In this six‑question, seven‑minute interview, Professor Pete Alexander talks with Jean‑Yves Laguillez, a France‑based China expert and entrepreneur. Laguillez explains his background—ten years living in China as an executive for a French multinational, followed by co‑founding a consultancy that helps small‑ and mid‑size Western firms become visible and sell in the Chinese market. He stresses that success in China requires a distinct digital strategy centered on WeChat and other Chinese platforms, and that Western tactics cannot simply be copied. Laguillez finds daily joy in the fast‑changing, innovative Chinese market, especially when creating youthful, game‑like content to attract Gen Z, the primary growth engine. He argues that the most critical business lesson is not strategy alone but execution, which hinges on people leadership, empowerment, and trust—principles he honed as an expatriate manager in China. He shares anecdotes about promoting team members every two years to build capability and trust. The conversation wraps with a brief look at his first jobs (childhood gardening, early engineering role in France/UK) and how listeners can connect with him via LinkedIn and his company Emotion Digital, which is expanding onto Pinterest and Instagram.
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This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
I am Jean-Yves Laguiller from France. I can qualify myself as a China expert as well as an entrepreneur. After living 10 years abroad in China working as an executive for an international French company, I have co-founded my own business 2 years ago just before the pandemic, helping small and middle-sized companies to be visible and sell in the Chinese market. I'm able to bridge Western and Chinese culture and business models. Myself, I'm located now in Paris, in France, but I have a Chinese team and my team is located in China. So we can be the ears and the eyes of the customers in China. The Chinese market is very special, not just the culture, but the wood environment is unique. So it's very important to be there in order to understand the market for customers. China is a digital country. To be visible, you must be visible on the Chinese social media, WeChat in particular, because if you are not visible there, you do not exist. In China. So in particular, we help our customers, with many Western companies, to be visible on the Chinese social media. Because all is different in China, you cannot copy your Western market strategy, and so we help our customers to do it.
Well, Jean-Yves, it is a pleasure to have you on the show. I'm looking forward to learning more from you. Question number 2: What is something that makes you smile and/or laugh about working in your industry?
I would say that I'm smiling and laughing every day, even with your question, because I found it a funny question, especially for marketing activities, because in marketing you find funny things every day. You must keep young to do a marketing job, and even more, I would say, in China, because China is a very fast economy, fast-changing behaviors of consumers. It's as well a quite innovative country, and in order to attract customers, you need to be very creative, and you must keep young, in fact, to be able to deal with the China market. And when I keep young, I keep smiling every day. And every day is another day, and every day is fun. Especially, I would say, you must attract the Gen Z in China because it's the main growth engine, inshallah. And you need to have content, to make content, to attract customers on this market segment. And then you have to adapt funny content including some games, even some time gaming is an important topic, marketing in China. So I keep smiling and have fun every day.
Well, I like that, and I completely agree. In my experience teaching Gen Z and students that were much younger than me, I always brought games into the programs, and that was something that they really enjoyed because they don't respond to just lectures, let's say. So I'm glad that you're doing that as well, and it obviously has a, has a positive impact. Question number 3: I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?
I don't know if it's in your book, but I would say that the most important chapter from my point of view is how to to grow out of the box, especially when you are dealing with a country like China, where you must be innovative, where you need to be agile, adapt to the day-to-day market. You need to be quite innovative and adapt to the new requirements. For instance, you cannot copy your Western strategy, your Western marketing. So it's very important to be out of the box, to be creative as well yourself, to go out of your comfort zone, to grow in order to be able to find creative and new ways to attract your targets. So I find this is an important chapter. —for this book.
I would agree 100% with you, and I would look forward to reading that chapter. Question number 4: Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?
Currently, I'm dealing a lot about building strategies, strategies and execution. So many people think that leadership is mainly about strategy, But it is not correct from my point of view, because execution of strategy is mainly a question about people. And for me, that's the most important topic that I want to share with other leaders— leadership about people. Because you can fail in a business because of poor execution, even with the best strategy. And most of the time, execution is a question of people management, people skills. People empowerment. But then business leaders need to have a strong leadership about people. It's about people motivation, it's about people empowerment, about how you can get good execution through your team. An authentic leader, from my point of view, is the one to be able to empower his employees, esteem and bring the best out of their potential. So leading people, of course, is challenging, especially when you are in an international context. It's a bit more difficult than in your own country. But I would say, from my experience, it's also the most rewarding experience that you can have in your career or in your business venture. Because the best is when you are successful to go as us. Maybe I've got this strong awareness about leadership to empower people from my Chinese past experience when I was working for a big international company. I would say maybe for two reasons. One, I was expatriate at that time, and as you know, an expatriate is not there forever. They are just for some period of time, and it's very important to prepare your living, in fact, when you arrive in another country, and you have to grow your team, you have to find your replacement, and and grow him or grow her. So this is the first reason. As well, at that time, I was working for a very growing company in China. And so grow company means growing the team, find new managers, grow managers. And so I have to give larger responsibilities to the team in order to be able to take higher position in the organization and to empower them. And so at that time, I remember I give them a higher position every 2 years, in fact. Maybe at beginning it was not so, so easy because they were not ready, but by doing, doing the new things, they grow. I trust them and empower them, and then they have been able to, to to take the job and to do everything according to our expectations. It was quite successful. So I think it's because of his experience. I'm thinking that empower people, leadership about people is a reason for me the most important, and leaders should pay attention to this because you can have the best strategy, but you can fail when you implement your strategy just because of poor execution. And I have many examples around me about this. So this experience has really convinced me about the importance of people leading empowerment to succeed in strategy and execution. So maybe now in my role is, I would say, it's a bit different. With my own company, but execution is still very important for my customers because they trust us to implement their strategy in China. And I empower the Chinese team to do it, to be successful, because Chinese team, I was, as I was saying at the beginning, is the ears and the eyes of our customers on the market. They are the right people to adapt the strategy according to the needs of the Chinese market. And so I have to trust them, I have to empower them, and it's a way to be successful.
And I agree 100% with you talking about the trust factor, because when you empower your people to make some decisions and take risks, and they realize that they won't be fired because they're they've been empowered, that gains or creates a lot of trust in the organization. So I commend you for that because it's a great learning that leaders can learn, but not only learn, but also implement themselves as you have done. So congratulations on that.
Yes, trust is really a must to implement a business strategy.
Absolutely.
Trust of the team or trust of the people working with you or your coworkers or your— No pills.
Absolutely, it's all part of that execution. Question number 5: What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?
Maybe you will not accept, but anyway, I can propose. I will propose my co-founder, in fact. Okay. Co-founder is a Chinese businesswoman, so I don't know if you have many Chinese people in your in your show, in your podcast. She's a native Chinese living in China, so I was thinking that maybe it could be interesting to have her on the show in the future.
Sure, I'd be happy to reach out to her.
I believe it for sure it will be different insights because she's Chinese and has a different background, different experience.
Yeah, that would be interesting. So thank you for that referral. And our final question, question number 6: please tell me about your first job.
About my first job, it depends when, it depends if it's before I was a— I have my first real job, or if it is my first job when I was a child. So, I would say when I was a child, as many children, I was helping my parents at that time. And I was doing gardening. In fact, a lot of gardening at the time, even when I was 10 years old, helping grow some vegetables, for instance. And so this is my first real job, in fact, manual job. And my first job in my career was as an engineer, in fact, in a French company. As well. I was bringing support to different teams in the company, different projects, and I found it was quite already interesting because it was a quite broad scope, and not only in France, but it was as well in UK. And I like it, this first experience, because it was quite diverse. And I need to be open-minded. And maybe thanks to this first experience, I always have an international career after it. And always wanted to learn new things, to be quite open to different things. So this is probably how my path has been built over the years.
That's great. I love the story there. So thank you for sharing that. And Jean-Yves, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?
People can find me on LinkedIn. I'm quite visible on LinkedIn myself or through my company Emotion Digital. You can find me, yes, on LinkedIn. You can find me as well on other social networks. We just opened, in fact, our first— yeah, two new social networks on Pinterest This was 3 months ago, and we are now on Instagram, in fact, from today. Well, just new. Congratulations! Yes, just today. I was hesitating to say it or not to say it because it's very new. But where you can find me is on LinkedIn, where I'm most active. Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander. You can contact me as well by email. Oh, okay. You will give my email on the—
They could reach out to you on LinkedIn directly from that. So, all right. Well, this is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Get hundreds of amazing business insights from previous guest episodes on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening.
