Rebirth 03: Starting a Business After Giving Up a Secure Job

Chapter 149 The Full-Cycle Model for College Students

Lin Feng stayed in Huicheng for two more days.

He wanted to see for himself whether these "workers' homes" service points could take root in the three factory areas.

Regarding property listings, Lin Xiaoqiang assigned someone to specifically follow up with landlords who had already entered their information into the platform and update the property status daily.

Wang Hai reported that after work, workers can go to the service point like they're shopping. They can handle everything in one place: renting a house, changing jobs, buying secondhand goods, and fixing water pipes. It's much more convenient than running around aimlessly.

Wu Wenjie emphasized that all of these are free, and basic services are offered free of charge.

After Wang Hai finished organizing the last page of the color-coded registration forms, he looked up at the shift schedule on the whiteboard and drew a five-pointed star next to the Huihuang Electronics service point he was in charge of.

When he arrived at the canteen, he saw seven or eight workers who had just finished their night shift gathered around the folding table at the Huihuang Electronics service point. Some of them were gesturing to the salesperson, saying that they wanted to rent a one-bedroom apartment close to the factory and preferably with a balcony to dry clothes.

The sales representative flipped through a folder, showing the workers photos of available properties page by page.

This scene is exactly the same as when the earliest street promoters in Shenzhen were canvassing the streets of Baishizhou. But now they are not just information carriers, but hubs for all aspects of life.

Whether it's renting a place, changing jobs, selling secondhand goods, hiring a cleaner, or fixing a plumbing pipe, workers can come here to ask about any of the everyday things they can think of.

Before Lin Feng left, he asked Wu Wenjie to compile the operation process of the "factory area living service" model at Huicheng Station into a standardized manual.

Service point location criteria: entrance to the factory canteen or dormitory area, with high foot traffic and within a three-minute walk for workers.

In terms of staffing: each service point is equipped with two ground promoters working in shifts, one responsible for information registration and reception, and the other responsible for liaising with landlords and merchants.

Business modules: four basic modules plus two extended modules, catering and leisure and convenient living, which will be rolled out gradually in the order of "renting first, recruitment followed by recruitment, second-hand housing support, and housekeeping services".

Information collection standards: Housing information must include apartment type, rent, water and electricity fees, commuting time, whether it is a direct rental from the landlord or a sublet, and surrounding amenities.

Merchant information must include menu prices, business hours, and whether delivery is offered.

This manual can be used directly whenever Tongcheng Life Network opens an industrial city.

On the way back to Shenzhen from Huicheng, Lin Xiaoqiang was driving while Wu Wenjie flipped through the landlord registration form that Wang Hai had submitted, saying that the newcomers in Huicheng were quite energetic and that some of them were capable.

Lin Feng said that Huicheng's "Workers' Home" model, once successful, can serve as a template for industrial cities across the country.

In the Pearl River Delta cities of Dongguan, Foshan, and Zhongshan, and in the Yangtze River Delta cities of Suzhou, Wuxi, and Kunshan, each city has tens of thousands of industrial workers. Whoever thoroughly understands the factory area first will hold the key to the next local market.

Wu Wenjie scribbled a few lines in his notebook, saying that the next step was to integrate the catering and leisure and convenient living services into the service points.

Factories operate on three shifts, and fast food restaurants also operate on three shifts. Workers want to take care of all their daily needs without leaving the factory area. This is where Tongcheng Life Network can take root in industrial cities.

Back in Shenzhen, in their newly purchased apartment, Lin Feng and Lin Xiaowen had a passionate night together.

The next day, Lin Feng prepared to fly back to Chengdu. In the morning, Lin Xiaowen packed his luggage and put several washed and folded shirts into his suitcase.

As Lin Feng was changing his shoes at the door, she tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek, saying she would text him when she arrived.

Lin Xiaoqiang drove him to Bao'an Airport.

As the car drove along Shennan Avenue, the banyan trees and office buildings along the road flashed by one after another.

There were four other people in the car: Lao Zhou from the housing rental sector, Sun Hao from the talent recruitment sector, Chen Li from the second-hand goods sector, and He Juan from the housekeeping sector.

These four people were training instructors selected from the four major sectors of Shenzhen. The list was finalized before the Spring Festival. They flew to Chengdu with Lin Feng to provide two weeks of systematic training to the new team in Chengdu.

When the plane landed at Shuangliu Airport, it was drizzling in Chengdu.

Xu Qiang picked them up in the company's Buick GL8 minivan, and shook hands with each of the four lecturers from Shenzhen.

He knew Lao Zhou well; they had worked together in Shenzhen for a few months last year, and they patted each other on the shoulder when they met. He Juan and Xu Qiang were meeting for the first time, and they nodded politely to each other.

It was already 2 PM when I got back to the Pidu International Building.

The sixth-floor office area was even more crowded than before the Lunar New Year. Zhou Zhongcheng's newly recruited field promoters filled the training room 601, where Zhang Ming was explaining the door-to-door recruitment model.

As Lin Feng passed by, he glanced inside through the glass window. Zhang Ming was drawing a grid on the whiteboard, tapping the whiteboard with the tip of his pen.

At the new workstations next door, 603, the operations specialists who joined before the Lunar New Year are meticulously matching the housing information templates and job posting standards sent from Shenzhen into the Chengdu Station's backend system.

Lin Feng asked Xu Qiang to call the heads of the four sections of Rongcheng Station to the conference room so that they could meet with the four lecturers from Shenzhen first.

Zhou Hai, the 35-year-old head of the housing rental sector, previously worked as a store manager at a real estate agency in Chengdu for five years and can recite the distribution of housing resources in the Danxian, Xipu, and Hongguang Town areas.

Sun Ke, the 32-year-old head of the talent recruitment section, was recruited from the Chengdu Talent Market. He has six years of experience in recruitment and has a directory of HR contacts for hundreds of technology companies in the High-tech Zone.

Liu Fang, the 30-year-old head of the second-hand goods section, previously worked as an operations manager for four years at a chain second-hand appliance store in Chengdu. She is very familiar with the pricing and testing processes for second-hand digital products and home appliances.

Liao Ping, the 38-year-old head of the domestic service division, has worked in a management position at a domestic service company for five years, personally overseeing the entire process from nanny training to client matching.

The four people, along with Xu Qiang, the station manager of Rongcheng Station, sat down around the conference table. The four lecturers from Shenzhen sat opposite them, each with an operation manual and training syllabus spread out in front of them.

Lin Feng didn't mince words. He drew a vertical line on the whiteboard, wrote "The proven model in Shenzhen" on the left, and "The direction Chengdu needs to break through" on the right.

"Starting from scratch, Shenzhen spent six months developing each of the four sectors. Housing rentals relied on canvassing the streets and collecting rental notices; talent recruitment involved going door-to-door to recruit companies; secondhand goods relied on inspection points and a credit scoring system; and housekeeping services relied on community posters and certified housekeepers."

These tactics can be directly adopted by Chengdu, without having to repeat the mistakes made by Shenzhen. That's why the Shenzhen lecturers are here today.

He asked Lao Zhou to stand up and introduce himself.

Old Zhou stood up and said a few words, saying that he had been running a house rental business in Shenzhen for half a year, from Baishizhou to Longhua, from urban villages to industrial zones. He and Lin Xiaoqiang led people to walk out each street one by one.

This trip to Chengdu involved a two-week training program. The first three days focused on standards for collecting housing information and communication skills with landlords. Afterward, the program involved taking sales representatives in batches for field training, visiting key residential areas around Xipu and Hongguang towns one by one.

Sun Hao then stood up and spoke for over a minute, explaining his "ammunition depot" of information on the grid-based management system for assigned households and job seekers.

The method for establishing it was briefly explained.

Chen Li explained how the inspection points in Shenzhen started from the first inspection point set up by Sun Hao at Liu's "Honest Home Appliance Repair" shop in Shenzhen, and how it has developed into a network of dozens of inspection points covering various areas.

He Juan shared the process of cultivating a steady growth of certified domestic helpers in Shenzhen, from its inception to the present, and briefly discussed some thoughts on the cold start of the domestic service supply in Chengdu.

After listening, Lin Feng wrote a keyword next to the names of the four people in charge at Rongcheng Station.

Next to Zhou Hai's shop is written "Urban Village + University", next to Sun Ke's shop is written "High-tech Zone Manufacturing", next to Liu Fang's shop is written "Second-hand Digital Products + Home Appliances", and next to Liao Ping's shop is written "Sichuan Girl Labor Service".

"The Shenzhen model is the foundation, but Chengdu cannot simply build houses on that foundation. Every city has its own unique characteristics."

Huicheng is characterized by its dense manufacturing sector and concentrated industrial workforce, so we created "Workers' Homes." Service points were set up around the factory canteens, integrating rental housing, recruitment, secondhand goods, and housekeeping services into the workers' living areas.

Lin Feng turned to Xu Qiang: "What are the unique characteristics of Chengdu? Have you thought about that?"

Xu Qiang stood up and walked to the whiteboard. He had prepared a Chengdu city analysis table in advance, which listed several sets of data:

As of 2005, Chengdu had 38 regular universities and colleges with more than 30 students, making it the city with the largest number of universities and colleges and the largest student population in western China.

The transaction volume of second-hand homes in the five urban districts of Chengdu reached 343.82 million square meters, a year-on-year increase of 38.22%. With the relaxation of policies on off-campus rental housing for college students, real estate agencies around universities such as Jiuyanqiao are booming!

The Chengdu domestic service market has 50 job opportunities, but the shortage of 10 jobs is as high as around the Spring Festival alone, indicating a serious shortage on the supply side!

The High-tech Zone is accelerating the introduction of electronic information companies. Chip packaging and testing projects of multinational companies such as Intel and Unison have been established, and an industrial cluster has been initially formed.

"Chengdu is completely different from Shenzhen. Shenzhen is a city of immigrants, and our core users are new Shenzhen residents who need to settle down."

Chengdu boasts a vast and stable pool of higher education resources, a rapidly expanding high-tech manufacturing sector, and a significant unmet demand in the domestic service market.

Xu Qiang circled these characteristics in red.

"University resources are our trump card. Two universities in Shenzhen can support a graduation season special, while Chengdu has more than ten times the number of universities in Shenzhen."

The manufacturing industry in the high-tech zone needs a large number of skilled workers and recent graduates. The recruitment sector can directly replicate Zhang Ming's "package-to-household" model from Shenzhen.

The domestic service market has a huge gap, especially in the areas of high-end nannies and international domestic services. I suggest that the Chengdu station make the domestic service section its key focus, emphasizing the export of highly qualified and certified Sichuan women.

Lin Feng drew a triangle on the whiteboard, labeling the three vertices "University", "High-tech Zone" and "Household Services" respectively.

"This is the three-pronged approach of Rongcheng Station. Universities provide graduates and young users, the High-tech Zone provides job openings and employment opportunities for recent graduates, and the domestic service sector exports the labor resources of western Sichuan to Chengdu and even Shenzhen and Shanghai through the Tongcheng.com certification system."

He turned to face everyone, his tone calm.

"I have a better idea: let's call this approach a full-cycle life service for college students." We'll start the training today; instructors and section leaders will begin coordinating now, and the specific plan will be finalized in a meeting tomorrow morning.

The next morning, the core team from Chengdu Station, along with the four lecturers from Shenzhen, all arrived.

Xu Qiang projected the "University Student Full-Cycle Life Service" plan, which he had worked on overnight, onto the wall. From freshmen entering university to renting apartments and finding jobs after graduation, he had organized all the needs of the entire chain into the business map of Tongcheng.com.

He opened the first page.

Local websites should be able to meet all the living needs of college students from enrollment to graduation. We divide the user lifecycle into four stages.

It's freshman enrollment season. New students and their parents need to purchase daily necessities, mobile phones and computers, and dormitory supplies.

Local websites' secondhand channels can stock up on desk lamps, electric fans, and bicycles collected during graduation season and then accurately push them to new students when school starts, at prices more than half the price of new items.

Daily routine for sophomores and juniors: errand running, on-campus part-time jobs, skills training. The SMS delivery model of Shenzhen Runtong can be adopted here; all the small printing shops and restaurants around campus are included in the merchant database, and students place orders with on-site promoters to run errands for them.

Graduation season for seniors. A proven three-step approach in Shenzhen: dealing with secondhand items, renting off-campus housing, and job hunting for recent graduates, all bundled together in this graduation season special.

Our advantage lies in our coverage of dozens of universities in Chengdu, reaching hundreds of thousands of students. This scale effect far surpasses our experience in promoting our services on a single campus in Shenzhen.

Post-graduation needs: Graduates who stay in Chengdu for work can naturally shift their housing and job search needs to the local network's social user section.

If graduates go to Shenzhen, Shanghai, or other cities, Tongcheng.com's multi-city linkage can achieve cross-city information exchange.

The job seeker information collected by Chengdu Station can be shared with the corporate recruitment platforms of Shenzhen Station and Shanghai Station, and landlords can also recommend their properties to recent graduates who have just moved in across cities.

Xu Qiang moved the laser pointer to the housekeeping section.

"Sichuan girls have a good reputation outside the province, but they lack standardized training and certification. Tongcheng.com can directly transplant Shenzhen's certification system over here."

Verified Sichuan women are given priority in the local online marketplace, and employers can filter them by service type, age, place of origin, and rating score.

Liao Ping continued, "The biggest problem in Chengdu's domestic service market isn't a lack of people, but a lack of trust. Employers are afraid to hire nannies they find online, and nannies are afraid of encountering employers who won't pay them."

If Tongcheng.com can launch its authentication system and "advance compensation" mechanism together, breaking down this trust barrier, the growth potential of its domestic service sector will exceed that of Shenzhen.

Lin Feng did not interrupt the discussion throughout.

His gaze swept over Xu Qiang's "University Student Full-Cycle Life Service" plan twice, and finally he wrote a line in the blank space above the whiteboard: Tongcheng Life Network Rongcheng Station - University Student Full-Cycle Life Service Platform.

"This positioning is more accurate than the local life information platforms in Shenzhen." Lin Feng put down his marker and turned to Xu Qiang.

"Shenzhen is a city covered by four sectors, while Chengdu is a city connected by a group of people. College students can solve all their living needs on the same city website from freshman to senior year, and even after graduation."

This approach hasn't been done in Shenzhen or Huizhou. The goal is to make "the entire life cycle of university students" a signature feature of Chengdu.