Many things, even if someone tells you the truth, you still may not believe it because it exceeds your level of understanding. Only after you personally experience it, see it for yourself, or say your level of understanding has improved, will you recognize it, but by then you often have already paid a higher price.

In 2014, I was in Shenzhen. At that time, the agricultural materials industry had also become very competitive, with each year not being very prosperous, and various low-level competitions were still very fierce. However, that year the mobile internet was born, and I kept researching how agricultural materials and the internet could effectively combine. During the research process, I attended some internet summits, internet training sessions, and some internet exchange meetings. In this process, my understanding and vision gradually opened up. I attended an internet summit where successful big names or already successful businesses shared their experiences. After listening, I felt it was very suitable for current agricultural materials bosses to understand.

In fact, when I attended these training sessions or exchange meetings, I had already informed my boss in advance, hoping he would go with me, but he always declined, saying, "You go ahead, I don't need to go. After you learn, just come back and tell me what it's all about." However, when I shared my insights with him, he reacted very dismissively, saying, "Old Zhao, you've been fooled. Others are deceiving you. Why do I say this? Because every penny is earned through sweat. Don't look at others buying luxury houses and driving luxury cars; in reality, they are all in debt."

The boss countered me like this and stubbornly believed that the information I received was incorrect. I couldn't persuade him because his level of understanding hadn't reached that standard, and he had always been engaged in the traditional industry, knowing nothing about the internet industry. He thought the internet was just a bunch of people messing around, a bunch of people bragging, and it was impossible to achieve good results.

But he wanted to try, so he contacted a company to purchase a software package and asked me to study and operate it. However, the version of this software was too outdated, and there was no market space for it. At that time, I suggested, "Why don't we go to Suzhou to attend a certain internet summit? Perhaps we can find opportunities there, as there are many bosses on-site, and we will find many potential users." For this simple reason, the boss agreed, and we went to Suzhou.

After arriving in Suzhou, I continued to promote our project, while the boss carefully listened to the shares from various big names. In the end, he chose a person from a traditional enterprise background, a Mr. Liu. Why did he attract him? Because they were both from traditional business backgrounds, and secondly, this traditional business person achieved greater sales and better results through online marketing. Therefore, he gained my boss's recognition and wanted to follow him and join his project.

From this story, what can everyone see? It is that as a person, he is more likely to believe someone who is similar to him, someone who has the same background and has successfully paved the way ahead. Thus, a person from the same background is willing to follow him. So, in this sense, it is not surprising that my boss chose him.

The boss took me to visit their company, then we had a meal and chatted. During this process, I found that the other party's success should be questioned. Why? Because throughout the entire process, he never talked about or delved deeper into internet operations; he was just constantly packaging himself, claiming to have a website, and obtaining passive traffic through various mysterious SEO optimizations, attracting a large number of relevant purchases and achieving today's success.

Did you know? In 2014, PC e-commerce was gradually declining, while mobile internet e-commerce was sprouting and growing robustly. However, they did not see the potential in this track and still thought that PC e-commerce was what they should persist in doing, even though they had only been doing SEO optimization for PC e-commerce for just two or three years. So we can predict that they still held the same mindset, still focused on product thinking and SEO optimization for traffic. This is completely different from the user-centered thinking of mobile internet, which values every traffic source because each traffic source represents a person with social attributes. This is also the biggest characteristic of mobile internet, while the PC e-commerce mindset of SEO optimization merely sees it as simple data, just a way to harvest traffic through a broad net.

I remember at that time they were thinking of choosing a product and using website optimization to obtain natural traffic for success. They had previously succeeded in automotive parts or certain tea leaves, and then their target shifted to nuclear carving. As you know, the market volatility risk for nuclear carving collectibles is very high. They only saw the present and speculated about the future, lacking necessary market research. They attracted many people to invest and become partners through packaging and their own fame. Later, this product continuously depreciated under market fluctuations, and the transactions were not satisfactory, ultimately leading to a collapse.

I was thinking that if the boss had chosen the mobile internet track at that time, then a few years later, he would not have faced that failure. So why couldn't my boss see this? The main reason is that the group of people from the mobile internet background were originally engaged in the internet; they might have come from the original PC internet and then transitioned, but very few traditional business owners directly transitioned to the mobile internet track. Traditional business owners first saw PC e-commerce and then mobile internet e-commerce. Therefore, it is evident that their failure was inevitable.

Last year, I came into contact with a beauty industry brand. This beauty brand had once been glorious; at its peak, many people sought to franchise it. However, later, due to either poor business decisions or internal management issues, it disappeared for many years. After disappearing for a few years, the company's owner wanted to restore that glory. He recruited talents and continued to use the original methods to expand the national market, integrating beauty shops, such as the famous brand plan, etc.

Before I joined, I discussed with the relevant boss about the combination of mobile internet and the beauty industry, proposing an innovative way to promote it in the market. However, what I said was understood by the other party at less than 1/10. He thought it was just about traffic; he believed it was about registering on these third-party platforms, creating an account, opening a shop, and then attracting traffic to buy his products. In short, this method still belongs to a model of PC e-commerce, regardless of whether it spreads through social means or any other means. However, its essential characteristic still belongs to PC e-commerce. He still did not realize that behind every data point is an independent person, and each independent person is an independent social entity. This independent social entity can influence a large group of people. Therefore, he had not yet elevated to the level of mobile internet thinking. So, when I followed the market, I couldn't feel any application, investment, transformation, training, or performance conversion in this area.