She graduated from junior high school, had 5,000 stores closed, and went from being in debt to earning 30 million a year. What did she rely on?

Hello everyone, I am TK Xiaobaiquan-Pear .

Many people know that I was once heavily in debt, but now I have made a comeback with an annual income of 30 million, but few know much about the process. Some people envy me, some are amazed, and some say I am lucky...

However, it is difficult for people who have not experienced the pain of entrepreneurship to empathize. My entrepreneurial experience can be said to have crawled out of the mud. Now thinking about it, it seems like a dream. So when I am alone, I often talk to myself, what have I experienced in these years? What have I learned? Even how can I help others? In addition to not forgetting my original intention, I also want to help others avoid detours.

I prepared this thousand-word article to review my experience in depth, and launched a communication circle based on my personal IP - TK Xiaobai Circle.

Dear entrepreneurs/brand owners, especially e-commerce bosses who want to transform, please take some time and read it patiently. I believe you will gain something more or less.

The road to e-commerce was opened by accident

Looking back, I got into e-commerce by accident.

In 2010, my family was poor and I stopped going to school after graduating from junior high school. Instead, I went to my relative’s factory to make a living. At the age of 14, I started to work hard in the factory. Living under someone else’s roof was not easy, and staying up all night to work overtime was commonplace.

Later, when I was older, I started working as an offline clothing sales guide. As a young girl who had just entered the society with beautiful dreams for her future life, I did not expect that life would teach me a severe lesson. The complexity of human hearts is hard to imagine. I became the one who was calculated. There was no room for explanation. I... was fired.

At that time, I secretly vowed to myself that I would study harder and make progress so that no one could bully me.

However, the idea was naive. I simply couldn't think of a way to get up, and life just pressed the pause button. I became addicted to the world of games, paralyzing myself, and couldn't distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Until one day I opened WeChat, a newly popular social software at that time. I was bored and clicked on the functions one by one. When I clicked on "People Nearby", I saw the signature of a nearby person saying that he was recruiting Taobao customer service. I simply added him as a friend. Coincidentally, he lived less than 5 minutes away from my home. I decided to go for an interview the next day. Unexpectedly, I was successful. I accidentally entered the e-commerce industry.

It was not until now, many years later, when I am still working in e-commerce, that I realized that a hobby can really keep you going for a long time .

In 2012, when Taobao was very popular, I was only 16 years old, and the turning point came.

That year, I met a rich second-generation guy in the game. He opened his own Internet cafe. We often talked about some in-depth topics, such as business content, market changes, etc. At that time, there were many things I didn’t understand. The few contacts and poor conditions at home made me inferior and sensitive.

Gradually, I felt the gap between myself and him, and wanted to emulate him and become someone who could stand on equal footing with him. I began to participate crazily in Taobao knowledge forums, online e-commerce platforms, and some offline communication activities and meetings.

During the learning process, I felt that I had reached a bottleneck in the field of Taobao customer service and wanted to break through this level to learn more new things. So I resigned and resolutely went to my friend's operating company.

I organized my own domestic Taobao circle, expanded my personal network, made many e-commerce friends, and founded the Humen E-commerce Club ... These were things I had done when I was 16 years old.

At this time, I already had the idea of ​​starting a business.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger

In 2014, my social circle exceeded tens of thousands of fans, and my self-media fans reached 200,000, so starting a business was put on the agenda.

I worked non-stop to find partners and rent venues, but I still didn't have enough experience, and I realized the ugliness of human nature. I was cheated, stripped of my assets, and filed lawsuits... all ended in failure.

This year, I was 18 years old and in debt of more than 200,000 yuan.

I transitioned from Taobao to work for Pinduoduo, where I acted as an agent for many clients. The fees were not high. I charged 5,000 yuan in operating fees plus commission per month for a single store, which was equivalent to an operator's salary.

When we finally did the billing, we were shocked to find that the average order value was too low, the labor costs were too high, and so on, we were simply unable to make ends meet.

I didn’t give up and started my own business, transforming into a cross-border e-commerce company on Shopee. I was full of confidence and started to set up a group of stores. Although I made some money in the early stage, in the end, 50 stores were directly closed and I lost tens of thousands.

After completely running out of money, he had no choice but to shut down the project.

The multiple failures in business ventures made me feel a lot of pressure. Not only was it a huge financial burden on me, but the greater pain was that I began to "doubt myself": Am I really suitable for starting a business?

I reviewed it carefully and found that I made a fatal mistake. I changed tracks blindly and quickly . This is a taboo in entrepreneurship. My experience at that time was not enough to support a project. This is what others say, "We cannot make money beyond our cognition."

But, whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

My road to comeback

From debt to monthly income of 30 million

I cheered myself up and continued to move forward. I readjusted my strategy and managed the Shopee store, and sure enough, I achieved results in operations.

In 2018, the Taiwanese market exploded, and online shopping orders in Taiwan have been rising. At that time, there were very few local sellers in Taiwan, which also gave me an opportunity. As the number of stores continued to increase, at the peak we had more than 500 cross-border stores, with daily sales of about 50,000 to 80,000 yuan and profits of up to 60% . This was my first taste of success in the cross-border track.

When the epidemic hit in 2020, orders for masks skyrocketed, with thousands of orders sold a day. Even during the Chinese New Year, I worked day and night, so I have hardly taken a vacation in the past few years of working in cross-border business.

But fortunately, the 200,000 yuan of previous debt was paid off at this time.

For me, even though this only paid off my debts, I was so excited that I couldn't sleep because I found the profit point.

Then I became more and more courageous and switched to local e-commerce and opened more than 5,000 stores, but more than 3,000 of them were closed, and the closure rate was as high as 80-90%.

I tried to add a new operating platform - Lazada Southeast Asian cross-border platform . During the peak period, we opened more than 3,000 stores and the closure rate was less than 10%. This is also the easiest cross-border platform for us. During the peak period, the number of orders exceeded 10,000 a day, and the sales volume was 50,000 to 80,000 a day.

It was also in this year that our efforts paid off. With a team of only 30 people, we built an ecological incubator and achieved sales of over 30 million in one year.

As the epidemic gradually passed, the platform rules became more and more, the threshold became higher and higher, and it was difficult to break through the bottleneck, so I joined Tik Tok.

You may ask me: Didn’t you say that you won’t change tracks easily?

This brings me to my other suggestion: you can try it as long as you are well prepared. The key is not to change it blindly.

Tik Tok has a high risk and is even more unstable than SP, but its momentum is good. From 0-1, I started my plan.

But because of the high risk, the highest number of stores was directly closed at one time. This large-scale store closure was something I had never encountered since I started my business. I quickly changed my strategy to minimize the loss.

After experiencing the Tik Tok wave, I have a new understanding of the platform. Different platforms have different ways of playing , so we just need to learn lessons in time.

However, there are also many advantages when doing Tik Tok Southeast Asian cross-border e-commerce. There is no need to stock up overseas or prepare goods in China first. You can directly cooperate with manufacturers or platforms for drop shipping, which reduces the risk of funds and saves a lot of trial and error costs. Therefore, the focus can be placed on product selection and operation .

I have opened 30-50 boutique stores on Tik Tok, and they are basically very stable. Having learned from the lessons of entrepreneurial failure, we focused on familiarizing ourselves with the official rules, platform gameplay, etc., especially making good use of inviting influencers, natural flow, and product cards . It is very easy to make a monthly sales of less than 100,000.

Click to see full image

Me and my TK white circle

It has been almost 3 years since Tik Tok started to cross-border business, and we have started to develop a high-quality e-commerce model, which is different from the traditional e-commerce, shelf e-commerce and second-category e-commerce that we have been involved in before.

During these three years, we experienced many pitfalls, were unable to find resources, were even ripped off by the industry, cheated by scammers, and took many paths that we shouldn't have taken. The result of trial and error amounted to hundreds of thousands.

In order to help more friends who want to be TK avoid detours, in 2024, I founded the TK Newbie Circle.

Here we have a group of brothers and sisters from all over the world who are doing global TK. We progress together in this circle and do our best together. I also sincerely hope that this circle can last for 5-10 years, or even longer, so long that no matter where we go, even around the world, we will not lack friends, TK technology, or reliable teams.