#头条创作挑战赛#
At 20:30 on December 31, 2023, at the "Spring Cocoon" Stadium of Shenzhen Bay Sports Center, Luo Zhenyu's "Friend of Time" New Year's Eve speech arrived as scheduled.
Luo Pang once made a big wish: the New Year's Eve speech will be held for 20 consecutive years, and this year is the 9th. In this year, Luo Pang continued to ask his friends for advice, and collected people, things, and things that made people shine.
The following is the full text of the New Year's Eve speech, which I will share with you.
1. Has it changed?
A set of small actions to deal with bumps
If I had to sum up my own 2023 in one sentence, what would that sentence be?
This question really stumped me. It's been a mixed year.
I don't know what your answer is, and that's how I found this sentence -
You must have heard this phrase when you were on a plane.
I've heard this many times myself. But at some point this year, when I heard this sentence, I shook my tiger body and slapped my thigh, isn't this sentence my 2023?
The phrase is – "Please fasten your seat belt, put away the tray table, and straighten the back of the seat." ”
In retrospect, I still have to thank this sentence for saying that there was still something that could be done at a time when I felt great uncertainty in my heart.
On a plane, you should hear this phrase at least twice. One landing, one take-off. If you encounter bumps, you may listen to them a few more times.
The New Year is just around the corner. I wish you all the best in the coming 2024, get through the bumps, land safely, and take off on time.
The New Year's Eve speech is in its 9th year. There is indeed an issue of aesthetic fatigue.
So, I had to ask myself: on New Year's Eve, why do you listen to a middle-aged person nagging for 4 hours?
If I think you're here to listen to me and give me a comment, it's really my fault, and I should register and take medicine when I go back.
Because you won't like it, and I don't have that much power.
So what use can this me, standing on the stage, be of use to you?
This reminds me of a joke I heard when I was a student at the Communication University of China.
In other words, a student in the TV department once had to hand in an assignment for a TV documentary. But he dragged it out until the afternoon of the last day and did nothing. You know, to make a film, you have to shoot, you have to write, you have to edit, and it takes a lot of work.
So how does he turn in his homework?
On the afternoon of the last day, he borrowed the camera, opened the lens cover, turned it on, and dragged the camera around the grass and shade of the trees in the school. There was no editing, and the original material was handed in without a cut.
It is said that this assignment was wildly praised by the teacher. Why? Because he gave the film a name -- "The World Through the Eyes of a Dog."
It sounds absurd, but it has inspired me a lot in my later work.
It told me that even though the world is still the same world, as long as I am willing to change the angle, even if it is just a little lower in the camera, I can always find some surprises.
That's probably what the New Year's Eve speech and I used for you.
There are always things in this world that are very useful to you, but they are hidden in all corners, silent, and without traffic. You also need someone to change the perspective of "seeing the world through the eyes of a dog" to help you find them.
This year, I will use this spirit of "recovery dog" to prepare for this New Year's Eve speech.
Like this golden retriever, he goes out into the grass, at the edge of a mud pit, in the shade of a tree, out of sight, looking everywhere.
As soon as you find something valuable, you will bite it and pick it up, and run back with all four hooves flapping, panting to show you.
As a retriever, why do I believe these things are valuable to you?
Because the world is just those problems, and each problem has more than one answer, and those really interesting answers are often out of your field of vision.
Let's start with an answer that touched me a lot this year.
Lin Sen runs a lemon tea brand in Kunming, Yunnan Province, called "Kirin Dakou Tea".
This year, I asked him, "How is your tea industry?"
He said: "It's going to be rolled to death! Not only now, but in the long run, it will be even more rolled." You think, with the change in the birth rate, in 30 years, even if we do everything well, my target consumer group will still be less than half. There are fewer young people, and my labor costs will become very expensive. In short, it's hard to do what we do. ”
It sounds like Lin Sen is a very pessimistic person about the future.
So I asked, "So what are you going to do?
He said: "Doing R&D on the spot." This year, he has been working very hard to do one thing: doesn't it mean that labor will be very expensive in the future? Can we develop a "store type": a tea shop can be operated with only one person on duty?
The benefits of this are numerous.
A tea shop that one person can live in, the store can be rented a little smaller, the labor cost can be lower, and the management efficiency can be higher.
If you can do it, of course, it would be great, but according to common sense, it is impossible.
You think, a tea shop has to have at least two people, one person receives customers, introduces products, and cashiers, and the other person is responsible for making tea.
If you feel that the product is very complicated and you can't explain it clearly to the customer, can you just make one product?" ”
There is only one person left, and there are still many problems to overcome.
For example, if there is only one person in the store, this person cannot have his back to the customer, so all the equipment on the bar counter in the back should be integrated into the front counter, and the movements should be concentrated within the length of one person's arm span. It's going to take a big round of R&D.
When a person is making tea there and the customer is staring, his movements must be performative, rhythmic, and refreshing.
Therefore, they specially invited a martial arts teacher in the university to help the clerk design every movement like a martial arts instructor for an action movie.
Will a person's store look monotonous and deserted? They have redesigned the decoration of the store, and the posters highlight exaggerated expressions and smiling faces.
Doesn't it look great?
So can this store make money?
Lin Sen did a lot of experiments, and the conclusion was that it was okay. Of his current 103 stores, 48 have fully implemented the one-person management model. One of the stores, although the monthly revenue is only 30,000 yuan, can still have a profit of 10,000 yuan.
Lin Sen said that with this store type, the viability of his business has been greatly improved.
I don't know what the final outcome of Linsen's experiment will be in the future. I wish him success.
What touched me the most about this case was not the business technique, but the fact that it made me see what a true optimist looks like.
Are optimists foolishly believing that the sun is always shining? If they have a premonition that it is going to rain, they don't say anything, they just go and get their umbrellas ready.
What can an ordinary person do with things like economic cycles and demographics?
What an ordinary person can do is nothing more than how to act under the given conditions to make tomorrow a little better than today.
And as soon as you take action, there is the possibility of innovation, and the breakthrough is also in it.
Two months ago, I chatted with Mr. Li Xiang. I asked him, "You have been attending various dinners recently, are you more pessimistic or optimistic about the future?"
He said, "All of them." However, there is one phenomenon: the older ones are pessimistic. Young, optimistic. ”
Then he tilted his head and asked me, "Are you optimistic or pessimistic?"
So what else can I say?
All I can say is, "Be optimistic!"
Pessimism and optimism are small things, and young people are not young, but big things.
The so-called youth here does not refer to the age of the person, but to an identification of one's own state: can you still take effective action?
You think you can still work, you're young, you think you can't do anything, but you're really old.
By the way: this is also what I like about the city of Shenzhen.
The reason why we often say that Shenzhen is a young city is its ability to act.
No matter when you come to Shenzhen, everywhere is steaming and full of energy. The little brother didn't say a word, and they talked about business together; the little sister didn't agree with each other, so she turned on the computer and made PPT. Such a dense crowd of strivers can only be seen in Shenzhen when you look at the whole world.
Shenzhen people laugh at themselves and say, "We are just making money."
The more I talk to the people of Shenzhen, the more I know that the people of Shenzhen actually have their own dreams, but either they are too busy or they are not familiar with you, and they may think that they can understand only the word "making money."
What's more: "making money" is an action. It seems that there are only Shenzhen people in the country, who are willing to use this action that everyone can understand as their own label.
If you haven't been to Shenzhen in the last four or five years, I strongly recommend you find a chance to do so. Not only will you see a hot Shenzhen, but you will also look back on yourself and see the hot part of your life.
I'll tell you another story.
This year, there is a hot topic in society: the 10-minute recess that disappears.
Some schools, for safety reasons, stipulate that students "cannot go to the playground after class", "cannot go out of the classroom between classes unless they go to the toilet", and "are not allowed to go up and down the stairs or play". Everyone is discussing, this is not a solution, how can we return the 10 minutes between classes to students?
If a normal problem becomes a hot issue, it must be because it is difficult to solve.
What would you do if it was handed over to you to solve?
The next document? Establish a rule? Send a team of inspectors to keep an eye on the students and have to leave the classroom after class?
Hey, I heard a new answer this year, from Principal Li Xigui. Now he has retired from Beijing No. 11 School and is the principal of Beijing No. 1 Experimental School.
So guess what Principal Li Xigui will do? Will he guarantee that these 10 minutes will be extended? No, he did the opposite, compressing 10 minutes into 5 minutes in the First Experimental School.
You heard it right, there are only 5 minutes between classes.
When people heard about this change, their first reaction was: 5 minutes? If you refute it in this way, then Principal Li Xigui will ask: Why do students gather to go to the toilet during recess, why can't they go to school whenever they want?
According to his philosophy, school is a condensation and rehearsal of social life. In industrial society, it is true that you have to go to work on time, eat on time, and even go to the toilet at the appointed time. However, in the future era of knowledge economy, most people's work rhythm can be planned and arranged independently. No matter how busy the workplace is, it doesn't stipulate the time when employees go to the toilet, right?
Therefore, in the first experimental school, if the students feel that they need to go to the toilet in class, they don't even need to say hello, they can go if they want.
When you hear this, you will say again, you can go if you want? Say it easily! What about classroom discipline? How to ensure the coherence of the teacher's teaching?
You see, here's where the interesting thing comes.
Principal Li Xigui said, that's just right, but it forces teaching reform.
The school has always advocated that teaching should not be full, but should be diversified, but the concept is difficult to implement.
Now, the teacher has to take into account that there are children who need to go to the toilet, so the class will not be more than 15 minutes in a concentrated period. The teacher has to talk for a while, and let everyone discuss it for a while.
They have even changed the space design of traditional classrooms, according to the different tasks of learning Xi, students are distributed in different spaces during a class, and each has its own way of learning Xi, instead of the traditional sitting in rows and staring at the teacher.
Then you think, when students go to the toilet, not in front of everyone, the psychological pressure is not so great, they can go if they want, and the rhythm of the class will become more and more relaxed.
Immediately afterwards, a chain reaction occurred: the phenomenon of dragging disappeared.
In the first experimental school, the class system is implemented, and as in the university, students do not have a fixed classroom, but have to switch between different classes according to the curriculum. Five minutes between classes is only enough for students to run from one class to another. So, as soon as the bell rings, the students stand up and have to go. There is no reason for the teacher to want to drag the class.
Then the next chain reaction, as you may have imagined, is that the set of rituals at the beginning of the class is gone.
I still remember when we were children, at the beginning of class, there was a set of rituals of "stand up", "hello teacher", and "hello classmates, please sit". Now because the recess is only 5 minutes, students gather from different parts of the campus, and the teachers can't blame them, so the ceremony has to be canceled.
You might say, "That's not right, right? What about the tradition of respecting teachers and teaching?"
Principal Li Xigui's answer is very simple: Do you need to meet the "good leader" and "good colleague, please sit" in the workplace? If the real society does not need it, the school does not need it. Respect the teacher, don't rely on this. You see, the teacher-student relationship has changed.
And that's it? No, there's a ripple effect.
Each class saves 5 minutes, which adds up to nearly an hour throughout the day. What should I do with this hour? In the First Experimental School, this hour is called "independent time", and students are allowed to arrange it by themselves. To discuss, to experiment, or even to be in a daze, to play a field of football, whatever you want, the school has no arrangement. Of course, the teacher will observe from the side, find the problem, and then guide you.
In the real adult world, everyone must have the ability to define tasks and plan their own rhythm. If you don't develop this ability in school, when will you develop it?
Changing the recess from 10 minutes to 5 minutes is such a change, and there are some by-products.
For example, students need to quickly organize their schoolbags and Xi school supplies after a class, and enter the Xi venue for the next class as soon as possible by running, which is also an exercise for students' self-care ability and even physical fitness.
Another example is the decrease in school bullying. In the past, the most bullying place in school was the toilet. Because there are no cameras in the toilet, children go to the toilet in groups, and conflicts can easily arise. Now that everyone is going separately, there are fewer bullying incidents and more toilets.
I am not talking about this example today to promote the "5 minutes between classes" as a specific change measure, after all, every school has its own constraints. I don't want to talk about any educational philosophy, but I want to ask you to see the value of a specific action.
In the chain reaction we just described, there are actually a lot of conceptual changes.
For example-
How should classroom teaching be designed?
Should the teacher delay the class?
Should there be a class start ceremony?
To what extent should students learn Xi on their own?
If we have to discuss these ideas clearly and then implement them, we may never implement them.
For example, should the teacher delay the class? The answer seems clear, right? But if you stand in the teacher's point of view, even if he doesn't say it, he will murmur in his heart: "Is it for me to drag the class? Won't I get tired after talking for a minute more? Isn't this for the sake of the students?" As long as the teacher still thinks so in his heart, the phenomenon of procrastination will never be eradicated.
Through this action, Principal Li Xigui changed the 10 minutes between classes to 5 minutes, and the gears of change began to turn, the debate stopped, and the concept landed.
This is the value of concretizing the problem into an action.
President Li often said that how can people solve problems? Instead of sitting there and discussing ideas every day, we should go deep into the specific scenes and actions of the world. To put it simply, it is these six words: "Once concrete, it is profound." ”
In the past, when preparing a New Year's Eve speech, I always tried to tell something new, preferably a little profound.
But looking back at 2023, I look at myself, and the most touching part of my life is not a truth. What caught my eye, without exception, were concrete actions.
He Fan is a well-known macroeconomist. Mr. He Fan took an electrician certificate this year. ID: A32040041323004292.
Congratulations to China for the birth of the first economist with an electrician certificate. Next time, if you meet him and go to your place to investigate, the electrical equipment is broken, you can trouble him by the way.
Mr. He Fan's electrician certificate is different from being an economist, not just reading books and thinking about problems at home. He really went to Jiangsu Changzhou Technician College, and it took 14 days to win the electrician certificate with a score of 99 points in the theoretical class and 100 points in the practical class.
So what do you think this electrician's certificate is of use to him? Maybe it doesn't work.
He just went out and entered the real life of the future industrial worker, becoming an economist who lived in a student dormitory over half a hundred years old, crowded with his classmates to eat in the cafeteria, clocked in class to hand in homework for teachers, and ran on the playground to see how young people fall in love.
This year, as a macroeconomist, he must have had a lot of confusion in his heart, but when he put on his clothes and went out, he thought about the employment of young people while taking the electrician certificate, learned to raise pigs in a pig farm and thought about inflation at the same time, and learned how to grow pepper from farmers in the mountain villages of Chongqing, and thought about currency at the same time. He became a different kind of economist, perhaps a more profound one.
You see, the three stories told above are nothing more than this sentence -
As soon as you act, you innovate.
As soon as it is concrete, it is profound.
As soon as I was confused, I went out.
In 2023, my eyes light up whenever I see these concrete actions that go out the door.
That's all for this year's New Year's Eve speech.
I'm in charge of being my "recovery dog" and bringing back to you the things that have sparked my eyes this year.
As for you, I implore you, while listening to me, to see if you can find new answers to your old questions in other people's methods?
2. Confused?
A general direction to find answers
Test you a little question.
Anyway, this year, I was educated by this question.
Q: If you had a supermarket, where would you put your eggs?
As soon as I heard it, I was very good at this question. Eggs are just needed, and the price is very transparent, so eggs are sold cheaper and used for drainage, which is called the "drainage strategy" in the product portfolio. After attracting customers, according to the principle of circulation design, you have to let customers go around for a while, and the longer you shop, the more things you buy. So, eggs should be placed in the innermost part of the supermarket. That's it.
If you are opening a big supermarket, this answer should be a perfect score. However, this year, the owner of a community supermarket gave me another answer: I can't put the innermost part, I should put the eggs at the door.
Strangely, supermarkets sell eggs, usually at a loss. Isn't it in vain that the guest buys the egg and leaves?
The boss said, "No. The small supermarket in our community is a neighbor's business, and we can't be so chicken thieves, we must be an open person, and we will eat in the open place if we suffer losses. If you take advantage of me once, twice and a month, don't you Xi used to come to my store to buy things? ”
Well, that sounds like that makes sense.
If it weren't for meeting such a supermarket entrepreneur, sitting in the study, I wouldn't have imagined that there would be such an answer.
You see, even for such a small question, in theory, we will have some standard answers, but in the people who actually do it, we can find a bunch of different reference answers.
What we just said was a different answer.
In the process of research this year, I found that if I ask for advice from doers, not only can I get different answers, but the questions asked by others may be different from ours.
For example, when running a bubble tea shop, all I can think of is how to develop new products, how to choose a location, how to attract traffic, and so on.
However, investor Wei Zhe raised a new question: how to eliminate the off-season?
He told me about the style of a bubble tea shop he had invested in.
First of all, eliminate the low season of the year. The peak season for milk tea is in summer, of which fruit tea accounts for 60%. But fruit teas are all iced, and in the north, they are not popular in winter. What should I do? Then sell warm winter hot drinks such as five-grain tea and blood glutinous rice milk tea, which are smoothed out in the off-season.
Is that the end of it? No. There is an off-season for a year, and there is an off-season for a day.
There's an off-season in the day? I've never heard of it before.
You think, milk tea generally starts to sell the first cup after noon, and it can be sold until the evening, but the morning is the off-season, and there are basically no orders.
How do you eliminate the off-season of the day and get office workers to come in early in the morning?
In this bubble tea shop, there is a machine embedded to sell coffee, and orders have been there since early in the morning.
That's how the off-season of the day is wiped out.
You see, I'm not trying to tell you how clever the answer is to selling coffee in bubble tea shops, but the question "how to eliminate the off-season" is too well asked.
Who can ask such a question?
It has to be the owner of this bubble tea shop, standing behind the cash register, what he sees in his eyes is that the store is empty in the morning, and he thinks to himself, oops, oops, terrible, the rent has been paid, the staff has been hired, and the inventory is stored, which is really in a hurry.
Without this "hurry", it is estimated that it is difficult to raise the question of "how to eliminate the off-season of the day".
Isn't there a saying? "Asking the right question is often the same as solving most of the problem." ”
You see, what can inspire people is not only good reference answers, but also good reference questions.
This year, there is another impression: good questions and good answers not only come from peers, but also from other industries.
This year, I met a strange company called "Yuehui Food", which is located in Gaocun Town, Qi County, Hebi City, Henan Province. They joked that they were among the "Top 500 High Villages and Towns". The main business is to make hot pot ingredients, the most famous is black chicken rolls, which are sold to downstream food wholesalers or terminal hot pot restaurants.
This manufacturing company, which sounds ordinary and not big, has taken the ability of lean production to the extreme.
The core spirit of lean production is "no waste". To what extent have they done it? We won't talk about the various picks on the production line, let's just talk about the office area.
There is not a single office chair in the office, and everyone from the president to the front desk is standing and working. So what should I do if I'm tired? There is a special rest area, you can see the sofa next to it, right?
As a result, everyone is more productive. It's too tiring to stand and touch the fish.
There is also an additional benefit, everyone stands in the office, the workstation is pulled through, the countertop is high, there is no sanitary dead end, each is responsible for the sanitation of their own area, and there is only one cleaner in the huge factory area.
There is no waste in the production stage, and there is no waste in the sales stage.
I watched their president, Deng Fanhua, give a lecture to the sales staff and mention a case: how to send new product samples to restaurant customers.
In the past, if this kind of door-to-door sales were not successful, it could only be counted. But in the eyes of lean manufacturing, this is a huge waste of time and resources.
In accordance with the spirit of "no waste" of "lean production", there is room for optimization in every sales action.
Let's see how they are optimized.
First, how to get there? Please note that you can't drive a good car. Once you drive a good car, customers will think, yo, such a good car, I'm afraid it's all earned from me.
Note that you can't just bring samples, you also have to bring pots and pans, do them on the spot, and let customers try them on the spot. Otherwise, if you say that you will do it later, the sample will most likely be left in the kitchen and dusted.
Please note that you can't go at eleven or twelve o'clock, because the customer's store is busy at noon, and there is no time to pay attention to you. Is it okay to do it at three or four o'clock in the afternoon? No. Because the restaurant has just finished lunch, and is about to start busy dinner, customers still want to seize the time to rest for a while, and they are not in the mood to take care of you, and even no one can be found in the store at all.
What is the best time? The exact time came: half past one in the afternoon.
At this time, the lunch rush is over, but there are still some customers in the store. The store manager can't leave the store, but he's not very busy. At this time, it is most suitable to come to the door.
Next, do it on the spot. How many servings do you make? Note that 8 servings. There are exactly 8 parts of zero and round. One for the boss, one for the chef, and the remaining six for whom? For the vice president? For the waiter? No, the rest was for the customers who were still in the store at the time.
Here's the point!
After everyone tastes, you, as a salesperson, don't ask the boss and the head chef first, but ask the customer: "Is it delicious?" 9 yuan for two, is it expensive?"
If you give it away for free, most customers will definitely say "it's delicious" and "it's not expensive".
What is the effect?
First, it hedges the boss's personal taste preferences. No matter how delicious something is, some people will find it unpalatable, but 6 out of 8 people will find it delicious, and even if the boss himself thinks it is not delicious, he will not think that it is a product problem.
Second, this matter has become another matter for the restaurateur: it is not a question of whether a supplier wants to sell me a new product or not, but whether or not I want to meet the needs of my customers and think that it is not expensive.
Think about it, just this set of long-term iteration before maturity of the combination punch, how much waste of customer visit time can be eliminated, and how much can the order rate be improved?
The story of Yuehui is not over yet.
It is not uncommon for a manufacturing enterprise to achieve such a lean production "miracle". However, some pressures will always be there, the upstream will increase the price, the downstream will reduce the price, and the peers will reduce the price.
Yuehui thought, are customers going to raise prices and lower prices? No, their purpose is to make money. Wouldn't it be okay for me to pass on this set of "magic skills" to them and help them earn more money by cooperating with me?
You see, this new question really forced a new answer.
Deng Fanhua, the president of Yuehui, said, "All industries are knowledge services. ”
How do they do knowledge services?
For example, Yuehui's sales staff go to their downstream food wholesalers and don't open their mouths to sell products. Often the first thing is to clean the cold storage with the user. This is not to learn from Lei Feng to do good deeds, in lean production, these are the two S's in the "5S" - cleaning and tidying, which is a very useful tool to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
For example, one of their customers in Nanchang has 27 cold storages alone, and in the peak season, they have to rent another 10 cold storages. Now, as soon as the sales of Yuehui came, cleaned and sorted, I found that there was no need for so many cold storages, and this one saved 150,000 yuan throughout the year.
It is said that as soon as the salesman of Yuehui "Ah Cong" arrives at the customer, the customer's boss often immediately greets him: Come on, stop what you are doing, and listen to Mr. Cong!
For another example, some food wholesalers start selling before they have time to code the goods.
The salesman of Yuehui came and said, no, no, this is too wasteful of store space.
Come, pile up the goods, and use as few goods as possible, to make the most spectacular and beautiful piles possible. Pull over a piece of A3 paper, write the name of the product in large letters, write the selling point, and then draw a red box around it.
Just poke a piece of paper there, and you will know at a glance that the sales will definitely be able to increase a little.
Are you saying this trick is new? Not new. All those who do retail know the little trick of carving insects, but they are just stacks in the supermarket. But the reason comes down to the truth, for some downstream businesses in Yuehui, it is such a simple matter, and if there is no help, it will not be in place.
What do you usually need to do for a customer when you sell a product? I asked them for a checklist, from cleaning to designing the flow line.
We got Mr. Hu Guangshu, the manager of the "Lean Management Practical Course", who is also a consultant of Yuehui Company, he said that this set of play of Yuehui is "customer management improvement marketing". To put it bluntly, it is to achieve its own marketing by helping customers improve their operations and help customers make money.
You see, looking for new answers, don't just focus on the bank, learn the basic skills of other industries, and also the competitiveness of your own industry.
I didn't expect that a manufacturing company in a village or town could also bring us such inspiration.
3. Too expensive?
Three new ideas to reduce costs and increase efficiency
Next, let's talk about the issues that have been paid special attention to during the preparation of the new business school. This question hangs like a sword over every boss's head. Especially in the past year or two, even super manufacturers such as Tencent and Byte have often used these four words: reduce costs and increase efficiency. It's true that the landlord's family has no surplus food.
Business is hard to do, and money is hard to make. So, the question is: can the cost be reduced a little more, and where can we save some more money?
It's still the same agreement. Now I'm going to talk about someone else's new answer, what about you? Listen and think about your own old questions.
Come, introduce you to a few friends. They have provided us with some interesting ways to save money and reduce costs, maybe you can use it when you take it, and it will be effective when you use it.
Let's get started.
The first friend is this one. Once, when I was scrolling through Douyin, I heard a restaurateur say that the person with the highest level of understanding of cost issues in the restaurant industry in China is Chen Ouwei. Hey, I know this person well. I also asked him to do a lesson.
So I quickly found Mr. Chen Ouwei, the founder of a restaurant group in Shenzhen. "Tell me, what do you think about cost?"
He taught me a lesson that day, and it was an eye-opener.
First of all, 300,000 things can be saved through an adjustment.
In the past, restaurants had a lot of single-use packaging. For example, chopsticks and spoons are cleaned and disinfected and then hand-sealed in transparent plastic bags. It is neither economical nor environmentally friendly. But in Chen Ouwei's restaurant, it was changed to use this kind of sterilized chopstick machine.
The use of sterilized chopsticks machine means that the packaging link is reduced, the table setting link is reduced, the plastic consumables are omitted, the process is optimized, the labor is reduced, and there is a high probability that it can save money. In a year, this alone can save more than 300,000 yuan in his restaurant.
And as a customer, the tableware I took out of the machine by hand felt a little warm after disinfection, didn't I feel more at ease? The cost has been reduced, and the user experience has increased. Therefore, Chen Ouwei said that cost reduction should not affect the user experience as the bottom line. Otherwise, it is not called cost reduction, it is called cutting corners.
One more thing, not only peers can learn, but even our home cooking can also learn. That's the chopping part. Chen Ouwei made a small change, when doing the initial processing of ingredients, he used scissors instead of kitchen knives. A handful of green onions, the master uses a kitchen knife to click down, and it is easy to cut off a section of green onion white, which is wasted. The edge of the vegetable leaf is a little yellow or there is a small hole in the insect bite, and the master uses a knife to "click" down, and it is easy to cut off a large piece. However, if you use scissors, you will be more precise with the ingredients and will reduce waste.
There is also data. He calculated that by changing the kitchen knife to scissors, he could save about 5% of fresh ingredients every day.
Don't underestimate this 5%, what you save is what you earn. And those who have cooked also know that using scissors is indeed more flexible, more labor-saving, safer, and easier to master than using kitchen knives.
There is another one, in the back kitchen of Chen Ouwei's restaurant, try to minimize the refrigerator, and put as little as you can. In a Chinese restaurant, he reduced the number of refrigerators from five to two. There's a saying in the restaurant world: "No matter how many refrigerators you have, a chef has the ability to fill it up." "The refrigerator is full, although there is no worry about no ingredients to sell, but it can't be circulated quickly, which is also a huge waste. There are few refrigerators and can't stock up, forcing restaurant managers to make accurate budgets for the next day's sales. As a result, not only is there less waste, but the ingredients are fresher for customers.
That day, I listened to him comb through the items one by one, and I said in my heart: I deserve to make money! What I save is what I earn, and I have never had such a deep understanding of this sentence.
I went to ask Chen Ouwei again, you did a good job, but after all, you are only the experience of the catering industry, can you summarize a money-saving method that can be used in all industries?
He gave me this sentence: "Lean management is not language, but mathematics." To put it bluntly, don't use emotional vague judgments, but rational actuarial methods.
It is said that many years ago, Chen Ouwei opened a restaurant in Shenzhen, which was so popular that 1,600 people came to eat at noon every day during peak periods.
However, one day, an industry veteran came and asked him, "Is it possible for you to challenge the restaurant to 1,800 people?"
Chen Quwei gave a very Chinese temperament answer: you can try, mobilize everyone, stimulate everyone's enthusiasm, and reward if you complete the goal.
But the old-timer didn't answer the conversation. Instead, I asked a few questions in a row. For example, how much time does it take for customers to queue up? What is the most congested point in the process? How much time does it take for an average customer to pay? Which can be effective during low or peak periods?
Obviously, this is a specific number, this senior, is a math teacher.
Chen found that he had a vague sense of these questions, but he could not answer the exact numbers.
After some calculations by the old-timer math teacher, he immediately gave advice:
First, after calculating the queue time, you can put up time reminders at different positions in the queue, "You still need to queue for 15 minutes/10 minutes/5 minutes". Anxiety is reduced when customers are queuing, and fewer customers give up in the middle of the process.
Second, the blockage in the store is often due to ordering food but not having a place to sit. Is there really no land? Not necessarily. Many customers are embarrassed to take the initiative to share a table with others. That's easy to do. There is a position of "traffic warden" in the store to clear the flow of people and arrange table sharing. The utilization rate of the seats has gone up again, and the table has become faster.
Third, take the stopwatch to calculate the customer's payment time, and find that it is 9 seconds for a person, and there is still room for improvement. Add a cashier and you'll be able to mention it in an average of 7.9 seconds. Two dining lines can increase the number of guests by 110 in one hour.
Chen Ouwei immediately acted in accordance with these methods. Sure enough, a month later, the number of lunch visitors to the store increased from 1,600 to 1,800, and after another month, the number actually increased to 2,100.
What does this story illustrate? Chen Ouwei summed it up in this sentence: "If the cost wants to go down, the ability needs to go up." ”
You see, the cost saving thing is not fought for at the negotiation table, not picked on the employees, in the final analysis, it is the growth of their own ability and ability.
Let's meet a cost-saving master, but he is not a boss, but a professor, a professor with an entrepreneurial spirit.
This is a group photo of Professor Wu Zhou and his team. They call their team "Tsinghua Toilet Heavenly Group". That's right, in the past 10 years, as a professor at Tsinghua University, he has only done one thing, and that is to study how to renovate toilets.
When Professor Wu Zhou decided to do this, he had a chat with his father. His father said, "This is good!" It's good that first, everyone really needs it, and the king of heaven and Lao Tzu has to go to the toilet; second, who will study the toilet as a professor? No one will rob you of this job, and you will be the only one in China.
Sure enough, in the past 10 years, Tsinghua Toilet Tiantuan has won various design awards at home and abroad, and no one has robbed him.
Designing a toilet that can be used by the team of Tsinghua University has to be a high-class toilet, right? For VIP visits? Space station for astronauts?
Not really. Tsinghua Toilet Tiantuan is really designing the public toilets that everyone sees on the streets and alleys and uses for ordinary people.
In 2018, they took on a big job of renovating public toilets in 1,325 hutongs in Beijing's Dongcheng District.
After the plan was submitted, the leader smiled and said, Professor Wu, I especially admire your concept, oppose spending money indiscriminately, and oppose building luxury toilets. In your spirit, can we cut the budget per square meter by another 30%?
You see, this trick is called "slashing your budget with your idea".
What should you do as Party B? All you can do is "show an embarrassed but polite smile". Professor Wu Zhou said that it is no wonder that Party A asked for this. There are more than 300,000 public toilets in China. Even if each toilet can save 10,000 yuan, it is more than 30 billion. For every dollar taken out, the social value is huge.
Then the next question comes, why do you have to use the team of Tsinghua University to reduce the cost when building toilets?
Professor Wu Zhou gave me a bunch of words. He said that this is all knowledge that can be used to renovate toilets, and behind any word is a bunch of disciplines.
I'll give you an example:
Many public toilets now have beautiful handwashing stations, but paper towels and dryers are installed on the wall next to them, which is a few steps away. The first thing people do when they wash their hands is shake them.
Don't underestimate this action, if 100 people subconsciously shake their hands, the result will be water all over the ground. When water mixes with bacteria in the air, it produces odors.
Therefore, to reduce the smell of the toilet, sometimes it is not necessary to spend a lot of money to install exhaust fans. You only need to change the position of the hand dryer, such as changing it to the middle of the sink, and then change some floor design, and this problem is solved.
Behind this small change is ergonomic wisdom.
For example, in order to control costs, public toilets are not considered to be heated. So, they found a graphene board, a new type of material, and added an infrared sensing device.
As soon as someone goes in and undresses loose, it automatically heats up. However, only this square meter is hot, and only the square meter that you are most afraid of cold is warm. After going to the toilet and the person left, it stopped, saving electricity and keeping warm.
This uses the wisdom of materials science.
For another example, if a public toilet provides free toilet paper, it costs tens of thousands of yuan a year, and the cost burden is very heavy. What should I do? Some places engage in scanning codes to buy paper, which is actually very inappropriate. It may not only leak personal privacy, but also lead to secondary queuing and secondary congestion, which violates the principle of fast in and fast out of public facility design.
Therefore, Tsinghua Toilet Tiantuan has developed a new type of paper taking equipment. You stretch out your hand and it comes out, but at the same time you have to listen to an advertisement. Advertising can attract investment. For example, "Get the new business school to provide you with free toilet paper", "Get the new business school reminds you to take your belongings". Solve problems for users, not ashamed.
You see, to come up with this idea, you have to have business wisdom behind it.
The toilets renovated by Professor Wu Zhou's team have blossomed all over the country, let's cheer him on!
Professor Wu Zhou's experience tells us that to reduce costs, we should not only think of ways within the system, but should introduce cross-border knowledge from all walks of life and disciplines into our own system and replace the old methods.
Next, I would like to introduce you to a person who not only reduces costs, but also achieves higher user satisfaction precisely because of spending less money.
This is a classmate of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Zhang Rui. Zhang Rui founded a cultural tourism company whose main business is Gobi trekking.
This is an old business, and many companies and business schools will engage in team building through the Gobi Challenge.
Zhang Rui found that the sales of this product are often stuck in the fact that many female friends hesitate to sign up as soon as they hear that they can't take a shower for three or four days. That's easy to do, since taking a bath is a pain point for customers, it costs to solve it.
Zhang Rui's company spent 150,000 yuan to modify two bathing cars. The 150,000 yuan is just the cost of the car, not including the cost of transporting several tons of water to the Gobi every time you use it.
Is the customer satisfied?
After only using it once, Zhang Rui found that it was broken. Money is spent, costs are raised, and the experience is not optimized, it's worse.
Why?
You can imagine a scenario:
One day walking down the Gobi Desert, everyone was dirty and tired. When I returned to the camp, I saw that there was a bathing cart, and I immediately went to line up. Excuse me, what is the relationship between the people in the team at this time?
I was a teammate just now, but now it's a competitive relationship. The longer you wash, the longer I will wait. Even if you are embarrassed to be noisy, the atmosphere of this queue is definitely not harmonious.
Imagine another scenario:
Some people went to the camp first, took a bath, washed white, and rubbed incense. At this time, if he met a teammate who was covered in mud and sweat and had just walked back to camp, would he go up and give a warm hug?
Zhang Rui looked at these two bathing cars at this time, and his eyes changed. It's not an artifact to enhance the travel experience, it's a poison that destroys team relationships. This cost is too unjustly spent.
So, he quickly sold the bath cart.
Well, now in Zhang Rui's camp, everyone should not be hypocritical, the real state of the Gobi is like this. I didn't have a shower, so I had to sit down and chat. Anyway, you're dirty, I'm dirty, don't dislike anyone. On the contrary, the relationship between everyone has become closer.
In the cultural tourism industry, everyone used to default that if you want to have a better experience, you have to pile up more costs. Book a high-end hotel, eat a Michelin restaurant, and see the scenery you have never seen before. Which one doesn't cost anything?
Also in the desert Gobi, Las Vegas in the United States is a wonder of the world piled up with countless money. Take this year's popular Las Vegas ball "Sphere" as an example, the visual effects are shocking enough, right? Sorry, it costs money, how much does it cost? 2.3 billion dollars. 16 billion yuan, how many toilets can be renovated?
How do you think this cost can be reduced?
But Zhang Rui, who has experienced the bath truck incident, realizes that it really depends on whether you are doing regular service or detonating the experience.
To do service, to provide things that people have never seen before, this is to do addition, to do experience, to start from the relationship between people, to detonate a certain extreme feeling, this has to be able to do multiplication.
Of course, adding costs money, while multiplication may not require more money, but insight into human nature and the resulting design ideas.
For example, the Gobi walk, in which some parents and children go together.
So how did Zhang Rui design it?
Instead of asking for a better mentor, live in a family suite tent.
Here's what he did:
On the first day, parents and children walk together, you can imagine everything, parents must think that their children have too many things to do, afraid of hardship, and children must think that their parents nag.
The next day, parents and children go separately, you can think of it, and there will be a little worry and anxiety between them.
Notice that different designs, relationships have changed, from blaming each other to caring for each other.
On the third day, the gameplay changed again. Go the other way. Your child, I lead, my child, you lead. You can imagine what two parents would say when they met at the camp that night? It must be "Your child is so caring and sensible", "How many books has your child read, he has thoughts!"
You see, something magical happens: a bear child, who was a little annoying the day before yesterday, suddenly turns into a little angel.
The fourth day is the last peak experience. Zhang Rui designed a link: blind walking. Towards the end of the hike, your parents are blindfolded and your children lead you through the last stretch of the trail. As you walk, parents will suddenly realize: in a few years, won't they be like this, relying on their children to complete the last part of their lives?
That sense of trust, that sense of dependence, that kind of family affection, all the way to accumulate, you can imagine it, when the child takes off the blindfold of his parents at the end of the line, how can there not be a tearful hug?
Zhang Rui's Gobi tour group lasted for four days and three nights. Following the multiplicative idea of changing relationships and detonating experiences, he has meticulously designed each journey. He said that he is not only a cultural tourism practitioner, but also a "time carver".
For example, everyone counts the journey, but Zhang Rui will pinch the right time to arrive at a specific place. In order to let everyone hike just see the sun rise the moment they climb the dunes.
Another example is that everyone will hold an evening event, but Zhang Rui's team will artificially create a sudden power outage. Because there is no light pollution in the starry sky of the Gobi, as long as you are present, as long as you look up, there is a galaxy in front of you.
For example, every Gobi tour group will set off fireworks at the party. But Zhang Rui will set off fireworks to the second accurately, so that people who make birthday wishes can just see fireworks blooming in the night sky when they open their eyes.
Zhang Rui told me that the sunrise, the Milky Way, and fireworks, these things are either free gifts from nature, or they don't cost much money.
However, having it appear in the right relationship at the right time can detonate the emotional experience of the person. It is said that we should have an experience, but the most burning experience is not outside the experience, not in seeing things that have never been seen before, but precisely in life.
A few days ago, a journalist friend pressed me to ask, saying that you always say that you have to do research for New Year's Eve speeches, are these surveys true, or are they for publicity?
I actually know what she's trying to ask, and what she's asking is that I'm really willing to spend so much time on research?
I don't know how you feel after hearing about these experiences, but I can tell you mine: in the past year, whenever I feel a little depressed and a little lost, I know that there is only one thing that is right, and that is to put on your shoes, go out, find someone, and ask for advice. Find people who have come over, find people who understand, and talk to people who do specific things.
Fourth, the volume does not move?
Three good papers with a unique approach
This year, we often say a sentence: it's too rolly, it really can't be rolled.
Simply put, it means to compete with other people's rules. Why is the college entrance examination very papery? Because no matter what kind of person you are, you have to do the same paper, so you just do it.
Therefore, there are thousands of ways to break the "volume", and in the final analysis, there is only one: each makes its own volume.
Everyone's endowment, preferences, and circumstances are different, how can you roll up if you look less at others and more at yourself?
Next, as a qualified "recovery dog", I found three very specific stories for you, after listening to these three stories, maybe you can answer this question yourself and find a way to break the involution in your own field.
The first story comes from a young entrepreneur, Liang You, who is this, I don't know why, he has to let me call him "Ergou".
Well, Ergou Liang You, he opened a tavern. The name of the tavern is "Jumping to the Sea".
From 2019 to the present, a total of 20 stores have been opened across the country, which is not big. If you rank by the size of the tavern, it can't even rank in the top ten in the country.
If you want to talk about characteristics, I'm sorry, but it is known for "poor decoration" and "poor service".
This is what a typical store of theirs looks like, and it can be seen that it is relatively primitive.
In the jumping sea, there is no waiter to bring the wine and food to the side, everyone has to line up at the bartender to get their own drinks. I didn't even scan the code to order, and when I ordered something, I had to walk over and talk to the bartender in person.
That's weird enough. Even people like me who don't live overnight know that the field of pubs and bars is very popular, and it is not uncommon to even invest 100 million in stores. Everyone rolls up decoration, roll experience, roll performance, roll wine, roll service, and should roll up.
How did such a "rough" store survive?
Moreover, not only survived, but what made Ergou proudest and "angry" the most was that he often did not stay in the store and was not diligent. In April 2023, he took all the employees of the diving company to Siguniang Mountain for team building. 7 days, a week away from home.
The point is that during the team building, all the shops in the sea were open, and none of them were closed.
Well, what is it to do is a diligent business? Who will take care of the store if you play it like this?
The answer is interesting, they have a strange position in their tavern: part-time bartender.
You see, this is the reason why jumping into the sea does not roll, and the two dogs quietly changed this "roll": the operation of the tavern, what should be operated? The answer to jumping into the sea is: we do not operate guests, operate bartenders. Moreover, he is also a part-time bartender.
What is a part-time bartender? It is the temporary shopkeeper who jumps into the sea on the same day, in addition to being responsible for serving the guests, he can also entertain friends and give them discounts. He also has the right to decide what the welcome drink will be for the night, what music to put on the tavern, what videos to play, what games to play, what activities to do, and what decorations to hang in the tavern.
As a part-time bartender, you can drink for free that day, and you can also get paid for the day, and you will also have a profit from the wine sold.
So you say, are there so many people who are willing to come and earn this part-time money? Yes.
In addition to money, many young people have a dream of owning their own pub bar café. It can be used as a temporary living room, and it can be used in the circle of friends. So, the part-time bartender who jumped into the sea did a more serious job than he did at work.
How many of these part-time bartenders are there? As of today, there are more than 2,000 of them. And the Jumping Sea Tavern has only 70 regular employees.
As soon as this mechanism is activated, many unintended consequences come.
First of all, the guests are not worried. came to a bartender, and brought a circle of friends to cheer.
Secondly, the service is not picky. You go to a friend's living room for a drink, where is it so exquisite?
Also, the tavern is also lively.
This is the past year, the activities that took place in the sea jumping tavern, incomplete statistics-
For example, you can drag a notebook over the bar to continue writing a person's novel. You can share the food brought by your hometown here.
By the way, there is a store in Beijing where introverts can go on Tuesdays, because this day is a fixed day for drinking silently, and they can only drink, no talking, and no exchanging contact information, which is the most suitable for social fear.
With so many activities, relying on the company's own marketing department, it must not be able to plan. How do you want to play with your friends, each bartender has his own tricks, and each village has its own doorway.
Also, not only playing, but also a group of friends who smell like, playing and playing, it is inevitable that they will have to do all kinds of business.
Here, there are really people who hold company job fairs and movie launch ceremonies.
Again, they are a group of acquaintances, so they have to have some decency and rules between acquaintances.
For example, "drunk alcohol is not sold" here. Some bars see that customers are drunk, so they take the opportunity to offer customers high-priced drinks. Not here. You see, it says on the wall: "Five hundred in the rabbit shop." You see? It's a homophonic meme.
Another example is jumping into the sea to prohibit strangers of the opposite sex from asking each other for wine. If a female customer feels that she has been harassed here, she can complain directly and the store will definitely take care of it.
There is also an interesting consequence. Everyone is here for their friends, so they are not here to be an uncle waiting to be served, but to make some contributions.
In other words, once a guest came to ask, I am an alumnus of China University of Political Science and Law, and the boss Ergou is an alumnus, can I get a discount?
Ergou agreed at first. But unexpectedly, all my colleagues were against it. The reason was: "Why can you enjoy privileges with one identity? He has not contributed much." ”
But what should I do if the boss has already agreed? So, this rule has changed. It's not that you can get a discount just because you're from the University of Political Science and Law, but that all the guests in the future can enjoy a discount if you can recite a law aloud on the spot, which can be regarded as contributing a little positive energy here. If you want to have a little privilege here, you have to pay by contribution, not by status.
If you want to feel the atmosphere of the Jumping Sea Tavern, after a while, you can go to the Shenzhen Nanshan Book City store in Jumping Sea, the address is next door to today's venue. You can also memorize the rules and try to see if there are any discounts.
That's a couple of part-time bartenders out there. If you go tonight, you might be able to meet one of them.
I'm not trying to prove to you how right this tavern is, after all, Jumping into the Sea is still in the early stages of development, and there will definitely be all kinds of changes in the future. What's more, whether it's good or not, it's just a roll that Ergou gave himself, with Ergou's own name printed on it.
I want to say, the tavern can actually do this, the boss can be so chic, is it worth reminding ourselves when we do things, don't rush to roll, first see if the roll can be changed?
I'll tell you another story.
Imagine what a person should be in when he is Amway?
You must know what "Amway" means, and it is almost synonymous with "sales" in modern spoken Chinese.
So imagine a salesman, what kind of day does he live every day? sweep the building every day? send business cards everywhere? desperately make strange visits? open a live broadcast to attract traffic? If you work like this all day, it is really tiring, and you can't roll up in minutes.
This year, Nutrilite became a sponsor of the New Year's Eve Speech Breakout, and I had the opportunity to get to see them up close.
Let me tell you about the life of a typical Amway person.
There is a big brother Chen, who has been Nutrilite for 20 years. Now, his sales team is serving 1,000 customers. So what does he do every day? It looks like he's partying with people and playing around every day.
What is climbing, camping, reading, drinking tea...... I was "angry" when I said this: What do you say are good that you are doing sales, and you are all shouting slogans? Why do you live a life of talking and laughing without any white things? This makes me envious.
However, I found that Brother Chen did not just play along, but played the role of the initiator and organizer of this kind of activity for a long time.
In the name of organizing a party, he held back and sold things to friends, isn't this the legendary killing of ripeness?
You see, when I think so, I'm getting into the horns of abstraction again.
Go back to the specific scene and think deeply: for such a salesman, he doesn't care how the rest of you do sales, and he finds the "paper" that he does sales: that is, to return to the real friendship, take good care of friends, and worry more about everyone. In this way, business and life are integrated and balanced.
Nowadays, office workers in the city, in addition to colleagues, often have a very restricted circle of friends. It's better to have someone in charge of Zhang Luo to get to know new people.
Isn't that how many things are, everyone wants to go out and have fun, but without a single person, it really can't be organized.
And this work is also very hard, do you know how many activities Brother Chen organizes in a year? 400 events, an average of more than one per day.
He also made a request to himself to greet at least 100 people every day, like 30-50 people in his circle of friends, and send serious comments to 3-5 people. He also has to participate in various academic Xi training, post high-quality circle of friends, and show life, growth, and change.
You see, a diligent and serious person, took the initiative to assume the responsibility between friends, worried about me, did things, as a serious person, I must want to find an opportunity to repay his favor, and when necessary, I should also take care of his business, isn't this a very normal relationship between friends? On the other hand, what he recommends is something I don't need, can I continue to be friends with him? I'm not stupid.
You see, consumers buy because they need Nutrilite products, and they buy from Brother Chen because they need this friend.
To put it bluntly, the rolls sent down that year were for business. But Brother Chen, he changed this paper to making friends. Specific to daily life, whether he is making friends or doing business, these two things are really inseparable from him, and they don't have to be separated.
Isn't this different from what we used to understand as a salesman?
At present, 67 cities at home and abroad have sub-venues for our New Year's Eve speeches. Among them, there are 4 official branch venues, 6 alumni association venues and 161 viewing groups.
If you see a sign that says "Amway Nutrilite" in the breakout room, they are sponsors and a reminder of the value of making friends.
Friends, seize the time tonight, shake hands with the strangers next to you, make some friends, and have a chance to do things together in the future.
Let's move on to the story.
Can you imagine what a real estate agent would be like in 2023?
Look for money, or on the way to find money in the Shawl.
But there is a friend, as a real estate boss, who has really lived the dream of every literary and artistic youth. If you look at the activities he participated in from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, the people he dealt with every day were either architects or artists, and I was so surprised by his beauty.
Some people may have thought that this is Ma Yin, the boss of Aranya.
Aranya is not a new case, it has been famous for a long time. But the mention of Aranya this year has a special inspiration for us.
Ma Yin said: "I experienced the difficulty of selling houses encountered by real estate developers this year 10 years ago. "Because Aranya was taken over by Ma Yin in 2013, the house is far away in Qinhuangdao and cannot be sold at all, and the money owed is 150 million yuan per year in interest alone.
So what should I do? I can only do a good job in property services. Ma Yin's statement is, "I originally went to the city to sell a goose, but I ended up raising a goose in the countryside - then raise it well and let the goose lay eggs." ”
Then he became a goose layer, and he found his own paper: how to change from a developer who sells houses to an operator who sells services.
Ten years later, what has become of Aranya?
Xiang Shuai summed it up like this: As the "poetry and distance" of the north and the darling of social media, Aranya's Internet celebrity identity and the various voices that accompany the traffic almost make people forget that it was originally a real estate project.
In the summer of 2023, the topic of Aranya on Xiaohongshu will have 390 million views. At the same time, Qinhuangdao Aranya has been sold to the tenth phase, and projects in Sanya and Guangzhou are also very popular.
Moreover, as a real estate company, taking Qinhuangdao Aranya as an example, 50% of its revenue has come from operating projects such as hotels, homestays, and restaurants.
Ma Yin said that Aranya's values are: "simplicity with quality, abundance with moderation." ”
This sentence is awesome!
I think that this is not so much Aranya's business strategy, but rather that Ma Yin is such a person. The whole Aranya project grew out of his personality.
Back to the three cases just now, in addition to the environment they faced, they were in different industries, development stages, and enterprise scales, but they all did the same thing: not to be defined by other people's answers, but only to do their own papers and answer their own questions. Look less at others and more at yourself, less into the distance and more near you.
If you also envy such a state, then you might as well go back to yourself, find your own endowment, and look at your neighborhood. The answer is already there.
5. AI is coming?
A kind of leadership that puts itself in the middle of things
In November 2022, or November 30 to be more precise, ChatGPT was released.
Since then, there seems to be only one sentence that can describe my inner feelings: "The gears of fate are beginning to turn".
Shocking news keeps coming: artificial intelligence can suddenly write articles, draw pictures, write software, make music, and make videos, and I can almost write a set of PPT by myself to go out to finance by myself.
Almost every month there is a big surprise.
There is a good saying: "I just learned, but I can't say it right, and then I say it doesn't change, and I come to software again." ”
This is still visible to us ordinary people.
In fact, outside of the public eye, a big storm is brewing in the field of scientific research.
In many scientific fields, there are some newly assembled scientific research teams, on a trail called "artificial intelligence", cats on the waist, touch the dark, and quickly advance to the top of the mountain. Scientists who use traditional methods to conduct scientific research are no less threatened by artificial intelligence than we ordinary people.
In this year, artificial intelligence has developed by leaps and bounds in physics, biology, geography, meteorology, archaeology, and other disciplines.
We Chinese are not absent either.
This is Dr. Cao Kai from Shanghai Changhai Hospital.
A young imaging clinician. His team used artificial intelligence to solve a super medical puzzle.
In the past, pancreatic cancer was known as the king of cancer, and the traditional diagnosis of human doctors could not detect the early symptoms of the disease, so it was often at an advanced stage when it was discovered.
However, Dr. Cao Kai collaborated with AI scientists to train a large model that can diagnose pancreatic cancer at an early stage using only noncontrast chest CT. The cost is very low, the equipment is very widespread, and the screening accuracy is very high.
Their research paper has also been published in top international medical journals, and this is the first Chinese imaging medicine paper published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Internationally renowned medical experts say that this paper marks the beginning of a golden age of cancer screening based on medical imaging AI. Dr. Cao Kai is at the scene of the New Year's Eve speech today, and he is also a user, congratulations, classmates!
There is a very sci-fi topic: when will general artificial intelligence be realized?
The so-called artificial general intelligence is the kind of artificial intelligence that can do almost anything and can achieve the top level of human beings.
There is a prediction website about when general artificial intelligence will be realized, and in 2020, everyone's prediction is still in the second half of the 21st century, and it feels like it is still far away.
But just after the release of ChatGPT, the prediction time was suddenly adjusted to 2029.
I looked at it this morning, and the forecast has been adjusted to: April 20, 2026.
A day with bits and pieces came to our eyes. If you do the math, it's only the second quarter after the 11th New Year's Eve speech.
Around 2022, several key breakthroughs in large models have fundamentally changed our understanding of AI. No one can explain why the big model has such intelligence, but it has such intelligence.
No one dares to say they know what the future holds. But everyone knows: I don't dare to say what artificial intelligence can't do anymore.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said, "If something works when it shouldn't, science should come in, and if something works but doesn't, engineering should come in." ”
The first half of the sentence is about the sea of stars of the entire human race, and the second half of the sentence speaks of the current problems of our generation-
yes, AI is so good, it's time to work, but why don't I know how to make it work? How do I use AI?
Fortunately, this is an engineering issue. We Chinese are good at this.
I'll tell you a few little stories. Doesn't it say that "once it is concrete, it is profound"?
Let's feel how Chinese are using new technologies "concretely". What kind of "profound" insight does this concreteness bring.
First of all, I would like to introduce you to a friend: Sui Shaolong, a former engineer of Apple and Tesla, and the founder of Frontier Intelligent Technology.
Five years ago, he founded a company to make intelligent robots with various advanced technologies. And his robot is aimed at one application scenario - excavators for mining. This app is so useful and solves a lot of troubles.
Let me tell you first about the problem solved by this product: in the mines of Inner Mongolia, the masters used to go to work every day, and in winter, they went to work at minus 20 degrees, and when they drilled into the operation cabin, they could hold the lever of the excavator, and their hands could stick to it. In summer, the cab is hot, exposed to the sun, dust, and mosquitoes. The conditions were tough.
After using Sui Shaolong's equipment, the masters can sit in the office and operate remotely. In the winter, the heating is baked, and in the summer, the air conditioning is blown, and the work is done. Not only have working conditions improved, but labor safety has also been greatly improved.
However, at the beginning, Sui Shaolong didn't think so.
He wants to replace people with advanced technology.
A scientist or engineer develops a technology behind closed doors in the laboratory. After the celebration party, I opened the window and looked at the world, and the easiest thing to think of was: People are useless, right? I can replace them with my technology, bosses, you should quickly dismiss all the people? What are you doing with people left?
You see my technology: it can replace the excavator operator on a large scale, hire people to operate remotely in the cheapest place for labor, and save labor costs for you; the robot does not need to rest, nor is it emotional, and the efficiency is greatly improved; so many good things, you only need to purchase my smart equipment to achieve, how good.
But Sui Shaolong failed to convince any of the mine owners.
Strange! New technology brings new efficiency, reduces costs and increases efficiency, aren't you the bosses just for profit? Why don't you make money when it's obvious?
Until one time, a mine boss confessed to him.
He said: "Mr. Sui, to put it mildly, you don't know that compared to the overall income of the mine, the labor saved with the new equipment is really nothing. When we open mines, what we are really worried about is actually the safety issue.
To put it mildly, you don't know, our town was built around the mine, and I have been friends with these masters for two or three generations. I don't look up and I see my wife dancing in the square with their wife, how can you let me open people? If I dare to do this, the window pane of my house will be smashed tonight. ”
You see, thinking abstractly, I thought that the bosses only loved money. As soon as you do it concretely, you will find that each boss has their own more realistic considerations. Let them take the initiative to destroy the original social collaboration network, the social cost and psychological cost are too high.
This conversation had a great impact on Sui Shaolong, and he also changed the direction of entrepreneurship.
He understood that instead of figuring out how to replace people with technology, he should think about how to use technology to support people.
It is said that with a sharp blade in hand, the murderous intent arises.
However, if a person who really owns an epoch-making technology, as long as he wants to promote the application of this technology, he will find that it is better to support people than to replace them, and if he can hold a sharp blade, he should have compassion.
Why?
With the use of new technologies, the original social network will not only not collapse, but will expand. So, if the owner of the technology is always thinking about how to get people to walk away and collapse the original social network, it is going against the trend of society.
This is proven by research: economists look at historical data and find that, contrary to people's intuition, -
The more automated a company is, the larger the scale of its recruitment.
The more automated an industry is, the more jobs it can accommodate.
For example, when cars replaced horse-drawn carriages, everyone thought that coachmen would lose their jobs. Actually?
Take New York, for example, in the heyday of horse-drawn carriages, there were 200,000 horses in New York. Later, the automobile replaced the horse-drawn carriage, and people's willingness to travel greatly increased, and the number of cars soon surpassed that of the horse-drawn carriage of the year. Therefore, the coachman can change his career to become a car driver and a car mechanic. And not unemployed.
So what disappeared? The 200,000 horses did disappear.
Why? Because people change careers, horses don't.
So you see, the real question given to us by technological progress is not "will I be replaced", but "do I want to be a person who can change careers, or should I be a horse who will not change careers".
Let me tell you another story, which is the story of a traditional industry that uses artificial intelligence first.
There is an entrepreneur named Wang Kun, who runs a direct-operated chain of beauty salons in Shenzhen, which is a very, very traditional business.
Throughout 2023, he has been pondering one thing, how to use AI in his business.
Can a beauty salon use AI?
Wang Kun said, yes, don't think of AI as a tool. If you look at it as a tool, you need it to be able to do your job immediately and produce efficiency immediately. Because tools are often bound to application scenarios. A screwdriver, of course, is a screw. You don't need to invent the use case.
However, if you think of AI as a human being, how to use it will test your ability to invent work scenarios for people.
For example, when a guest enters a salon room, the beautician usually prepares a welcome card that says, "Your room has just been disinfected, please feel free to use it." If you have any needs, please feel free to contact your beautician. ”
It's all this kind of cliché anyway.
Wang Kun thinks that AI can be used here: when a customer enters the door, the beautician hands them an AI-generated personalized welcome message, such as a Tibetan poem containing the customer's name.
For example, there is a famous handsome guy in the country, if Xu Zhisheng comes, he may see such a hidden poem: Xu Zhishengmei.
Some people say, isn't this embarrassing? Hey, anyway, the guests who really come to consume say that they like it very much.
The key is that this kind of hidden-head poem generates one in a few seconds, and there are as many as there are in it. These are the welcome cards they write to their customers.
As you can imagine, when a guest enters a room and sees this, the introvert's heart warms, and the extrovert can't help but post a circle of friends. The next time the guest comes back, I can give him a new one.
In the past, write a Tibetan poem and rhyme with it, what a good literary quality! If you were required to write 20 poems a day, who would have the ability to do this? Now, any beautician who has graduated from a secondary school can do it.
Therefore, Wang Kun said: "AI is not a simple tool to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Because whether it is cost reduction or efficiency increase, it is a one-dimensional change. The real use of AI is to make the impossible possible. ”
Wang Kun's use of AI in this way is just a very small and very small example. In the future tide of AI applications, it may not be worth mentioning. But don't you think? An entrepreneur should be like this, within his reach, embracing technology with open arms.
But is Wang Kun a tech maniac?
Then I'll tell you another story and see how he stopped in front of technology.
In the past, they also developed a mini-program where customers could make their own appointments and choose their favorite beauticians.
How nice. Customers have more choices, and the efficiency of resource matching has improved.
However, Wang Kun told me that this small program was taken offline after a month. Why?
Because it has two consequences:
First, isn't it my responsibility to see which beautician is better suited for which client? How can I pass this responsibility on to the client and let the client choose? Wouldn't it become a platform for renting out beauticians? What is the value of my organization?
An even more important consequence: young beauticians can no longer grow up.
You think, if it's a regular customer, then she must prefer to choose a beautician she is familiar with. If it is a new customer, she will definitely choose a more experienced beautician in the mini program, who will choose that newcomer?
So what happens if you don't use a mini program?
Let's imagine a scenario:
The customer wants to make an appointment, and the familiar beautician just has a time conflict. The store manager will say to the customer, "Ms. Wang, your beautician is a little out of time." Please, do me a favor. I have a new colleague here. When she was in school, she was in the top 10 of her class, and we specially selected her and trained her for three months. The little girl has good skills and is also motivated, I wonder if you would like her to serve you today?
Do you think, how can an eldest sister withstand such words?
It is a demand for her to come to the beauty salon and enjoy good service. But being a senior who is willing to bring young people is also a demand. Maybe it's a stronger psychological need.
This kind of thing doesn't happen between man and machine, it only happens between man and man.
Therefore, Wang Kun said that when it comes to technology, we can't talk about efficiency in general, but in our place, it is very important to bring up a little girl, it is very important to grow the talent echelon of the organization, and it is also very important to increase the emotional contact between us and customers.
Here's a more illustrative example: according to the capabilities of today's artificial intelligence, it is entirely possible to observe and identify students' concentration through AI technology in schools, and once students are distracted, they will immediately send reminders and corrections.
Wouldn't it be good to give thorough attention and improve the efficiency of Xi?
Contrary. Brain science studies have found that when the mind wanders, the area of the brain is larger than when the mind is focused. Students' distraction in the process of learning Xi is itself part of the act of learning Xi, and it often stimulates wonderful ideas. Excessive attention monitoring can lead to the loss of students' ability to control their attention. At this point, it's time for technology to stop.
I'll introduce you to one more person.
Li Rui, who used to do teaching product design at Xueersi, opened a consulting company this year to help others polish products.
At the beginning of the year, Mr. Li Rui was still telling me that he was going to recruit people to prepare for a new company.
But when I talked to him recently, he said that there is no need, it is completely enough to be alone, and the business has already started.
What happened?
He used AI.
He is now analyzing customer data with AI. It is said that Li Rui does not look at any excel sheets now. When he gets it, he throws it to the AI for analysis, and he looks directly at the conclusion.
He collates the minutes of the meeting, using AI. It is said that he can now submit the minutes to the client 10 minutes after the end of the meeting with the client.
He does an official account, and he doesn't need to edit it. Throw the written article directly to the AI, and the AI can generate illustrations, guides, golden sentences, and titles.
He does product design, and he doesn't need a designer anymore. What kind of diagram you want, as long as you say it clearly, the AI will generate it directly.
I secretly praise in my heart: this person has lived as this era should be.
In this state, Silicon Valley also invented a new term "soloprenuer", a one-man entrepreneur.
But do you find it strange that there are still a lot of people around us who think that AI is useless. Let it write a year-end summary for me, it's all a bunch of clichés. Let it answer a simple question, and often nonsense, factual errors. If you really want to rely on AI to do important work, it should be early.
Hey, doesn't it sound reasonable on both sides?
So, what's the problem?
If you want to become a person like Li Rui and be able to use AI so freely, what is missing?
It is generally believed that what is lacking is the application of artificial intelligence technology, so let's learn. It's like when we didn't know how to type on a computer and enrolled in a class to learn five-stroke fonts.
However, this year, I met an investor in the field of AI, Zhang Jinjian of Oasis Capital, and gave me an analogy.
Don't think of AI as a tool, he said. Think of it as a tool, and you will demand that it will do your job for you right away, and that it will be productive right away.
You have to think of AI as a human being, and it is a top student who graduated from a prestigious university, studied all majors, and has been among the top performers. They don't have to rest, they have unlimited numbers and are on call 24 hours a day. They have a very good level of knowledge, but they just haven't experienced social experience, and they need you to command before they can work. It's like an abacus bead, and it doesn't move until you pluck it. Also, you will make mistakes, and you have to be patient to teach them and give them time to grow.
Now the question arises, how many of these Xi can you bring?
This analogy opened my mind.
That's right. What we lack is not the ability to use AI, but the ability to command people.
We can do a thought experiment now: If you were to be matched with a large number of such Xi students for free, would you be their leader?
When a bunch of young people are staring at you with big pure eyes, waiting for you to assign a task, can you wave your eyes and command?
- Can you break down your big tasks into a bunch of smaller tasks that Xi can help you do?
- Can you clearly explain the elements, scope, objectives and acceptance criteria of the task when assigning the task?
- Can you see what is wrong when he makes a mistake, and then correct him and coach him?
- Can you rate the quality of their creativity and explain your preferences and tastes?
- Can you coordinate the relationship between so many Xi students that the tasks between them do not fight?
Oh my God, that's what a pretty leadership manager can do.
Speaking of which, there's a word that comes out of nowhere. What we're missing is what prompt engineering is, but "AI leadership."
Li Rui turned a person into a team.
But the era of AI is coming, and the focus is not on that team, but on how many capable teams there are. The point is, if you give a team, can you be a good leader for them.
This is the real test for us in the AI era.
Anyway, the kind of Party B that is now facing big people, or can only say that "high-end atmosphere, high-grade, low-key luxury and connotation" Party A definitely does not have AI leadership and cannot pass this test.
You see, it's not that the tools are stronger, the stronger we are. The reality is that the stronger the tool, the more demands are placed on us. AI is really a strong amplifier of ability.
Understanding this analogy, it is possible to answer the question that everyone is concerned about - will AI eventually replace people?
The answer I'm going to give you today is: no.
Because no matter how strong AI is, it also needs a human to be the leader, to make judgments, and to make decisions.
This may be a bit out of our common sense. Shouldn't the stronger the person, the more likely he should be the leader? If AI is so strong in the future, how can humans still lead it?
This year, Mr. Wan Weigang gave an argument.
He said that AI is indeed strong, not only is it capable, but it is also immortal, and if you make a mistake, you can come back at any time, and after restarting, you are a good man.
This is the advantage of AI, but it is also the disadvantage of AI.
Because there is an iron law in the world: whoever bears the consequences should make decisions.
You can imagine a scene: a group of people want to get out of the primeval forest, there are all kinds of difficulties and dangers along the way, there is a person, super ability, but he is immortal, may I ask, will you choose him as the expedition leader?
Definitely not. Because of the danger, he dared to die. He couldn't die anyway.
So you see, who will be the leader? It is not only about who is capable, but also about who is responsible and who dares to bear the consequences fairly.
People seem to have disadvantages such as pain, death, fear, and love, but compared to AI, this has become a human advantage. Because we can bear the consequences with flesh and blood, with a life destined to be limited.
Therefore, in the human world, man is always the leader of the machine.
The argument is complete.
Let's be honest, standing at the end of 2023, if you ask me: what will AI evolve in the future?
But if you ask me, how to be a person who is afraid, loving, and responsible?
Then, my heart was full of certainty. Because, thousands of years of civilization have already given us the answer.
Let's go, with this answer, let's run together towards that mysterious future.
6. Too crowded?
Two peach blossom springs beyond view
More than ten years ago, there was a popular saying that it was called fleeing from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, saying that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are also indispensable, and such first-tier cities are too crowded and under too much pressure, so they have to escape.
But entrepreneurs don't think so, people who do things are not afraid of crowding, but they are afraid of not succeeding.
So, the next two stories that I'm going to tell you are actually trying to draw your attention to the changes that are happening in our lives, which is that some people have run away from the central cities.
Do you think this is the story of escaping from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou? No, it is finding a new heartland and going to a new place. Both stories are small, but it's an important trend.
Let's start with this one.
Xu Kaicheng, a native of Panzhihua, Sichuan, is 26 years old this year, and he used to work in the provincial capital of Chengdu. Chengdu, a proper new first-tier city. But now, he is in Panzhihuagan Family Farm, growing mangoes and selling mangoes, with a turnover of 1.2 million yuan a year and a net income of 220,000 yuan, which is three times the income of his part-time job in Chengdu.
But I want to tell you this story, not because Panzhihua is Xu Kaicheng's hometown, or because Panzhihua is a good place to grow mangoes – but because Panzhihua is a good place to start a family farm.
What do you mean by that?
Panzhihua was supported by mineral resources in the past. Although the climate is good, because it is a mountainous area and the cultivated land area is small, it is difficult to develop agriculture with scale effect.
But now you may also have the impression that there are people on Douyin who sell Panzhihua's mangoes live all year round, how can they be more in the limelight than Hainan Island?
Teacher Huang Biyun, an expert in supermarkets, told me that Xu Kaicheng did not fight alone at Panzhihuagan Family Farm, but formed an action alliance and had a complete set of playing styles.
This network, which consists of 6,172 local family farms, has developed over the past five years.
Let's take a look at what difficulties Xu Kaicheng will encounter when growing mangoes, and how will they be solved here?
Where does the water come from?
There are many mountains in Panzhihua, and the drop is large, and it is not possible for a family to lead the water of the Jinsha River to the mountain. Here, the government has to negotiate the order in advance by pumping water to higher reservoirs and then releasing water from top to bottom to different areas.
What if I don't have a brand?
The local area has created a shared brand of Panzhihua fruit "Panguo". As long as Xu Kaicheng meets the prescribed criteria, he can join. There are special people to operate brands, advertise, expand channels, participate in agricultural fairs, and negotiate orders from large supermarkets and enterprises. Negotiate good conditions, and everyone enjoys it together. This is something that is difficult for a farmer to do alone. What about brand maintenance?
Mango must be saccharified 7-8 percent on the tree to ensure the taste. If someone picks and ripens in advance, it will destroy the reputation of Panzhihua mangoes. Joining the alliance, Xu Kaicheng has to observe a uniform picking time. In the season of large-scale marketing, the day when the mango goes go down the tree is agreed, and the whistle is blown before action.
Even better, the family farms have joined forces to achieve a temporal scale effect. Panzhihua has a large altitude difference, and on farms at different altitudes, planting different varieties, the time of mango market can be staggered. We don't have to squeeze to go on the market at the same time, and we can also make the Chinese mango market from June to December, and the entire production area of Panzhihua dominates the screen, affecting the minds of consumers.
What about the shortage of labor?
Family farms generally have only two or three laborers, but mangoes are tens of thousands of catties when ripe. Don't be afraid, all alliance members help each other at harvest time. The agricultural cooperative set up a date, and today Xu Kaicheng picked mangoes, and organized forty or fifty people from the whole society to help. After one day's picking, tomorrow, Xu Kaicheng will also go to help other people's homes.
What should I do if the courier is expensive?
Collective bargaining. Mangoes are heavy, easy to rot, and the cost of distribution is very high, and the damage is also large. Family farm alliances negotiate, and they have bargaining power. Not only is the postage much cheaper, but it can also pull through the cost of different places in the country, for example, 10 yuan to run the whole country.
What should I do if I can't sell out?
If you can't sell the fruit in time, it's going to be bad. On-site processing, the introduction of fruit cold storage and freeze-drying plants, according to the use of each family to share the cost.
What if you want to innovate?
Staring at the neighbor's house. There are always some families who, in addition to mangoes, are willing to try passion fruit, avocado, and macadamia nuts. Once they succeed, let's learn together. Anyway, it is a brand that makes Panzhihua fruit together.
Now, Xu Kaicheng's family can be together every day, accompany their children to grow up, and take care of the elderly. Mom manages the fruit trees, Dad docks foreign orders and exports to Russia and Nepal, and he and his daughter-in-law live broadcast, take orders and pack them through Douyin.
Don't think that I'm telling you a story about the Peach Blossom Spring, a story about getting tired of struggling in the big city and going home to farm.
When it comes to returning home, the first thing we think of is the warm human affection and familiar environment.
No, those are not that important for the people who do things.
What Xu Kaicheng returned to was actually a brand-new and efficient cooperation network. This network is a combination of government credit and the spontaneous cooperation of 6,172 family farms.
Jeffrey West, a leading figure in complex science, has studied the relationship between a city's economic aggregate, the number of patents, the number of professionals, and the size of its population. To put it simply, a city's creativity is directly proportional to the power of 1.15 of its population.
We who do things have to go where things are happening.
So, what inspired me from Xu Kaicheng's story is that if you see someone else leaving the big city, it's not necessarily that they've withdrawn, but it could be that they saw a new center that I didn't see and joined a new network of cooperation that I hadn't discovered yet.
Let me tell you about one more thing that has stood out to me this year.
Taoxi River in Jingdezhen. This is a cultural and creative park with a planned area of almost one square kilometer.
Let's introduce a few friends to you:
Philip Read（菲力·雷），画家，来自加拿大，从事瓷板画创作。
Sofía Ullauri Lloré(索菲亚·洛雷),陶瓷艺术家,来自厄瓜多尔。
Eva Roucka is a sculptor from the Czech Republic.
Ran Xiangfei, a designer, from Huaihua, Hunan, founded his own ceramic brand.
Wang Yunbo, a native of Dandong, Liaoning Province, runs a plant dyeing studio.
These artists are artists from all over the world, with different nationalities and different industries, but they are now all gathered in Taoxichuan, Jingdezhen. There are more than 20,000 artists like this.
It's not unusual for artists to gather. However, it is the first time I have heard of the clear proposal of "de-masterization", that is, not to be a big-name artist.
I consulted the general manager of Taoxichuan Cultural and Creative Operation Company. It just so happens that we still get users.
She said that in general, the construction of art industrial parks is to give favorable conditions, introduce master towns, and then separate the stalls and sell them at a high price.
But Tao Xichuan is a different account.
The master has already earned money, and he may not care about the subsidy given by the park; the master has a very wide range of paths, and he doesn't care about the social network you provide him; the master is also very busy and has no time to stay here for a long time, and gives him a studio, which is also locked and locked, and the space utilization rate is very low. Relying on the masters, I am afraid that it will be difficult for the park to be vibrant.
In Taoxichuan, they don't invite masters, but only young craftsmen who come here to start businesses and create.
You see, isn't this line of thinking different?
In the past, when I wanted to do something, my own mentality was "Mu Qiang", trying to chase those things that are stronger and more powerful than me, but today, "cherishing the weak" can also become a successful strategy. Keeping young people who have nothing, so that ordinary people can see hope, will also grow business opportunities.
What kind of opportunities will a young artist have here?
First of all, the industrial advantages accumulated by Jingdezhen over the years have greatly lowered the threshold for entrepreneurship. There are skilled blank drawing masters, and there are public kilns that can be found everywhere. You can buy a finished billet for 3 yuan, you can ask workers to help you glaze for 3 yuan, and you can burn the kiln for one or two yuan.
What's more, the products made here are easier to sell.
Tao Xichuan exempts booth fees for new artists, don't look at this small amount of money, for artists who are just starting out, they can solve their urgent needs.
There is also an anti-laziness mechanism, free booths, which can only give you up to 6 consecutive months. Also, once a month you have to submit an application and tell the organizer that I have a new work. Who will approve it? Tao Xichuan asked these young people to form an autonomous committee and judge for themselves which of us are qualified to set up stalls. You have to rely on your own ability to stay.
Artists have to grow. In Taoxichuan, a cultural and creative district, the best lot is not rented, but is used for cultural public welfare, and more than 400 activities are held a year. Far away from the big cities, art galleries, museums, music, performances, exhibitions, and lectures are indispensable.
It's not hard to stay here and be self-sufficient. For example, this one, Yang Fan, 25 years old, a native of Huanggang, Hubei, stayed in Jingdezhen after graduating from Jingdezhen Ceramic University. Now he is a ceramic jewelry craftsman, with an annual income of about 360,000 yuan.
If you have the ability to start your own studio, you can live a little more nourishing. For example, this one, Chen Jian, 29 years old, is from Zhanjiang, Guangdong. It is the brand owner of metal handicrafts, with an annual income of about 2 million.
What does it look like to be in the head?
For example, this one, Momo, 35 years old, is a native of Jingdezhen. At first, he set up a stall in Taoxichuan, and then became a Douyin anchor (@缘起墨舍陶瓷收藏), cooperating with hundreds of kilns. Now the live broadcast room can achieve more than 200 million turnover a year, and the net profit is more than 20 million.
In Taoxicheon, the threshold can be very low, but the ceiling can also be very high. There are no towering trees, but lichen moss, flowers and shrubs grow in three dimensions, in a variety of forms.
Just now, I told you about two small places that may be out of your field of vision.
There's no big story here.
But they're all telling us that there's a lot more to starting a business, a clustering approach, and a lot more to generating innovation than we originally thought.
Where people are cherished and where there is diversity, there is more ability to gather people.
This reminds me of someone asking the question: what kind of buildings are better?
The architect Alexander came up with an answer: not because of how beautiful the architect designed, but because, "The more patterns of life that emerge in a building, the more beautiful it looks." ”
7. The New Year is here!
A big project with a long way to go
In 2023, there is one last bit of time left.
During the year, many masters waved goodbye to us: writer Milan Kundera, painter Huang Yongyu, director Guo Baochang, Charlie Munger, Kissinger, economist Li Yining, jurist Jiang Ping...... There are so many people to remember.
I'd like to talk about Ryuichi Sakamoto, a world-class musician who I admire for the way he said goodbye to the world.
In 2014, 62-year-old Ryuichi Sakamoto was diagnosed with throat cancer.
Then he opened a column about his thoughts and feelings after his illness. In the article, he asks the question: "How many more full moons can I see?"
This reminder is really important.
We always feel that life is a well that never dries up. In fact, everything in life has a certain number of times.
How many more times can I share it with you like today? This year is the 9th edition, and there are only 11 left until the end of the 20th session. With such a count, I can't help but not cherish every encounter with you.
Ryuichi Sakamoto asked, how many more full moons will we see? dozens, hundreds of times? Not as many as we thought anyway.
Hence the saying: Don't forget to look at the moon every day.
In 2021, Ryuichi Sakamoto's condition relapsed and he was no longer able to undergo surgery, but he still held an installation art exhibition in Beijing.
At the end of 2022, he no longer had the physical strength to complete a live concert, so he completed a performance online in front of an audience around the world. After three or four more full moons, Ryuichi Sakamoto died at the age of 71.
Here comes the thing that shocked me the most.
Before he died, he personally selected every song that was played at his funeral, a total of 33 songs, which lasted for more than two hours. Moreover, the last time this playlist was updated was three days before his death, and Ryuichi Sakamoto calmly added the last tune, which was called "Breathing".
The musician's curtain call was so beautiful, calm, and stubborn.
He did a lot more than the world allowed him to do. Even if it's something you can't see with your own eyes, you have to do it.
I was struck by his ability to control his life.
Yes, the world often pushes us straight into us, and we have to fight and retreat as we grow old.
I'm 50 years old and this feeling is especially clear.
But Ryuichi Sakamoto gave us an example: I can control a lot more than it seems.
What kind of state is this? a state of rebellion against the impermanence of fate.
But I couldn't find the right words to express it until one time this year I heard a sentence from Mei Ciqi, the dean of Tsinghua University's Xinya College: "Don't let the world completely win over us." ”
Yes, that's what it means.
Even if I have to retreat in the face of reality, it will not delay me to still leave a piece of my last iron wall in my heart. Don't let it get your hands on it completely.
Tonight, I said many times: "Be concrete" and "Be actionable". So talk about what I'm going to do next, and what I'm going to do.
I'm going to restart the long video of "Luo Ji Thinking" back then.
What do I talk about in each issue? I concentrate on one thing, and each issue talks about a year in history.
The first phase I started in 1000 A.D. The second issue deals with the year 1001 A.D. Then 1002, 1003, 1004......
We have calculated, in the next six years, we will all be in the Song Dynasty. In the seventh and eighth years, we traveled through the Yuan Dynasty. Immediately after, he entered the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. It was talked about until 1912 A.D.
After the completion of this phase of the project, a total of 913 issues were obtained. After doing it at this pace, I will be 70 years old.
If I could still do it at that time, I would go back and do the second phase of the project, from the establishment of the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC to the first phase in 999 AD, which is another 1220 phase.
If nothing else, this should be the last thing I'll do in my life.
This project that I plan to bet on for the rest of my life is called "Civilization".
In the past six months, some friends will smile when they hear this idea. said, Luo Fat, you can, you want to follow Sima Guang. Sima Guang's "Zizhi Tongjian" was written from the Zhou Dynasty to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and you are going to continue to write "Zizhi Tongjian".
It's a little interesting, but it's not quite.
Sima Guang's "Zizhi Tongjian" ended in 960 A.D., and it was written that the Song Dynasty was founded, and it stopped. And I, I have been jumping for 40 years, starting from 1000 AD, why should I jump for these 40 years?
In order to begin the narrative with the complete number of 1000 C.E.
The year 1000 is recognized by the academic community as the beginning of globalization.
What's more, the Common Era, which is a modern way of dating that is common to all mankind. This meant that we wanted to bring a global perspective to the project.
For example, in 1140, Yue Fei won a great victory in Yuncheng and defeated the heavy ironclad cavalry of the Jin soldiers with infantry. How can we look at this battle from the perspective of the history of world wars?
For example, in the early years of the Song Dynasty, China's imperial examination system matured. What does it inspire us modern people to do general education?
For example, in 1616, Tang Xianzu, who wrote "The Peony Pavilion", and Shakespeare of England died in the same year.
There are so many such topics.
I am not a professional historian, and in the future, everyone will wait for me, while learning Xi, while asking for advice, and at the same time telling you in detail.
I'm waiting for a blessing from you. I wish I finish it, I wish it all right.
Thankfully, I'm still a little bit credited when it comes to setting up oversized and extra-long flags.
I insisted on it for 10 years, and I completed it last year;
My friend of time gave a New Year's Eve speech, and I said that I would do it for 20 years, and now it is the ninth year.
Does anyone still remember the slogan of the "Luo Ji Thinking" program back then? "Fight yourself to the death, serve everyone".
I'm still willing to do something like this – make big wishes, take small steps, walk long distances, kowtow, don't pause, and of course, don't rush at all.
Looking for a job to do, I found a good thing for myself that is rare in the world:
There are too many things in the world that I can't say, but as long as I follow the timeline and do it seriously, I have super certainty.
If there are conditions, let's set up a studio and do it with great fanfare; if there are no conditions, let's just do the same in the study with a mobile phone. If we have commercial income, we will pay more manuscript fees to the planning teachers, and if we don't have commercial income, we can also write manuscripts by reading books by ourselves and using ChatGPT as an assistant.
With this restraint and stimulation of an external heartbeat, I can finally put aside all distractions and do one thing for the long years to come, and keep doing it until it is what I want it to be.
In the new year, I hope you can find something like this too.
Let's do it together: a breath of true breath.
VIII. Prospects
2024 is already here!
Summing up the past year, everyone has their own keywords of the year, Cambridge Dictionary is "illusion", Merriam-Webster dictionary is "real", I heard that the annual life trend released by Xiaohongshu is "listen to persuasion"; Station B's annual barrage is: "Huh?"
What have been the key words in your mind this past year?
The days are passed, just as the poet Haizi said: "It will always be like this, behind the wind is the wind, above the sky is the sky, and the road is still the road in front of the road." ”
Yes, it will always be like this, there will be days after the days, we have to do things ourselves, we have to change ourselves, one leads to another, and the road can become very long, from under our feet, to the other side of the sea-
In 2023, I have traveled to many parts of the world and consulted many Chinese who have gone overseas to start businesses.
We Chinese all say that "it is good to be at home for a thousand days, but it is difficult to go out for a while", drifting across the ocean to do business and looking for opportunities, life is not familiar, language and culture are not familiar, how can it not be difficult? But when I sat opposite them, on their faces, what I saw was not embarrassment, but the excitement of discovering new opportunities.
Last year, Chinese who went overseas to start a business circulated a saying: "Kill back overseas and do a big job." ”
Unexpectedly, in Egypt, where the per capita monthly income is two or three thousand yuan, Chinese milk tea that sells for 20 yuan a cup has to wait in a long line to buy it. No matter where you are, people are curious about fresh tastes and yearn for a better life.
Unexpectedly, women in some countries will cover themselves tightly with robes, but under the robes, they are actually faces painted with heavy makeup. Over there, Chinese female consumers can use up false eyelashes in a month. And 70% of the world's false eyelashes are made in China.
Unexpectedly, the population of Saudi Arabia is not large, but there are many bigwigs who play kryptonite. There, a total of more than 32 million people, 29 million paid game accounts have been opened, and each account spends almost 2,000 yuan a year on games. In the list of the top 10 games in Saudi Arabia, Chinese game companies have won 8 seats.
Unexpectedly, in the North American market, which is a benchmark in the film and television industry, the number of downloads of the Chinese short drama app ReelShort once surpassed Tiktok. The mature Hollywood industry ignores that in addition to traditional film and television, there is a diverse, sinking vast market. Those short and fast boss dramas, werewolf dramas, and vampire dramas just make many North American audiences unable to put them down as soon as they pick them up, and they often pay three or four hundred yuan for a drama.
Unexpectedly, in Africa, e-commerce consumption is upgrading, and the consumer population in Africa is close to 330 million, which is the last billion-level Internet market in the world, forming a purchasing power close to that of China and India.
These things that we didn't think of while sitting at home, and what local companies didn't notice, were seen by Chinese companies when they crossed the sea and looked at the local market with new eyes.
Chinese companies have seen that African households are willing to buy electrical appliances, but the power network is unstable, sometimes with power outages of 12 hours a day. Some Chinese companies are about to go public by exporting household energy storage generators to Africa.
Chinese companies saw that the Japanese per capita family living area is small and traditional household appliances are unsalable, so they designed LED ceiling lamps with integrated projectors and audio functions, which have grown against the trend in Japan's home appliance industry and become the sales champion for four consecutive years.
Chinese companies have seen that in North America, hiring people to mow the grass, clear the snow, and clean the pool is quite expensive. Therefore, we have developed lawn mowing robots, snow clearing robots, and pool robots. In this category, the market leaders are almost all Chinese companies.
Isn't this generation of people who go to sea a little different?
He Wei, the director of Xiaguang Think Tank, which focuses on overseas research, provided me with a lot of research cases this year.
One of the things that touched me the most was what she said: The era of the new generation of Chinese going to sea has finally come. "Where I struggle, is my hometown. ”
The reason why I will talk to you about going overseas at the first moment of 2024 is because-
Anyone who can take root in a strange place, anyone who can find a way with the light in his eyes, anyone who can find a job for himself in an uncertain environment, whether it is far away or nearby, you are a brave person who goes to sea.
This sea, no matter how big or small.
I've always enjoyed reading Wang Shuo's novels. He had a saying, I always remember, "Life can't change, I will change, and no one will try to ruin my good mood." ”
Today's New Year's Eve speech, every story you hear, is essentially telling, if you want to change, then try to return to yourself, back to the neighborhood, back to the real life scene, starting from a specific action, let's go day by day.
Don't spoil your good mood.
In the new year, we have agreed, if we encounter difficulties and obstacles-
Let's just push the window open and shout with all our strength: The world is a grass platform, but I'm not!