Photo by Natalie Behring (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Entrepreneurship is life and life is entrepreneurship. I have been thinking long and hard about what is the one quality that I really admire with all the Entrepreneurs that I work with. And I always come back to Tenacity… despite all odds, they trudge another day and live to tell the tale. I am really inspired by that attribute. I was reading an article about Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group in China and there were some quotes in that article from Jack Ma…
Jack Ma: The 4 main questions the young generation must ponder on
What is failure: Giving up is the greatest failure.
What is resilience: Once you have been through hardships, grievances and disappointments, only then will you understand what is resilience.
What your duties are: To be more diligent, hardworking, and ambitious than others.
Only fools use their mouth to speak. A smart man uses his brain, and a wise man uses his heart.
The first one really stuck with me hence the title of the blog post. Life and Entrepreneurship throws a number of curve balls at you, the best you can do is ask “Is that the best you got?” and keep moving forward. Most times you get bruised, some times you are on your knees and other times you get lucky and it misses you. The more life experiences one goes through one gets more antifragile i.e you get stronger because of the event if you have the right attitude. Here are some thoughts on Entrepreneurship from Jack:
Jack Ma’s advice to entrepreneurs
- The opportunities that everyone cannot see are the real opportunities.
- Always let your employees come to work with a smile.
- Customers should be number 1, Employees number 2, and then only your Shareholders come at number 3.
- Adopt and change before any major trends or changes.
- Forget the money; Forget about earning money.
- Rather than having small smart tricks to get by, focus on holding on and persevering.
- Your attitude determines your altitude.
Jack Ma on entrepreneurship
- A great opportunity is often hard to be explained clearly; things that can be explained clearly are often not the best opportunities.
- You should find someone who has complementary skills to start a company with. You shouldn’t necessarily look for someone successful. Find the right people, not the best people.
- The most unreliable thing in this world is human relationships.
- “Free” is the most expensive word.
- Today is cruel, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be beautiful.
I struggle with all the challenges every Entrepreneur goes through every day. It is a struggle and it never gets easier. A wise mentor of mine advised me to handle life gracefully and learn from every event and the attitude to learn from events is a powerful one. I hope we are all learning everyday and better ourselves in the process and maybe, maybe make the world a better place along the way.
Related articles
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Fail Tagged: Alibaba Group, Business, China, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Jack Ma, Small Business
