Persuasion

According to Merriam-Webster, persuasion is the act of causing people to do or believe something. A successful entrepreneur must be able to get others to do what you want. For example, when you’re running your business, you need to be able to convince prospects to become customers, motivate your team to work hard towards your vision, and know how to negotiate effectively with vendors and suppliers.

Jack Ma is the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba group, a family successful internet-based businesses. He is one of the world’s greatest living examples of entrepreneur today. He was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China on 10 September 1964. He started to learn English since young age. He tried his best to improve his communication skill by giving free tours for the foreigners who lived in a hotel near his residence for nine years. Then he get the nickname “Jack” from one of the foreigners who was also one of his pen pal.

In 1994, Ma get to know about the internet. He thought that the internet was a great business opportunity and decided to start an internet company although others didn’t believe in his thought. In 1995, he visited the United States frequently to learn about internet. Then he started an internet company named “China Yellow Pages” with $20,000. Within three years, his company obtained 5,000,000 Chinese Yuan, which is equivalent to US$800,000, he started another e-commerce company named Alibaba with 17 friends.

Jack Ma showed the traits by attracting a group of IT elite to establish his business empire Alibaba. To expand its global operations, he also successfully persuaded the founder of SoftBank, named Masayoshi Son, to invest 20 million dollars in Alibaba. Besides that, he tried to search for more talented young students on and persuade them that they should work for Alibaba when he gave lectures at Stanford and other universities.