Quote of the day by Jack Ma: ‘If there are nine rabbits on the ground and you want to catch one, just focus on…’

“If there are nine rabbits on the ground and you want to catch one, just focus on one.” — Jack Ma

At its core, LiveMint's quote of the day by Alibaba founder Jack Ma is a warning against multitasking, opportunistic chasing, and a lack of strategic focus.

What does the quote mean?

Jack Ma often paired this line with a crucial second half: "Don't try to change the rabbit; change yourself until you catch it."

Cost of Divided Attention: In business and personal goals, people often see multiple attractive opportunities simultaneously. Chasing two or three at once dilutes your energy, speed, and resources, almost guaranteeing you catch none. Success requires choosing a single target and ignoring every competing distraction until that objective is locked down.

Adaptability Over Switching Targets: When catching that "one rabbit" proves difficult, the common instinct is to give up and chase an easier-looking one that scurries by. Ma’s argument is that jumping from one shiny target to another only wastes stamina. Instead of constantly changing your goal, improve your own skills, refine your strategy, and adapt your approach until the original objective is achieved.

Power of Saying “No”: For entrepreneurs and professionals, discipline is defined by what you choose to reject. Having nine rabbits on the ground represents an abundance of potential ventures, but successful execution demands ruthless prioritisation—mastering one core product, market, or competency before attempting to scale elsewhere.

How is it applicable today?

Jack Ma’s rabbit analogy speaks directly to the primary structural challenges facing modern businesses, investors, and professionals:

Tech Startups and the "AI Pivot" Trap: With generative AI dominating headlines, countless early-stage startups are abandoning their core value propositions to build generic AI wrappers or slap chatbots onto unrelated software. Instead of solving one deep, unglamorous problem for their customers (catching their one rabbit), they chase the latest tech buzzword, exhausting their runway without securing product-market fit.

Corporate Efficiency and the "Year of Focus": The post-pandemic era of easy venture capital and rapid corporate overexpansion has forced a sharp market correction. Companies that launched speculative metaverse divisions, instant-delivery wings, and sprawling side bets have had to institute mass layoffs and divest non-core assets. Market leaders that retained profitability did so by doubling down on their primary revenue drivers and ruthless cost discipline.

Retail Investors and "Shiny Object" Fatigue: In personal finance, retail market participants often cycle through crypto tokens, speculative small caps, meme stocks, and volatile thematic funds. Jumping from one trending asset to another usually leads to buying near the peak and selling at a loss. Sustainable wealth creation still belongs to investors who master a single, disciplined strategy—such as low-cost index investing or high-conviction fundamental research—and stick with it across market cycles.

Career Specialisation in an Attention-Deficit Economy: In an information-dense professional landscape, individuals frequently face "skill overload," jumping from one certification to another—learning basic coding, then switching to prompt engineering, then UX design. True career moat and pricing power come from achieving deep, specialised competence in a focused domain before attempting to branch out into generalist territory.

When was the quote first said?

Jack Ma used this metaphor frequently as a core leadership lesson on focus and saying “no” to distractions, originating during Alibaba’s early turnaround in the early 2000s and repeated across several key speeches.

The philosophy originated following the dot-com crash, when Alibaba had to cut side ventures and concentrate entirely on making B2B e-commerce viable. Former Alibaba vice president Porter Erisman documented Ma drilling this into employees: “If there are nine rabbits on the ground and you want to catch one, just focus on one. Don't change the rabbit, change yourself until you catch it.”

Ma explained that an entrepreneur’s biggest failure is chasing multiple opportunities at once—the CEO's true job is not finding every opportunity, but having the discipline to say no to most of them.

The quote gained widespread popularity across China and the global business community when Ma served as a judge and mentor on the nationwide entrepreneurial reality TV show Win in China. He repeatedly used the rabbit analogy to critique contestants who pitched sprawling, multi-industry business plans instead of mastering a single core product.

Who is Jack Ma?

Jack Ma is a Chinese entrepreneur, business magnate, and philanthropist.

He co-founded Alibaba Group in 1999, building it from an apartment-based startup into one of the world's largest e-commerce, cloud computing, and technology conglomerates.

Ma also oversaw the creation of major platforms, including Taobao, Tmall, and Alipay (which evolved into Ant Group).

He served as Alibaba’s CEO until 2013 and as Executive Chairman until his September 2019 resignation.

Jack Ma, a former English teacher from Hangzhou, China, rose to prominence as a global advocate for small businesses, entrepreneurship, and digital commerce before largely shifting focus to education and agricultural philanthropy.