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Dan Lok

Why You Shouldn’t Read Books-Implement What You Learn

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“Which books should I read to effectively learn? What’s the fastest way to get the most information in a short period of time?”

My mentees from around the world ask me these questions, because they are looking for that book that will grant them to success like a key to unlocking everything. But what they may not know is that I don’t read books.

I use books and that’s a big distinction. When I read a book, I’m not trying to understand everything the author is saying. I’m not trying to understand all the concepts and ideas because the purpose of learning is mastering. It’s all about implementation of knowledge.

So when you have a book in front of you, don’t read it, use it. Here are some ways that I implement what I learn.

Watch this video about why I don’t read books.

 

I hear people declaring that, “I read a book a day” or “I read a book a week.” In my case, read about two to three books a week. I’m constantly learning. When I read books – when I use them – I have a simple goal.

The Power Of Three

For each book, I look for three key ideas from the book that I can implement immediately. Just three. Even if I find more, I only implement three.

If I can get those three ideas from the first three chapters, I will highlight them as my three takeaways and then I’ll put the book back on the shelf. Maybe later on I’ll go back and read the rest of the chapters and implement some of the other ideas. But once I’ve got my big three, I’ve achieved my goal.

Sometimes I get my ideas from the back of each chapter, where they’re talking about action steps and summaries and resources. Those are great places to look. Sometimes I get ideas just from the table of contents. If that’s the case, I put the book away and then I implement.

So, I don’t read books. It’s not about accumulating book titles in your list of accomplishments. Being able to list off books that you’ve read doesn’t mean anything if they haven’t changed your life. That’s the big distinction I want you to get.

One of the most powerful tools you need to have in life or in business is clarity. And clarity is power. And power is the ability to take action. That’s a tremendous mindset shift.

The more you read, the more confused you get, and the less clarity you have. The confusion robs your power. If reading more gives you more clarity and gives you an increased ability to act, that’s good. That’s powerful.

Converting Information Into Knowledge

Now, the next step to gaining clarity is the big difference between 1) information and knowledge and 2) knowledge to wisdom. Let me explain. Information is just facts, data, numbers, figures, theories, and principles. There’s a lot of information on the internet, YouTube and Google.

The volume of information available to you does not make you richer. It also does not make you happier or healthier or smarter. Information is just information.

A metaphor is when you’re going to school and reading books in class. There’s a lot of information in your textbooks. This is the first stage.

Once you’ve gathered enough information, you start accumulating knowledge. You’re taking the information and you’re learning about the distinctions. You’re also applying it in a project or you’re taking a test.

After the test, you find out whether you passed the exam and which answers you got wrong. Well, you’re learning from how you applied your knowledge. That’s accumulating your knowledge. In a similar way, a lot of people read books to acquire information.

The tragic part is, many read books to acquire information and then they wonder, “Why am I reading and learning but my life is still exactly the same?”

Turn Knowledge Into Experience

The answer is simple. They haven’t converted information to knowledge, and knowledge into experience. Now how do you convert knowledge into experience?

After you’ve acquired some knowledge, you’ve got to implement by getting some experience. You may think that the only way you can get experience is if you’ve made multiple mistakes. If you make a mistake, you get to see if an idea works.

It’s how you get experience. You’re seeing the pattern of things. Let’s go back to the school example. Now that you’ve taken enough exams, you’ve also studied the same subject for many years in a row. Science and math for example.

Now you see a pattern as you gain more experience of what works and what doesn’t. Experience is much more valuable than knowledge and knowledge is more valuable than information.

Books themselves are just information. Information does not change your life. You’ve got to give it meaning by converting. You need to gather it and filter it into knowledge. Then from knowledge, you implement and turn it into experience.

Wisdom Is Simplification

When you’ve been working with experience long enough, it evolves into wisdom. There’s a big difference between information or knowledge and knowledge versus wisdom. I don’t consider myself to be a super smart guy. People label me more as a wise man.

I’m wise because I’ve done a lot of things and had a lot of experience. In contrast, a lot of people are smart but they’re not wise. Wisdom is something completely different. Wisdom is knowing what not to do. It’s also knowing when you don’t have to do something.

That means if you have enough experience, you know how you’re going to make something work.

My experience tells me, these are the 20 things that I could do to make me successful. Wisdom is knowing, “Okay, 19 of these things are useless. Just do this one.” That is the difference. Knowledge is about accumulation. Wisdom is about elimination.

It’s not about daily increase, it’s about daily decrease. Eliminating what doesn’t work, for example. But you cannot gain wisdom without knowledge. You cannot obtain wisdom without experience. You have to go through all of that. After you finish those stages, you can simplify everything that you do.

In fact, there are only a few things that you need to do to get you the results. You don’t need to do a hundred things. You can do a couple of things and do them well. Most people are smart but not wise. You can tell by the way that they communicate because it lacks a lot of depth. It lacks wisdom.

It’s all about taking ideas and turning them into information, converting information into knowledge, then turning knowledge into experience. I filter my years of experience and condense that into the wisdom that I have. This is what works for me. It might work for you.

Swimming In Deep Water

So it’s not so much a question of, “Oh what books should I read, Dan?” Or, “What’s the best way to learn?” Those are very superficial questions. You need to go deeper than that and go beyond reading books.

You want to take the information that you read, implement it in the real world, and see what works. There are many stages of learning.

When you start applying, that’s when you find out what works and what doesn’t work for you. You can read about how to swim but you aren’t really learning until you are swimming laps back and forth in the pool. After that, you can swim in the lake because you have experience.

Now when you have wisdom, you can go and swim in the ocean but you also know it’s better not to because of the sharks. That’s wisdom.

Final Thoughts On Why You Shouldn’t Read

Now you know why you shouldn’t just read books. You should use them. Implement what you learn. If you read hundreds of books but your life is the same, then all that information hasn’t benefited you at all.

Knowing that, ask yourself now, How are you going to change the way that you learn? How are you going to change the way that you read books?

Most importantly, how are you going to change the way that you accumulate true knowledge, true experience and wisdom?

What is one idea you will implement today? Comment below.

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How To Manage People And Be A Better Leader

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“People may hear your words but they feel your attitude.” – John C. Maxwell

When it comes to managing people, the most important lesson I’ve learned is that people are not manageable. If you want to be a strong leader, the best way to lead your team is to give them independence.

In other words, instead of “micromanaging people,” where you are managing all the details of each person’s job, you need something more efficient. Micromanaging is exhausting and you will not be able to do that as your company grows and you have more people on your team.

So, instead of micromanaging, create structure and create systems where you are painting a picture, creating that yellow brick road. Show them the path that you want them to walk on. What I’m going to show you are some tips on how to manage people and be a stronger leader.

Watch this video on how to manage people and be a better leader.

Give Team Members Room To Grow

Your job as a leader is to coach people toward success, however they define it. It could be in terms of finance, status, or their role within a company. That if they follow this path, they’re going to get to the goal that they want.

If you hire the right person, very often, they will find the right role for themselves within the company. You shouldn’t set in stone the position that you hired them for. As time goes on, you may discover other talents that they have.

Within my company, you can have someone starting at a very junior position and they could move up to a very high position because depending on their talent and work ethic, they could grow.

For that reason, I don’t pigeonhole my team members. I don’t hire for a very specific role and then tell them that’s all they are going to do for me. People evolve, so they may develop talents over time.

So to me, I am not as interested in hiring someone for a particular skill set. What matters more are three qualities that cannot be taught.

Loyalty Matters More Than Their Resume

I always communicate to all my team members the three qualities that I look for as the CEO. The first is loyalty to the leader, the brand, and the customers.

I don’t care how talented they are, I don’t care how good their resume is, nor do I care how smart they are. If they are not absolutely loyal, that person is not someone you can have long term in your company. They might leave you for your competitors or steal your customers.

The second quality I look for is harmony.

A Players And Team Players, Not Lone Wolves

You want to have harmony on your team, so you want to find people who work well with other team members. You don’t want a lone wolf. The chemistry between your team members is important.

Even if they are talented A Players, if they don’t work well with other people on the team, they’re not going to last. So harmony is very critical.

It doesn’t mean they have to like everybody or hang out at a company barbecue. But during work time, they have to be able to get along with other people to accomplish certain tasks. Harmony is very critical.

Those are the two things I look for in team members: loyalty and harmony. The third and final quality I look for is results.

High Level Results

I want to know if the team member has the capacity and the experience to perform their tasks at a high level. Can they produce results and not just talk about results? And can they produce results on a consistent basis?

Sometimes you hire people and they may be able to perform results at the beginning, but they’re not consistent over time. Or sometimes, you bring them in for a certain job, and you notice that after three years, the job has outgrown that person.

They could produce results before, but they can no longer produce results. Now here’s what happens if a team member has loyalty, harmony, and results, but not necessarily in equal amounts.

The Right Combination Of Qualities

Phenomenal Results

If you have someone that is phenomenal at producing results, but they are not loyal, they don’t work well with other people on your team. What I usually do is I hire them as independent contractors.

They’re very good at accomplishing a certain task or project and that’s it. They’re not going to work within my company and they’ll never rise up to key leadership positions.

Absolute Loyalty

But if someone is very loyal to the organization and they work well with other team members, but they are not results driven, I have a place for them in my company. It doesn’t matter that their results are only okay.

They probably work in customer service, support, or accounting. I can trust them and I need those roles as well.

Career Driven

Now here’s another combination. If someone is not loyal, but they could produce results and  they work well with other people, we’ve got a problem. It means they have good people skills, but they’re not loyal to me.

That kind of person I keep at a kind of middle management, director level. They might lead a little team, but I will never promote them to the top because loyalty is a problem.

It could turn out that we work together for six months, up to three years, and then they jump ship to work for somebody else. So I don’t want to promote that person to a leadership position.

Perfect Fit

On the other hand, if someone is loyal, works well with other people, and produces results, and they are lifelong learners, then it doesn’t matter where they came in within the organization. I can promote them to the top.

Given time, they will hold an executive position in my company. Their background and their age don’t matter to me. If they have all these three things, they become one of the key people within my global organization.

When you’re hiring and when you’re managing people, ask yourself these questions. Think about where your people are at. Now, if you have some people that aren’t loyal, don’t work well with other people, and don’t produce results for you, guess what you should do?

Fire them! No point hiring them in the first place either. You don’t want them in your organization. What you want is someone with the right amount of loyalty, harmony, and results.

Key Thoughts On How To Become A Better Leader

Running a business is simple. It’s people that are complicated. They don’t want to be managed, and they don’t stay static. They constantly evolve, so when you hire someone for your team, you want to be flexible because as the person grows, their role in your organization may change.

To decide if someone is a good fit for your company, measure them against three key points. Are they loyal to you and your brand? Is there harmony between them and your other team members? And does that person produce results?

Ideally they have a mix of all three traits, but even if they don’t, if they are loyal, you can find a place for them in your company.

Do you think loyalty, harmony, and results are important to your organization? Comment below.

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Why Aren’t You Delegating?

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(Stop Being a Control Freak in Business)

How comfortable would you feel about asking your friends and family to do a favour for you? How about asking a stranger on the street to help you with a task?

Now you might or might not feel comfortable with asking other people for help. But most entrepreneurs are very reluctant to delegate tasks. And it’s usually because of two reasons.

One possible reason is that you’re the type of entrepreneur who is a control freak. You don’t want to give up your authority. Another possible reason is you are afraid the person doing the task will make a mistake.

As a result, you become a one-person business doing all of the work yourself, working until exhaustion, with no time to reflect on how to move your business to the next level.

However, the sooner you start delegating, the sooner you can grow your business.

You don’t need to be a CEO or the boss of a couple of employees before you start delegating. Sharing the work will ease your workload and free up your time for other tasks, like planning out the direction of your business.

You can start delegating as soon as you’re ready. You don’t even have to wait until you’re rich.

Have a look at my business for example. People tell me because I’m rich, I can delegate. But the opposite is true. It’s because I delegate that I’m rich. It’s a chicken and egg thing.

So if you have your own business and you aren’t delegating, start now.

Here are some tips to motivate you to be less controlling and more at ease with delegating to other people.

Watch this video on why you should be delegating more for your business.

Start With The Right Mindset

If you don’t have the habit of delegating now, you won’t be making the money to maximize your time. And if you don’t have the habit of delegating now, you’re not likely to be delegating when you have more money.

One reason why you’re not delegating is because you’re thinking about saving. You want to wait until the future when you can afford to start paying other people to do tasks.

The opposite is true. You’ll start saving money when you can afford to put money aside. To make enough money to put some aside, you need to free up your time to work on generating more revenue. You can’t do that if you’re saving money by doing all the routine tasks yourself.

You need to start developing a millionaire mindset now.

Right now, for every dollar that comes in, you want to set aside ten cents. You’re cultivating a habit early on. Then when you have a hundred times more money, you’re already used to saving a bit of everything you earn.

So start the habit and delegate small tasks. Let your less important responsibilities go gradually and as you get some good experience working with others, keep delegating more from there. If you’re still reluctant, it might be because you have limiting beliefs.

Why You Aren’t Delegating

What’s holding people back from delegating? They can come up with enough reasons to last a lifetime.

For example, they think they can do the job better themselves. They don’t trust others to do it because the other person might make a mistake. Or the other person isn’t qualified to do it or they already have enough to do.

Or they believe they are the only person on this planet who can do it so they can’t ask anyone else to do it.

All of those reasons are nothing more than limiting beliefs. None of it is true, and having those beliefs doesn’t help your business. You don’t get anything done, and you stay on the hamster wheel.

There are some tasks that you can delegate to others.

  • Responding to emails
  • Responding to customer service
  • Scheduling business and personal appointments
  • Writing to new prospects
  • Bookkeeping, graphic design, website development
  • Travel arrangements

All of these tasks and more, you can delegate to other people. If you aren’t delegating, there are four big fears that are holding you back.

1. Fear Of Losing Control

You fear what could happen if you lose control. Maybe the other person will make a mistake and it will cost you time or money to fix.

You fear you could be rejected if you ask someone for help. You’re worried that this person will think you’re incompetent because you’re not doing the task yourself. Or you’re inadequate.

This is especially true of men. Women are more willing to ask for help. Men are taught to be strong and macho so if you don’t do something, you’re incompetent and you might lose your sense of honour.

Maybe you don’t fear losing control, and you’re not afraid to ask for help, but you like to watch every dollar you spend very carefully.

2. Fear Of The Cost

Sometimes entrepreneurs think the cost is too high and they can’t afford it. They want to save money. However, you need to think about how much your time is worth.

If you want to make a million bucks a year, your work has to be worth $1700 an hour. If you don’t delegate, then you’re losing $1700 an hour. Isn’t your time worth so much more?

Even if you think you can’t afford to delegate, start the habit and free up your time. You can’t be afraid of losing money, or having a bad experience.

3. Fear Of A Bad Experience

You may have tried to delegate in the past and it turned into delegation hell because the person you trusted and paid didn’t deliver as promised.

To avoid that, create a document. Provide your consultant or assistant with the information they need, the steps they need to take, and your expectations. They are less likely to make mistakes when expectations are clear.

If they still manage to make mistakes, then hire someone else. Or delegate to three people and see who does the job the best. Keep the good one and let go of the rest.

Another way to think about it is this: Have you ever had a bad meal in the past? Did that stop you from eating ever again?

For that same reason, don’t let a bad experience stop you from looking for the right person.

4. Fear Of Not Finding The Right Person

Hiring the right person is a numbers game that you won’t get right every time. In the big scheme of things, it’s not going to matter. Six months to a year from now, you’re not going to remember the minor errors. You just need to get better at filtering out the bad matches.

Here’s an example. One of my business partners had a business for 15 years. He wasn’t good at hiring or managing people.

One day, I asked him to fire everybody. He didn’t want to do such a thing because he considered his employees as friends.

The experience turned out to be a business lesson for him. All the people my business partner thought were his good friends tried to get to every last dime when they were fired. One even kept the iPad he had been given.

Employees are employees.

Hiring people is a skill. There are so many steps to choosing the right one, from filtering to coaching them to training them to develop new skills.

The way I hire people and run my company is a bit unusual because I run this virtual empire. I choose to work from home. I don’t want to commute or go to an office. When my mentees call me, I’m in my underwear, not my suit. I like to be at home.

I get up, do my morning routine, and get to work. It saves me a lot of time. But that’s a personal preference. It also means because I don’t see my team face-to-face most of the time, so I need to trust them to do their responsibilities. So when I hire, I choose people who can work independently.

Why You Need To Delegate Now

If you want your business to grow, you need to learn to get comfortable with delegating now, not in the future. Your time is valuable, so overcome your fears and start finding tasks you can ask other people to do for you. Most importantly, establish a hiring system so you create a team of people you can trust.

What tasks do you delegate to other people? Comment below.

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Words of Wisdom From a Self-Made Billionaire

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A billionaire once said to me, “Dan, if your goal is to make a billion dollars, chances are, you’ll never make a billion dollars.”

Those were his words of wisdom, which were discouraging and confusing at the same time. What was he really trying to tell me? That I was going to fail?

I was hungry for answers from the local billionaire who was sitting next to me. He’d made a fortune in the real estate and financing business, and I wanted a role model. I was a young guy at the time and we were at the Vancouver Club. The people at this exclusive club are shareholder and families of generational wealth, so I didn’t feel like I belonged.

As one of the youngest members of the Vancouver Club, I found it was a fascinating place to meet a lot of powerful and influential leaders.

I met real estate developers, powerful politicians, tycoons, and tech entrepreneurs. The place was a gold mine of possible business mentors for someone like me who was still struggling to achieve my dreams.

I felt very privileged to have the chance to sit with this successful billionaire and learn from him. I asked him, “How does one become a billionaire like you? What advice do you have for a young man like me who is building my companies? If you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?”

The advice he gave me wasn’t just about money or how to make it. Surprisingly, he told me that if I just focused on the money, I wasn’t going to get as far. Here is what he shared with me about how to reach his level of success in business and in life.

Watch this video for words of wisdom from a billionaire.

 

Don’t Set Out To Be A Millionaire Or Billionaire

Now before you start wondering if he was telling me to stop focusing on money, let me share what he said. It wasn’t what I expected.

He told me, “You know what, Dan, at first, that wasn’t my goal. I didn’t set out to be a billionaire and put that on my goal list or anything like that. Now when I was young, I had a wife and kids, and all I wanted to do was provide a nice environment for them. I wanted to provide a good education for my kids. I wanted a nice home for them to grow up in.”

He also wanted to become a millionaire. He worked hard at it and eventually, he hit a million dollars.

But he realized nothing changes that much. He still went to work. He still ate the same breakfast and he still provided for his wife and kids. The difference was, his house was now a nice house and he had a couple cars. Life was good.

But he realized that didn’t fulfil him. That old life didn’t get him excited anymore. He realized that being a millionaire wasn’t the end goal.

Grow Your Business One Step At A Time

At the time, he had good employees that he treated like family. He got to know their spouse, their kids, and before you knew it, they were a pretty big company with 100 employees. But to expand the business, he needed to acquire another company.

So that’s what he did – he expanded and then he had two companies. So I asked him how he managed all these different companies.

He said it was like having a baby – you just have one at a time. You acquire a company, and then you let it grow. Step by step, you help it, nurture it, and grow it. And then you have another company, and you nurture it and grow it.

After decades of doing that, he ended up with tens of thousands of employees and this group of companies.

Then I asked him, “How do I grow my business the way you did?”

He had grown his fortune one company at a time, but the key is he didn’t focus on the money. He didn’t focus on making a billion dollars. What he said was, “If your goal is to make a billion dollars, chances are, you’re not going to make a billion dollars.”

I asked him what he meant by that. Wasn’t the purpose of growing companies to make a billion dollars?

Love What You Do, Value Your Customers

He said, “If you love what you do, and you love your customers, your people, and your team, and you’re willing to make a difference and establish a reputation of being fair in business dealings and working with people…people will want to come back to you and do business with you.”

It’s easier to do business when people come to you, instead of you chasing them. You want people to come to you because you have a good reputation. You want to show them you care about them.

So people – your customers and your team – are what will get you to your goal of becoming a millionaire or billionaire. You can’t just focus on the money goal. You need to love the people who are your customers and your team so they will want to come back to you.

I took the advice of that billionaire and I’ve grown my organization to a global level. If a young guy were to sit down with me and ask the same questions I did as a young man, I would give him the same advice on how to become rich.

If you are interested in more advice from successful entrepreneurs, tune in to my podcast called The Dan Lok Show. Every single week, I interview successful entrepreneurs, heavy hitters, millionaires and billionaires, to bring you their wisdom and insights.

 

Jack Ma’s Top 9 Rules For Success | Why You Should Listen To Your Customers

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Photo credits: Frederic Legrand – COMEO / Shutterstock.com and feelphoto / Shutterstock.com

Remember the gut wrenching heartache you felt the moment you realized you gave up on your goal too soon? That if you’d persisted, you would have reached success?

I know the feeling. It’s like the analogy where you’ve been drilling for oil for several months. You’re tired and disappointed, so you give up. But if you had just kept going for one more hour, you would have struck it rich.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and now billionaire, always believed that today is hard, but giving up is not the answer. “If you give up tomorrow, you will never see the sunshine.” Those are wise words that apply to life in general, but especially true in business if you want to be successful with your customers.

I don’t follow too many other entrepreneurs, but Jack Ma is definitely one of a handful that I look up to because of how much his wisdom resonates with me. I have probably read every single book written by or about Jack Ma.

Maybe it’s his poor, English teacher background – I’ve always found him to be very compelling and persuasive. He’s also a very articulate public speaker and visionary. As a global educator, I can relate to his teacher’s heart.

Success is not easy to achieve, and both Jack Ma and I have been down that road to prove it. We can’t make your journey any shorter or any less difficult, but we can share Jack Ma’s nine rules of success to give you an advantage in business and in life.

Watch this video about Jack Ma’s nine rules of success.

1. Think Outside The Box

Let’s start with how people like to perceive you. They like to label you. So if you don’t make sense to them, they think you’re crazy.

When I was younger, people thought I was crazy because of my outside-of-the-box thinking and teaching style. People thought of Jack the same way when he came up with Alipay, an online payment platform.

When you don’t make sense to others, you’re a lunatic, but when you’re successful, they give you a different name. They call you eccentric and innovative because when you’re successful, all your ideas are validated.

Jack believes that being crazy is good. Why? Because Jack says that, “If everyone agrees with me and if everybody believes in our idea is good – we will have no chance.”

You wouldn’t be the one standing out from the crowd. If everyone thought the same way, you would all blend in together and succeed and fail together.

So what can you do to stand out and be innovative and be a little crazy? Jack teaches us to “Focus on the user.” As long as you’re focusing on the customer and they love what you’re doing, that’s all that matters.

2. Seek Opportunities Before Anyone Else

When it comes to opportunities, I do believe they are everywhere.

As an entrepreneur, we create our own opportunities but to be a good entrepreneur and visionary, you must see the opportunities before anyone else. You don’t want your competitors to see your vision.

I’m talking about the Blue Ocean. In business, you’ve found a Blue Ocean when you don’t have competitors and you’re the only one offering what you offer in your market.

When Jack Ma’s company Taobao became a market leader in the Chinese market, eBay withdrew from China. EBay, the competition, was like the shark fighting and making the ocean red. When competitors are gone, there is no more fighting, no more red. When they are gone, the ocean is clear and blue.

For me, founding the High-Ticket Closing program was a Blue Ocean. I offered a premium prices sales program that was new to the marketplace.

When you can create a Blue Ocean opportunity, you will have found something ahead of your competitors. To do that, identify what it is that no one else is offering and take advantage of it before anyone else.

3. Hire Women

Jack Ma’s secret to making a company excellent is to hire women. Almost 47% of the employees at his company are female. I strongly agree with this secret to success.

All of the bad business partnerships I’ve had in the past were all with men. All the ones where I’ve been successful were all with women. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my wife Jennie.

Really, it’s women who have all the major buying power. If a man wants to buy a new house, he has to talk to the wife. If he wants to buy a new car, he has to talk to the wife. Even if the husband is the one bringing in the money, it’s the wife that makes the buying decision.

In closing, in sales, I teach my students to sell to the wife. If the husband can’t move forward, he needs the wife to say yes. If the wife says yes, then it’s a done deal.

4. Think Bigger And Create An Ecosystem

Jack Ma believes that when you have a couple million dollars, that money belongs to you. But when you have one billion dollars, that money doesn’t belong to you anymore. When you have that much wealth, you have a social responsibility to other people.

He believed that when you have that much wealth, you can create a global economy, one ecosystem where people can buy and sell, make payments, and travel using one global system. We could create an economy that would generate 100,000,000 jobs in the world.

His way of thinking inspired how I set my own business goals. I started small, and kept dreaming bigger and bigger.

At the beginning of my career, I started my business because I wanted to support my mom. Once I had enough income coming in, I was able to support my mom, my family, and myself. At the next stage, I improved my lifestyle with a better car and a better house.

Once I accomplished that, I went on to larger goals. I started solving bigger problems while building my organization and my team. Then it wasn’t just Dan Lok organization, it became the students that benefited from my programs and services.

Over time, I was building an ecosystem where I was helping not just myself but the people around me to create opportunities, a better lifestyle, and more abundance for others.

Like Jack Ma, I was learning to think bigger, beyond my own needs and my own family’s needs. I was thinking at a global level.

Apple has created an ecosystem with its products. The information from our lives is integrated with the cloud.

 

5. Business Is A Team Sport

Business is not a sport that you play on your own. It doesn’t matter how talented you are.

As a leader, it’s not about you doing all the work. It’s about you having the vision, figuring out what the are most important critical drivers within your business, and then finding the team members that can execute your vision and turn that into reality.

Choosing the right team member is critical to your success. Jack Ma said that you should choose the right person for the job. If you don’t know technology, hire the best technician. If you don’t know finance, hire the expert.

6. Work With Small Businesses

Just like a business isn’t something you can build on your own, success isn’t something you can reach on your own. If you help others, then you will also rise up.

Jack Ma says, “I believe small is beautiful. We can use the internet to help the small guys. If you can help others to be successful, then you will be successful.”

I’ve approached building my business in that way. I’ve made most of my money serving small businesses, clients, and my students. Only a small percentage of my wealth is from big companies. The majority of my wealth is from small businesses.

As Jack Ma said, “In this world, if you want to win in the 21st century, you have to be making sure that you are making other people become powerful, empower others; making sure the other people are better than you are, then you will be successful.”

7. Traditional Education Is Important But Not Everything

Jack Ma advises us, “Don’t hire people because of which school they are from. Hire because of their learning spirit.”

I absolutely agree with this approach because within my company, we never hire based on resumes. Actually no one has ever submitted a resume! We look at your attitude, your culture fit, and what talents you can bring to the table.

Skills are something we can develop and train, but attitude and company culture are number one. It doesn’t matter if they have an MBA. I never went to university.

What matters is your learning spirit, the fighting spirit, the hunger. Any skill, if someone wants it badly enough, they can develop, but I cannot teach them culture. I cannot teach them to share the same values and beliefs that my company has. I cannot teach them the desire to succeed.

8. Focus On Value, Mission, And Value Training

Jack Ma taught values, the mission, and professionalism. After that, his company got more managers and leaders than other startups. With that change, his company started to do better because he believes it’s about creating value for others.

Technology might change. Your product might change. Your service might change. But if you have the right people, the right culture, you can work together as a team, and you can innovate. So it’s definitely people driven and customer centered.

When you are focused on the customer, on the people, and your team, that’s what makes the company grow. That’s what makes the company stay and sustain the growth.

9. Follow The Customer To Business Model

Of all of Jack Ma’s rules for success, is the most important tip of all.

You may have heard of B2C and B2B, but Jack Ma believes the future of ecommerce is C2B, consumer to business, because we have a large number of consumers. The focus won’t be on businesses to customers (B2C) or business to business (B2B), but the power of the customer.

They can ask for things to be tailor made on a large scale, and businesses will need to addresses their demands because consumers are now more demanding than ever.

They want to consume content exactly how they want, where they want, from whatever technology that they want. For example, they may want to watch a show without interruption. Or they want the option to watch a show from their iPad, their iPhone, not just their TV.

They want to buy and consume on their own terms and organizations need to be able to fulfill that need.

The model of “this is what we have and you should buy some” won’t work anymore.

Even Coca Cola has personalized bottles with people’s first names as one of their campaigns. Consumers made demands, and the largest companies are listening. They are custom tailoring to the needs of their customers.

Summary: Jack Ma’s Top 9 Rules For Success

If you want to be successful, never get too comfortable. Always be thinking outside the box, looking for new opportunities that will keep you in a Blue Ocean. Business is a team sport, one that you cannot play on your own. So work with small businesses and focus on creating value. And most importantly, listen to your customers and their needs. It’s your responsibility.

Which of Jack Ma’s rules for success do you like the most? Comment below.

SUGGESTED ARTICLES:

How to Hire the Right People: Lessons From A Future Billionaire

Dan Lok’s Blue Ocean Strategy

Bruce Lee’s Rules For Success

 

How To Systematize Your Business If It Isn’t Working

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Remember when you first started your business and you measured time from one deadline to the next, one task to the next?

One of the biggest challenges you’ll have when you start a business is the number of tasks that you’re taking on.

You’re the expert at everything. You wear the suit and make executive decisions and chat with clients. You roll up your sleeves to make the coffee and fix the photocopier when it breaks down.

The business becomes a part of you so you are living and breathing and dreaming it from morning until night.

At this point, your friends and family are probably wondering where you’ve gone, if you can be separated from your business the way employees can be separated from their jobs. Clearly, you need to make some changes to your professional life so you can have more of a personal life. But how?

The good news is, it’s possible to systematize your business if it isn’t working. It starts with a closer look at all the roles in your company, and then deciding how you can delegate responsibilities to other people.

Watch this video on how to systematize your business so you’re working on it, not in it.

 

1. Decide What All The Aspects Of Your Business Are

In a typical internet business, for example, you have so many aspects to manage. You have content, copywriting, list building, getting traffic, having offers, technology, and finance. These are some key areas you have to focus on.

Right now, you may be working on all of the areas shown below.

You could be working on all of these areas of your business.

 

In each of these seven aspects, you may also be working on any or all of these tasks.

You could be completing all of these tasks.

 

Maybe you’ve done most of these tasks before, maybe you don’t know how to even begin doing some of these things, like a teleseminar or RSS feed.

As you expand your business, you will need some help with any of these seven areas. At this moment, let’s pause and take a look at the org chart of your business to see where you need help.

2. Draw Out An Org Chart And Decide On Roles In Your Organization

An organizational chart, or org chart, shows all the roles in your business, from you, the CEO, to everyone else in management and those with the least amount of responsibility.

This is what an org chart looks like for a typical business with one person. Now you can see why entrepreneurs seem to have split personalities. You have to do all the roles and handle all of the tasks.

No wonder you’re overwhelmed! You’re the only one in your org chart.

 

You can also see that this format cannot work over time. You cannot sustain it.

If you aren’t feeling the exhaustion already, you will. You can’t just stick your head in the sand and hope the problem will go away.

Now instead of just putting your name on all of the roles and responsibilities, like you did in the org chart above, diagram it out more clearly by role. You have several responsibilities but they all contribute to the same end objective.

As the CEO, your objective is to work on the mission. You are the leader, the conductor of the team. To turn your dreams into reality, you need to figure out what roles contribute to your mission.

Every business has four core functions: operations, finance, marketing, and people. Each function includes different responsibilities. When you’ve figured out the functions of your business, you can start clarifying expectations for each role.

Decide on roles and describe each role.

 

3. Assign Names That Clarify Your Expectations For Each Role

Define and name each position in your business but give careful consideration to each name. For example, there is an assumption of seniority when you call someone the Director versus calling someone the Sales Manager.

The way you create a title also makes a huge difference. For each position, assign a name that shows your expectations for each.

If you called someone a Marketing Manager, what do you think that person’s job would be? What if you called that same person the Chief of Revenue Generation instead? Notice how the purpose for that person changes depending on the role you assign them.

4. Systematizing Your Business Requires A Clear Plan

You are not your business. You are you. You create value in the marketplace and you create wealth for your family.

To separate yourself from your business, start delegating others for the other roles in the organizational chart. It may not happen overnight. You will still be in many of the roles when you start.

Over time, you will find someone to be your Chief of Revenue Generation. That is their role. Their responsibilities will be to generate revenue for the company, and that may include different aspects of marketing.

But to systematize your business, you must first decide on all the roles and responsibilities in your company, starting with you as the CEO. Over time, you will find people to take on those responsibilities as you delegate more tasks to other people, while you continue to oversee the mission.

This method is the first step to take so you’re working on your business, not in it.

Are you working on your business, or in it? Comment below.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.

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