Text|Daily People Club Xu Qing."If it's an absolute head anchor, I think you should care about him well, give enough benefits, see what else he wants, just give it to him. Churchill said that the most essential meaning between people is exchange, and there are no permanent friends, only eternal interests. After this sentence is clarified, interests are power, fame, and money, and if these things are divided, I think there will be no problem. ”Edit|Shinno.
No one expected that in the long night of Gaotu, it was actually a competitor who sent the fire.
On the evening of December 14th, when the number of fans of Gaotu Jiapin Douyin exceeded 1 million, the founder Chen Xiangdong deliberately changed into a big red T-shirt, and was so excited that he roared loudly: Thank you to the lovely family members in front of the screen!
A "bloody case" caused by the Oriental selection made the angry "mothers-in-law" frantically defend Dong Yuhui, and turned their heads and ran to the live broadcast room of Gaotu Jiapin to send "splashing wealth". According to the battle report released later, in just four days, the Douyin account of Gaotu Jiapin has increased by nearly 1 million fans. At the most, 180,000 people crowded into the live broadcast room at the same time, and the cumulative total transaction volume broke through the 10 million yuan mark.
When catching the "splashing" traffic, Chen Xiangdong and the anchors of Gaotu Jiapin sang "The Sea" excitedly. Screenshot of the live broadcast.
For this "pouring wealth and wealth", Chen Xiangdong chose to accept all the orders and keep the traffic here for himself. On December 15th, Daily People was invited to participate in the communication meeting of Gaotu Jiapin, and Chen Xiangdong, wearing a red sweatshirt, was the absolute protagonist. Compared with the anxiety of gray hair on his temples when Gaotu was laid off more than two years ago, he now looks good, even if he has slept at two or three o'clock in the morning in recent days, "It's not that I'm too excited to sleep, but there are too many messages to reply."
The founder of Gaotu has not experienced the taste of being "bombed indiscriminately" for a long time. After the "double reduction" fell in 2021, Chen Xiangdong, who has always been on his lips, had to make the decision to lay off tens of thousands of employees, the education business that injected his heart and soul fell apart, and the stock price also responded, and Gaotu's future was bleak.
Gaotu Jiapin's live broadcast room was also unknown for a long time. This account was created on November 16, 2022, according to the anchor Haotian's recollection, they worked hard for 8 months before they accumulated 2,000 fans, **the number of people is only a dozen people all year round, and only 8 people at the same time at the most deserted time**. After doing it for more than a year and losing a lot of money, someone persuaded Chen Xiangdong to stop doing it.
I have to say that the style of Gaotu Jiapin and the Dongfang selection next door is too similar. Shrimp, rice, and agricultural products are sold over there, and they are also sold hereThe anchor over there used to be a teacher, who could bring goods in English, play and sing guitars, and the teacher's talent show here has never been interrupted. It's just that only Dongfang Selection won the lottery and Dong Yuhui came out, and Gaotu Jiapin is just another, mediocre live broadcast room.
In fact, Gaotu and New Oriental have a long relationship - Chen Xiangdong was born in New Oriental, was once the executive president of New Oriental, and is an old acquaintance and colleague with Yu Minhong. He started his first business after leaving New Oriental, and he did who to learn from (later renamed Gaotu), and he was a direct competitor to New OrientalThe second time I tried to bring goods through live broadcasting, I was a good product with Gaotu, and I still competed with Dongfang Selection. No wonder netizens joked, "Chen Xiangdong touched Yu Minhong to cross the river".
Whether it's hot or hitchhiking, Chen Xiangdong doesn't mind what others say about him. Some netizens who don't think it's a big deal to watch the excitement suggest that Gaotu directly poach Dong Yuhui, and Chen Xiangdong in the live broadcast did not dodge, and directly contributed a golden sentence: "Dong Yuhui is not used for digging, but for love." ”
In recent days, rumors that all parties want to dig up Dong Yuhui have been rampant. First of all, Luo Yonghao, an old acquaintance of Yu Minhong and Chen Xiangdong, publicly shouted: If Mr. Dong Yuhui himself wants to start a business, I am willing to support it. Later, there were rumors that JD.com's vice president of human resources had gone to Shaanxi to recruit Dong Yuhui with Liu Qiangdong's autograph, which Dong himself denied.
At the communication meeting, Chen Xiangdong once again reiterated his views. "How could I dig Dong Yuhui?At the moment, (this) is definitely not something that people do, unless Dong Yuhui leaves by himself. He also felt that he understood Yu Minhong's thoughts, and agreed with the view that "with Dong Yuhui, there is Oriental Selection", "The times create heroes, and heroes can sometimes make a company."
Chen Xiangdong did not hide his excitement at all, and his voice suddenly became louder when he spoke. At present, the luck sent by the opponent is still being sent to the live broadcast room of Gaotu Jiapin, but whether it can stay for a long time still has to wait for the verification of time.
The following is Chen Xiangdong's self-statement, which was compiled according to Chen Xiangdong's speech and answers to questions at the communication meeting, and was deleted and modified on the basis of not affecting the original meaning:
01 A reporter friend asked today, do you think you can increase the number of fans by another 500,000?Can it break through 2 million?
Actually, I don't care anymore, the problem I want to care about is to let all the partners calm down, think deeply, customers come to our live broadcast room, what do they want?I think there are two things he wants, one is to be happy and interesting here, and the second is that the things he buys are cost-effective.
After this wave of popularity has passed, some people feel that the popularity of the live broadcast room may fall, and it may even return to the previous state. I don't think we can go back to the previous state, because with so many fans and cognition, as long as we do the basic actions, we won't have any problems surviving.
I had a meeting this morning to tell the team, don't pay attention to what others do, we are still short in time, and the scale is relatively small, just do what we do, how is your quality, how to give good incentives to your friends, that's all.
Regarding the recent turmoil in Dongfang Selection, I think Mr. Yu made it very clear that this matter must be wrong, and if you communicate internally about internal problems, you will commit a big taboo if you go to the Internet to talk about it.
"If it's an absolute head anchor, I think you should care about him well, give enough benefits, see what else he wants, just give it to him. Churchill said that the most essential meaning between people is exchange, and there are no permanent friends, only eternal interests. After this sentence is clarified, interests are power, fame, and money, and if these things are divided, I think there will be no problem.
Some people say that "Gaotu Jiapin is stepping on the Oriental Selection to cross the river", and some people say that "Gaotu is about to surpass Dongfang Selection", I think this hot discussion is not right, because Gaotu core is to do education, Dongfang Selection does e-commerce, these are two different companies, if you say Gaotu Jiapin, I think it's okay, but Gaotu Jiapin has just begun, there is still a long way to go, and now I think it's a bit too early to talk about it.
Gaotu Jiapin surpassed Oriental Selection and topped the list of food goods. Screenshot of the live broadcast.
As for "the live broadcast room is occupied by the fan circle culture", I think this question is an outright lie. People live for a lifetime, don't they just join different circles?Home is a small circle, classmates are a circle, and colleagues at work are not also circles. Is it wrong to meet the fan circle?That's right, right?
Gaotu has experienced similar things in its development. When we have more than 40,000 employees, the management cadres may not be mature, and the employees who encounter problems will say that I want to make trouble, and even complain internally. The cadres said that you look at him, there is a problem with morality and values.
I said that people have just graduated from a school, and their parents have raised them for decades, so why do people have problems when they come to the company?I told the cadre that you didn't communicate enough, you didn't have enough emotion, you didn't have empathy, you didn't meet his needs, things didn't get things done, what is wrong with him?So I don't think let's talk about the fan circle culture and start opposing others.
02 Gaotu Jiapin is currently focusing on strategic focus and focusing on agricultural products. I think agricultural products are a very big track, so I really don't have any plans to expand the matrix number at the moment.
As for what the future growth goals are, the changes are too fast now, so the current plans are all short-term, and different plans are being made every day. But for the long term, I did it a year ago.
Now Gaotu is a bit out of the circle, and old friends and classmates who haven't been in touch for many years suddenly come to me. I said that I have been doing education for so many years, and Gaotu was listed in the United States that year, I thought everyone should know very well, but I didn't expect that there were still people who didn't know much, and they only knew about me through Gaotu Jiapin.
A large number of good friends recommended the best businessmen they knew to contact Gaotu Jiapin, saying if they could help them do sales, and manufacturers who have been doing agricultural products for 20 years came to me and said if they could establish long-term cooperation, and I met for 5 minutes.
In fact, we set up a live broadcast team in July 2014, and in December 2020, I also formed a team called Jinniu, which went to Changsha to take out an independent office and find the benchmark Xi in Douyin.
At that time, after a few months of doing this, our account had more than a million followers, which was very ambitious. But then the policy changed, the person in charge left Gaotu, and a lot of messy things happened, and the matter was broken. But I've been saying internally that Douyin is such a huge opportunity, why can't we seize it?
At the end of 2022, I thought about it seriously and felt that any great channel change was accompanied by a great brand revolution and a great business perception transfer. I think that Douyin has so many businesses that do well, such a high GMV, and we Gaotu started with ** educational content, and we are famous teachers, so we should still do this.
On November 16, 2022, we established Gaotu Jiapin and began to enter this field. At that time, I had a few particularly painful and tangled questions. The first is who to let be the CEO after the establishment of Gaotu Jiapin.
I asked some core cadres internally, but no one wanted to, so I became the CEO myself. I don't have enough time, and I don't know much about it, so it's embarrassing to not be able to do it, and I will be questioned by others. It struggles me.
In addition, everyone knows that after the company went public, I promised that I would not accept interviews or participate in activities in the future, calm down and study hard, so that I could grow better and make better decisions, but doing Douyin means that I have to show my face and change my life mode. That promise is also a challenge for me, how do I talk to myself?How to reconcile with yourself?
The last layer of pain is that Gaotu education is not so stable, if I go to do Gaotu as a CEO, it will send a signal to everyone, is it that I don't do education anymore, I don't love education anymore?
Later, I thought about it, and I think that exploring Gaotu products should be the most important thing for Gaotu, and we must seize such a major change in business channels. It was because of the changes brought about by the WeChat scene that Gaotu became a great company.
03 I had a list at hand, and there were three most important things.
First thing, I opened my own Douyin account. Everyone saw that I was the first Douyin posted on January 6, 2023, and now I have more than 4 million fans here, and I didn't expect the most popular one, **There are more than 60 million times, more than 70,000**.
Chen Xiangdong's personal Douyin account has accumulated more than 4 million followers. Screenshot of Douyin.
The second thing is that I want to be the CEO of Gaotujiapin. At that time, there were about a dozen people in the team, and they called me Manager Chen. I started from the chairman and CEO of a listed company to a small project manager.
The third thing is how to match talents in the organization. We now have more than 100 employees, 270 at the peak. These more than 100 employees are really carefully selected and tested. I've interviewed thousands of people, and of course some interviews are as little as 5 minutes. This is so important, how busy was I at one point?I spent the Chinese New Year's Eve with a group of friends in the company, and it was the second half of the night when I got home.
I remember that day, I gave dozens of ** to many good friends who do e-commerce. I said help me quickly, I'm a fool now, I can't do anything. They were all surprised, and they also criticized me and said, "Mr. Chen, you have everything, you can find someone to do it, why do you do it yourself?"I said that this matter is too difficult, and there is a high probability that it will fail, so I will take responsibility for this failure.
Before this wave of traffic arrived, we actually spent tens of millions, but we didn't do it. At its peak, 270 employees is also a lot of labor expenses, you must know that e-commerce talents are relatively expensive in fierce competition, and everyone has a lot of doubts about me.
When we were in January 2023, there were thousands of people in the live broadcast room, and it was very lively during the Chinese New Year. But then it dropped to more than 1,000 people, and then it became 500 people, and it just kept going **.
At one point, we had a few very good anchors leave, either back to the education line, or left the company, and after going out, they wanted to be well-known anchors, but they didn't succeed, and Gao Tu couldn't come back, and finally went to other institutions to become teachers. I still feel quite uncomfortable in my heart, many people tell me euphemistically, Gaotu Jiapin is not turned off, I tell all those good friends, give me some more time, to all the important management cadres, give me some more time.
I really didn't want to give up. Our Gaotu Jiapin suddenly went out of the circle that day, and the co-founder Luo Bin ran 22 kilometers around the road in front of his house alone. He said "touched". Luo Bin was very concerned about me, and when I decided to go to Gaotu Jiapin, he came to talk to me and said don't do it, if it can't be done, right?
But I know that in the face of great opportunities, direction and courage are the most important, do you dare to set off?Are you afraid of losing face?At present, in the field of e-commerce live broadcast, the CEO of a listed company personally serves as the project manager, and I estimate that there are not many in China.
From 2014 to 2017, we stumbled for three years before we finally found a profit scene. Gaotu has only been doing it for a year, and I always feel that I shouldn't give up like this. I think if you really make a company of 10,000 people, it should be 999 defeats and 1 win, and you will come to a conclusion. At that time, you feel that there is a high probability of failure, you enjoy the process, defeat, but have courage, then there will be no psychological barriers and emotional baggage. Slowly, we waited until this day.
On the night of December 11, 0412, the traffic exploded, and the number of people in the live broadcast room that day exceeded 10,000.
When I broke 10,000, I was unabashedly excited. They have been expecting when there will be 1,000 or 3,000 people in our live broadcast room, and when 10,000 people are in front of them, everyone is stunned.
So I thought about it at the time, I didn't dare to enter the live broadcast room, for fear of affecting my partner's mood, so I sat at my desk by myself and wrote them a thank you letter.
The live broadcast room suddenly became popular, and the biggest change in the team members was that when the employees spoke to me, their waists stood straighter, and their smiles came over directly, with a happy face. So there is a saying that winning battles is the best team building. What do I worry about most every day right now?I am most worried about the departure of employees, and the anchor will suddenly be unable to bear it.
Chen Xiangdong Weibo. Figure screenshot.
Someone asked me if the surge in traffic of Gaotu Jiapin was due to a certain accident. I am reminded of Warren Buffett saying that his success is due to the fact that he has bet on the right fortunes of the United States and that he can make a good decision every five years. I think Warren Buffett is right, the reason why Gaotu can become a company that is not bad at the moment is also because it has hit the mobile Internet era.
Management scientist Jim Collins once said that successful people often attribute their success to luck, but the question is that luck is there, why isn't luck yours?For example, today Nvidia is very good and has hit luck, but there are tens of thousands of companies doing this, why don't others hit luck?Was Dong Yuhui's exit from the circle at that time also luck?But the last ten years have also had his grind, right?
Tell me about myself, too. Everyone says that this is the wealth of the sky, I want to say that this is indeed luck, this luck is not that we have done something, but it is here, and suddenly the luck of the wealth of the sky comes. But can you catch it after you come?In the past year or so, Gaotu has practiced hard and Xi the basic skills, every employee of Gaotu Jiapin, including the front-line editing and shooting, is personally interviewed by me, each anchor is personally selected by me, I have trained them, eaten a lot with them, and every time I encourage them not to give up, to read more and think more.
So what I'm trying to say is, if the luck of wealth is there, why isn't that luck yours?The rhetorical question is actually to do a self-alert, I believe that luck is there, there will definitely be a lot of good luck in the future, the question is when these good luck comes, whether Gaotu Jiapin can be worthy.