Not long ago, I heard this piece of advice from Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and one of China’s richest man: “Don’t be the best. Be the first!” This advice is very profound. But it is also very counterintuitive and goes against the grain of conventional wisdom that we have learnt since we were children. If you want to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive world, you have to be a contrarian. Conventional wisdom will not work anymore.
Tag Archives: Seth Godin
Madness of chasing Twitter ‘popularity’ for zero authority
A few years ago, one of my friends excitedly came to me, exclaiming, “You know what? The Prime Minister [of Australia] is following me on Twitter!!!” Back then, Kevin Rudd was the Prime Minister and he was known to be a workaholic. So, if a workaholic Prime Minister decides to follow you on Twitter, it […]
What’s worse than having no social media strategy?
One day, during a consultation session, a consultant of some unnamed company asked his client, “Do you have a telephone strategy?” His client was dumbfounded. “What do you mean by telephone strategy??? We don’t have one! How on earth are you supposed to have a telephone strategy? The telephone is just a communication tool. It’s […]
If you build it, they wouldn’t come, unless…
Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable. Seth Godin, author & world-renowned marketing expert Many small business owners can certainly feel this. After spending lots of toil, sweat, emotion and money building the online arm of their business, they find the most important thing is missing: customers (or more accurately, lack of customers). […]