Author | Babe
Edit| Mia
Although the Xuan Jing incident came to an end, her "mentor" Sam was pushed to the forefront.
The short video of former Baidu executive Xuan Jing was criticized by public opinion because of her values, and finally ended with her resignation. The beginning of the incident is also related to Xuan Jing's experience from the commercial Internet celebrity Brother Sange, who paid 5980 yuan for three days of class, and after the class, the company emphasized short video operation and began to radically call on all employees to do Internet celebrity IP. It is also reported that Xuan Jing ran from Beijing to Hangzhou and specially recorded 4 videos, spending a total of 160,000 yuan.
Who is the mentor behind the executives of large factories? According to public information, Brother Sam's real name is Shen Wenjun, born in 1987, is a graduate of the 2002 fitter class of Muping Vocational College, a secondary school student with only a junior high school education, but has 18 years of business experience.
According to relevant media reports, as of January this year, the "Gulfstream Entrepreneur Alliance" founded by the Samgo team has 2,735 members, with a membership fee of 80,000 yuan, and all members have an income of millions. According to this estimate, the income from membership dues alone is as high as 219 million yuan. How did the fitter who graduated from the technical secondary school successfully make a lot of money by counterattacking? And how did he harvest these elite leeks?
Holding the script of the big male protagonist of "Dick Silk Counterattack", where is Brother Sam?
How does Samgo single-handedly attract business executives?
It is reported that Brother Sam's real name is Shen Wenjun, he started to do Taobao shop at the age of 16, sold silk scarves on Taobao to earn the first pot of gold in his life, and then resold sea cucumbers on Taobao, aquatic products have limited profits, he finally chose to sell bird's nest, and the profit from selling bird's nest is ten times higher than selling sea cucumbers. In his own entrepreneurial experience sharing, he said that in 2016, he relied on micro-business direct sales to achieve 20 million sea cucumbers and bird's nest performance, profits of 3 million to 5 million, and expanded from 1 store to 12 stores.
Different from the business tycoons who are deeply involved in a field of industry, he prefers to make quick money, after seeing the decline of the Tmall market, he began to start the idea of "training + traffic", and mixed with Zhihu to post to share his entrepreneurial dry goods, the original intention was to develop the franchisees and operators of sea cucumber shops, but soon he found that selling classes is more profitable than selling products.
At that time, Sam Ge lamented that his circle of friends led him to buy a factory when he had money, and one of his friends went to Hangzhou, where the atmosphere was to be a platform if he was rich. Both of them are smart and successful, but the income of being friends on the platform is dozens of times that of selling sea cucumbers.
Brother sea cucumber, who was not satisfied with the status quo, happened to encounter the arrival of the short video era, and quickly changed the track, relying on selling financial and business courses and emotional classes to attract attention, and using a large number of slice accounts to expand his influence. In his speech at his company's 2023-2024 annual meeting, Samgo revealed that his company's revenue exceeded 1 billion. The company has grown from 0 to 1,000 people in four years, and the minimum number of employees will increase to 3,000 in 2024.
It is reported that the courses launched by Internet celebrity sea cucumber include 56 recorded and broadcast courses of "Short Video Traffic Operation Cognition Course", priced at 5980 yuan and priced at 9980 yuan "Short Video Whole Case Trader" course, which is a high customer order product in the knowledge payment industry. In addition, the private board of directors who have passed the course drainage need to pay 80,000 yuan to join the group. According to media reports, the "Gulfstream Entrepreneur Alliance" founded by the Samko team has 2,735 members as of January this year, and the membership fee is 80,000 yuan. According to this estimate, the income from membership dues alone is as high as 219 million yuan.
Sam boasted of being a leader in the field of monetization, which quickly attracted him to many followers. In his speech at the company's 2023 annual meeting, Samgo mentioned that the company's revenue will exceed 1 billion, and in 2023, the company will have 3 small partners with an annual income of more than 10 million, more than 20 colleagues with an annual income of more than 1 million, and 6 colleagues with an annual income of more than 5 million. In fact, it is true that among the accounts incubated by Samgo's company, @毛毛姐 (founder of Mu Wanqing) and @服务者 Lao Ji are relatively well-known commercial IPs, and these representative cases have also boosted Samgo to further attract fans and obtain traffic, and the IP he incubated is conservatively estimated at 100 million.
The company has 0 people participating in the insurance and the company is cancelled, is it "knowledge payment" or "knowledge pyramid scheme"?
At the end of March this year, Douyin issued the "Announcement on Carrying out the Special Governance of "Thick Black Learning" and "Pseudo Success Learning" to crack down on low-quality fan attraction and drainage and other "cutting leeks" behavior, Brother Sea Cucumber was punished by the Douyin platform, and users can't search for the main account, but nearly ten matrix accounts are still updated normally, including @Pure Commercial, @金尚商业说, @参哥思维圈, @参校长不讲废话, @参哥带你走天下, @私域参校长, @参哥认知圈@参哥 (daily number. record growth) and so on.
Entertainment unicorns found that the sea cucumber course categories cover emotional intelligence, reasonable equity management, IP incubation, etc., with price gradients ranging from 199 yuan to 80,000 yuan. At present, the sales in the "Samgo Takes You Grow" video account store include amateur IP training camp and a full set of equity contract management. Among them, the online course "Short Video Speculation Maker Plan Course" is priced at 9980 yuan.
Brother San, who has been banned repeatedly, has changed his name and made a comeback, is his realization really that simple? Is it really that easy to monetize? The Douyin platform believes that a small number of "self-media" take advantage of the psychology of ordinary people who want to succeed quickly, plan content and set up matrix numbers, simplify, routine, and even blacken the way to achieve success, and realize it by setting up private boards, training classes, etc.
How did the rise of Samgo take advantage of the psychology of ordinary people who want to succeed quickly to reap the harvest?
First of all, the form of kladivostok's knowledge is greater than the content, he takes advantage of the knowledge anxiety and information panic of many users, the team does not clearly promise to be responsible for the specific business results, and the effect of this kind of knowledge paid courses is indeed difficult to quantify, and many people can only consider themselves unlucky when they enter the pit.
Secondly, with Samgo as a typical example, the craze of knowledge payment has caused many non-professional knowledge IPs to attract traffic through the production of learning short videos, and these non-professional knowledge IPs do not have a deep understanding of knowledge, and even many times there are problems of "taking words out of context" and "over-interpretation", resulting in the audience's misunderstanding of knowledge. According to the boss who has purchased the service of Brother Ginseng, "Brother Ginseng's IP incubation accompanies the run, and it takes 120,000 to teach you how to learn from the manuscript washing and IP methodology, and there is no after-sales service at all."
It can be seen from many revelations on the Internet that sea cucumber brother often chooses some controversial topics, and uses some exaggerated and appalling titles, as well as impactful pictures and soundtracks to arouse the audience's curiosity about knowledge. The form of knowledge is greater than the content, resulting in the lack of value and meaning of knowledge content, and it is difficult for the audience to gain knowledge and skills from learning short videos.
A post posted by the media "Vulcan Economy" about "What happened to the people who paid to learn from the brothers?" The video mentions that paying millions in exchange for a "trader class" is very funny, in addition to the basic editing, it is just to teach "copying" and "benchmarking", as for what the trader should do? Which ones are right and which ones are wrong? No one in the company knows about it. The so-called "thousand-person company" of Vladivostok is actually composed of a lot of traders who have paid 50,000 yuan and come to learn, they do the same things as employees every day, clocking in and out of work, and handing over daily newspapers, all of which are free labor, and what these people do is also called "joint co-creation". The boss who paid 50,000 yuan in tuition turned into a free laborer, looking forward to the success of his business in one fell swoop, and did the most basic operation and editing. And the bosses who have paid millions of dollars are arranged in the live broadcast room that is not as big as the toilet, listening to the instructions of traders who are not formally employed, and asking them to plagiarize, read manuscripts, bias speeches, tell the history of suffering, and sell miserably.
In addition to Ginseng, the female business IP "dada" has also been banned, and dada's management trainee model has also borrowed from Ginseng's co-creation model. Dada advertises himself as the owner of a 400-person new media company with 15 million fans on the entire network, while more than half of the 400 people in his company have no salary, or even a basic salary, and they rely entirely on "profit sharing".
What's more noteworthy is that, according to the company's investigation data, the company held by Shen Ge is Yantai Xingliu Media Planning Co., Ltd., which was established in August 2021, the legal representative is Jiang Defang, with a registered capital of 1 million yuan, 70% and 30% of the shares held by Shen Wenjun and Jiang Defang respectively. According to the 2021 to 2023 annual reports, the number of insured people in the company is 0. It is worth mentioning that recently, the company has added a simple cancellation announcement, and the announcement period is from April 25 to May 15.
Since Lei Jun left to become an Internet celebrity, IP creation has indeed become a hot track at the moment. It's just that it's worth thinking about whether the business created by IP depends on form or content. However, judging from the current situation, the payment for knowledge is no longer an era of barbaric growth, and the "co-creation model" of Brother Sam has been closely watched by the regulatory authorities, and his business model must not be a long-term solution.