Life is severely punishing those who refused to study hard.

Giving lectures at annual meetings for distributors of hundreds of companies, I often recall a saying: "Life is severely punishing those who refused to study hard."

Many distributor bosses, during their school years, either were too playful or came from poor families, so they entered the business world early and started selling goods.

The first generation of distributors went from poverty to wealth, relying entirely on hard work. They skipped classes, played around, and once they entered the business world, they instantly became workaholics. They ate worse than pigs, worked more than oxen, got up earlier than chickens, and slept later than... well, they squeezed every drop of effort to sell goods, nurturing their business with blood and sweat, and finally achieved modest wealth.

Then, problems arose—

As the business grew, with more inventory, more customers, more debts, and a larger team, relying solely on the boss's hard work was no longer enough. Systematic management improvements became necessary.

Facing numerous challenges at work, life forced distributors to seek learning. They came to training classes with their problems.

Their desire for knowledge was 100% sincere because they were anxious. In class, as long as they heard something useful, their attentiveness moved the speaker.

However, the personal level of distributors and the state of their company management varied greatly:

Some distributor companies still had primitive management systems, using manual ledgers, still paying salespeople based on sales volume, with no basic management processes for inventory and accounts...

With such management status, it was difficult for them to apply the whole set of internal management improvement courses after returning. You might be teaching quadratic equations, but they haven't even mastered two-digit addition and subtraction.

Some distributor bosses had poor cultural literacy and no habit of learning and summarizing, which inevitably affected their absorption of knowledge. But driven by life's pressures, they were eager to learn and listened attentively.

I saw these bosses "greedily" taking photos of the slides, wearing reading glasses to take notes without missing a word, staying alert even in the afternoon sessions, and surrounding the teacher with questions after class.

I often think: If these distributors had been this attentive during their school years, would they have to work so hard, struggle so much, and learn so laboriously today?

How does a bowl of rice become part of your body?

Some distributors with annual revenues of tens of millions ask questions that are quite vague.

For example, they might blurt out:

"I hired three accountants, but the accounts are still unclear. We calculate profits daily, but at year-end, we find we've lost money. What should I do...?"

"How should I design performance assessments to motivate employees to sell my goods...?"

"My employees are afraid to manage; if I discipline them, they threaten to resign. What should I do...?"

What to do? What to do? What to do? The questioners are urgent, sincere, and anxious.

But these questions are too general and unspecific. To truly answer them, one would have to start from scratch and explain for a whole day.

It's impossible for a teacher to understand each distributor's current team situation, business status, and other details, and provide tailored, specific answers. That would become a consulting project.

There are tens of millions of distributors in China; it's impossible to provide personalized consulting to each one.

What teachers can do is provide practical experience, theoretical summaries, universal rules, case analyses, and usage methods.

For example, six ways and operational steps for distributors to reduce capital tie-up and solve funding difficulties...

For example, 14 principles, tool tables, and system templates for distributor inventory management...

For example, common systems, methods, pitfalls, and tool details for distributor personnel assessment in modules like "sales assessment," "process assessment," "vehicle expense assessment," "promotion assessment," and "account assessment"...

For example, how to establish a sales data ledger format, use computerized information management, and set up data alarm mechanisms to monitor which product, region, terminal, or salesperson has performance issues...

For example, salary assessment and welfare design systems to reduce employee turnover...

For example, nine models and execution tools for profit improvement...

For example, how to hold morning meetings and what the boss should say...

And so on.

Distributors are happy during class, taking photos, notes, and applauding, which moves the speaker.

But that's it. These courses are just "principles" and "rules," knowledge from others, experience from predecessors.

There is no personalized textbook that fits each distributor's specific situation; distributors can only go back and teach themselves.

How to teach yourself?

After listening, you need to extrapolate, take the knowledge, tools, models, and methods learned in training, adapt them to your own company's situation, select applicable parts, try them out, modify, polish, and integrate them into your trading company's management system.

In other words, the chef can only cook the meal for you, making it delicious and easy to digest, and even feed it to you.

But whether you can metabolize and absorb it, turning it into part of your body, depends on your own effort.

If your "IQ" is insufficient, you will inevitably suffer.

Turning a bowl of rice into part of your body—turning classroom knowledge into a mature operating mechanism for your company—is not easy.

This requires "learning in class": listening attentively, participating in interaction... That's not hard; just be serious.

"Reviewing after class": As the saying goes, "The wise gain power, the benevolent see cause and effect." You need not only to review knowledge but also to think, to critically examine what you've learned, deciding which methods you can use now and which you can't... This is slightly more difficult.

What's harder is "practicing after class": Make an "action plan" for yourself. Which method from this training can I use now? When, where, and with whom will I try it? Then practice it yourself. You will encounter difficulties, but you must solve them rather than giving up at the first setback.

Even harder is "reflection: if I could do it over": After trying a new method for a period, review and reflect: How has it worked? What problems did I encounter? If I were to apply this method in my company, how would I modify it if I could start over...?

Knowledge becomes skill through practice, and skill becomes instinct through repetition: Thus, learn-review-practice-reflect, learn-review-practice-reflect... In this cycle, you practice, explore, modify, and eventually shape it, overcoming the body's rejection, turning it into habit, and then into nature, making it your own.

Whether this process can be achieved truly depends on the distributor boss's learning and comprehension ability, and their ability to practice, explore, summarize, and adapt.

It may not be directly related to education level.

But it is definitely related to how many books you've read seriously and how many things you've done with your heart.

It is definitely related to whether you've developed the habit of learning and summarizing in your past life and work.

It is definitely related to whether you've honed the mental toughness to persistently overcome difficulties.

—These are the true IQ.

IQ, like muscles, must be trained.

If your IQ is insufficient, you are "dumb," and memorizing three hundred Tang poems won't save you.

I mean no offense; I myself was a mischievous youth, attended a second-rate college, skipped classes to run a restaurant and a clothing factory, and failed the CET-4... I started low and suffered a lot later, working overtime, staying up late, enduring hardships I can't easily explain, and "making up lessons" in the school of society. I know this well.

"Dumb" inevitably leads to suffering.

Don't let your children struggle as hard as you did.

In the world, don't be afraid of anything, but some debts must be repaid eventually.

The first generation of distributors came from hardship. The suffering they endure today is, to some extent, "repaying debts"—the debt of "not studying hard back then," the debt of "only looking down to pull the cart, not looking up to see the road, acting recklessly without thinking, and not reflecting on losses"!

Distributor friends, let's suffer for our own generation; don't let the next generation suffer like this.

The world is full of storms; you can't be the boss forever. It's not easy to retreat at the peak, and even harder to withdraw completely. You will eventually leave the scene.

But before you wash your hands of it, let your children study well.

Yes, what they learn in school may not be directly useful. Even if they major in marketing, the theoretical knowledge in textbooks is far from the real business world.

But remember, the most valuable thing one learns in school is not knowledge at all. It's learning habits, reading comprehension, the ability to summarize and extract, and the ability to extrapolate.

Let your children study a few more years, preferably graduate and then work at a large company for a few years before returning to take over your business. The careers they build will surely be different from yours.

In a chaotic world, reflect on the beginning: if the son surpasses the father, only then is the father qualified to applaud the self from the depths of time.

Don't let your children struggle as hard as the first generation of distributors did.

Source: Wei Qing Training (ID: weiqingpeixun)

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