6 Lessons Jack Ma Wants Entrepreneurs to Learn

Chinese entrepreneur and one of the richest men in Asia, Jack Ma’s rags-to-riches story has endeared him to many people across the world. He built his company ‘Alibaba’ from scratch, to become a global e-commerce giant.

Apart from being chairman of the Alibaba Group, Jack Ma is also a Special Adviser on Youth Entrepreneurship and Small Business to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Ma, who visited Africa for the first time recently, gave a lecture on empowering Africa’s young entrepreneurs at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. With over 500 young business leaders in attendance, the event offered the right opportunity for Ma to share some lessons about entrepreneurship and life, which we can all learn from.

“If you want them better, train them, discipline them and support them”, He said. “I call myself CEO (Chief Education Officer) of the company. You don’t have to be the best, but you have to know who is better than you and work with him. Be a good teacher; a good teacher shares knowledge and also expects people are better than you are.”

2. Wealth comes with responsibilities towards Society

He explained that wealth always comes with some responsibilities, which should be aimed at the collective good of society.

“When you have 1 million, that is your money. When you have 20 million, that is a problem. You have to think of the valuation, where to put the money; if it has to be real estate, buy stocks, or invest as VC [venture capitalist]. When you have more than one billion dollars, that kind of money belongs to the society. And people in the society trusted that you can spend the money better than the government.”

3. Don’t Complain, Act.

Slow growth and development act as roadblocks to many entrepreneurs in their quest to realise their dreams. It is commonplace to hear different complaints about the situation in their country, society, economy or their industry. However, Ma believes successful people complain less.

“A lot of people complain “nobody helps me. Why don’t people help me to get money from the banks? Why am I not born into the Bill Gates’ family?” People have a lot of stupid complaints. I had all these complaints that young people have today, I had them. I complained about Bill Gates, Oracle and all these companies taking our jobs. I later found out that complaining doesn’t work.”

“I travel around the world, I see so many successful people, politicians, business people, scientists and artists, I find one quality that the successful people share: they never complain; they are always optimistic.”

4. Failure Lessons are more important than Success Stories

Ma revealed that he uses failure stories to teach his organisation (which has about 57,000 employees!). He believes talking about failure should be an important curriculum for entrepreneurship.

“The MBA teaches success stories. When you read two minutes of success stories, you get up and think ‘I can be successful.’ When you share a lot of failure stories, you learn.

“No matter how smart you are in your business, you will make the same mistakes again and again. The way we teach and share failure stories, by not wanting you to avoid mistakes, is to teach how to face the mistakes when you are in trouble.”

5. Stick close to Technology; See Opportunities in Challenges

According to him, almost 90% of the businesses in the future will be online.

“The first technology revolution reduced human energy and we knew humans were not as strong as machines. The second technological revolution reduced the speed of human beings and we knew we could never run faster than planes and trains. This (present) technology revolution relieves human brains. Don’t be scared because machines will be smarter than we are.”

“One of the things I want to think about is: how will the world look like? What will China look like? What will my neighbours look like? What kind of problems will they have in five or ten years? If this is a problem that is going to happen to China; if these are the problems going to happen to my customers; if I can fix these [and] if I can start preparing now, five years later I will be a successful person.”

Addressing the audience in Africa, he added: “Africa has much opportunities, because of its young population. Africa has so many complaints and problems. That is the opportunity. If you want to be big companies, solve big problems, if you want to be small companies, solve small problems.”

6. Customers and Employees take precedence over Shareholders

Towards the end of his speech, Ma advised the audience: “Always remember customers are number 1, employees number 2, and shareholders number 3. If you make your customers happy, they pay the money; if you make your employees happy, they will be creative and innovative.”

So, what do you think of Jack’s advice?

Which of these 6 pieces of advice resonate with you the most?

Let us know what you think in the comments box below and be sure to share this article with your friends and colleagues, too!

Best,

Adam