An inspirational story about the difficulty of starting a business: it is difficult for a boss to start a business from scratch. When it comes to private business owners, most people will think that they live a high life and have no worries about food and clothing. In fact, funds are accumulated step by step, life is improved bit by bit, and the fruits of bosses' labor are accumulated through hard work and sweat. This is the deepest feeling when interviewing Liu Jinzhu. In Jincheng, as long as you make the uniform of the company, people will think of a name, Zhu Jin Clothing. People in Jincheng not only like Zhu Jin's uniform, but also talk about the boss of this enterprise. Liu Jinzhu's small achievements have come from scratch, and there are different versions so far, but when it comes to the entrepreneurial history of Zhu Jin's clothing, there is a characteristic that it is hard and tortuous.
Childhood poverty
Liu Jinzhu is from Tongbai, Henan. My father died at the age of 5, and my mother died at the age of 10. Liu Jinzhu has lived with two older sisters and one older brother since childhood. ? I'm not as poor as others. I play a traditional lifestyle. Although my two sisters have been working in the agricultural sector so far, our two brothers have received high school and university education respectively, which is due to the indomitable character trained by my poor family. ? Liu Jinzhu quietly took a drag on his cigarette and said thoughtfully.
You can imagine how poor a family without parents is. Fortunately, he is talented and his academic performance has been good. During the Spring Festival, every household buys New Year pictures and sticks them on the wall. Their family has never bought New Year pictures, because as long as they have a penny, their brothers and sisters have to save it for life and school. However, the walls of their house are covered with awards from their brothers, which is the only thing that their family can be proud of.
Perhaps it is the encouragement of these awards, or perhaps it is the tempering of life. Since then, he has strengthened his belief. No matter how bitter and poor you are, you must also walk out of a life mode different from ordinary people. He must go his own way and do his own business in the future. This determination and belief has been urging him.
The high school life from 1987 to 1990 passed quickly. In the year of graduation, he was successfully admitted to an institution of higher learning, ranking seventh in the county.
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After graduating from college, Liu Jinzhu invited five or six students to go south to Guangzhou to explore the market and find their own development path. Their trip to Guangzhou is only enough for one way. When they come, they are ready to never look back until they make some tricks. In the first few days in Guangzhou, they were at a loss because of fierce market competition and fast-paced life. In the following days, other students went home one after another, and he stayed in Guangzhou for the longest time. Two years later, he returned to the mainland with rich business management knowledge and advanced market management concepts.
1996, Liu Jinzhu came to Jincheng, which was still strange to him at that time. Here, he had an idea. He sent a fax to Shanxi Daily from Jincheng Post Office, asking for a job advertisement. He remembers it clearly: it was a newspaper in May of 1 year. After the job advertisement was released, many people looked for him. Among many businesses, he chose a health care product manufacturer in Huguan. From then on, I stayed in Shanxi and began to have a preliminary concept of Jincheng's market.
Later, Liu Jinzhu worked as the vice president of an automobile liability company for two years. The businesses he contacted involved Henan, Shandong, Hebei and other places, and he also had a deeper understanding of the business community. He has served as assistant of travel agency, department manager of clothing factory and general manager of clothing responsibility company. Although Liu Jinzhu's position is changing, his department is changing, and the customers and markets he deals with are also changing, his distinctive personality and the essential spirit of hard work, honesty and trustworthiness, and innovation that he has practiced have never changed.
Start your own business
With the understanding of Jincheng and even Shanxi clothing market, Liu Jinzhu took a fancy to an opportunity for him to show his strength. At the beginning of this year, he led some people to join Dark Horse Co., Ltd., specializing in clothing projects, and created a brand-new clothing brand-DCL clothing.
He invested more than 6.5438 billion yuan to buy equipment, and many experienced technicians took the initiative to work in his factory after learning that he was going to make clothes. After the personnel problem was solved, he began to conduct a detailed investigation and study on the market. At that time, Jincheng's uniforms and uniforms sold very well. He immediately changed careers and began to cooperate with the unit to produce and process uniforms. Liu Jinzhu personally pays attention to production, sales and management. With his sales experience and perseverance in Guangzhou, the products produced by his clothing factory have been affirmed and praised by the ordering unit, and orders have been delivered to your door continuously.
He seized the potential business opportunity in this market and began to import more advanced equipment. He liberated himself and studied some information about production and sales. With the operation scale of a small prefecture-level city, his products far exceed the level of his peers.
Liu Jinzhu said that although there are too many hardships along the way, after all, he has exercised himself, gained a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the market and management, and urged himself to develop his career day by day. He said:? I don't want to be a stall owner. Life is full of choices. With a little hesitation, fate may change direction. I want to seize every opportunity that belongs to me. ?
Entrepreneurial inspirational story is difficult: from a debt of 200 thousand to an entrepreneurial legend with a net worth of one million, losing a kindergarten teacher? A job? Start working as a dishwasher
Sun was born in the 1960s. Like most people at that time, she was ordinary and ordinary.
After graduating from high school, she went to an enterprise kindergarten as a kindergarten teacher. However, at the end of 1996, the company suddenly informed her that the kindergarten was dissolved due to poor business conditions.
She was unprepared? Understand? Life becomes empty. Soon after she lost her job, her husband was laid off, and the family suddenly had no source of income, while the children were still at school. What should I do to make a living? I have to find another job.
At that time, she said, I felt like I had a nightmare. But looking back now, she is also grateful for that life. It was in this matter of washing dishes that she laid the foundation for her future development.
From 1997 to 200 1, with the help of others, Sun started working as a dishwasher in a Japanese restaurant in a hotel in Changchun, but he could only get no income from 500 yuan's salary every month.
I became the front desk manager within a year.
Up to now, she can still remember the first sentence she learned in Japanese when she went to the restaurant to wash dishes on the first day. Bring all the washed dishes. ? First morning at work, chef? Japanese Kanda Saburo assigned her a job in Japanese.
At that time, she had not been exposed to Japanese. After listening to this, she had no idea what it meant. Kanda Saburo spoke several times in Japanese, but she still didn't respond, which made Kanda Saburo very angry. She threw a spoon into the sink and left very angry.
Afterwards, a colleague in the kitchen told her that the chef just asked her to bring the plate. Through this incident, she fully realized that in such an environment, she could not work without knowing Japanese. That afternoon, she learned simple Japanese? After work, take care. ? When she left work that day, when she said goodbye to the chef in this blunt Japanese, the chef was surprised and then told her happily in the same blunt Chinese. You are a hardworking China native, and you will certainly develop. ?
Later, she studied Japanese very hard and spent most of her spare time studying Japanese. When the chef knew this, he began to promote her and teach her some Japanese cooking skills.
A short month later, she was transferred to the kitchen by virtue of her diligence and sensitivity to Japanese cuisine. After working in the kitchen for nearly a year, she has basically mastered the Japanese cuisine, and her diligence has also been valued by Japanese bosses. 1998, she was promoted to the front office manager of the restaurant.
By about 200 1, this restaurant has become a well-known restaurant in Changchun, and Sun's diligence and management experience have also been recognized by his peers.
So many other restaurants invited her to work in the past, and some actually offered a commission of 5% of the annual gross profit and a salary of 2,000 yuan a month. At that time, her salary was several times different from their generous conditions, but she had only one idea at that time. I was trained here, but I was not needed in the shop. ?
If you open your own shop, you will encounter SARS.
By the end of 200 1, the owner of this restaurant began to work abroad, ending the restaurant's business in China, and Sun had to lose his job again.
But at this time, she is different from the unemployed kindergarten teacher five years ago, but an industry expert with rich experience in Japanese restaurant management.
So she went to another Japanese restaurant in Changchun as a manager, but her management style was difficult to integrate with the family-run enterprise, so after more than a month, she resigned and left. Later, she tried several others one after another, and they all encountered the same problem. In that case, why not open a shop and be your own boss? She is cruel and cruel, and she did it herself! After a short preparation, she borrowed 200,000 yuan from the bank and some money from relatives and friends, and finally opened a Japanese restaurant with a scale of about 160 square meters on June 5, 2002.
With her own management experience and familiarity with the industry, she managed to turn the store into a famous Japanese restaurant in Changchun within one month of opening. According to her idea, the bank loan can be paid off in less than one year.
But maybe fate is deliberately testing her. Just a few months after opening the business, she encountered the biggest crisis in her career? Sars.
? At that time, there were very few customers every day, even on weekends, and there were very few customers in the store. Lost at least 30 thousand a month. ? Now she recalls the situation during the SARS period and still has deep feelings.
At that time, many hotels were basically in a state of bleak operation, and some even? Fragile? Disappeared during this period.
In order to quickly reverse this situation, she began to plan to send Japanese box lunches to schools and hospitals. Her efforts helped her again. In the first half of 2003, a professor ordered a box lunch in her shop. In order to let the professor eat the hot box lunch, she specially took a taxi from Tongzhi Street to deliver the box lunch to the professor's house.
At that time, the professor was very moved and publicized her lunch box to her colleagues at school, and the fact that she took a taxi to deliver the lunch box became a well-known story in the industry.
Up to now, many university teachers and professors have made friends with her through lunch boxes and become frequent visitors in her shop.
At the same time? Take a taxi to send a box lunch? This also won her credibility. At that special time, someone still went to her shop for dinner, and she finally got through that difficult period.
An answer brings a group of guests.
In June 2003, Sun Changshu started to develop his own Japanese restaurant in one breath. One of the Japanese guests gave her great inspiration.
According to her introduction, in June 2003, a Japanese old man came to the store. Before that, the Japanese old man had been to several restaurants in Changchun, but they all felt unsatisfactory. When someone introduced Sun's Japanese restaurant to the old Japanese, the old man didn't take it seriously at first. When he came to the shop, he gave Sun one? Run away? .
? Let me ask you a question. If you can answer, I'll have dinner here. What is the best temperature for sake in Japan? In Japan, whether a restaurant is authentic or not is measured by sake.
? The temperature of the human body is most suitable for 37 degrees Celsius. ? The Japanese old man was very excited when he heard this answer, because the heads of other Japanese restaurants in Changchun he had been to failed to answer this question correctly, but after tasting her cooking, the old man gave her the highest and most cordial evaluation. This is the flavor of our hometown (Japan). ?
Since then, every time the old man comes to Changchun, he will come to her shop to taste and constantly introduce her restaurant to his friends. With this experience, Sun saw the benefits of service details, and even improved the level of the whole restaurant from service details.
In her restaurant, details are everywhere. When the toothpick box was opened, 16 toothpicks were neatly placed in a square, and the wooden window lattice on the wall was almost wiped without a trace of dust, Sun said. She wears white gloves to check every window lattice every day to make sure it is clean. The Japanese attach great importance to the cleanliness of the dining environment, but we can't underestimate this. ? It is through this service that her restaurant has welcomed more customers.
Now, all the 200,000 loans that Sun owed to the bank when he started his business have been paid off, and his personal assets have reached nearly 6,543,800 yuan.
And she also has a bigger goal, to double her store on the existing basis and strive to open it to Japan.
? What's the big deal? Start over?
Reporter: Why do you want to start a business in catering?
Sun (hereinafter referred to as? Sun? ): In the restaurant where I worked, many service personnel are relatives of the boss and can't say anything or give orders. At work, I have high requirements for the quality of employees, many people will not adapt, and it is difficult to cooperate with these people. The only way is to choose to leave and open your own shop.
Reporter: Since you have chosen to open your own shop, can you accept the harsh training and management of shop assistants?
Sun: They can't accept it at all. People are lazy. If they don't hurry, they will become lazy. In order to express their opposition to my management style, they once joined hands? Strike? In protest. But I told them that the strict requirements now are not personal. You are a migrant worker now. Without strict training and study, you will only be a migrant worker everywhere. If you can pass my training, you will have a chance to change your destiny wherever you go in the future. As a result, ordinary employees are excellent now.
Reporter: During the SARS period, there were problems in the operation of your restaurant. Have you ever thought about giving up this industry?
Sun: At that time, SARS really hit me hard. I once thought, can I really only be a migrant worker, but not a boss? However, I think my Japanese teacher, who is over 70 years old, can still get the first place in China. A man in his seventies, after several failures, can still work hard and finally succeed. I am much younger than her and have more time than her. As long as I work hard, I should be able to succeed, so I will grit my teeth and start all over again. Facts have proved that I succeeded.
Reporter: In business operation, we pay great attention to the location of the store, but your store did not choose to open in a busy street, but in a small alley. Why do you choose to open a shop in such a place?
Sun: I chose to open Japanese food in such an alley, not to save costs, but to spend all the 6,000 yuan I saved every month on purchasing raw materials of Japanese food to ensure the original flavor of Japanese food. Cooking authentic dishes with authentic ingredients is one of the reasons why my restaurant is so prosperous.
Reporter: The shop assistants in your are excellent. Do you have any unique experience in the management of shop assistants?
Sun: One thing is very important in my management, and that is? Working hours are working hours? There can only be one relationship between oneself and employees, and the reward and punishment system is extremely strict. At the end of work, employees can put forward what they think is unreasonable on this day and discuss it together. If it makes sense, then listen to his advice in the next work, so that the contradiction between the boss and the clerk formed in the work can be resolved, and the opinions of the employees can be respected, so as to work harder.
Entrepreneur speech
? There are always some people in this world who complained five years ago that they didn't seize the opportunity of wealth ten years ago. Today, five years later, they began to complain that they didn't seize the great opportunity five years ago. I believe that in five years, they will complain that they didn't seize today's opportunity. In fact, there is no shortage of opportunities in this world. There is a good opportunity at any time. The key is whether you can feel it and do it with all your might. As long as you work hard, it's never too late. ?
Inspirational Story of Difficult Entrepreneurship: Yang Haoyong, CEO of Jiji.com, was impulsive and stumbled.
Move Craigslist, the largest classified information website in the United States, to China? This idea was the main reason that drove Yang Haoyong back to China to start his own business. At this time, he? Know nothing about the Internet in China? But just looking for classified information websites is a good thing.
? I think it (Craigslist) is used by so many people, and it must be valuable. ? He said,? Many great products are like this. Both social networking sites and search engines have no business model in the early days, but they can help others solve problems. ?
Yang Haoyong didn't think too much. He decided to hurry back to China and try to get ahead of others. After returning to Beijing, he and a part-time student completed the website architecture within two months. In March 2005, the website was launched. But not long after, more than 1000 classified information websites suddenly appeared in China. With only $654.38 million in hand, Yang Haoyong had to consider where and how to spend the money.
At that time, most domestic websites followed Craigslist's example and set up many city sub-stations to provide various service categories, but it seemed a little acclimatized. Yang Haoyong decided not to spread it all over the country, but to make a single breakthrough, concentrate resources on expanding the Beijing market, and only focus on renting houses, secondhand goods and making friends.
? It's best to focus on the initial stage of entrepreneurship, which other cities can't reach and don't have that much money. ? In his view, if you want to win, you must attack others' weaknesses with your own advantages and try your best to catch one? Hill? . At that time, among the websites of the same type in China, only Jiji.com focused on the Beijing market.
Looking back this time? Just leave? Yang Haoyong admitted that his entrepreneurial experience was not the result of careful calculation, and he didn't want to make money at first, just wanted to operate. ? Entrepreneurs just make the seemingly impossible possible. If you can see many things clearly at a glance, there may not be only a few people to do it, and it is impossible to do only one or two in the end. ? In his opinion, just one product? Is it useful? 、? There is demand? In the end, we will definitely find a business model and realize business value.
But in the first four years, Yang Haoyong and his team? Suffering? Come here? What the company lacks is not courage, but capital. In 2008, it happened that the market was in financial crisis. Many interested investors gave up their investment, but Yang Haoyong finally got an investment letter of intent, but he waited for this contract for 1 1 month. This is very painful for any startup? . Three months before receiving the funds, the company ran out of money, so Yang Haoyong had to lead employees to do sales and advertising. At the most embarrassing time, the company did not lay off employees, but encouraged employees to go home for vacation, and executives were not paid.
After this period of downturn, 20 12 China Internet ushered in the big outlet of group buying, and the market-going network also ushered in the peak of growth, and the website traffic surged. By 20 12, due to the new business needs, the company has expanded from several hundred to nearly 2,000 employees. But for this kind of expansion, Yang Haoyong defined it as? Decision-making mistakes? .
Jump into the group buying bubble, Gigi. In the case that the main business is unprofitable, com has hastily opened up a new front. This poses a great challenge to the company's operation. In just a few months, domestic group buying enterprises were killed miserably. After half a year, the group buying business in Jiji.com had to stop, and a large number of employees were laid off.
After this incident, Yang Haoyong found that the company was too focused on technology and lacked management experience. ? When any startup is expanding rapidly, it should not only pay attention to the business itself, but also pay attention to team building, including organizational processes, which I learned in Central Europe. ? He said,? Teams must grow with entrepreneurs. If there is a short board, the whole company will be affected. ?
Look inside, not outside.
Now that the market has gone through several rounds of financing, there won't be any embarrassment of capital fracture in those years, and it's not in front of Yang Haoyong? Where is the tuyere? What are you going to do? problem He seems to have returned to his original style: concentration.
Today, the classified information business in Jiji.com has maintained a growth of 150%. Yang Haoyong believes that the company can develop many new businesses, but it is more important to make its own business bigger and stronger. ? It's different now. What we are thinking about is not what new business we should set foot in, but how to make a company with thousands of people run longer and develop longer. ?
In Yang Haoyong's view, he has stood on the forefront. As long as there are no major mistakes, the business will grow rapidly. But this era has higher requirements for internet companies, not only to have excellent product technology, but more importantly, to build excellent teams.
? In the past, we always considered how much our performance could grow and which industry we would enter, and rarely looked at what needed to be changed within the company. Now I think more about whether the organizational structure is reasonable, whether the efficiency is higher, whether the talent training of the team is better, and whether the whole system can be more perfect. ?
Yang Haoyong, who has changed his mind, has implemented many new measures within the company, such as putting forward new requirements for the direct sales and channel team with more than 1 000 people? In addition to achieving sales performance, it is also necessary to export talents to other businesses of the company; In the mobile internet business, the company promotes virtual stocks to encourage employees to hold shares internally, and the company develops to a certain stage to buy back shares, or encourages internal incubation projects to raise funds; The product research and development part adopts HRBP system to help each team sort out talents, formulate incentive mechanism and explore product design. Good prospects? .
As a big company, Jiji.com's organizational structure has also been adjusted: How many product R&D teams are divided into several hundred people? Team? Each team maintains a scale of five or six people, with a maximum of 10, including a project leader. On the one hand, it is convenient for exams, on the other hand, it ensures the speed of research and development.
? Twenty or thirty people write code together, and it is easy to eat the same pot; Become a small team of several people. If you can't do it well, others will feel it and it will be easier to evaluate it. ? At the same time, most projects are promoted in a week or two, which is unimaginable in traditional industries, including traditional software industries. For example, Yang Haoyong said that projects that have been in the company for more than one month are often internal reorganization, code reorganization or major functional development, and the top management must take a look; Small projects will be very granular to ensure the speed of advancement.
Yang Haoyong entrusted the decision-making power of most projects to the team and only focused on the promotion of large projects. ? The final KPI and year-end option incentives are linked to the project results. I don't need to supervise what is done between everyone. If the result is good, I will be motivated. ?
As the saying goes, the CEO's job is to melt money, set the direction and find someone. For Yang Hao, there is another task now? Sort out the process. ? Big company disease? In fact, every company has it, and we will reflect on it every once in a while. ? He said,? Recently, we are still studying how to improve efficiency. In the process of rapid development of the company, we emphasize risk control and the process should be more standardized. Looking back now, we must emphasize authorization again. ?
More important than money is the process.
Although we have been working hard in this field for 10 years, Yang Haoyong believes that the opportunity in the field of life service has just arrived: organizing life service providers through the Internet platform and providing services to users more efficiently will be the next big trend. Life service is a bigger blue ocean than e-commerce? . He pointed out that in many mature markets, the output value of life service accounts for more than 70% of GDP, while in China, this figure exceeded 50% for the first time.
Nowadays, Jiji.com has paid more and more attention to the mobile Internet. This year, the traffic from the mobile terminal has exceeded 60%, compared with 30% last year.
For some vertical websites that focus on a single business, Jiji.com has brought a certain impact. Will Yang Haoyong be like this? Reverse erosion? The reasons for this phenomenon can be attributed to two points: first, the battlefield is different, and second, the dimension reduction attack? Almost all of Jiji.com's traffic in third-and fourth-tier cities comes from mobile terminals, and the cost of acquiring users is lower than that of some vertical websites.
? Take recruitment as an example. They have about 20,000 to 40,000 resumes every day, and we add100,000 resumes every day. One of the reasons is that we pay attention to the needs of grassroots workers, and it is valuable to do a good job in the experience of these users. ? The business model of many vertical websites is to charge membership fees, which keeps many users out.
Yang Haoyong believes that the platform advantages of classified information websites and the scale effect of complementary cooperation among various classifications are more obvious. For users, finding a job at the Expo will produce a certain degree of user stickiness, and then the needs of renting, buying and living services will also be solved. ? In Jiji.com, 40%~50% of the total revenue this year comes from recruitment business, and the annual recruitment sales are expected to reach 700 ~ 800 million yuan.
/kloc-More than 0/000 classified information websites that appeared 0/00 years ago, most of them have disappeared, but Yang Haoyong persisted because of a mentality of enjoying the process. The farther back, the less it's about money? .
? Earn more, that is, one room and one car, eat better and go out to play. ? He said,? The purpose lies in the process. There are all kinds of problems in the process of starting a business, so try to solve them. I found that many people used it and found it very useful, which returned to my original intention of returning to China to start a business. ?