The 2022 pandemic caught all FMCG professionals off guard, disrupting everyone's plans for the first half of the year. For companies: growth, new product launches, reforms, and hiring; for individuals: promotions, salary increases, buying cars, buying homes, and changing jobs. It was as if everything had suddenly been paused. It wasn't until the end of May, when the outbreaks in Beijing and Shanghai began to wind down, that people felt spring in their hearts, as if it were just beginning. But the flowers are halfway through their bloom, and there is less than a month until the first half of the year ends. But no matter what, things are finally moving again. When I went to the airport this morning, I took a nice Didi ride. I asked the driver, "Have you been anxious these past six months?" The driver said, "I have elderly parents, young children, and a mortgage. My restaurant couldn't stay open and closed down. If I said I wasn't anxious, that would be a lie. But what can anxiety do? Life has to go on; you can't stop eating just because of the pandemic. Look, I'm here driving passengers." I asked the driver, "You seem not very anxious." "Reality is right here. You have to accept it whether you like it or not. No one's life is smooth sailing. You have to accept reality and look at the possibilities in life. Fortunately, I still have my skills and experience. Money can be earned again, but if you lose confidence, you lose everything." Exactly, if you lose confidence, you lose everything. This gave me great inspiration. Looking at my friends' comments on social media, most focused on discussions of big trends and slow variables. The story of the Mexican parrot didn't seem to interest them much. What I really want to say is that whether it's the big trends of the era or the slow variables of the industry, for us individuals, mental bandwidth is the prerequisite for making choices in the present. Many primitive tribes in Africa eat monkeys. Their method of catching monkeys is extremely simple: find a tree hole with an opening just big enough for a monkey to stick its hand in. Then the hunter deliberately shows food to the monkey, pretending to store it in the hole. Once the hunter leaves, the monkey will go to get the food. But the hole is too small; once the monkey grabs the food, it can't pull its hand out. As soon as the monkey grabs the food, the hunter appears quickly and easily catches it. You might ask, why doesn't the monkey let go? Yes, why doesn't the monkey let go? What is more important than life? Although monkeys are smarter than parrots, in times of crisis, their mental bandwidth may be worse than a parrot's. The point of this story is that when crisis comes, anxiety only narrows our mental bandwidth. This also explains why gamblers who lose keep trying to win back their money. A few days ago, a distributor from Shandong, Boss Wang, chatted with me: "Teacher Zhao, I'm a bit tired and can't keep going. But after taking stock of my assets, all that's left is: the warehouse is rented, the brand belongs to the manufacturer, the salespeople are hired. Except for a few broken cars, there's a pile of expired goods and accounts receivable. I feel that after decades of hard work, apart from some numbers in the account, nothing seems left. I feel a bit sad." I see many distributors who have worked hard for decades and made some money, but besides money, family affection, children's education, friends, and their own health seem to be lacking. They don't understand new business models and can't do them. Profit margins are as thin as paper, tasks are suffocating, children don't want to take over, and there are no suitable managers to handle things. Cognition is the container for money. Many people work hard to make money but never think about what kind of cognition is needed to hold that wealth. For many, the peak of their cognitive life is only in the month before the college entrance exam. For the rest of their lives, their main learning methods are WeChat Moments and Douyin. Not learning, not communicating, playing cards and drinking are the main ways they grow. They seem experienced, but from a professional perspective, apart from greasy tricks, their insights into self, life, profession, business, and new things are very shallow. Old Wang said, "That's not right, Teacher Zhao. I've been very hardworking for decades, getting up early and going to bed late, never daring to be lazy." I said, "That's not called hard work. You're using tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness." A good business is herding sheep, not chopping wood. I see too many people turning a sheep-herding business into wood-chopping. Doing business is essentially learning how to raise sheep, not practicing wood-chopping skills. Back to the present. Yesterday, I chatted with Mr. Fang from Yan You Xin, and he proposed a viewpoint: Online business will go through three stages: I deeply agree. Isn't traditional offline business the same? After 40 years of reform and opening up, the logic of business has indeed changed and entered a new stage. The pandemic didn't change anything, but it really accelerated the process. Three years of pandemic have been faster than ten years without it. Many businesses that seemed okay and could last a few years have been pulled directly to ten years later by the pandemic. The existing offline market, the involution of Tmall and JD.com, the chaotic community group buying, O2O that no one knows how to do, Douyin short videos that can only be watched, private domain e-commerce, live streaming e-commerce, content e-commerce, digitalization... all these topics are things that can kill distributors. Some distributors say, "I know, but I can't do it!" Is the new business really difficult? Let me tell a story first: Watson asked Holmes: "Why can you always find the truth when others can't see the situation clearly?" Holmes said, "Because I observe." Watson said, "Observe? I observe too. Why can't I?" Holmes said, "You observe? Then let me ask you, how many steps are there on the staircase at our front door?" Watson said, "I don't know." Holmes said, "I know, 17. Because you just see, but I observe." What we call 'insight' is different from 'observation'; it goes further—seeing is knowing there are stairs in the hallway, observing is knowing there are 17 steps, and insight is knowing why there are 17 steps. Observation is seeing the phenomenon; insight is knowing the essence behind the phenomenon. In fact, as long as you understand the essence behind the phenomenon, I think any business is not that difficult. In yesterday's article, I mentioned that when a consumer has a need, before purchasing, they will take several actions: Similarly, when we judge whether something is feasible, we also follow these steps. I'm saying all this to tell you: Get out more, walk around, and communicate with people in the industry. Seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times. Even if you don't do it, you need to know what changes are happening in the world. Especially after the pandemic, the changes in the industry are huge. On June 30 - July 1, we will hold the 2022 (7th) China FMCG Channel Innovation Conference in Guangzhou, inviting more than fifty industry experts and teachers to discuss how to do business after the pandemic. I believe the insights gained from communicating with these experts at the scene will be far greater than what you get from looking at your phone at home. Interested friends, don't miss it. -END- Are you 'watching' me?