Success and profitability are outcomes of focusing on customers and employees, not objectives.
Interpretation
Focusing on the needs of customers and employees leads to success and profitability.
Jack Ma highlights that success and profitability should not be seen as primary objectives, but rather as natural outcomes of prioritizing the satisfaction of customers and the well-being of employees. By cultivating a strong relationship with both groups, businesses can foster loyalty, improve service, and enhance productivity, ultimately leading to greater success.
In practice
In a business seminar discussing how customer satisfaction drives profits.
Hong Kong people say Hong Kong needs to preserve its uniqueness. I say Hong Kong's uniqueness is in its diversity, its tolerance of difference cultures... China does not want to see Hong Kong in decline. I have full confidence in its future.
If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat tons of them.
It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys. It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way.
Helping doing business easier, we choose the name Alibaba because it is a global company. It is founded in China, but it was created for the world.
In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'
Even if your competitor is still small in size or weak, you should take him seriously and treat him as a giant. Likewise, even if your competitor is massive in size, you shouldn't regard yourself as a weakling.
I realise that I do not change the course of history. I am an actor, I do a movie, that's the end of it. You have to realise we are just clowns for hire. After I had success it was great, at first, not to worry about money. It was on my mind when I was growing up.
Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.
Fame is a series of misunderstandings surrounding a name.
When most people ask about a business growing, what they really mean is growing revenue, not just growing the number of people using a service. Traditional businesses would view people using your service that you don't make money from as a cost.
If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400.
It's not how many hours you put in with a client or on a project. It's the quantity and quality of your energy - your focus and force - that determine whether that time is valuable.
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