What's Covered in This Article
Not everyone will believe in your dreams, but you still owe it to yourself to make them happen.
In 1999, Jack tried convincing 18 of his acquaintances to start Alibaba. They laughed it off. Nobody ever imagined Jack would ever be rich. Not even his wife. When Tao Bao (China’s E-Bay) was started, not even the staff believed it.
Currently Tao Bao delivers 65 million packages daily.
As at 2016, US$ 550 billion worth of trade has happened on the platform. This is the equivalent of 21 countries’ GDP combined.
It has created 33 million jobs for China.
Don’t try to be the #1 but the #1 who can best work with people.
When you understand people, what they want or don’t want, you have a business.
People = business.
Lack of a first-class university degree in business with a 4.0 GPA is not a deal breaker.
Strive to be the CEO – chief education officer.
Best teachers finish class 5 minutes earlier.
Teach students how to learn.
A good teacher always expects his students to be better than him. You don’t want one of your students is bankrupted, or the other one is in jail.
Hire good people smarter better than you are. And then train, discipline and support them.
Be a good student.
Keep on learning.
You don’t have to be the best.
Find out who is better than you and find ways to work with them.
Always be a good teacher – assured of knowledge, teach others.
If you had to choose between riches or respect, go for the latter
When you’re worth U$ 1 billion dollars, that’s not your money.
It’s the society’s.
Society believes in you more than they trust the government.
How to be successful?
Have a high emotional quotient (EQ).
Know how to work with people, support them, and understand them.
How not to fail?
Have a high Intelligence Quotient (IQ).
Always pursue learning.
Be both street smart and academic smart.
How to be respected
Have a high Love Quotient (LQ).
Care for others.
Love them.
Respect the future = young people.
Spend time helping other people.
Never allow your past to define your future
Jack Ma’s parents earned KES 600 a month combined income between the both of them.
To hell with all those stupid complaints. Complains don’t work.
Why should people help you? Who are you? People will help you because of your EQ.
Jack Ma was denied 30 jobs including flipping burgers at KFC ☹
You must get used to failure to win
It’s like boxing.
Failure stories teach more lessons.
No matter how smart you are, you will make mistakes at some point.
You need to learn how to face mistakes when you’re in trouble.
There is always an opportunity
How you survive is what makes the difference.
Kenyan internet speeds are faster than America and people still complain.
If the government doesn’t know what’s going on, right there, is an opportunity.
If people around you don’t agree with you, that’s another opportunity.
If everybody wants to use it, there’s NO opportunity.
If no one wants to buy, be your first buyer.
The world is changing very fast
90% of all businesses will be online.
In the future if you can’t sell online, you’ll go out of business.
Tech revolutions have been taking place every 50 years
First rech revolution – caused world war I. Reduced human energy. You’re not as strong as a machine.
Second tech revolution – reduced speed/distance of human beings. You can never run faster than a plane or the SGR.
Third tech revolution – leased human brain. Machines will soon be smarter than we are. Past 20 years we made people like machines – Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook.
Next 30 years might not be the internet. In the future, we’ll make machines like people.
Electricity, cars were not invented in the US, but they use it the most.
Internet worked best in China because they don’t have the best or most sophisticated payments infrastructure.
The world is facing challenges
Data, internet, artificial intelligence, machine intelligence, etc.
Jobs will soon disappear.
Challenge plus opportunity.
Change, and people complaining is the opportunity
Its not how much money you have, it’s what problem you can solve for the world.
You must always ask yourself what problems will Kenya / customers, have in 5 years or 10 years?
Think about the future.
If I do this, I can solve problems in the future.
Opportunity always exist where people complain.
Ask yourself, how can I solve it?
When change comes. How can internet solve the African or Kenyan problem?
Use internet to empower people
We are lucky because we are entering into a very interesting period – Young people.
Africa is the youngest continent in the world.
People have passion. People have edeas.
We have nothing to lose.
Developed countries are worried.
To be a big company, solve big complaints/big problems.
Two qualities of successful people
- Never complain
- Always partner with good people
Mobile is more powerful than a PC
Africa has tonnes of the former.
The poor infrastructure will give you the level of opportunity you never even imagined.
Kenya is already in paradise.
You don’t have to follow other countries’ models.
Think about the way Africa is about.
Africa should be Africa. Why?
Where can you find so many elephants alive and still walking around? Africa. Leverage them. Protect the wildlife, the environment.
It’s easier to build buildings, but calling back the animals?
It’s impossible.
China is the kitchen of the world – Very dirty. Air pollution.
It’s impossible to copy china.
But even if you do, you have no future.
China grew in assembly line. Manufacturing is shifting from B to C to C to B. Business thinks about something and sells to consumers.
In the future, because of technology it should be C to B.
Manufactures must make their products smart, tailor made, not mass produced.
The future is not about how many t-shirts you can make in 1 hour. It’s about how many different t-shirts you can make in 1 hour. How many tailor-made t-shirts can you make in 1 hour?
Youth is the best opportunity
Don’t be scared of failure.
Learn from others’ mistakes.
When you face these mistakes, you’ll know how to face it. How to challenge it.
Never give up
There is always opportunity.
It’s easier to give up. But keep the hope.
E-commerce, internet, is the opportunity for a country like Kenya, China, Africa.
The best place for e-commerce is Europe. But why isn’t that the case? Europeans worry too much – loss, security, privacy, etc. Stop worrying!
When you worry too much, you’re scared to move forward.
Don’t wait for innovation from the government
That’s not its job.
Innovation comes from the customer.
It comes from the market.
4 Secrets to entrepreneurial success
- Customer should be #1.
if you make the customer happy, he will pay the money.
- Employee should be # 2.
If you make the employee happy, they will be creative.
- Shareholders should be #3
- Hire enough women.
47% of employees are women. 43 % of Alibaba’s senior managers are women. E-commerce is about people talking to each other. The computer is just the front end.
Women are better at taking care of other people than men. Women understand. They have a much higher EQ than men.
Women are more likely to make an app more user-friendly than men engineers.
To succeed as a business person, you will need 3 values
- Result driven,
- Efficiency driven,
- Fair trade.
Final word:
Speed up
You may have a vision but you must move fast.
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Feature Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
