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15 LIFE & BUSINESS LESSONS FROM CHINA'S RICHEST MAN - JACK MA

He is the recently named China’s richest man - the man who took Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce business, to the biggest IPO in US history. His name is Jack Ma. 

There is something interesting about successful Chinese entrepreneurs and leaders. I always find them to be much deeper and more humble than their American counterparts. After reading several articles about Jack Ma, I particularly admire him for starting out as an English teacher earlier in his life with no technical background, but great foresight, ambition, and determination.

Here are the 15 Life and Business Lessons from Jack Ma (translated from Chinese to English).

Your attitude is more important than your capabilities. Similarly, your decision is more important than your capabilities. 

You cannot unify everyone’s thoughts, but you can unify everyone through a common goal. Let your colleagues and employees work for a common goal.  

A leader should never compare his technical skills with his employee’s. Your employee should have superior technical skills than you. However, a good leader should have more foresight, higher tenacity, and higher endurance for failure than his employees.

Giving up is the greatest failure.

Only fools use their mouth to speak. A smart man uses his brain. A wise man uses his heart.

The world will not remember what you say, but it will certainly not forget what you have done. Don’t make complaining or whining a habit.

Adopt and change before any major trends or changes.

Your attitude determines your altitude. 

A great opportunity is often hard to be explained clearly. Things that can be explained clearly are often not the best opportunities.

“Free” is the most expensive word.

When starting a business, you must have the ability to see, the ability to understand what is going on, and the ability to keep up with the pace.

When you’re small, focus and use your brain instead of your physical strength. 

If you have a different mindset, you will have a different outcome: if you make different choices from your peers, your life will then be different from your peers. 

The most unreliable thing in this world is human relationships.

Starting your company means you will lose your stable income. But it also means your income will no longer be limited, you will use your time more effectively, and you will no longer need to beg for favours from people anymore. 

< This article was originally published in Chinese and was translated into English. Please share if you find this helpful.> 

Innovation? Why not?

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Business Hacking Strategies

Business can always present many challenges and over time our strategies wear out and become ineffective, this infographic helps give perspective to the businessman and if used properly can help to rejuvenate our business and help the business. The process are grouped and classified into the various groups that the business person can employ.

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Be careful who you vent to.

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HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF SOCIAL MEDIA AUTOMATION

Work Smart Show daily blog.

Now please don’t think I am scared of or anti-technology, in fact it both amazes and frustrates me. I am far from a Luddite taking to a computer with a hammer, well sometimes, but there are some parts of technology that I could do without. I am talking specifically about the auto likes, auto followers and auto DM’s on Twitter.

Almost every time I post an article or daily blog I will receive a notification a second later telling me that someone has liked, retweeted or commented on this. Now please don’t think I am bragging in fact it is quite the opposite; this will be a company targeting a keyword that I have used such as ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘business’. At first I would follow the account because of their like but very quickly stopped when I understood their tactic. They are trying to illicit a human response, a like or follow, with a system set to auto-pilot.

The other example of is auto DM’s when you follow someone. I have read the auto DM’s of three people. Only three of the 1,810 people that I currently follow. When I receive a DM stating “XX person sent you a link” I don’t even open the message. To have people open and respond to your DM’s you need to respect them, their time, needs and wants. Almost no one on twitter wants a link to your site, training course or sure fire way of earning an income at home. Also if you have set up your profile correctly the follower would have already seen this information and links in your bio.

Now let me tell you about the three that I did open and respond to even though I knew they were auto DM’s. The first was when I followed @begosite and received the message “Are you the DIY type of person, or would you rather someone else do things for you?” There was no link, no promotional material even though this is an account for a DIY website builder. This lead to a very interesting DM conversation about outsourcing and what work as an entrepreneur or business you could or would outsource. It also lead me to follow all of the accounts linked to this; @bruceandeddy and @butchewing and receive a similar auto DM; “Would you rather see us as giant corporation or small business?”

Now aside from being another interesting topic for a blog post some other day these accounts went to the time of posing an interesting auto DM question, then taking time to converse in depth once I answered instead of spamming me with promotional material that I would resent.

I have said on the Work Smart Show podcast that I don’t mind advertising if it is interesting and relevant to me and in the same way I don’t mind auto DM’s as long as they are engaging and not self-promoting.

So I give you this challenge; do you have a auto DM? Is it engaging or simply more of your site and contact details? Take time today to work this into an engaging question and then answer the responses. What have you got to lose? After all have you honestly ever made a sale, gained a listener or fan through an auto DM?

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