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My whole career this is the biggest failure financially, but at the same time, it's one of my favorite things I've ever done.

I opened my own restaurant when I was 17. I went broke, then traveled around the country, learning about different kinds of foods, had three other restaurants that went broke. It didn't all start just a few years ago!

I had one year of struggle. My parents were always there, but I didn't want to rely on them. Now it's moving pretty fast. I'm not rich, but obviously this is fantastic. All I know to do with money is put it in a shoebox anyway.

I was a bartender at a Pizzeria Uno's for nine years. The people I worked with were amazing, but it was quite possibly the most miserable time of my life.

I've always had to have some kind of failure before I was successful.

In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'

The most disappointing businesses, for me, are the ones where the people flat-out lie. I had one in Queens where I gave them a couple hundred thousand dollars and they started spending it on themselves.

I lost all my investments after everything crashed in 2001. Prior to that, I'd been living off the interest on my investments, which was very healthy because it allowed frequent travel, and I had a lovely apartment.

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family... Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

Fear of failure held me back from being a DIYer for many years, especially after a few early attempts at home improvement projects went awry.