Tips on business from Jack Ma, the richest person in China

Jack Ma: Mistakes I regret

In 2001 I made a mistake. I told my employees who I founded my company with that career limit in the company for them would be a level of a manager. Back then I thought that I needed to hire professionals from outside to put them as top managers.

Over years those professionals have been leaving my company. Instead, those I doubted stayed and have been perfectly fulfilling their top managing roles in the company.

My principle is that your attitude and decisions are more important than your abilities.

You can’t make everyone think the same, but you can make everyone believe in one common goal. And don’t even try to force your employees to think the same way, it is impossible. It’s easier to unite people around a common idea than around a single leader, no matter how important he is.

What differs a company’s leader from an employee?

A CEO should never compare their technical skills to the skills of employees. The technical skills of staff must always be better than yours. Otherwise, you might have hired wrong people.

What differentiates leaders?

• The head of the company has to see the company’s development many years ahead.
• A leader must have strength to stay firm and persistent in order to sustain what is beyond an ordinary employee’s abilities.
• A leader must possess remarkable abilities to endure blows and experience the inevitable failures.
• Therefore, a good leader is distinguished by his vision, perseverance and character

Do not engage in politics

Politics and money are rarely able to stay in the same hands, and if you are engaging in politics, you better forget about business. And vice versa, when money meets with politics, it is equivalent to a match that is about to meet a fuse. So wait for an explosion.

Four questions for young people to answer

• What is a real failure? A real failure is giving up to fight.
• What is flexibility? You will understand what flexibility is when you live through setbacks, difficult life situations and disappointment.
• What are our responsibilities? To be more diligent, to work harder and to be more ambitious than others.
• Only fool uses his mouth to speak. A smart person speaks with his head, and a wise person speaks with his heart.

We are here to live in full energy

“I always tell myself that we are born not for work, but for enjoying our lives. To make lives of others better and not working all the time.”

If you are wasting your time on working, sooner or later you will regret it.

About competitors and competition

• Only fools refer to competitors with aggression.
• If you treat everyone and everything around like enemies, they will be your enemies.
• When you are competing with each other, avoid hatred, it will destroy you.
• The competition is like a game of chess. If you lose, you can always play one more round later.
• The real entrepreneur doesn’t have enemies. Once you understand this no one will able to stop you

About whining and complaints

If you sometimes allow yourself to whine, there is nothing wrong in it.

Instead, if you fall into depression on a regular basis and often complain about life, it becomes similar to alcohol. The more you drink, the harder it is to stop.

On your way to success you will notice that successful people don’t complain and whine.

The world does not care about what you say, but what you do is important.

Tips for entrepreneurs

• The real opportunities lie where nobody sees them.
• Make sure that your employees come to work with joy.
• Customers are on the first place. The staff is number two. The shareholders are number three.
• Begin to adapt to the new environment before benefits of it become noticed by others.
• Forget about the money and ways for you to make money.
• Rather than implanting some minor chips and tricks, focus on the stability and long-term plans.
• Your attitude determines how far you will go.

About enterprise

• A good opportunity is often difficult to explain clearly. If it can be explained easily, usually it is not a good opportunity.
• As a partner, you have to find someone who complements your skills. You do not necessarily need someone more successful.
• Look for the right people, not the best people.
• The most unreliable thing in the world are the relationships between people.
• “Free of charge” is a very expensive phrase.
• Today will not be easy, tomorrow will be worse, but the next day everything will be fine.

What not to do

• The worst quality for an entrepreneur is to be a snob, to be unable to adequately assess the situation, take a high pace and not to be able to maintain it, to be unable to look ahead.
• If you do not know everything about your competitors or you underestimate them, then you will lose for certain.
• If your competitor is weaker than you, you still have to treat him as an equal. Similarly, if your competitor is much more powerful than you, do not be afraid of them.

About your business

• When you start your business, it means that you give up a stable income, sick leave and annual bonuses.
• On the other hand, it means that your income is not limited by anything, you’ll make better use of your time and you do not have to ask permission from other people.
• If your solution differs from the decisions of your fellows, then your life will be different in one way or another as well.