crisis, the double reduction crisis, the Oriental Selection incident, Dong Yuhui's departure...

Yu Minhong's choice was to allow colleagues to have different opinions, remain cowardly, be inclusive of all parties, encourage employees to start their own businesses and achieve success for others, and even give the company to Dong Yuhui for free.

You can say that Yu Minhong is not ruthless enough, or even a bit cowardly, but you can't erase his kindness. In his own words: I always solve problems with the mentality of caring for everyone around me.

In 2007, I first heard Yu Minhong speak at university. He ended with the sentence "Why do I always have tears in my eyes? Because I love you deeply." This sentence can be used here.