For a long time, 36Kr has witnessed the rise of "She Power", and actively promoted the high-quality development of "She Power" through the writing of women's individual experience and the shaping of women's new images. At the WISE2023 King of Business Conference, 36Kr launched the "Women's Creativity Session" to provide a super communication and display platform for female leaders from different fields, helping more women to tear off the label and redefine the highlight moments of contemporary women with their abilities and attitudes.
At the summit, Wu Ting, the founder of the guest business school, won the "36Kr Business Female Innovator of the Year" award and gave a keynote speech on "Musk and Zeng Guofan". The following is a condensed version of the speech, Enjoy~
Hello everyone, I'm our guest Wu Ting, the founder of Business School. The characteristics of guest business are many case studies and case storage, we have precipitated more than 3,000 in-depth cases, more than 500 video cases, 700 accompanying cases, you can follow my video number Wu Ting, as well as the official account of guest business, we are studying all kinds of interesting stories every day. In today's short speaking time, I will mainly share with you the stories of two people: Musk and Zeng Guofan. In the process of talking about the two people's cases, I will also intersperse some other business cases to extract some "tactics" and commonalities of leadership.
On the surface, Musk and Zeng Guofan look very far apart. Musk is an American, Zeng Guofan is a Chinese; Musk is a contemporary, right in front of our eyes, we can often see the news about him, but Zeng Guofan is a Qing Dynasty person, although he has left us, but many people are learning Xi from him, learning Xi how he succeeded, how to be a "saint and an outer king"; Musk is an entrepreneur, Zeng Guofan is an official; Musk is a science and technology person, Zeng Guofan is a cultural person; Musk is leading the wave of science and technology business, A great figure who changed the world, Zeng Guofan was an important minister who continued the life of the Qing Dynasty for decades.
Although these two people don't seem to have anything to do with each other, I think there are a lot of things in common between the best and most successful people in the world. The first is the belief in self-sacrifice and the determination to change the world, the second is the ability and method of "copying homework", then they are very good at "hugging their thighs", and finally they are also very good at storytelling. Many outstanding entrepreneurs and successful people around me actually have these four characteristics. Next, I will disassemble these 4 commonalities respectively.
First, the belief of others and the determination to change the world.
Let me first sort out Musk's story roughly. In 1999, Musk founded X.com, an online financial services and email payment business, and he bought Twitter and then changed its name to X, creating a perfect cycle.
X.com later merged with a competitor to create a PayPal, the company was bought by eBay in 2002, and Musk took a sum of money to invest in SpaceX and Tesla. These two companies, as we all later know, are two great companies that have changed the course of human technology, business, and society.
SpaceX is a logistics and space company that aims to help humans reduce the cost of space transportation in the future, and if the Earth cannot live in the future, humans will have to settle on Mars, and SpaceX is preparing for these things. Of course, SpaceX is also using Starlink to provide some communication services.
Tesla is an electric vehicle and energy company, which has driven the development of the entire industry, and today China can achieve "corner overtaking" in the new energy vehicle industry, Tesla can be said to be indispensable.
In addition, there is a solar energy company, SolarCity, which was founded by two of his cousins at the suggestion of Musk at the time and sold to Tesla ten years after its creation to provide charging services. Many people at OpenAI should also know that the recent turmoil in the leadership has been in full swing, and Musk is the co-founder of this company.
Neuralink is a biotechnology company owned by Elon Musk that aims to help people with cerebral palsy, help humans achieve a healthier body, and explore the infinite possibilities of human-computer interaction in the future. The boring company, a rail transit company, many people say that this is his boast, but it has not been realized for the time being.
It can be seen that every company founded and invested by Musk first has a great wish, with the belief that he will change the world, and only after he has the will can he put it into action and realize this series of behaviors.
We here, whether you are an entrepreneur, a manager, or an outstanding progressive youth, we need to first have a goal after ten mountains, and after this goal, you will find that every stumbling stone under us is not a problem, nor is it a difficulty.
We know that Zeng Guofan passed the imperial examination and entered the Hanlin Academy, and because he dared to speak out, he offended Emperor Xianfeng to some extent, which coincided with the death of his mother, so he returned to his hometown to guard filial piety for three years. During the period of filial piety, he was also in retreat and self-cultivation, constantly reflecting and improving himself.
During this time, the Taiping Rebellion swept through most of China, and the development of the Taiping army was in full swing, making the rule of the Qing Dynasty precarious. This gave Emperor Xianfeng a great headache, so he ordered Zeng Guofan to go out of the mountain again and help organize group training in the local area. What is a deputy's group training? That is, he can form a militia on his own. These militias are not regular troops. At that time, the regular army of the Qing Dynasty was the Eight Banners and the Green Camp Army, but these so-called regular armies were really vulnerable to combat power.
For Zeng Guofan at that time, he was a literati, and he did not have the title of general of the regular army, nor did he gain the true trust of Emperor Xianfeng. The road ahead of him was full of difficulties.
But Zeng Guofan still took on this tricky job. Why? Because Zeng Guofan was bent on saving the world and renewing his life in the Qing Dynasty.
He believed that the Taiping Army was not an ordinary reactionary organization, and that the leader of the Taiping Army, Hong Xiuquan, founded the "God Worship Religion," which was incompatible with the traditional Chinese Confucian culture that Zeng Guofan believed in. Everywhere they went, they burned down the Confucian Temple, burned books, killed people, and occupied some Confucian temples as warehouses and training factories. This made Zeng Guofan realize that if the Taiping Army took power in the future, it must not be a good thing, and if this rhythm continued, not only the Qing Dynasty would fall, but Chinese culture would also be destroyed in their hands. So, he decided to lead the regiment to train and raise soldiers, save the people, save the Qing Dynasty, and save Chinese culture, so there was the later Hunan army. Therefore, under the constraints of the environment and resources at that time, Zeng Guofan's wish was beyond the reach of ordinary people.
Here, I share a sentence from Zeng Guofan to you, "Whoever is good at playing chess, whenever he is in danger of chess, saves himself on the one hand, and breaks the enemy on the other, he often becomes a beauty due to illness and turns defeat into success." It was at such a critical moment that Zeng Guofan took on the heavy responsibility and finally achieved his goal little by little. If he doesn't have the belief of who else he can, and if he doesn't have a strong will, how can he turn the tide alone?
Second, the similarities between Musk and Zeng Guofan, as well as the ability and method of "copying homework".
Musk wanted to build a rocket, initially he wanted to find the Russians to buy rockets, but he didn't expect the Russians to knock on this Internet bigwig, and the offer was twice his budget, and Musk's team had to go home. On the plane back to the United States, when many of his colleagues had already started drinking and having fun, Musk suddenly showed off the spreadsheet he had made and excitedly said, "Brothers, I think we can build our own rockets." ”
A couple of engineers were drunk, thinking Musk was daydreaming or joking with them. But when they looked at the table closely, they were very surprised to find that Musk had disassembled the main components of the rocket and detailed every penny of cost required to build, assemble and launch a rocket.
According to his vision, they can build a medium-sized rocket at a manageable cost and with technical achievability. Musk can disassemble the problem in this way precisely because he has returned to the basic principle of building a rocket: Isn't the most basic component of a rocket just a module? Isn't it just a part to disassemble a module? Isn't the most basic step in building a rocket to produce parts and assemble parts?
Therefore, as long as the technology of each link can be broken through and the cost can be controlled, a cost-effective rocket can be created. Some parts are too technically difficult? If the cost is too high, look for alternatives. Under the guidance of such ideas, Musk created the first civilian rocket, which also made the entire industry and even all mankind boil.
Zeng Guofan also had a similar experience of "copying homework". Fighting a war requires not only land battles, but also water battles, so it is very necessary to create a naval division. At first, in order to resist the water attack of the Taiping army, the Hunan army built dozens of wooden platoons and mounted their guns on the wooden platoons to attack the Taiping warships. Later, Zeng Guofan built a row and converted a ship. These wooden rafts can make do in the Xiangjiang River, but once they are put into the Yangtze River or large lakes, it is difficult to resist strong winds and waves due to their small size. If you make the wood row large, it will become very clumsy.
Zeng Guofan then tried his best to buy a civilian ship and transform it into a gunboat. However, the civilian boats in the Huguang area were difficult to renovate and failed again. So Zeng Guofan turned to Xi as a Guangdong sailor at that time. But no one had ever seen a Cantonese warship, and they didn't know how to make it, so they were at a stalemate for a while.
Later, Zeng Guofan, through multi-party coordination, invited technical experts who were familiar with gunboats. Zeng Guofan studied the style of warships with them, and even took the advanced warships of the West to gradually dismantle, "copy homework", and began to recruit craftsmen to make them. With joint efforts, they have done a lot of combined innovations, and gradually have their own tows, long dragons, fast crabs, and sampans. In the end, this sailor also won many battles.
It is not only Zeng Guofan and Musk who can "copy homework".
Tang Binsen, the founder of Yuanqi Forest, is also a good hand at "copying homework". When talking about how to learn Xi, the founder Tang Binsen told us, he said: "History is continuous. Your business model, the business model of the best company in the industry before, they have a 1% chance of changing, not 50%, just like the evolution of the human species, little by little. So our logic is to learn Coca-Cola every day, what he does, we do what we do, we do what he does, we do what he does, and we think about some key issues by mistake. Throw freezers, build factories, build your own channels, and go from online to offline. A lot of new consumption is online, but when we see that Coke is not like this, should we do it? Or do we first copy the company at the head of your industry, and then talk about anything else. ”
Tang Binsen not only "copied the company", he also "copied the entrepreneur". He said, "Look at the biographies of bosses who have made a lot of money, bosses of companies that have lived for more than 50 years, and that's first-hand information." 711, Amazon, Nike, Buffett, Duan Yongping, Ren Zhengfei...... After reading it, you will find that there are commonalities. This is called learning Xi for "big peers" entrepreneurs. Take their old material and do new reasoning.
At the scene of our Xi, Tang Binsen also gave each entrepreneur a book "Salt and Sugar: How Food Giants Manipulate Us", which describes the "business history of taste" from the perspective of business evolution and corporate social responsibility. In the process of starting a business, Tang Binsen also copied the principles and followed the principles in the book, which further helped his career.
In the process of constantly "copying homework", Tang Binsen completed nearly 10 billion sales in 6 years, becoming the biggest dark horse in the beverage industry, which is the power of "copying homework".
Midea's current helmsman, Fang Hongbo, is also a master of "copying homework". When I led a team to study in the United States, I asked Fang Hongbo, what is your lighthouse? He mentioned a book written by Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, which I later recommended to many large and medium-sized companies to Xi study: "Boom and Recession". This is a book that focuses on the history of economic development in the United States.
From the founding of the United States to today, it has experienced many depressions and crises, history is strikingly similar, there is nothing new under the sun, fantasy is useless, to understand the history and understand the industry, learn to "copy homework", maybe you can solve your confusion.
In fact, 99% of almost all innovations are "copying homework" in the first place. Here, I have to mention an American master of "copying homework" - Jobs.
There used to be a power connector on Apple computers called "MagSafe", which was a magnet that connected the laptop to the power supply, and did you know the secret of this little connector? This function was actually "stolen" from a Japanese rice cooker. Japanese rice cookers have long been designed with magnet door locks to prevent the hot rice cooker from falling to the ground and injuring people when someone trips over the power cord.
Steve Jobs said, "Not everybody has to grow food for themselves, not everybody needs to make their own clothes, we speak a language invented by others, we use mathematics invented by others." We're always using someone else's work. It's an amazing thing to use the experience and knowledge that humans already have to create. ”
Not only MagSafe, but even some of the functional innovations that have caused a sensation in the world, Jobs also did it by "stealing" inspiration.
For example, the famous Macintosh graphical interface was once called "the worst robbery in industrial history." In December 1979, Jobs visited the Xerox Research Center twice. On the second visit, he asked Xerox to show him all the core technologies several times. In this way, he witnessed first-hand the dazzling graphics and font effects of Xerox's graphical interface. The subsequent launch of Apple's Macintosh computer mimicked Xerox's graphical interface, so we could click on icons and folders on the computer. If it weren't for this "stealing", perhaps, today we don't know what a mouse is.
Countless people have questioned this as a plagiarism. At the time, Steve Jobs said, "Didn't Picasso say, good artists copy their works, great artists steal inspiration." We've always been brazen when it comes to stealing great inspiration. ”
Third, Musk and Zeng Guofan are very good at "hugging their thighs".
Although Musk is a genius, he can't do everything. As a child, Musk was particularly fond of reading. At that time, he was introverted, always immersed in his own world, and basically relied on self-study to gain knowledge. But after starting the business, Musk began to realize that the brains of these authors are a mobile treasure trove of knowledge, and the knowledge processed by their brains can solve problems more accurately. So Musk recruited one top talent after another and started his own "100,000 whys" model.
Kevin Brogan, an engineer who has worked with Musk, said that Musk would stop an engineer at a SpaceX factory and ask him questions about valves or a particular material. At first, everyone thought that the boss was testing themselves, but later they found out that the boss wanted to learn knowledge. He would keep asking questions until he had learned 90% of what the other person had learned. In fact, Musk moved to Los Angeles after deciding to build rockets, because there are many of the world's top aviation industry people in Los Angeles who can help him refine his ideas.
This is Musk's way of "hugging his thighs", he not only constantly pursues the first principles of business, but also knows how to use the best resources to serve himself, and the essence of the business model is the ability to mobilize resources across time and space, so that constantly "hugging his thighs", Musk has gradually realized his dreams one after another.
The same is true of Zeng Guofan. He knows people well and has built one of the most successful teams in history. Everywhere he went, Zeng Guofan visited virtuous people everywhere. His shogunate numbered 500 people, and he was home to a wide range of translators, physicists, mathematicians, copywriters, and lawyers. With the assistance of these people, Zeng Guofan even introduced European science and technology in an organized manner, and built the first steamship in modern Chinese history.
During the period when the Hunan Army was established to fight against the Taiping Army, the development of the war required a large number of military command talents, which also made Zeng Guofan pay more attention to collecting talents, which also made his good generals like clouds. Among them, Jiang Zhongyuan, Taqibu, Luo Zenan, Li Xubin, Zeng Guoquan, etc., are all masters of leading troops to fight.
In terms of fighting, after many battles, Zeng Guofan knew that his strength lay in setting a strategy, and leading troops to fight was definitely not his strength. Therefore, he handed over the specific battles to the generals under his command. When the Anqing War began, Zeng Guoquan hoped that Zeng Guofan would sit in command nearby, but Zeng Guofan replied and refused: Over the years, whenever the most critical place of siege was besieged, Yu personally attended the scene, and every time he was defeated, he tried and tested again and again. Yu Bi didn't believe it, attacked the emblem in March, and tried to go to one line again, and the result was tested again. This time, Yu will never come to Anqing.
Our guest student, OATLY OATLY, where Zhang Chun, president of OATLY Asia, is located, "the world's first oat milk stock", and is also very good at "hugging the thighs".
In 2018, OATLY, which has achieved satisfactory results in the European and American markets, officially landed in China. Initially, OATLY followed the general play of traditional FMCG listings, that is, advertising, offline supermarket distribution, and preferential promotions, and then used this to drive purchase and brand promotion. However, it had little success and encountered the embarrassment of not being able to sell. Seeing that the C-end retail market was not going through, Zhang Chun decisively turned the bow of the ship and made a key decision to leverage the market.
Let's think about it, what is the mission of oat milk, which is to stand in the market with "animal milk" as "plant milk", and even to complete the things that "animal milk" can't do, such as letting lactose-intolerant users drink it and low-carbon advocates to drink it. Then Zhang Chun thought, where do you need milk?
With the reputation and potential energy that OATLY has formed in boutique cafes, Zhang Chun has made unremitting efforts to join hands with Starbucks, the boss of the coffee industry, and has successively followed up Costa, Pacific Coffee, KFC, McDonald's, Luckin, etc. In just a few years, OATLY has almost "won" most of the coffee circle and laid out tens of thousands of coffee stores. In this way, OATLY gradually completed the construction of consumers' cognition, and at the same time established the category concept of "oat milk", and also opened up its own sales.
In addition, many Chinese companies are also "hugging each other's thighs". Recently, Huawei's automotive business has taken a key step, and on November 26, Changan Automobile announced that it had signed a "Memorandum of Investment Cooperation" with Huawei. After negotiation between the two parties, Huawei plans to set up a new company engaged in automotive intelligent system and component solutions, which means that Huawei's intelligent electrification platform will be opened.
In July this year, Volkswagen announced that it had signed a framework agreement with Xpeng Motors on strategic technology cooperation, and Volkswagen invested about 700 million US dollars in Xpeng Motors to acquire about 4.99% of the shares of Xpeng Motors. In 2022, Volkswagen invested 2.4 billion euros in Horizon, a provider of intelligent driving computing solutions...... Volkswagen's series of actions have embraced the technical thigh, chip thigh, and intelligent thigh of China's new energy vehicles, thus ensuring that it can continue to survive in the next era.
Recently, Mr. Charlie Munger left us at the age of 99, and we all know that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are very good partners, walking on two legs together, and laying down a world-renowned performance in the investment world. In fact, what I want to say is that Buffett's industry as an investor is actually the most typical industry of "hugging the thighs", because they are holding the careers that all entrepreneurs cast with their lives, they take the money of LPs on the one hand, and on the other hand, they are optimistic about the careers, they hold all the thighs in them, and use their professionalism to do a good job of control, which is also "hugging the thighs".
Finally, both Musk and Tsang are very good at storytelling.
In A Brief History of Mankind, Yuval Harari describes the elements of human success as "good storytelling", which in turn led to large-scale collaboration and organization that allowed Homo sapiens to survive the blood. Therefore, the history of human development is a history of the birth and death of stories.
Musk is very good at storytelling. For example, the story of the Martian immigrants he tells provides a commentary on all his business practices and makes people crazy. He made people really believe that the companies he founded were engaged in new energy vehicles, recyclable rockets, artificial intelligence, ...... It's all about paving the way for leading humans to settle on Mars. He is also very keen to speak out on social media, and every time he speaks, he can set off a wave of public opinion from time to time, winning huge traffic and benefits for him and his company, and he even bought Twitter, which is also one of his storytelling initiatives.
Tsang also knows how to tell stories. In Zeng Guofan's view, a truly powerful general should not only engage in material stimulation, but more importantly, grasp the heart and mind of this army. Therefore, Zeng Guofan attached great importance to the ideological and political work of the Hunan army. When leading troops to fight, on the 3rd and 8th of each month, Zeng Guofan had to convene the army to give lectures, and he used the Confucian and Mencian ways of "killing oneself to become benevolent" and the Yue Fei spirit of "not afraid of death, no money" to educate soldiers to be loyal to the monarch and patriotism. He also attached great importance to discipline and personally wrote the "Song of Loving the People" to teach soldiers to love the people and not disturb them. With the ideological and political guarantee, the Hunan army is fundamentally different from the previous army.
Zeng Guofan also insisted on keeping a diary and writing family mottos. Did he write a diary for himself? Not only that, but he also left it for posterity. He famously said: "The lotus road bows, and the public opinion speaks to the words." If he hadn't written these things, perhaps future generations would have forgotten him soon. Every one of us who is engaged in business can also think about it: If one day I am no longer in office or I am gone, will my company and my thoughts be able to linger for centuries? Today, many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in China have reached the time to think about this issue.
In fact, I think all the great startups in the world are good at storytelling, and you can tell stories to shout internally, externally, employees, investors, and markets.
For example, Huawei's Ren Zhengfei has always emphasized the importance of "persisting in arduous struggle for a long time." At the end of 2000, when Huawei was ahead of its Chinese counterparts and growing at a high speed, Ren Zhengfei wrote an article entitled "Huawei's Winter." He would like to take this opportunity to remind all Huawei employees to have a sense of crisis of "living to die".
In this article, which is full of worries, Ren Zhengfei said: "Have all the employees of the company considered what we should do if one day, the company's sales decline, profits decline, or even go bankrupt? Our company's peace time is too long, and too many officials have been promoted in peacetime, and this may be our disaster." The Titanic also went out to sea amid cheers. These views and speeches all reflect Ren Zhengfei's determination and vision as the founder. In my opinion, this is also a vivid interpretation of "repairing the roof when it is sunny and gathering people's hearts".
In the process of Huawei's development, Ren Zhengfei can always appear at the right time, write internal letters, share what he has seen and heard, and share his in-depth thinking with all Huawei people, and his internal letters are to tell stories to the internal and market.
In 1915, my fellow countryman, Chen Duxiu, the founder of China's largest entrepreneurial team, organized a magazine, the first issue of Youth Magazine, which later became New Youth, with the first volume of the first volume and the cover article being "The Hard-working Achievers: A Biography of Dale Carnegie." You may not imagine that China's New Culture Movement, "Enlightening Society", was first started by a story of a business figure, and later came into existence with our Marxism and the establishment of our party.
My mission in founding Guest Business School is to "empower enterprises and increase wisdom for society", and I also hope to tell China's business cases and stories well, so that these case stories can inspire and shine on more people.
That's all for today's sharing, thank you.