Olina Qian

I saw an interesting tweet this morning:

@faroukrm: What to do, to be an entrepreneur or to be an employee?

It is such a great question. Actually I was being asked for this question several months ago from a friend too. Although he put it in a more aggressive way: Olina, when will you become an entrepreneur. So I’ve been think about this question for a long time. I love this tweet, so I quickly Retweeted it and added on my opinion as well—what a good question.

I soon got some responds and RT, there is one gentleman asked me if I am an Entrepreneur. So I answered:

@gtowna Haha, it is a good question. To be or not to be! What’s your answer?

His answer came back in 10 minutes and I felt it is a great answer:

@olinaqian I’m going entrepreneurial, all the way. The riskiest thing to do is to be safe.

Oh my, the riskist thing to do is to be safe. I felt something just hitted in my heart and I realized that how true it is. I always felt this way, but nobody ever brought it up in such an direct and efficient way.

Lots of times in our life, we do trying to play safe. We are afraid of changes. So we are repeating our patterns on a daily base, because we believe that’s the best way to do it. But what if it’s not?

I had a dinner with a good friend from Alibaba last night. When we talked aout Alibaba’s culture, he told me Alibaba’s core values are six points:

1. Customer First: The interests of our community of users and paying members must be our first priority.

2. Team work: We expect our employees to collaborate as a team. We encourage input from our employees in the decision-making process, and expect every employee to commit to the team’s objectives.

3. Embrace Change: We operate in a fast-evolving industry. We ask our employees to maintain flexibility, continue to innovate and adapt to new business conditions and practice.

4. Integrity Integrity is at the heart of our business as trust is an essential element of a marketplace. We expect our employees to uphold the highest standards of integrity and to deliver on their commitments.

5. Passion Our employees are encouraged to act with passion whether it is serving customers or developing new services and products.

6. Commitment Our employees have a dedicated focus and commitment to understanding and delivering on the needs of Chinese and global SMEs.

I felt so inspired with those core values and it is interesting that the third value is ‘Embrace Changes’. In chinese, we had an idom: Ni Shui Xing Zhou, Bu Jin Zhe Tui. It means life is like a river. You are runing against it. When you are not moving forward, you are going backward.

Since life is about changes, we are growing every day, we are changing every day. People succeed are not because they work hard, it is because they make smart choices when changes happen. So changes is another way for opportunity presents. We always want to embrace changes and to prepare ourselves for the opportunity. So the riskiest thing to do in life is to be safe! It is absolutely right!

I just followed @gtowna, his real name is Adam Mezei. It is amazing that he is a sinologist. He is also hosting a show called Vitamin C: Your Daily Dose On China. I suggest you follow him and watch his show as well. Since this guy really knows what life truely means. Many thanks for his wisdom words this morning.