---
title: "Going Global: What Are the Top-Level Mindsets?"
description: "Why should we go global? This is a question worth pondering. Going global may represent a second entrepreneurial venture, requiring the recombination of many production factors. Whether it's passive or proactive expansion, there are many points to consider. How big is the market, what can we do, and which categories can we tackle? Today, let's share how to go global scientifically. Going global is a second startup."
author: "Cc"
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published: "2024-12-15"
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# Going Global: What Are the Top-Level Mindsets?

> Why should we go global? This is a question worth pondering. Going global may represent a second entrepreneurial venture, requiring the recombination of many production factors. Whether it's passive or proactive expansion, there are many points to consider. How big is the market, what can we do, and which categories can we tackle? Today, let's share how to go global scientifically. Going global is a second startup.

Why should we go global? This is a question worth pondering.
Going global may represent a second entrepreneurial venture, requiring the recombination of many production factors.
Whether it's passive or proactive expansion, there are many points to consider. How big is the market, what can we do, and which categories can we tackle?
Today, let's share how to go global scientifically.
**Going global is a second startup**
Entrepreneurship is a scientific discipline, and so is going global. That's why I propose the concept of scientific globalization.
All our thinking paths, especially in the global expansion chain, are fraught with pitfalls—ranging from a few million to over ten million in losses.
So we need to seriously consider many aspects, many chains, and many core production factors.
When dividends come, embrace them fully and seize them firmly. Otherwise, the dividend may exist, but it may not be yours.
**1. Align Consensus**
Each company at different stages has different genes, different cells, and thus different growth strategies.
Everything is like when you first started your business: finding people, finding money, and market insight.
The overseas market environment, especially in Southeast Asia, may be closer to China, so many consumption patterns are similar, making it easier to approach and transfer supply chains.
But another issue arises: low prices. Over time, low prices become the main theme.
So many people want to earn US dollars, but the US is a foreign country. We need to explore its consumption patterns. Comprehensive insight is crucial; only with clear insight can you take precise steps.
Internal actions must be accurate without any mistakes, as the cost is high. Eventually, even in the US, production must be localized.
If your cross-border e-commerce project is within 200 million RMB, I don't think you need to talk about branding; just sell your products well.
We currently have four products, each selling over 2,000 units daily, generating about $1 million per month each. Four projects bring in over $4 million, totaling over 20 million RMB.
That's nearly 300 million RMB a year with just four bestsellers. So just focus on creating bestsellers.
If you have many cheap SKUs, the pressure is high, and the cost of retreat is also high. Shipping back may cost more than the product value.
You can only destroy locally, with a recovery rate of about 10% of the selling price. This loss is significant, so you can't ship products over and then figure out how to sell them. Strategy is crucial; you must think clearly first.
When starting a project domestically, we must think three steps ahead and take one step. This thinking is important.
So going global is a second startup; all production factors need to be recombined.
For example, you need to know local customs, industry understanding, offline retail, and online presence. It's not just Amazon; there are many e-commerce platforms.
In Europe, there are over 40 e-commerce platforms of various sizes, not just Amazon and eBay. So where are your capabilities, and which market can you tackle? Market insight and human organization are crucial.
Initially, within 200 million RMB, using domestic short-video and self-media talent for TikTok interest research is fine for starting.
But later, you must localize your organization. Many teams need to connect with local influencers for content creation, as they are closest to local consumption.
This involves significant human resources and team management, with many complexities.
We previously did e-commerce in China, running Douyin, and we were quite confident, having reached the top.
We thought our capability model would be the same for TikTok. After three months, we found it was far from true.
Many operations are similar, just translated from English to Chinese, and browsers have auto-translate, so the backend is similar.
But locals' preferences for products and content were operated based on domestic assumptions.
Click-through rates were very low; they weren't interested, didn't understand what we were saying, and just saw it as an ad.
Previously, we relied on experiential entrepreneurship, which essentially self-reinforces around one point. You think of a point, then continue thinking along it, alone, believing you're right.
For example, shifting from shelf e-commerce to interest e-commerce is different because video is multi-dimensional and can showcase products. It naturally demands more from people, so this is a significant backdrop.
**2. Scientific Entrepreneurship**
When doing many things, we must think scientifically.
Science is a vast discipline, and it's the same abroad. So we need scientific theories and a rigorous methodology to proceed step by step.
Success can be replicated, and failure can be avoided. In going global, scientific globalization is also important.
I put up a sign in our office corner that says "Scientific Entrepreneurship" to remind our team to think scientifically in all decisions.
I often receive requests on Feishu for budgets for certain actions, but they don't include a Plan B for next steps or a Plan C for contingencies.
I won't approve such requests. When applying for a budget or a plan, you need a Plan B. Without complete thinking, if you're just testing products for the sake of testing, we have no idea what to do next.
Companies gradually make many low-quality decisions, and when it comes to big decisions, you can't make them. You must practice scientific entrepreneurship, with rigor at every step.
**Scientific Globalization: Right Things + Right People + Right Methods**
Today, I'll focus on this table and break down its logic.
We have a project to start, called "Seed Thinking," which is the management of the entire business lifecycle. I think this thinking can help many founders and managers.
There's a first-level breakdown like a tree root. Our thinking logic is root, trunk, branches, and leaves, breaking down level by level.
We have a first-level breakdown with "right things," "right people," and "right methods."
To succeed globally, the product, category, and track you choose must be right.
If you're just starting on Amazon or eBay now, you might be in the mid-to-late stage, and the dividend may not be yours. So the right thing is crucial.
Here, I'll share some methodologies on how to find the right methods and operations. You can't escape these three: right things, right people, right methods.
**1. Right Things**
It's a project strategy. The next layer down is tactics, with more detailed and forward-looking thinking.
At the core, why go global? What do you want? Why do you want it? There's a role in your items.
I propose two roles: **proactive globalization** and **passive globalization.**
Proactive globalization means I want to globalize. Over 20 years ago, Japan already had globalization ideas, though their brands' global shares were not high.
They had early brand globalization thoughts; our parents' generation used Japanese home appliances.
Domestic competition is fierce, so we think about going global—that's passive. Everyone's situation differs; you need to think about why you're going global. This is origin thinking.
Is it because your original business isn't growing, has no profit, or is losing money? Or do you have a desire for a global brand, exploring new business? Or do you think cross-border profits are high?
For passive globalization, we add another thought: why can you do it?
Products are highly homogeneous. You go global, and your neighboring factory also goes global. Why can you? What's special about your product? What core technology? This thinking is crucial.
So, back to the second-level breakdown, there's business positioning. The boss must have a detailed and clear business positioning on the right things.
Also, is the overseas business line a new business exploration, a growth must-win battle, or a survival must-win battle?
Sometimes operators can't understand what the boss wants. For example, if I'm an Anker operator, I excel at high-profile strategies. As soon as I join, I want to show off.
But the boss says, let's just try it, test TikTok's potential, which limits your performance. Would he blame the boss for unclear strategy? No.
The boss must clearly know which of the three strategic roles you belong to. So you need to infer and verify from your business positioning, then confirm.
There are three types: new business exploration, growth must-win battle, and survival must-win battle.
**First, new business exploration.**
I make about 200-300 million RMB a year. I want to try overseas, test if the current dividend exists, and if my team can handle it. My first-year expectation is low; 20-30 million is enough. That's new business exploration.
A key indicator in new business exploration is setting a stop-loss line. So in the third-level breakdown, set a stop-loss line, with finance leading.
You must list core indicators clearly. Stop at a loss of 2 million. That's the basic requirement for new business exploration.
**Second, growth must-win battle.**
The original business growth is slowing or stagnant, needing a second growth curve. You've been on Amazon for three years, stuck at 200 million. The only change is profit, which is being squeezed.
Last year you made 20 million, this year maybe 10 million, and later maybe 5%. So you urgently need a second growth curve.
**Third, survival must-win battle.**
On the brink of survival, you need to find a way out. You can only go all in because there's no other way.
In e-commerce, you must determine your role. Next, in the fourth-level quadrant, define your strategy.
For example, if positioned as new business exploration, think about where to find people and methods. After positioning, think about who to find and what methods to use to start.
**2. Right People**
Finding people is difficult, but once you find the right ones, success becomes easier, and you'll ride the dividend. This is important.
So you must: **see and recognize people, select people for tasks, and recruit soldiers.**
What kind of general to recruit must be clear. In interviews, they might say they understand TikTok. We need to deeply analyze them.
First, is their understanding clear, familiar, or proficient? We need to dialectically see what they mean. They might mean clear, like they've played with domestic Douyin and now switched to TikTok.
The fourth-level item is to consider what capabilities they have and if they can be transferred.
Second, they say they're familiar because they've played in Southeast Asia and think they understand TikTok. But are the product selection directions for TikTok US and Southeast Asia the same?
Many regional cultures differ, so consider if capabilities match, if the business logic is the same, if they can quickly master the platform, and language and cultural issues.
Third, what does proficient mean? For example, I worked at Anker and achieved big results, so I'm proficient. But their approach is more high-profile.
Because they've spent big money, but if our business positioning is new business exploration, it may not fit.
Once you anchor ahead, you can judge later. Once you've confirmed the person, define the next steps, responsibilities, rights, and benefits. Here, set core indicators for the current stage.
Everyone must be clear: do you want profit, sales, or to build a team prototype? This must be explicitly stated.
Otherwise, the operator won't receive your instructions and can't manage downward or build the team. In the fourth-level breakdown, your decision is that the team should be fully built and break even or slightly lose for six months. That's your decision.
Your positioning and expectations for the business must be clear. From the right people perspective, you must ask yourself: among senior executives and partners, don't over-amplify your abilities.
For a new business, there's a big risk: some think they can do it, but their capability might be 70%.
Business positioning must be done by capable people, not just brave ones. Clearly define the team's capability model and expectations. This must be sorted out.
**3. Right Methods**
We must learn to comprehensively view market industry insights.
**First, read professional research reports.**
Professional reports provide industry common sense. For the US online e-commerce market, platform landscape, vertical analysis of each category and industry, you can quickly use their conclusions to understand industry common sense.
**Second, pull data from TikTok and Amazon markets.**
Overall product market data, category data, single product data, and competitor data.
**Third, calculate product costs.**
Look at Amazon's current profit structure and TikTok's profit structure. Are they consistent? What spaces can be squeezed?
This is essential because the two platforms have different rules and deduction points.
**Fourth, look at mainstream market tactics.**
Influencer marketing or paid ads, live streaming or automated live streaming. You must know the mainstream tactics in the market.
**Fifth, make a sales plan.**
For the next six months or a year, what sales forecast do we have? Have a preliminary sales budget.
Because it affects our capital needs, you must predict it first, then output a professional report.
Market insight also includes competitor insight. If we target a brand that's top in the US, how do we comprehensively understand it?
Below is a cost calculation table and a sales plan. So the fourth and fifth-level outputs will have specific reports, with responsible departments and their outputs.
Finally, the most important is finance. For a 1 million RMB business, from the boss's and manager's perspective, you must know how much capital is needed for turnover. This must be clear.
Don't let the operations team sell wildly without backend support.
When you're an operator, from the day you join, you must clearly understand the company's situation. Plan rhythmically so the company can cooperate better.
We'll do financial calculations, like project budget, sales plan, and HR development plan.
Because you understand the tactics, you know I won't do live streaming for the first six months, but after six months, I will. So HR will change.
I'll need to hire streamers, assistant streamers, and controllers. They'll produce a complete marketing and financial plan to control sales.
Weekly, review sales plan completion and budget consumption progress. They should be proportional. We constantly check this rhythm weekly.
Fifth-level items output many standard documents through team collaboration.
So cash flow is crucial. It's the essential supply for battle. In cross-border e-commerce, healthy cash flow rolling is the core for healthy project development.
I've seen too many good projects where operations rush forward but backend information lags. That's painful.
This table deserves more thought, especially for bosses, executives, operators, or business leaders.
In summary, successful globalization equals right things, right people, and right methods.
**Excellent Operators Need Three Perspectives**
**First, the boss's perspective.**
The boss sees the whole picture, how the project is prepared, personnel, methods, and budget.
**Second, the operator's perspective.**
They can steadily advance the project, know how to control risks. They see the overall strategy, advance and retreat orderly, team operations with rhythm, goals, strategies, and methods.
**Third, the colleague's perspective.**
For example, if I'm finance or an operations assistant, in this table, my role in the company project is important.
This clarifies individual division of labor, personal goals, how to advance and collaborate.
So excellent operators are good at managing others' expectations. In the team, they manage expectations for every position, including the boss's, controlling risks and progress.
I once posted this on Moments:
In cross-border e-commerce, if we don't thoroughly study basic issues and lack reliable analytical frameworks, hasty ad-hoc measures often fail to achieve expected results and may create new contradictions.
**How to Start Scientifically?**
**1. Market Insight**
**First, comprehensively view the differences between Amazon and TikTok markets.**
We've seen many brands ranking high on Amazon but inactive on TikTok; many brands outside the top 100 on Amazon are category leaders on TikTok.
We once saw a vacuum cleaner brand that didn't rank on Amazon but was category first on TikTok.
**I need to look at the dividends from Amazon and TikTok. In TikTok, what's the market size and dividend ceiling?**
For example, if Amazon has 10 billion in category transactions, what's TikTok's current industry size? How much ceiling do I have?
**Second, look at share within brands.**
What ecological niche can I occupy in this brand matrix? This is important.
**Third, single product competitive differentiation.**
These brands are on TikTok. What's my difference? Here, beware of experience. Respect the platform's essential differences and don't be blindly confident about your product.
Our comprehensive market insight for a brand includes this information.
First, when did they enter, what products do they make, and then their TikTok infrastructure.
Also, operational progress: store registration, influencer outreach. You'll see their transaction channel share.
Affiliate influencers, self-operated accounts, and mall ads are divided. Self-operated might be only 9%, affiliate influencers 37%, and mall plus ads 53%.
You can see the brand's strategy: using influencer content for paid ads to drive mall traffic. So comprehensive market insight reveals their tactics.
Extract their bestsellers, including their strategy breakdown, market insight, reasons for female purchases, and product function displays.
This table is important. From the detailed breakdown, in the first phase in September, they made $1.08 million.
Their strategy was selecting specific products. I found their Amazon bestsellers weren't directly used on TikTok.
They had a specific, exclusive product. They found influencers with 100,000-300,000 followers, targeting overweight individuals.
First month over $1 million, second month October over $3 million. Then they started finding influencers with under 100,000 followers.
They started with mid-tier influencers, then moved down. They used data from converting influencers to convince lower-tier influencers, a top-down approach.
Third step hit Black Friday. In November, December, January, they earned $10 million in three months.
They prepared 7,000 influencers and posted 100 pieces of content daily. The first two months of accumulation were crucial. Cost calculation: platform fees, product costs, and shipping.
After influencer promotion and ads, we know gross margin. How much are you willing to spend on promotion? What's the absolute gross profit? This needs calculation.
**2. Selling Point Calculation**
Suppose we have a product and want to promote it. We must make selling point assumptions.
I don't know which selling points work in the market, so I make assumptions.
Assume my product has selling points 1, 2, 3, 4, but I'm not sure which is most popular. So I assume.
After assumptions, I break down 157 top viral videos and see how each video's selling points are distributed.
We collect these selling points in a distributed manner, and you'll know where market acceptance is concentrated. Next, we test bestsellers.
Then find influencers, select content, and run ads. That's the standard trilogy.
Next, we break down the highlight frames of ad video content. Our colleagues do one thing daily: short video content breakdown.
For example, if a video has four peaks, it means traffic retention is highest at those seconds. We study what action and script the highlight frame uses. This breakdown is important.
So in each campaign, we continuously iterate content. When you focus on your selling points, you go back to those viral videos and match your script.
Also, timing is important. Many of our spikes occur during promotions, different from daily marketing.
You'll see Black Friday, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day are explosive. There are several key nodes.
In summary, we use assumptions to test selling points, then amplify through ads.
This way, sales rhythm is controllable. We don't use influencer pulse sales to challenge new products, as that puts pressure on inventory. We generally use paid ads.
After confirming selling points, we run ads and amplify with influencers this year. Then do brand live streaming. In the future, we must plan and localize.
I have an important message for you: **As an operator, you must learn the thinking of peeling away layers.**
Look at today's table breakdown, including thinking about every detail, every highlight frame, every script. We've formed a complete methodology internally.
This is our anti-fragility capability in going global. Top operators think by peeling away layers, considering every point.
And you'll see much thinking behind it, which is workflow plus professional flow—your understanding of e-commerce platforms.
Professional flow: can you convert an operator's personal capability into team capability? This is an important method.
Going global is a steel plate. It has many difficulties, information gaps, cognitive blind spots, and human resource issues.
It's a hard, extremely difficult plate to kick through. So you need a group of capable, pragmatic people determined to kick through it, seizing a dividend opportunity and going all in.
What is all in? You can only have one thing in your eyes. So since we started TikTok last September, 99% of our time is on TikTok. Attention is focused there to do it well.
I hope everyone achieves better results in this project. Wish you smooth sailing, breaking through to become butterflies.
Find the second growth curve for your business. See you at the top of the TikTok charts.


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