Advice for an Entrepreneur

I recently read an article about Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, the most successful online company in Asia.

There were some good advice/or reminders in that article that I wanted to share with you:

• Starting your own business means no stable income and no paid holiday but it means freedom. Freedom to do what you love and freedom to spend your time as you wish to and the freedom to earn more. (Enjoy the freedom and remember why I decided to start my own business in the first place.)

• When looking for a partner, look for someone that adds to your knowledge or skills. This person doesn’t necessarily need to be someone who has already succeeded anything. (Getting together a good team is easier said than done but we are getting there.)

• Client first, employees second, share holders last. (Just focus on what the client wants for now.)

• Today might be tough, tomorrow might be worse but the day after will be wonderful. Concentrate on establishing stability and promising long-term plans, not quick-fix schemes. (Just take it day by day. It will take some time but it will happen.)

• Competition is like a game of chess. You may loose this round but next round may be your turn to win. Keep trying and don’t fear competition. We are all equal. ( It will happen.)

• We are here to enjoy life, and make other people’s lives better. If you will spend all your time working, you will come to regret it. (The business will ultimately benefit from me having a good time.)

• Only fools talk out of their mouths. Intelligent people speak to themselves only in their head; wise people only in their hearts. (Agreed.)

•  Failure is when you give up fighting for what you want so as long as you keep trying, you have not yet failed. (Keep trying.)

• The worst qualities for an entrepreneur to have is snobbishness, adopt an unsustainable tempo of work and the inability to understand a situation properly and/or what’s going to happen next. (Sustainable tempo …. play, breath, relax … and stay clear and focused.)

This one is a good one to remember:

• Your attitude towards work and your decisions are more important than your abilities. ( I need to learn that there are many people that are better than me in so many areas, that my job is to make the right decisions for my business and not trying to do it all myself.)

and then finally, one that I found quite useful as a reminder:

• If 90% of the boardroom believes an idea is good, there is often no point in developing it, as the chances are that somebody else is already doing it and you won’t be the leader. (I must stop procrastinating when I have a good idea, before it becomes an idea that everyone else also has).

Quite useful, don’t you think ?  A lot of these things I already knew but every now and then, it is great to hear it from someone who has done it and done it very well.

What is the best business advice you ever had ?

Source: Brightside