Far North Coffee, located in the 798 Art District of Chaoyang District, Beijing, is a small two-story building in the shape of a square next to the boulevard. On the pale blue façade hangs a sign with a simple and modern design: "After work gas station". The following line is a small word: "Internet University of the Future Business Leader". Here, it is the "base" of Zhang Meng, a young entrepreneurial mentor and chairman of Qingchuang Wisdom Technology.
At exactly 10:00 a.m., Zhang Meng had just finished an 8-a.m. meeting and returned from outside to Far North Coffee's office. A white dress, half-length brown curly hair, sunglasses on the top of the head, non-stop, footsteps are windy.
Zhang Meng, the "strong woman" who is always radiant on social media, presents a real busyness in real life, and is also a grounded elegance. She sat down to rest for a while, took another cup of coffee, and whispered to reporters about the "video number" she was doing her best.
Time efficiency management expert, best-selling author, founder of the Far North Coffee Youth Innovation Accelerator, founder of LEAD Lide Leadership, national pacesetter of construction, Olympic torchbearer, 2019 Asian emerging pioneer, was rated as "the most beautiful youth story" by the League Central Committee... Behind the many halos and honors, Zhang Meng is only a post-85 girl who has just started a business for 8 years, but she has helped 7 million young people to improve their competitiveness, and more than 20,000 young people have taken the first step out of micro-entrepreneurship. The Internet and time, she used it to the extreme.
Insist on getting up early to read and study for 20 years, insist on publishing a book every year, no matter how busy you are at work, and insist on playing Muay Thai 3 times a week... It seems that the life of riding the wind and waves and being alone relies on the unimaginable hardships and persistence of peers, but Zhang Meng feels that she is tireless. In order to realize self-worth, but also to help young makers across the country to find their own value, I really don't know how much this tall and slender big girl can "fight".
The self-disciplined nature of "crazy" youth
Parents, classmates, teachers, everyone advised her to choose the former, Zhang Meng thought of the hardships she insisted on paying over the years, gritted her teeth, and resolutely chose to withdraw from Zhejiang University and retake the college entrance examination.
In junior high school, Zhang Meng liked to play a "chivalrous girl", often in the class "heroic righteousness" and "punish the strong and eliminate the evil", the teacher saw her as a mischievous poor student, even before the parents attended the parents' meeting, they had to push for whom.
In 2001, the opportunity for change appeared, hearing the news of the success of Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, the ignorant Zhang Meng was actually touched by the heartstrings, and she made a wish: I want to be an Olympic torch bearer and win glory for the country!
How easy is it for ordinary people to become Olympic torchbearers? Xiao Zhang Meng remembered this accidentally sprouted wish in his heart. When the Olympic torchbearer first had to get good grades, so she changed her previous rebellion, took the initiative to sit at her desk, and wrote her homework for the first time until late at night... "Desperate" brought her the sweetness of being one step closer to her dream, and she successfully entered a well-known high school in Shenyang.
For another three years, she was admitted to zhejiang university with excellent results in biomedical engineering, full of thought that she was far away from her dream, but the teachers of Zhejiang University clearly told her: because she is not the home of the Olympic Games, she has no opportunity to be an Olympic volunteer in Hangzhou.
The choice was placed in front of Zhang Meng so quickly, either accepting the reality and giving up the dream; or giving up the top five Zhejiang University in the country for the dream. Parents, classmates, teachers, everyone advised her to choose the former, Zhang Meng thought of the hardships she insisted on paying over the years, gritted her teeth, and resolutely chose to withdraw from Zhejiang University and retake the college entrance examination.
When Zhang Meng went to go through the withdrawal procedures, the director of education who received her said that you will definitely regret quitting school for this reason. Zhang Meng said afterwards that at that time, she had only one voice in her heart: "Go to Beijing!" Be a volunteer! ”
Back in her hometown of Shenyang, Zhang Meng seized the remaining few months to study hard, and in the college entrance examination that year, she was successfully admitted to the English major of Beijing Normal University as a liberal arts student, and finally went to the dream capital of Beijing.
As soon as she entered the school, Zhang Meng applied to become a volunteer for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In his sophomore year, he finally became the torchbearer of the Olympic Games and participated in the torch relay in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia. The little dream that germinated in junior high school came true after 7 years of persistence.
On the road of counterattack, heavy passes
Zhang Meng once again experienced the powerful role of self-management, and she understood that if she wanted to do anything, she must make up her mind to win, which is the premise of success.
Entering Beijing Normal University was a new beginning, and Zhang Meng set herself a new goal: to become a diplomat. However, the first test of the school gave Zhang Meng a downward spiral, and she ranked 89th out of 120 people in the whole grade, which greatly hit her self-confidence. She asked herself repeatedly, "Am I the only one who can be a bad student?" Zhang Meng calmed down and carefully analyzed, the English Department of Beijing Normal University needs to learn about 5,000 to 6,000 hours of professional knowledge in 3 years, if she takes out twice the energy, will she be able to fly first and surpass her peers around her?
The long-cultivated task spirit helped her, and Zhang Meng began her 1,000-day grove plan. After consulting her brothers and sisters, she set her own task: to learn An extra 3-5 hours of English every day, and persist for 1,000 days until her grades improved to the first place in the whole grade.
Therefore, in the secluded grove near the Ninth Teaching Building of Beijing Normal University, Zhang Meng was left with the shadow of Zhang Meng practicing English. Every morning at 5-8 o'clock, she would appear there without moving, and she would never be lazy even if it was nine cold days. In the early morning of winter, after returning to the classroom after the morning reading, "I can't hold the pen in my hand", and it takes 30 minutes to warm up again. She just forced herself into this position.
Trying to give back to her is equally generous. For 3 years, her grades have been ranked first in the whole college, even if she took the second major, she is still at the forefront of the major, and has taken all the scholarships that can be obtained. Zhang Meng once again experienced the powerful role of self-management, and she understood that if she wanted to do anything, she must make up her mind to win, which is the premise of success.
In addition to becoming an Olympic torchbearer, in 2008, another major event that affected Zhang Meng's life occurred, she participated in the APEC Voices of the Future (APEC Future Voice English Speech Contest). The prizes of the competition attracted Zhang Meng to attend the APEC CEO Summit with the leaders of the country that year.
Competitors from Tsinghua, Peking University, Beijing Foreign Chinese Universities, as well as native English speakers. In the face of a strong opponent, Zhang Meng actually passed five levels, slashed six generals, and stood all the way to the end on the podium. In the end, she came to the stage of the APEC CEO Summit with the first place result, which received much media attention. Ma Yun, who was attending the meeting at the time, also noticed her and said to her: "Zhang Meng, you are the best one selected by China, you have to do a good job." ”
How can it be counted as a career achievement, and how can I use my limited time and energy to reach more people around the world? Zhang Meng thought from the bottom of her heart, I want to start a business!
Empower young people to grow and succeed
Because of her excellent grades and performance in school, Zhang Meng has gained more social practice opportunities than her classmates. The school motto of Beijing Normal University, "Learning to be a teacher, acting as a model for the world", laid the educational background for her continuous cross-border entrepreneurship in the past 8 years.
It was during her college years that Zhang Meng first ventured into the business world. In APEC Voices for the Future, she reached out to many high-level chinese and foreign political and business figures and found a problem, that is, in such an international youth organization, Chinese youth are not confident enough, and their voices are difficult to be heard by the outside world.
Based on this situation, Zhang Meng began to think: "There are actually a large number of outstanding young people in China, and they all have great ambitions. But when they first enter the workplace, they do not have the skills of the workplace, and they do not have the funds and direction to start a business, they are very much in need of a group of responsible entrepreneur mentors to help them grow, but they lack a platform to connect graduates with these successful entrepreneurs. So, why don't I come and make this bridge? ”
Therefore, in 2013, Zhang Meng, who started her first business, founded LEAD Leadership and Lide University, hoping to become a "social university" that "connects young people and entrepreneurs and helps young people grow and succeed".
As Zhang Meng emerged in the entrepreneurial world, many well-known entrepreneurs who pay attention to youth development also noticed the post-85 girl, who participated in the "One-Hour Dialogue Youth" campaign launched by Zhang Meng on Weibo and became the first six mentors of the leadership of the NGO platform LED led by Zhang Meng: Ge Jun, former vice president of Apple, Zhou Zhixing, senior media person, Zhu Yongxin, vice chairman of the Central Committee of the China Democratic Progressive Party, Li Wenhao, founder of Wall Street English, Deng Fei, initiator of free lunch, and Gao Hongpeng, chairman of Shaanxi Changhe Industry.
Solving the knowledge and skill gap between higher education and employment and helping entrepreneurs to start a business is Zhang Meng's original intention. Through the establishment of offline Lide Entrepreneurship Camp, Youth Conference, Lide University, Youth Accelerator - Far North Coffee Open Class, as well as online "off-duty gas station" online workplace classes and thousands of WeChat learning communities, Zhang Meng and her friends have provided many targeted and pragmatic workplace improvement courses and guidance for college students, newcomers and early entrepreneurs.
In order to better help young people incubate entrepreneurship, Zhang Meng has also dabbled in offline coffee experience stores. The "Far North Coffee" she founded is a typical representative of "Internet + Coffee", and every detail is related to serving young entrepreneurs. Its English name "Hypervic" is a combination of the English words "Hyper" and "Victory", which means "super success".
For a period of time, Far North Coffee has been opened in Beijing 798, Beijing Guomao, Xi'an and other places, but the number of young customers who visit each store every day is only dozens or hundreds of people. At the same time, the company's other "X team" specializing in online marketing actually created a record of 100,000 customers in one night.
The disparity between traffic and cost was in front of her, and Zhang Meng made a bold decision to close all The Far North Coffee stores except the 798 store and focus on the line from then on.
"I understand that as entrepreneurs in the new era, we can't compete with our predecessors where they are strong, they are good at offline management, SOP, process processing, we are not good at it." Zhang Meng said, "If you want to kill a blood road out, it must be something they can't understand or play, and we are good at." ”
Shifting from offline to online also reflects Zhang Meng's courage to break the boundaries, once he finds the trend, he will turn in time and then move forward firmly.
From "early risers" to entrepreneurial mentors
Zhang Meng, who has been moving forward on the road of helping young people start a business, has plunged headlong into the track of knowledge payment.
At the end of 2015, she began to lay out the Internet route in the then-emerging live broadcast war. In November 2016, Zhang Meng founded the knowledge payment MCN platform "Off-duty Gas Station", which means "after work" life "gas station", to help young people grow their employability and core competitiveness firmly on their own.
Time management is Zhang Meng's specialty, and among her many identities, Zhang Meng likes the label of "early riser" the most. In Zhang Meng's view, taking the initiative to develop the habit of getting up early is a manifestation of self-discipline. It was for 20 years that she had been regularly getting up before 5 a.m. every day, giving her a lot more extra time to improve herself than others.
The time to get up early without a phone call and no other social information is the most efficient time of the day that belongs to you completely, and being able to insist on getting up early for a long time is equivalent to living more than others for half a day. Taking early rise as a benchmark, Zhang Meng passed on her experience in time management to her anxious peers. Using her own life-based experience as an example, she developed an audio course called "Zhang Meng's Life Efficiency Handbook: 50 Lessons in Time Management".
The course includes energy management, adequate physical fitness, correct rest, emotional account storage, willpower charging, repetitive inscription, and building an energy blueprint. Once launched on the Himalaya FM platform, it has remained on the hot list for a long time.
"For Sister Meng, the younger she is, the more I am ashamed of myself" "Getting up early has freed me from sub-health and confusion and become full of vitality"... This course is widely praised by college students and young white-collar workers, and a sincere and enthusiastic message has become the driving force for Zhang Meng's unremitting efforts.
Next, she developed high-quality courses such as "Zhang Meng: 50 Lessons of Energy Management", "Zhang Meng: Efficiently Building Personal Branding", "30 Days of Working money training camp" and other high-quality courses, and achieved the first place in the whole network list, the first place in the overall list, and the first place in the personal growth list on the Himalayas.
Off-duty gas stations frequently launch explosive models, forming a high-density, high-efficiency workplace knowledge dissemination, with a cumulative influence of more than 100 million. Millions of young people have started by following Zhang Meng's insistence on getting up early, reversing unhealthy living habits and embarking on a journey of rewriting their lives.
At the same time, Zhang Meng found that although many students participated in the course and learned things, once they reached the practical stage, everyone was still overwhelmed and would have such confusion: How should I use it? How can I make money?
As an entrepreneur, Zhang Meng understands best that the most difficult step for entrepreneurs is precisely this step from 0 to 1. At this stage, no one intervenes through education training. So, what can you do to solve this confusion of young entrepreneurs? Zhang Meng has been thinking.
Helping young people start businesses by hand
At the end of 2018, Qingchuang Wisdom and Beijing Chaoyang District Labor Service Management Center launched the "Young Maker Program", which uses curriculum guidance, entrepreneurship support, and accompaniment assistance to help young people realize their entrepreneurial dreams by means of government entrepreneurship competitions, policy interpretation, and assistance.
In just one year, 500 young people with dreams have joined the Youth Maker Program. When they first joined the program, some of them were timid and cowardly, and they could not communicate smoothly with others; some women lacked work skills because of the disconnect between production and society; some of them had difficulties in their families, and they encountered divorce, illness and other blows. With the help of Zhang Meng, they changed themselves from scratch and discovered the value of themselves.
Zhang Meng told reporters about one of her most impressive, two-child mothers - Chu Yi. Her eldest son suffered from congenital cerebral palsy, and her husband abandoned their mother and son. The strong Chuyi chose the classics of traditional Chinese studies, insisted on teaching her son to read and read, and after unremitting efforts, finally let her eldest son recover to the level of being able to go to school.
Before the coincidence of meeting Zhang Meng, the life of Chu Yi and his two sons was very difficult. Zhang Meng's life efficiency class taught Chu Yi time management and led her and her son to change together. After joining the Youth Maker Program, Zhang Meng planned for her the identity of "Classic Family Instructor of Traditional Chinese Studies", giving her energy and letting her start to export herself.
Chu Yi often said: "What I am doing is a job full of enthusiasm and value, and I am willing to be a runner for more people and more families." "The Young Maker Program not only helped to improve Chuyi's living standards, but more importantly, the positive energy that Zhang Meng worked hard to spread, and helped her spread more positive energy and continue to blossom."
The other is Xie Zihui, a post-90s visually impaired college student. In 2018, before Xie Zihui graduated from normal school, she was told that she could not become a teacher because of the current policy restrictions, and her dream of becoming a teacher since she was a child was shattered. In the trough, her father took her to see Zhang Meng and asked Zhang Meng to help her make a choice.
Zhang Meng thought that according to objective conditions, if Zihui did not have the opportunity to realize the dream of teaching and educating people, it was very likely that she could only choose to become a masseuse, and she must help her.
As a visually impaired person, Zihui is able to study with her classmates in general higher education institutions and even receive scholarships, which is her unique competitiveness. The Young Makers Program provides Zihui with training and support from influencer organizations, giving her the opportunity to tell her own story and spread her experience to other visually impaired people. After Zihui found that she could bring such great changes to others, she returned to her original sunny and cheerful.
For the inspirational stories of these young makers, Zhang Meng said it like a few family treasures, and her eyes flashed with full of affection and sense of accomplishment. As she herself said: "Altruism is the greatest happiness." ”