Day 1:
Goal: Our team of five began dividing tasks for community delivery, course delivery manuals, community marketing copy, and traffic channels.
On this day, our target was to create a “Play with ChatGPT” delivery manual, which would serve as the foundation of our community and the major focus of our project. We roughed out a basic outline in the group and spent over ten hours that night furiously writing the initial draft. Throughout the process, we were excited, thrilled, and exhausted, but also had moments of joking around.
Most of the content in our manual was written by ChatGPT and utilized existing resources, with only a few parts referencing outside materials. We were racing against time during these ten days, and though we heard many rumors, we never had time to consider them. Some believed this project could lead to financial independence, but that wasn’t our primary goal. Our project actually started out in a group chat, and none of us had ever met in person.
At the outset, I thought my workload was the lightest, but I ended up with relatively tedious responsibilities. I then brought in my natural talent of “seeking help” and enlisted a few friends to share the burden. Later on, my buddies joked about how I made a habit of asking them for help. At the beginning, we were all incredibly busy, but fortunately, my teammates helped me shoulder the load.
From traffic to community management, we achieved numerous breakthroughs throughout the ten days, with our product launching in just 24 hours, our distribution group gaining 100 people, and our community running smoothly with everyone in their respective roles.
Day 2:
Goal: Keep the community active, establish a distribution network, finalize details, optimize processes, address unexpected issues, and plan out paths for end-users and distribution groups.
Once you have a product, it’s time to start selling. As adults, we can’t just work for free out of love, but figuring out how to sell and where to sell can be a challenge. To develop things from the perspective of traffic-conversion-product.
Having previously managed a Baidu Q&A project with monthly revenue of $300,000, I had relevant experience with the overall model. The rest of the team had little or no experience with private domains or training.
We complemented each other’s strengths and ultimately used a third-party distribution system through one of my friends to begin distributing our product.
Using our own WeChat payments would result in the following problems:
Multiple remote payments could trigger risk control It would be difficult to track sales by distributors to next-level buyers Mismanaged accounts are difficult to keep track of Did we have to control the launch of the program with precision timing? Using a third-party system solved those problems. I pressured my friend into creating a custom system overnight that met our requirements. He stayed up until 4 a.m. with me to make last-minute adjustments, resulting in the Polar Flyer distribution platform.
In the middle of the night, I called him, and there was a girl with a very pleasant voice next to him. I knew it was inconvenient to bother him, but at that moment, he was the only person I thought of who could provide such quick help, and we had only known each other for less than a week.
On the first day of distribution, the platform was inundated with a large number of people, rendering it unusable. We did not anticipate our partners being so robust, and the platform’s risk control for vendors was also significant. Even Little Egret had some initial risk control issues. However, it was subsequently optimized by Qiang Ge, making it relatively stable.
The first batch of distributors and community members experienced relatively poor service quality as a result.
It wasn’t possible to complete purchases due to risk warnings Purchases would enable automatic enrollment in the group, but the group number could also be shared with other buyers (Initially, I intended to verify with the customer service agent, but too many users swamped the platform, making it impossible to keep up.) Buyers were unable to add the verifying assistant even after a purchase was made (The assistant’s account was banned since too many people added it, and I was banned too, seven times between the two of us) Buyers had not yet been added to the learning group even after a long time (Community management staff were unable to keep up with the number of messages they received) User problems flowed in like snowflakes, and we worked tirelessly to solve them.
As a founder, it’s not just about enjoying the fruits of our labor; it’s about solving problems. There will be problems every day, and new ones will arise. Li Yanhong, the CEO of Baidu, previously stated that he wakes up each morning and wonders if the company will go bankrupt that day because there were so many problems.
As a founder, what do we compete for? It’s our ability to solve problems. Remember: The success of your project depends on how quickly you can respond to and resolve issues.
Record-breaking achievement: 200 users, six-figure revenue.
Day 3:
Goals: Finalizing preparations for XETON, including onboarding, distribution group guest sharing, community emoticons, opening ceremony, customer service script, course live module, account distribution issues, and FAQ consolidation.
Distribution:
Distributors must understand product details and share social media posts about the community to effectively promote to their private network. Distributors can follow the tutorial to apply for commission, upload their own commission posters, and learn how to invite people with the most success rate based on background data. The distribution policy and regulations are posted in the group description, and we encourage distributors to utilize multiple versions of commission posters for automated distribution promotion. A Flysheet document link will be shared in the group, addressing any questions and inquiries from distributors regarding the distribution process. Distributors can receive commission based on the process and method provided, implemented weekly with quick and easy withdrawal steps. A Flysheet document link with curated questions and answers regarding the distribution process will be regularly updated and linked to in the group description. Customer:
Upon purchasing the product, customers follow the process to join the exclusive community group with verification and group rules and dialogue. Group welcome messages, announcements, opening ceremony guidelines, and group interactive guidelines are posted within the community. Sharing guests and creating excitement is top priority, with specific advertisements sent to highly-engaged members. The community emoticons, course delivery schedule, and curated FAQs are all available within the community. Account distribution requires a small assistance form that can be attained with minimal wait times. At this point in time, our discount group has exceeded 300 participants, all promoting our product before it actually hits the market. However, our WeChat group has been overwhelmed with users, with multiple back-up WeChat accounts being banned, while our payment services have been flagged.
Though we have encountered issues with our current XETON system, we have overall successfully managed to acquire 946 trainees. With the understanding that our flow of traffic will only continue to grow, we have started preparing a new system of utilizing the platform, Lilith, to become more widely available for our users.
The registration of a company is a challenging process, as we require a specific business entity to register the platform, happening only with the backup companies of Zhang Weiqiang. Therefore, we have used up our former company as a replacement, allowing quick access to Lilith until the situation is rectified.
Though the use of enterprise WeChat was suggested as un-restricted, we have faced issues with all our backup accounts being banned. Thankfully, by reaching out to our team, we were able to find temporary solutions and our work continues.
Task Assignment:
Zhang Weiqiang needs to put up a column (icon, introduction, details page, pricing, store decoration). Kai needs a marketing promoter (set ratio, promote products, commission settlement, level setting). Fan Lingyi Chen needs to add a promoter (Stone test promotion, import of old system distribution partners). Zhang Weiqiang (corporate WeChat authentication, corporate WeChat debugging) I have less responsibility in this area because I almost control the old system before, so I have been busy with related work of the old system before the formal launch of XiaoE Tong.
Basically, people are in a state of collapse, with account numbers of hundreds a day, and even no time for meals. And that evening, two projects in my own studio also started, which can be described as three good fortunes. The spirit is excited, but the body is exhausted.
Stone is also collapsing because I was the main force at that time, but at least I had an assistant to help, he blocked thousands of troops and horses alone, and the after-sales code was even blasted. Fortunately, my friend replaced me in time, and almost let people think it was fake.
Why can we achieve such results in such a short time?
The project itself is hot, very hot, and the ChatGPT distribution in the private domain conversion speed is very fast. Many people will place orders after seeing the poster; Our manuals and content are really well done, and there is no one in the market who can outdo the simple training and monetization module; The distribution model is well designed, with a 40% commission for the 299/399 product that everyone distributes; We, the initiators, have accumulated a certain amount of energy and trust in our respective small circles, especially in the circle of life itself, which has made many friends help us promote without counting the cost. There are also many previous friends who I have brought in to help, using the words of one of my friends, it is “useless brothers”. However, it should be reminded here that the reason why the project started so quickly cannot be separated from the above reasons.
But the project should not rely too much on “the personal ability and influence of the initiator”, because this is only suitable for cold start. If sales traffic depends solely on influence or private domain, it will stop very quickly. It is impossible to make it bigger and stronger and create new glories.
Achieve the goal: three individuals have exceeded 10,000 in personal distribution commissions.
Day 4:
Objective: To manage the delivery team/volunteer group
As you all know, after a group of students entered, we now have 2 distribution groups and 4 student groups, with a total of nearly 3,000 people that need to be served. For our rookie team, the pressure is quite tremendous to handle this many people.
For example, some of the common issues that need to be addressed include:
Who is responsible for adding paying users to designated groups? What actions need to be taken in both distribution and delivery groups? Who will handle the course opening? Is preheating necessary? Who will resolve and summarize issues within the groups? How to distribute free accounts to group members? Problems one after another require a huge customer service team to solve.
So how to solve this problem? With just one call in the distribution group, a volunteer group of 100 people was formed that evening, later selecting a few leaders to form a coordination group.
As the five of us know the value and excellence of our volunteers the best.
I have to praise this delivery team. After we assigned the tasks to them, they spent 14 hours in a Feishu meeting on the first day. They produced nearly 30,000 words of community operation SOP, with each person’s role, responsibilities, and timelines assigned clearly.
In this process, we put distribution on hold to improve our delivery process. There were too many users, and we needed to regroup and set off again, even if it would hurt some corresponding interests.
Moreover, the backend reconciliation process was also quite troublesome. Although the overall refund rate was controlled at 0.2%, there were still some data difficulties. Even if a user requests a refund, we still need to handle this area.
Record-breaking: The rookie team delivered perfectly, the volunteer group exceeded 100 in an hour, and the volunteers completed a 30,000-word delivery manual in 24 hours.
Day 5:
Objective: Bringing in external talent, officially switching to XiaoE Tong, clearly dividing tasks and executing in groups
On this day, the five founders of our team have clearly realized that there is too much work and it is very chaotic. It is no longer enough for just the five of us to make it run smoothly. So we sent the following message in our group:
In order to better streamline our work, I suggest making the following adjustments for the upcoming work: I will bring in 2 colleagues to lead different modules. They will not receive any shares, and their bonuses will come from my personal profits.
To better handle the second and third wave of explosive traffic, we split into the following small groups:
Distribution group: Responsible for managing distributors, including distribution opening, distribution training, and distribution fission. Delivery group: Responsible for the distribution page of XiaoE Tong, adding purchasing users, entering groups, granting document permissions, and managing customer service personnel. Delivery group in the group: Group operations, volunteers, and live courses. Finance group: Team leaders from various channels, 3-for-1 promotion design, and refunds. Course group: Responsible for document repairs, course polishing, and upgrading new products. This decision was approved by all members of the team, and we officially began to collaborate. In the afternoon, everyone had their own meetings to organize their respective modules, including the integration of XiaoE Tong. Without this decision, it would have been difficult for us to start our second phase so quickly.
After grouping, each group is responsible for their own tasks. If there are any problems, they can seek help within the group. Even though we are divided into groups, each person still has other tasks.
For example, in my case, I am nominally divided into these groups, but actually, I participate in everything except delivery. I just haven’t handed over some of these tasks to other members yet.
During this process, my WeChat account has been blocked five times, including my main WeChat account that I have used for over a decade. However, because a portion of the work had been handed over early, my account had not paralyzed following the blockage.
Otherwise, the loss would have been severe. At that time, my main WeChat account was the main force to accept all kinds of traffic and coordinate distribution. I was lucky to have grouped in time and sorted things out.
After my main account was blocked, I reminded the other partners, but in the end, two partners were not spared, so we were eventually blocked by around ten WeChat accounts and five enterprise WeChat accounts.
I remind everyone that many things need to be prepared in advance. Having access to traffic is key. Today, I have increased the number of my WeChat accounts from five to seven. I may not use them all, but I must have backups ready.
In the process of entrepreneurship, the company itself is a fast-moving ship, and sometimes it runs very fast, not all members can keep up.
As an entrepreneur, you may face a dilemma when your company is growing. You have two options:
Wait for your existing team to catch up, but this could slow down your company’s growth.
Hire new talent to help you grow faster, but this could create division among your current team.
These are some of the challenges you’ll need to consider as you navigate the growth of your business.
Day 6:
On the sixth day of our startup journey, we reviewed everyone’s learning progress and worked to prevent the spread of pirated versions of our content, while also exploring ways to enter the public domain market.
We noticed that our delivery manual was already being distributed online, and even people selling pirated courses were promoting our product. They offered theirs for $9.9, while we gave a 40% commission for referrals.
We also found out that people we know and those we don’t were creating paid content related to ChatGPT. Thankfully, our quick delivery time kept us ahead of our competitors.
While we felt urgency to create better content, we were also relieved when we compared our manual’s outline to our competitors’ and discovered we were ahead. Fast and early is an important advantage to keep in this competitive industry. We’re constantly monitoring piracy and staying vigilant about public domain traffic.
Day 7:
On the seventh day of our startup journey, we conducted tests to ensure the smooth operation of our company, held our first partner meeting, and celebrated our achievements with a banquet.
We’re taking the necessary steps to formalize our business and establish a strong foundation. Our initial partner meeting allowed us to align our goals and strengthen our working relationships. It was a great opportunity to recognize and celebrate our team’s hard work and dedication by holding a special dinner event.
We’re excited to continue moving forward with a clear plan of action and strong partnerships in place. By testing our operations and celebrating our milestones, we’re setting ourselves up for success.
Day 9:
On the ninth day of our startup journey, we made significant strides towards establishing a strong foundation for our company. We worked closely with a lawyer to discuss equity and drafted contracts to establish clear ownership and partnership agreements. We also held our second partner meeting to review our progress and make plans for the future.
Finally, we secured a location to commence work on our product, giving us a physical space to start building and creating. With all of these important pieces falling into place, we’re looking forward to moving full steam ahead with our startup venture.
We recognize the importance of laying a solid groundwork for our company, and we’re taking all necessary steps to ensure that we start off on the right foot. We’re eager to bring our vision to life, and we believe that our hard work and careful planning will help us achieve great things.