When did you first hear the name “Alibaba”?
Obviously in your childhood, but when did you hear it’s a company which is founded by one of the richest men in China or you can say, Asia?
Not so long ago when I first heard about Jack Ma and his failure stories, it was a good story to listen but nothing new to me.
Because it’s always the same for rich people to struggle in their past and overcome them like heroes and become the most successful people in the world.
So why was Jack Ma different and how did I realize he was different?
I started a book 8 weeks ago known as “alibaba: The inside story behind Jack Ma and the creation of the World’s Biggest Online Marketplace”. This book is all about how “jack ma” became “Jack Ma”. It was really a wonderful read for me because it made me realize some basic understandings of life in a very different way, to be honest in Jack Ma way.
Here are some of my learnings and thoughts about this book that represents the fascinating entrepreneurship journey of Jack Ma…
1.
Jack Ma believes that if he can be successful anyone can be successful. He started with Alibaba and for the demand of the market and his own business, he successfully launched other services like Alisoft, Alipay, Taobao, and Alifest. The confidence he puts in his speeches is outstanding.
2.
It’s easy to convince others if you are confident first. Jack Ma uses simple language to persuade others and gets right to the point and that is one of his biggest strengths.
3.
According to Jack Ma, Never get frightened by your opponents. In fact, if they underestimate you, that’s good. Because they will not pay attention to you then and you can grow in the meantime without their concern at all.
4.
Jack Ma has a very good sense of social responsibility. Even when he was a tour guide, he believed that if he can’t answer to the foreigner’s question, all the Chinese people will lose face because of him. He also stood up for stealing once even though the thieves were far bigger in size than him which actually was a psychological experiment for a TV show to find out how long it takes for someone to stand up against theft.
5.
Jack Ma says your problem should not be something to make you weak. If it doesn’t kill you, you can always get up and start again.
6.
He believed too much money is a bad thing. Once he turned away money from Masayoshi Son saying he didn’t need the $30 million money Son wanted to invest, he only needed $20 million. Son’s assistant was astonished to hear that because Jack Ma was the first one to say that Son was investing too much in something.
7.
He knows that Ideas which are not implemented actually doesn’t matter at all. Because so many people in the world think of thousands of things at night and in the morning keep on walking the same old path and that never get them anywhere. Rather than stand idly by the pond, longing for fish, far better to go out and make a net.
8.
People are the most important aspect of business for Jack Ma. He believes that the long-term way of business is through people’s hearts, it is not through short-term profit & opportunistic self-interest.
9.
Jack Ma thinks that if you want to be able to work less, you have to think of ways to do it, clever ways to be allowed to be lazy like Bill gates who was too lazy to write dos commands so he built the graphical interface, as well as Coca-Cola founder, was too lazy to find out about amazing tea culture of China or coffee of Brazil, so he mixed sugar with water and became famous.
10.
Jack Ma is honest and bold in his own way. At Harvard, before a speech, the host asked him to say something about him that was not included in the prepared handout. He said “ten years ago, I applied to come to Harvard. I applied three times and was rejected three times. You all didn’t even look at my application, I believe- you just turned me down!” His confession made 35 MBA lined up for the chance to work with him after his speech.
Jack Ma was not an engineer, not a marketer, not a producer, so what did he do to build these companies so big that most of the others do not have a stand against it in China or you can say globally! He has only one capability to make him different from others in the long run and that is he can predict the future and work towards it and convince people to share the same vision he believes in an outstanding way.
He also has an amazing capability to push people to their best and lead them wonderfully. A junior employee in his company once said everyone is equally respected as Jack Ma in here. Anyone can go and talk to him and share his ideas with him. He welcomes everyone in his company openly. Do you know all those 18 people who were the first to join Jack ma in his crazy ideas are still working for him!
How many companies have the same trust system as them for about 18 years!
Probably that is why he is ranked at number two in Fortune’s 2017 “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” list.
As an admirer of Jack Ma, I am happy to say that, Jack Ma is already introducing Alibaba in my country which is Bangladesh and also became a very big part of the biggest business industries like bKash and daraz.com.
Hopefully, by his knowledge and experience, he will change the course of e-commerce of my country in a very positive way. Because as Jack Ma I also believe that,
“Success lies not in how much you have accomplished, but in the fact that you have done something, experience the process & begun to learn something”
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Originally published at blog.markgrowth.com