Business mentor Hu Huacheng is known as the “brain behind new business” and the creator of new business models.

Time flies like an arrow, and time flies like a shuttle. In the blink of an eye, it is already the age of no doubt. Looking back on my life experiences, although I cannot say that I am successful, I have always been striving for success.

It’s just that my definition of success may be different from everyone else’s, because I don’t think that a person’s freedom of wealth through entrepreneurship is success. Real success should be helping more people to succeed. Such a life It’s even more worth remembering.

When I truly understood the true secret of success, I found that I felt a lot relieved. Anxiety no longer bothers me, and I feel full of energy every day.

In recent years, due to the shift in work focus to focus on new business model design, I have also come into contact with hundreds of entrepreneurs. They often ask me the same question: "Mr. Hu, you It’s so mysterious. With such a heavy workload every day, how do you maintain a happy mood every day? I feel so anxious every day that I really want to know you thoroughly.”

I have been asked more and more often. I have always wanted to find an opportunity to share some fragments of my personal growth and some thoughts after changing my thinking. I hope it can give some inspiration and help to entrepreneurs.

1. I came from a humble background and met a noble person by chance

I am from Suqian, Jiangsu Province. I was born in 1978. I am 45 years old this year. I have been away for half my life, but I have not returned to Suqian yet.

When it comes to Suqian, my fellow countryman Liu Qiangdong, founder of JD.com, has said in public more than once that Suqian’s economy is backward. When I was a child, the pork rice cooked by my grandmother was the only one I could eat. Happy things.

As a person from the same place, my family conditions are not much better than Liu Qiangdong’s, and may even be worse.

When I was 14 years old, in order to reduce the burden on my family, I dropped out of junior high school and went to work, hoping to help my family live a richer and more dignified life with my own hands. life.

But just before departure, I became worried because my family didn’t even have the travel expenses for me to work. Finally, I borrowed dozens of yuan from relatives and friends, and embarked on the road to work in Jiangyin, Wuxi with my friends.

When I first arrived in Jiangyin, I was shocked by the high-rise buildings in front of me. In addition to shock, I also felt a little bit scared. Because I don’t know what I can do, and who is willing to take me in?

Due to his young age, he is still in the category of child labor. No boss dares to take this risk, and his job has been unavailable for several days. Fortunately, it was summer, so I could still spend a few nights on a park bench.

What I thought at the time was that if no one wanted it, I would go home and help my family farm for two years. Just when I was about to give up, I met the first noble person in my life. He not only took me in, but also provided me with a job as a bathhouse attendant. Although the salary is only 400 yuan/month, it is the most important 400 yuan in my life.

It was the help of noble people that allowed me to enter an adult world, and I began to use adult thinking to think about the operation of the world.

2. Dig the first pot of gold in life

As a bathhouse attendant, I mainly face two types of people every day. The first type is my colleagues, and the other type is The customers of the bathhouse are called bosses.

Since I was young at the time and had no idea about money, I developed a good habit of treating guests to dinner. Usually after I have paid my salary, I will invite a few colleagues with whom I have a good relationship to have a meal together. Over time, my colleagues were willing to teach me some industry secrets and how to do things quickly and well.

When it comes to clients at the bathhouse, I also like to listen to their sharing, and will also chime in when appropriate. In terms of service, I am more attentive than other colleagues. Therefore, many bosses will come to me directly when they arrive at the bathhouse. This allowed me to gradually earn a higher salary than my colleagues.

To be honest, when other colleagues were earning a monthly salary of 400 yuan, I had already received a monthly salary of 600 yuan. At that time, I was even a little complacent.

But this complacency was soon completely shattered by one incident. In the 1990s, wages in bathhouses were paid directly in cash.

When the boss was paying wages to the company's technicians, I was shocked. The highest one actually received a salary of 6,000 yuan.

What is the concept of salary? Almost equivalent to my annual income. I was immediately awakened by the reality, which made me realize what people often say: "There is heaven outside the world, and there are people outside the world."

Soon, I found the technician with the highest salary and became my teacher. After rounds of "sugar-coated bullets" attacks from me, he finally agreed to accept me as his disciple.

As expected, "famous teachers make great apprentices". It only took me three months to learn how to be a technician, and I was able to earn a salary of 3,000 yuan/month. When I got a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan, I was happy for a long time, because my parents’ annual income was less than 10,000 yuan per year. The thought of being able to subsidize the family made me feel happy.

However, I still had the belief that I would use all my efforts to exceed Master’s salary. But I found that no matter how hard I worked, I could only earn 4,000 yuan at most, which seemed to be the limit of my ability, and I was very tired every day.

When I was distressed about this matter, a customer completely woke me up. He said: "Why do bosses earn more than employees? It's not because of how capable he is, but because He is willing to help more people and provide them with money-making opportunities, and at the same time, more people are helping him make money."

When I heard this sentence, my mind really seemed to be struck by lightning. Yes, ecstatic.

Since then, I have stopped trying to make money by selling my time, because no matter how hard you work, there will be a bottleneck waiting for you.

I began to try to recruit apprentices to make money through various channels, so that waiters with a monthly income of 400 yuan could help them earn about 2,000 yuan by learning technician skills. I only need to collect 50% of the apprentice's commission every month to reach a monthly salary of 5,000 yuan. At this time, I only have 5 technicians.

After finding a good money-making model, there are more and more technicians around me, and I can get a certain commission from each of them. It is not difficult for me to earn more than 10,000 yuan a month. I am only about 20 years old at this time.

Then came a new worry. Although I had earned a lot of salary, I still didn’t have a store of my own, and I always felt like something was missing.

In 2003, at the age of 25, I finally opened a large leisure center of my own, with a monthly turnover of more than 200,000 yuan. It seemed that I suddenly felt like I was reaching the peak of my life (it’s a bit funny to think about it now).

In any case, I made the first pot of gold in my life, millions of dollars, by opening a leisure center.

3. Enter insurance by mistake and develop super transaction skills

The happiness that money can bring to people is always short-lived. After I adapted to the life of spending money every day, I found that I Heading towards the abyss of depravity. I couldn't help but start to reflect, is this all my future life?

At this moment, I urgently need to prepare for my transformation, but I haven’t found a suitable industry yet. At this time, a salesperson who specialized in insurance came to the leisure center to look for me every day, hoping that I could sell insurance part-time. After all, there were so many customers coming in and out every day. As long as a few orders were completed every day, the income could at least double.

But when I thought about changing from boss to salesperson, I couldn't accept it and refused many times.

Unexpectedly, this insurance salesman seemed to be convinced of me and went to the leisure center to chat with me every day. Seeing that he couldn't explain it to me, he even called in the department manager or even the director.

With the kind invitation from the director of the insurance company, I finally couldn’t resist the urge to challenge and accepted their invitation. Among them, the sentence that inspires me the most is: "Insurance is the only criterion for testing a person's ability. If you can do well in insurance, you can succeed in anything. If you can't even do insurance, how can you still negotiate? What success? ”

Because I am young and energetic, and I also need to receive some new thinking, I am still willing to try insurance work.

It was very difficult to sell insurance more than ten years ago, and many people thought they were scammers. I had the attitude of giving it a try before doing it, but what I didn’t expect was that this job was very suitable for me.

Because I talk differently from other salesmen, I control the customer's heart from a human perspective, and guide the customer to say "I want to buy insurance".

I didn’t know that I had this ability before. This is probably related to the different customers I contacted at the leisure center. In the end, I developed a mature chatting skills.

While other salespeople could only earn more than 1,000 yuan, I received another monthly salary of 10,000 yuan.

However, the money is not a lot for me, and I think it is a bit slow to earn. So I started thinking about how to make a new breakthrough in my income, so I designed a new way to make money, recruiting assistants. The assistant’s job is also very simple. I only need to invite 40 friends to dine with me in a three-star or above hotel every month.

At that time, almost no one dared to do this, because once there was no deal, the money spent on dinner would be wasted. Each dinner might cost thousands of yuan, which was also a huge sum. Not a small fee.

But I know that inviting people to dinner is not an easy thing. If I can invite people to dinner, it means that they are people with good relationships or my relatives and family members. It is because I know the relationship chain. , so I dare to do things that ordinary people dare not do. During the meal, I just casually praise and compliment my assistant on how outstanding he is in the company. Because he is outstanding, he earns a good salary, treat his friends and relatives, and so on. Most of their relatives and friends who come will still support one or two orders or recommend a few new customers.

Why is this happening? This is human nature, short-tongued and soft-handed. What’s more, I invited them to a three-star hotel for dinner, because in addition to being relatives and friends, most of these people have never eaten in a three-star or above hotel. Food, this gives them a psychological advantage, and also gives them real benefits. It doesn’t matter whether you buy insurance or not, the meal is free.

Many people will be embarrassed not to buy insurance just because they are taking advantage. It’s just that we need to use some appropriate words to guide them at this time.

It only took a few months for some assistants to discover that I had made a lot of money through their connections. Some smart people were unwilling to continue to be my assistants and chose to work in insurance sales on their own. Salesmen, because they discovered that as long as they use the right methods to do insurance, it is actually very easy to make money. Later, our team’s headcount and revenue were more than twice the total revenue of other teams in the company.

Under the instigation of the general manager of the branch, I was almost appointed as the deputy general manager of the branch by the headquarters.

Unfortunately, becoming a senior executive in an insurance company requires a high degree of education, which became a stumbling block for me on the road to insurance.

After working for two years, I decided to say goodbye to this industry. On the one hand, it is because of the bottleneck of my career, and on the other hand, it is because I have already learned the abilities I want to learn.

4. Found the largest chain recruitment platform in the country

After bidding farewell to the insurance industry, I wanted to do a bigger business when I was young, but what kind of business is big enough? ?

After my hard exploration, someone told me that the Internet can be infinite, as long as your dream is big enough.

When I heard about the Internet, I was surprised and delighted. I was surprised that my academic qualifications were limited and I had never played with computers. Fortunately, there is a big enough market for me to use it to my heart's content.

After establishing the intention to enter the Internet industry, a new problem arises, that is, which industry to choose? After all, the Internet is so big, we have to choose what we are good at.

After careful consideration, I found that what I was best at was recruiting, so the China Talent and Employment Network was ready to launch in 2005.

The website mainly targets Zhaopin Recruitment and Carefree Career, and aims to build the most influential talent employment website in the country.

The company's main businesses mainly include: online recruitment, personnel outsourcing, labor dispatch, mid-to-senior talent search, vocational training and exhibition services, etc.

After three years of development, the company has more than 600 employees in its national offices, has set up recruitment outlets in 364 cities across the country, established long-term cooperation with more than 2,000 vocational colleges across the country, and provided services to 270,000 companies. Through talent recruitment services, a total of 1.1 million job seekers have been served.

In view of my contribution in the field of talent recruitment, I was invited by the Asian Wealth Forum to serve as the chairman of the board of directors of the Asian Wealth Forum.

But the market is ruthless. It does not care about what contribution you have made to this society, but how strong your company's ability to resist risks is when risks come.

In 2008, the sudden financial crisis caught me off guard. During this period, an investment institution also expressed that it wanted to invest 50 million yuan in the company, but it needed to obtain 51% of the company's equity.

When I thought that the company would become someone else’s company, I flatly refused. In hindsight, I may have been wrong and lacked the most basic financing thinking. Because if you look at today's Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and other companies, their major shareholders are all the company's founders.

In the end, the company failed to withstand the impact of the financial crisis and became a footnote of the financial crisis.

5. My career as a professional manager is still going smoothly

Although the company has closed down, the company’s platform is still there. I continue to maintain the operation of the platform and look forward to one day making a comeback.

After the company closed down, I locked myself in my room for three months and carefully reviewed my entrepreneurial experience in the past few years and the reasons for my failure. I also realized my own weaknesses.

After the review, a boss in Jiangyin who specialized in labor dispatch came to invite me several times to become a professional manager in the company. I was really touched by his sincerity and hope to help the company reach a new level. At the same time, I also hope that he can invest in me to revive my China Talent Employment Network.

After two years of my hard work, the company has been able to achieve an annual net profit of several million yuan. Just when I thought my boss could invest in me, he kept avoiding my needs.

Later I realized that my boss had his own reasons for not investing in me, because at that time the company did not have anyone who could replace my position. If it invested in me, then I would most likely not be able to hold this position. professional managers of a company, the company's net profit will be affected.

When there was no hope of investment, a talent-hungry boss of a human resources company poached me and hoped that I would help him create a new model in addition to the company's existing model. The premise of the business model is that it must be better than his current company. This time, I did not use the traditional labor dispatch method, but helped him design a store + national broker model. The store adopted insurance. The "1+4 manpower combination" broker adopts the "national broker model" and is the first to launch the slogan "everyone recruits, everyone gets rewarded" nationwide, turning job seekers into recommenders. In addition to working in a factory, We also recommend people around you who are interested in finding a job to us. As long as the admission is successful, we will give high recommendation rewards. The longer the recommended people work, we will also give the recommenders a certain management bonus every month. This not only solves the problem of It not only solves the recruitment problem, but also solves the retention problem, and at the same time helps the employer reduce the attrition rate.

In just half a year, the company developed more than 30 local franchise stores and more than 200 agents, extending its influence to almost every corner of the city. What’s best about us is that we can get 1,500 yuan per person when other labor dispatch companies can only get 500 yuan for recommending a person.

Why are companies willing to pay us high prices? Because we have enough store operations staff and hundreds of part-time recruitment agents, as long as the proportion of profit allocation is high, each person who recommends one person may be able to recruit hundreds of people in a day. With this confidence, When a company needs to recruit 1,000 people in a week, we take the initiative to propose a betting agreement. If we can't reach it within a week, we won't charge a penny. If we can reach it, we have to charge 1,500 yuan per person. Normally, there are only 500-1,000 yuan recruitment fees in the market. Through our betting cooperation, we can get higher The recruitment service fee at market price is high, which makes stores and agents happy, because the commission we give to stores and agents is 70%. Think about it, there is no reason to not work hard with this kind of motivation.

Under this circumstance, the company's profitability was instantly among the best among its peers.

It is undeniable that I made a little money here, but I still failed to successfully resurrect the China Talent Employment Network.

What makes me even more desperate is that there are slow and peak seasons in the talent market, and companies do not need people all the time, which makes me feel uneasy.

During the years when I was a professional manager, the China Talent and Employment Network was still running. During this period, investment institutions also came to inquire about investment, but most of them refused due to harsh conditions.

Just after I realized the uncertainty of the talent market, I finally made up my mind to sell the China Talent Employment Network and made a profit of nearly 10 million yuan.

6. Transformed into a consulting position and a mentor

After saying goodbye to China Talent and Employment Network, I also thought about retiring completely to give myself a rest from the tense nerves for many years. . But six months after retiring, I couldn't stand it anymore. The monotony day after day made me feel like I was in prison.

In order to get rid of this boredom, I also chatted with many bosses around me, hoping to get some inspiration and start the next journey of life.

One of the bosses’ words influenced my plans for the rest of my life. He said: “If you want to quickly understand an industry, it’s best to go for consulting, so that you will encounter all kinds of people. As long as you can solve such problems one by one, you will become an industry expert and a mentor to your boss.”

I deeply agree with this, but what should I do if my knowledge reserve is not enough?

The simplest and fastest way is to read, but reading is not an easy task. After all, my academic qualifications are limited, and I have no habit of reading. In order to force myself to work hard on studying, I set a book writing plan for myself.

In this way, I can convince myself that the purpose of reading is to write a book, and the purpose of writing a book is to witness my reading.

I didn’t expect that in the past five years, I had read more than 3,000 books on business and written more than 20 books. Some people even mistakenly think that I make money by selling books.

Because of constant learning and recharging, supplementing deficiencies, improving myself, and exporting to the outside world, the market has witnessed my consulting capabilities and business model design level in the past five years. It can be said that in terms of business model design, it seems that I am As if I was born with this ability, no matter what project or product I encounter, I will habitually design a set of patterns for it. It is precisely because of factors such as like, love, persistence, and stubbornness that many partners have given me A new title, "Creator of a New Business Model", can be created with value only by someone. My annual consulting fee has also increased from the initial 120,000 yuan to 360,000 yuan, and then from 360,000 yuan to 680,000 yuan. Now 1.68 million/year.

In the process of being a business mentor, I was also lucky enough to catch up with the rapid development of self-media in the past few years. Whether it is Weibo, official accounts, Toutiao accounts, or Baijia accounts, I All have gained a certain amount of love from fans. So far, I have more than 4 million fans on the entire Internet, more than 200,000 book readers, and my personal brand has been exposed nearly 1 billion times.

When I was doing self-media, I also let my family participate in his own brand creation process with these successful experiences. He used the business model and all-round consulting and guidance I designed for him. Currently, his influence in the short video field has surpassed mine. The number of fans on the entire platform exceeds 10 million, the total number of fans of the team exceeds 30 million, and the annual revenue exceeds more than 20 million.

7. Helping others succeed is the most important thing

Through helping my family members succeed in starting a business, I realized one thing: the happiness that helping others succeed in starting a business brings me Even more successful than my own business. So why don’t I take the opportunity to embark on the path of angel investment? How about using my wisdom, resources, connections, and capital to participate in projects for entrepreneurs with ideas, ambitions, courage, and endurance?

After having this idea, I started to prepare my own funds. After all, before the soldiers and horses were moved, food and grass went first. Up to now, the group company has used 30 million of its own funds and 500 million of venture capital authorized by venture capital institutions, aiming to create a truly comprehensive group company of consulting + creative services + investment + media in the local area.

My logic in choosing the consulting and investment industry is slightly different from other investment institutions. I will not just invest funds, but will use all my years of entrepreneurial experience, network resources, media traffic and business thinking. Provide packages to entrepreneurs and accompany them to grow together.

Because I know that there are no industries that will be eliminated, only business models that will be eliminated. Only by continuously innovating business models and constantly iterating business models can companies be invincible. Please remember that all business competition in the future will definitely focus on the innovation and continuous innovation of business models. If a company or a boss lacks business model design capabilities, I believe it will be defeated in advance!

? Famous domestic business mentor——Hu Huacheng