20211012 Listening Notes: How to look beyond things and see people?

Classmate Huang Di was born in a family of dentists. Their family has been doing one thing for three generations, and that is dental care. Huang Di, who grew up in such an environment, was deeply touched when he saw his elders spending their entire lives studying one thing. Not only did she choose the dental medical industry, she also decided to start a business with the support of her seniors after accumulating strength and built a high-end dental medical institution called Beva Dental.

When we hear high-end, we will subconsciously think that it must be very profitable. But one thing impressed me deeply. Once I heard that when my classmates from the Institute of Advanced Research were communicating with Huang Di offline, they were particularly worried about her, and that was when Beva Dental would be profitable. Yes, from its opening at the end of August 2019 to now, Huang Di’s Beva Dental has never truly made a profit.

Is she short of customers? Huang Di told me that she actually has no shortage of customers and has accumulated a large number of high-quality customers. So why not make money? I don’t know if you have been to other dental medical institutions. Let me tell you how Huang Di’s institution works.

At Beva Dental, Huang Di made a request to all medical staff, which is: before treatment, please think about a question. The client lying on our treatment chair today, if it is you Family members, such as your children, your parents, brothers and sisters, how would you formulate your treatment plan?

What is the use of asking this question? Here, I especially want to share with you the story of one of their patients.

Once, a customer came to Beva Dental and asked for a veneer. Veneers are a technique for repairing teeth, which involves pasting a layer of material that approximates normal tooth color on the surface of discolored or defective teeth. It turns out that this customer fell down and one of his front teeth was missing a little bit.

He consulted several hospitals, and they all suggested that he get veneers, and some even suggested that he get a dental crown, which is to put a brace of similar color on the outside of the teeth. Whether you are making veneers or crowns, normal tooth tissue needs to be removed. You know, once the tooth tissue is worn away, it cannot be regenerated. And as you can probably guess, this is not cheap, and the price usually costs at least a thousand.

So this customer was not at ease, so he consulted several local dental hospitals. When he came to Bewa Dental, the doctor at Bewa Dental found that his missing front tooth showed no symptoms of sensitivity and did not affect his daily eating.

So the doctor suggested that he can adjust the gap a little bit so that it doesn't look obtrusive. After the adjustment, he can see the effect. If he is not satisfied, the doctor will consider giving him a better plan.

Later the client thought, since he has to grind his teeth anyway, why not give it a try. As a result, after polishing, the gap is basically invisible. The customer was very satisfied. Unexpectedly, the doctor's gentle adjustment solved the problem that had been bothering him for a long time. What the client never expected was that the final treatment cost only 50 yuan.

You see, one costs at least a thousand yuan, and the other only costs 50 yuan. In fact, the real decision-making power lies in the hands of doctors and medical institutions, but Huang Di's Beva Dental Clinic will advise patients to choose the 50 yuan plan. No wonder the students are sweating for Huang Di.

Indeed, Beva Dental is really not making money now. But what did Huang Di say? She said that it has only been two years since they started the business. In fact, before establishing the hospital, they were prepared to make losses in the first five years. Because she and her team believe in the power of long-termism, she also believes that the craftsmanship of "seeing customers" and the corporate gene will eventually create a valuable brand, even at the expense of five years of losses.

So, what does it mean to look beyond things and see people? Huang Di’s approach gave us a very good answer. For an enterprise, it is natural to develop and make profits. But there are many ways to do this well. The method chosen by Huang Di is to first look beyond corporate profits and see every customer who comes to Beva Dental and see everyone's real needs.

See people’s self-motivation

The second classmate I want to introduce to you next, her name is Li Yingya, she is the director of the Talent Development Center and Moral Education Center of Sunshine Xinlin Children’s Commune tutor. Her organization has never done any marketing in 16 years, but it has great influence.

Sunshine Xinlin Children’s Commune is an innovative language literacy education institution in Kunming and is very well-known in Kunming. I heard many students from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Kunming campus say that if their friends’ children want to enroll in Sunshine Xinlin, they still have to wait in line for at least a year.

Classmate Li Yingya shared that a very important way for Sunshine Xinlin to be recognized by so many families is to continuously build an active learning community and then help every individual in this community achieve own value. She said that by allowing everyone to realize value and everyone working hard for their own value, the team will be self-motivated. In such an atmosphere, employees, parents, and students can influence each other and form a positive cycle.

How exactly is it done? Here I want to share two short stories with you.

The first story is that they let everyone participate in the "production process." The most important thing is the learning process. Their unique point is that everyone involved in the "production process" includes not only employees, but also parents. They invite parents into the classroom, which is not the kind of thing we usually imagine where parents can just observe in the classroom. The parents in their classroom also need to study together, discover and solve problems together, and grow together. I have attached a picture to the manuscript, which is a real photo taken in their class. You will see the interactive part of the class, parents also need to participate, actively raise their hands, the atmosphere is particularly active.

Imagine that allowing parents to participate in the production process not only allows parents to experience Sunshine Xinlin’s professional courses and comfortable environment up close, but also allows children and parents to deepen their emotional exchanges here and promote Parent-child relationship. It’s a positive positive cycle. Parents will recognize this place more and more, and Sunshine Xinlin will grow better and better because of their participation.

The second story is about how to let employees discover their own value. Their approach is project management. Project-based management within Sunshine Xinlin means that all teaching, teaching research, and activities are carried out in the form of projects. More importantly, they will put this type of project at the school level through open bidding among all employees. The team that successfully bids will obtain the planning and operation rights of the project. What effect will this bring?

During the project planning process, employees will actively contribute creative ideas in order to finally realize their ideas. They have planned "Jurassic theme", "Minions theme", "Liyuan Opera", etc. The activity made all parents sigh that it was "so creative and attractive."

You see, this is the value of human beings. With so much positive feedback from parents and children, employees’ sense of value and self-identity has been greatly improved. In my opinion, Sunshine Xinlin’s approach actually activates everyone’s curiosity and enterprising spirit. This is really important for engaging in the production of spiritual products and creative work.

In work and life, if our exploration system is activated, we as individuals can exert greater energy. Therefore, looking beyond things and seeing people does not mean not paying attention to things, but by discovering the value of people and in turn accomplishing things.

See the uniqueness of people

On the level of activating individuals, the third classmate I will introduce to you next also has a clever trick. She is Yao Meng from Chengdu campus.

Four years ago, Yao Meng handled a B&B project in Shaxi Ancient Town, Yunnan. Shaxi Ancient Town is the only surviving and well-preserved ancient market on the Tea Horse Road.

I have attached a picture of this B&B run by Yao Meng. You can also see from the picture that this is a high-end B&B with a great sense of design and quality.

Although the local history, culture and tourism resources are very good, and the starting point of the B&B is also quite high, at that time, Yao Meng was actually quite unsure. Because on the one hand, this is her first time handling such a high-end B&B project. What is high-end in the homestay industry? Does it mean the equipment is particularly luxurious, or the service is particularly considerate? There is no clear standard reference. On the other hand, because this store is the first high-end B&B brand to enter Shaxi, she has no experience to draw from in terms of employee recruitment and training or operating model.

So how do you make guests choose to stay in this B&B after traveling thousands of miles away?

Yao Meng’s idea at the time was that the key to attracting guests to a B&B, and the soul of the B&B, should be its unique experience.

And where do these unique experiences come from? She focused her attention on Shaxi.

Shaxi is a settlement of the Bai ethnic minority, and Yao Meng is a Han nationality. She does not understand the local people. Therefore, Yao Meng decided to integrate into their real lives, get to know them deeply and understand the lives of the locals.

The first thing Yao Meng did was to communicate in detail with every lady who was willing to come to the B&B for job interviews to understand their personal and family situations. She later arranged company team building sessions at the homes of different employees, taking this opportunity to communicate with their families and understand their lives.

It was in this opportunity for in-depth communication that Yao Meng discovered that everyone has unique value.

For example, Sister Duan in the store lives in a very remote mountain. There were no roads at that time, so she had to walk or ride a horse every time she went home, which took more than an hour to get there. But it is because deep in the mountains at such a high altitude, a particularly precious ingredient - matsutake mushrooms - is abundant near Sister Duan's home. Pan-fried matsutake, fried matsutake, grilled matsutake, stewed matsutake, matsutake sashimi and other cooking methods we can think of, no matter how you cook it, it will be delicious. Sister Duan told Yao Meng that they have been picking matsutake mushrooms with their parents since they were young, so they are familiar with which tree has a few matsutake mushrooms under it. So how can such a great resource as Sister Duan’s home be connected with a B&B?

It is not difficult to think of one thing. The matsutake mushrooms near Sister Duan’s home can be introduced into the restaurant of the B&B. But Yao Meng's idea was different. What did she think of? Yao Meng was creative and thought of developing a travel route for matsutake picking. During the matsutake season, Sister Duan becomes the steward of this route. She can take guests to experience picking matsutake by themselves, and then enjoy a matsutake feast at her home. This idea can not only provide a very unique experience for B&B guests, but also help Sister Duan improve her family's financial situation. Similarly, Sister Duan is not only an employee in the store, but also a supplier of B&Bs, and the developer and executor of special experience routes.

Yao Meng has many other ideas similar to this. There were sisters Yang and Xiaoju who could dance in their store, so they formed a song and dance team with Bai characteristics. There are also those who have honey at home and can make wine. They have all become suppliers of flavored products for B&Bs, providing local specialty products for B&Bs. Gradually, this store not only performed very well, but also became a benchmark for the government to inspect rural revitalization activities.

Look, where did all these things Yao Meng do come from? I think the first reason is that she has an in-depth look at every employee, and what she sees is the life experience of every local employee; and then she creates opportunities so that tourists can enter and experience a different life experience. This is the key to B&Bs attracting tourists.

Seeing the kindness of people

Finally, I want to share this story with you. Not from one person, but from a group of people. They are a brave and intelligent group from Class 1, Chengdu Campus. What I want to share with you is their very unique graduation project.

The graduation project is an important module in the study journey of the Institute for Advanced Study. It means that each group can study and create around a core challenge, and finally complete a group work, which can be a research project. The topic can also be a practical project.

The graduation project of the Brave Wisdom Group is a Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake called Zhang Fei Beef Mooncake.

You may have heard of or even seen "Zhang Fei Beef" products in some places at the airport. This is a casual snack, focusing on the specialty gift market. A classmate in their group is an employee of Zhang Fei Beef. When they were discussing the topic for their graduation project, the Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching. Although the brand Zhang Fei Beef focuses on the gift market, there were no corresponding special products on such an important day.

So this became a challenge that their group wanted to solve. How to design an innovative product so that Zhang Fei Beef can have a product that is closely linked to the theme of the Mid-Autumn Festival? Finally, their group decided to make a beef-filled mooncake.

What do you think is the biggest challenge here? In fact, it is not about whether they have experience in food processing and mooncake making technology, nor is it a problem with retail logistics, but there are so many mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Why should everyone buy their mooncakes?

So the biggest challenge is to find the selling point of this product. In their group, there are people from the financial industry, there are active military personnel, there are people in production, but no one is creative.

What to do? They thought of the alumni of the Institute for Advanced Study. There are many creative workers among the alumni of the Institute for Advanced Study. So they actively borrowed widely, found their class teacher, and connected with alumni in the creative industry. Finally, they found an alumnus who had received the 0th batch of the Institute of Advanced Studies, and they spent an afternoon communicating and collaborating.

In the end, they condensed a common sense and wanted to make a mooncake that is sentimental and meaningful. What does it mean?

They discovered that everyone must have some people who are affectionate and righteous to you in their life. Do you have anything to say to these people who are affectionate and righteous to you? There must be, but maybe when we meet, we can’t say this. So you can entrust Zhang Fei, who is also kind and righteous, to help you.

Therefore, the positioning of this mooncake is that it is a mooncake that cannot be given away casually. You must give it to the person who is affectionate and righteous to you. They also wrote special copywriting and designed friendship cards for this purpose.

1,000 boxes of a sentimental mooncake were locked on the night of pre-order. As far as I know, their team must control sales because production capacity can barely keep up.

Look, what did this group capture in their graduation project? It captures people's feelings. First, I saw the friendship between the alumni of the Institute of Advanced Studies, and then I saw the friendship in everyone's heart. Finally, I pinned this friendship on a moon cake and completed a valuable graduation project.

There are many other students from our Institute for Advanced Study who have such impressive stories.

For example, student Shi Xinyuan made ice-breaking activities a new tradition on Kunming campus, so that more students can see and understand real partners.

For another example, Zhang Yu and Zhang Zhe’s team, adhering to the spirit of craftsmanship, tried to develop low-cost brown sugar processing technology, helping Yunnan sugarcane farmers solve the problem of being unable to process sugarcane on their own.

There is also classmate Yang Di. He has held reading meetings every month for three consecutive years. Each time, he invites a local time-honored brand owner from Yunnan to share. His wish is to make Yunnan’s local brands more popular. People know.

There is also classmate Cao Yang, who successfully led a less experienced team to complete the CG model of Transformers 3 by tapping into the team's internal drive and learning ability. Of course, there is also classmate Ma Min, who studies aerospace-specific springs. Through his team's modification of springs, the assembly qualification rate of a certain hydraulic device that has been maintained for decades has been increased from 30% to 95%.

There are many, many students like this, and they are the most valuable asset of our Institute for Advanced Study. There are more than 11,000 alumni of the Institute of Advanced Research, who are all masters from various industries, forming a powerful brain community. What are brain homologs? That is, if you are an alumnus of the Institute for Advanced Study, you can share the knowledge and experience in the brains of other alumni by linking to them. More importantly, just like the Zhang Fei beef mooncakes we just introduced, the reason why they came up with the selling point of friendship was also inspired by the friendship between students at the Institute of Advanced Research. To be honest, I am also very touched. In just three months, they have developed such a deep friendship as classmates.

I heard that some students were on a business trip. In order to catch up with the weekend group discussion, because there were no direct flights, they had to stay overnight. Please note that they transferred from the high-speed rail to the train all night and had to reverse several trains. I didn’t even have time to put away my luggage, so I went back to campus to participate in the group discussion.

I also know that some students have a very important job, but they don’t want to miss preparing for the final project with their classmates, and discuss with them until one or two o’clock in the night. It is too late to go home, so they have to find a hotel nearby. Continue your work.

There was even a classmate who said to me very seriously, "Teacher Lu, do you know? I have been in Kunming for ten years, and it was only when I arrived at the Institute of Advanced Studies that I made my first graduate degree in this city. A group of true friends." Please note that this classmate was not drunk and impulsive when he said this. Moreover, he has been working hard in Kunming for ten years, and now he has a successful career. Of course, he has a wide range of friends, but he is a classmate of the Institute of Advanced Studies, which makes him feel the purest and most simple friendship between classmates.

So, even though many students have graduated from the Institute for Advanced Studies almost three years ago, they still maintain the habit of gathering regularly. Although they were together for only three short months, they formed a lifelong friendship.

This is what we want to gain from the Institute of Advanced Research and Development for everyone.

Here, I also sincerely invite you to come to school. You are welcome to join this brain community, gain a group of loving study partners, and do greater things together.