Big Tech People Can't Take Off Their Long Gowns? Some Achieve 1,000 Orders Monthly in 3 Months in Global Selling; Others Struggle to Launch for a Year.

On April 19-20, I held two consecutive events in Hangzhou. For obvious reasons, after all, this is big Hangzhou, the capital of Ali e-commerce.

To further refine the participants, I compressed each event to an average of 15 people, with Max practical group members + specially invited practical experts reaching 100%+.

There were basically three types of people at these two events:

1. Big tech career changers - almost 50%, obviously mostly programmers and product managers. If this continues, I'm going to prepare a special session specifically for product managers.

2. Old e-commerce people or old cross-border e-commerce people - about 35%. There are cross-border e-commerce people who started contacting and deeply cultivating Southeast Asia 3-5 years ago, Amazon self-operated suppliers, and people who have deeply cultivated the pet industry for 7 years.

3. Cross-border industry practitioners - the rest are people who are already relatively related to the cross-border e-commerce industry. Google direct customers, AI e-commerce products under a certain company, Alibaba International Station, TK, product managers of a certain site-building SaaS, etc.

(Note: the events I hold have no business cooperation, they are all real group members.)

Old Problems for Big Tech Career Changers

Some achieved an average of 1,000 orders per month within 3 months of starting; others struggled to launch for a year.

1. Those who went directly from 0 to 50

Brother L, a programmer by background, and his partner resigned without a backup plan and achieved an average of 1,000 orders per month in their first battle on Etsy within 3 months. Like many Etsy partners, they experienced shop issues, but more than 3 months of practice achieved results that satisfied them. They resigned together to go all-in on global selling and are currently preparing to pioneer independent stations.

Therefore, they came with very specific sharing and very specific questions. Both of them are also from big tech programmer backgrounds. Using this advantage, they even developed their own ERP for Etsy for faster and quicker order return, etc. The friends at the scene envied them: why do e-commerce? Wouldn't it be nice to just sell shovels and sell SaaS?

It's actually uncommon for newcomers to start directly from 0-50 like this, but these people have such obvious characteristics. From listening to their sharing and questions at the scene, you can see that they can also deeply research and solve small problems, and they also know what they want and what they should do in terms of direction.

2. Those stuck at 1-1.5

Actually, 80% of the friends at each event are similar. Everyone has orders, a few or more than a dozen orders every day, but because of advertising and various costs, they don't make money, or can only make a small profit.

Brother Shui shared his iteration of positioning and product selection. In the middle, he also experienced the edge of giving up when orders wouldn't come out at all, to being able to get orders from natural traffic and getting excited, to the edge of giving up again when orders wouldn't come out at all.

Brother E focused on a category that he knew might be quite competitive and wasn't his strength, but his execution was strong enough to be in a state of continuous orders. The same problem: single source of traffic, wanting to try new traffic sources but making him feel a bit overwhelmed.

Brother Song chose an extremely niche pet category, didn't study SEO much, and got a few orders. But currently also exploring new, stable traffic and orders.

And so on, these people are all facing problems of the same nature but completely different solutions.

My observations and suggestions are:

1. Actually, these people are smart enough, they even know their own problems, but perhaps due to ability limitations, they cannot better truly implement and improve. For example, someone said I should do more social media, yes, then go do it; someone said I think my products are all moved without competitiveness, then find a way to "iterate" from the product side.

2. Participate more in communication. These people actually don't lack execution or problem-solving ability at all; they simply lack some new cognition. From my observation of many veterans, 0-1 relies entirely on execution, 1-100 relies on a stepping stone. This stone is not produced by execution; it is produced by forcing yourself to open your horizons and cognitive limitations, to ask, to try, to chat.

3. Remember, most knowledge payment products including me can already help you 0-1, which is already the strongest delivery of knowledge payment products. The experience of 1-100 must be obtained by yourself through various methods, personally stepping on them. If there is a knowledge payment product in this world that says it can teach you 1-100 and lead you to make millions a month, think about the logic bug here yourself.

3. Those stuck at 0-1: to the left is being sober, to the right is self-consumption.

Brother Lu shared that many times he can actually be aware of the problems he might face, such as whether he is trapped in a certain execution he is not good at, whether he is trapped in self-moved product selection, etc.

To put it nicely, it's a kind of sobriety, constantly self-dialectical; but to put it badly, it's also a kind of internal consumption, a bit too self-questioning.

This problem may be the biggest obstacle for some smart people. They are too soberly aware of the problems and possible failures they face, but indeed at their stage they cannot find practical solutions.

My solution suggestion is to treat it as a child's play and face failure directly. To put it bluntly, don't take it seriously, what can it do? Will you lose your life because of one attempt? Or go bankrupt? After landing, even if you fail, you will find that nothing worse will happen.

New Challenges for Old E-commerce People

The answers to all problems are always so simple and unadorned

1. Sister S/Sister H, senior product expert marketing expert, still face many 0-1 challenges when deciding to start their own business.

Sister S, who has a rich resume and strong execution, has participated in the product development of many domestic top brands, then cooperated with a domestic top 3 brand in a certain niche category on Taobao to go overseas, and later also did shop groups for TK US stores.

The last global selling attempt was to start a station from 0-1 with a partner again. The friends at the scene felt that her last attempt might have encountered a problem that all entrepreneurs encounter: pursuing perfection too much.

Entrepreneurship fears this most, whether it's developing physical products, designing an independent station, or anything else. Personally, I always feel that you cannot pursue perfection too much, otherwise you will likely be stuck in place forever. We have seen too many entrepreneurial inspirational chicken soup: first make a pile of shit, then optimize it.

2. Brother D, Brother F, etc., Amazon self-operated product supply chain, Amazon mature sellers, even old players have to learn to brush TikTok short videos, study independent stations.

Facing changes in the internal and external environment (new platform traffic dividends, tariff policies, etc.), many old global selling people are trying new channels (TikTok, Temu, Shein), and even new self-operated strategies (DTC independent stations).

Some old global selling people will easily suffer setbacks when trying DTC self-operation and trying various traffic channels. I don't think it's that profound, it's simply expectation and mentality issues; and in the process of switching, they cannot quickly build a set of organizational systems (whether it's their own employees or outsourcing). More importantly, what links to do personally, what links to grasp big and release small.

The few old cross-border players at the scene sound quite "practical," that is, they are quite willing to deeply study the actual execution details.

3. Brother T and Brother C, the most simple and unadorned

There are also many traditional global selling e-commerce people who follow the most basic and correct business rules.

This time, Brother T deeply cultivated a certain country in Southeast Asia + a certain category; Brother C deeply cultivated various innovative products in the pet category. From the mouths of these people, what you get is always the most simple, unadorned, most correct and simple sharing.

I think their stories have always been my favorite sharing. From their mouths, there are no stories of 0 threshold, 1 week, exploding millions of various cow-horse snake-god stories seen on the current internet, and no "small tricks big ultimate moves," just simple, down-to-earth, respect for the market, respect for professionalism, respect for the essence of an industry.

Some Personal Ramblings

1. Within this month, I deeply interviewed 5 groups of real practical guests + organized 4 offline salons with a total of more than 100 practitioners. First, to explore my ability boundary, after all, organizing events and recording content is equivalent to a new field. But after actual testing, it feels pretty good, quite handy.

Second, to more broadly touch the bottom of my user base. I can't say it's full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers, but I can only say that everyone has infinite cooperation and co-creation value (for content). I originally recorded some important big shots who could chat deeply later at each small event, but by the last two events I was tired because everyone has particularly senior experience that can be used for sharing.

2. Next step, my events will iterate again, continuing to move closer to my ideal final form. Generally, it will be divided into 2 modes: one is the global selling version of Xie Chat, with a scale of more than 30 people, no ability requirement threshold. In the form of guest sharing + audience interaction, and I will record the content as completely as possible and publish it on self-media platforms. The second is to make the closed-door meeting deeper and more refined, within 10 people, continue to raise the threshold. Mainly deep internal communication. In May, I will go to Fujian and Guangzhou-Shenzhen; before that, I may experiment with one in Shanghai.

3. If users can get value, then this thing must have value. Put monetization behind, and the investment of ability and time is also a difficult investment.