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Li Jing: Unleashing Her Power

Li Jing: Unleashing Her Power

By Winfred ParkerPublished 2 years ago 11 min read
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"In 2010 China 'business Magnolia' Annual meeting", the famous host and Oriental popular media chairman Li Jing won the "business Magnolia" title with the absolute advantage of the network vote first and became the only media celebrity selected this award. Li Jing is unquestionably the most influential female leader in China's media field.

Entrepreneurs in the media world

From the ace TV show host to the chief producer, and then to the founder of the company, Li Jing in multiple identities between the skilled: as a host, her unique, witty and humorous hosting style, conquered hundreds of millions of viewers, and repeatedly won the media awards; As the leader of the company, she is also the model of professional women in today's China. She founded the first generation of private TV company "Oriental Popular Media" from scratch, and has become the most dazzling and active production organization in China's TV media industry.

Having just won the "Best talk show host" title, Li Jing won the award as "Business Magnolia". "I thought that a bunch of female bosses together must be a 'hate women conference', only to find out that it is a group of happy beautiful women. Thank you, Magnolia Conference, for discovering and exploring the beauty of women in business. I never read entrepreneur magazines because I'm just a TV guy, and I know that the most important thing for me is to keep the audience tuned in the age of the remote control! When you do what you should do and put your heart into it, you find that a lot of things you didn't want come to you instead! I also often say to my host, the root is not deep, the leaf is also useless, do their own professional is fundamental!"

Shen Nanpeng, founding partner of Sequoia China, who reviewed numerous projects and gave Li Jing her first venture capital, said: "It is rare to be an excellent host and an excellent leader who can switch roles with the host. Lee Jong s company and show do not give people a strong sense of business, but a sense of intimacy.

"Big Sister" type of "dream"

For the first time in her life, Li Jing, a famous hostess who is known for her tough questions, was grilled by purely commercial media, despite being used to cameras and flashbulbs.

"Business model", "cash flow" and "corporate strategy" are hardly the words that entrepreneurs often use, even though Li Jing has founded a media and entertainment + e-commerce company with perhaps the most unique model in China. Her official title in the Oriental popular company is not "Li Zong", but "Jing elder sister". "When I was a kid, I wanted to be a big sister, wearing sunglasses and a black trench coat, with a bunch of kids behind me." Li Jing some complacent to this.

With the ones we are familiar with ambitious founders (male) they are basically different, li jing from day one, there is no set a clear and ambitious goals for yourself, she did not take the initiative to find a realistic imitable model, she don't care about money, was not what concept of capital, she even from the beginning to resist turned himself into a businessman...

She starts from a very modest starting point: to escape the dullness of reality and do something really "fun". In the constant attempts and setbacks, this "literary young woman" who loves rock and roll slowly discovered that a small studio originally with sex can be completely interpreted as a cool business whose radius continues to extend outward.

Isn't that the real essence of "entrepreneurship"? Find the joy of life, so as to create value for the society.

In fact, there are too many indecisive friends around us. They spend their whole lives looking for a so-called purpose or reason, and they have countless arguments to convince themselves to jump into the fire of entrepreneurship.

Why can't it be as simple as Li Jing? As long as you "have the courage to follow your heart and intuition," as Jobs put it, everything else is left to chance.

"Quitting is Crazy"

In 1999, Li Jing, who had already made a name for herself at CCTV, abruptly resigned from her leadership.

"At that time, CCTV was very unhappy, one reason is that I was the kind of disobedient main son, always have their own ideas on the program, the leadership would talk to me, but I was determined to resign. Because I knew that in this environment, I could not create anything. At that time, my choice of work was whether it was fun or not, whether it was happy or not, whether it was strong or not. At the time, it was boring."

Originally Li Jing imagined Xu Gehui, Chen Luyu to Phoenix Satellite TV, but because there is no acquaintance, also failed to go. How to do?

Fortunately, there is also a group of "like-minded" old classmates, these Beijing Film Academy graduates of literary and artistic youth, all the talk is freedom, art, and these "best friends" together, Li Jing feels that her state is completely different.

"I just got together with my classmates and I said let's set up a studio, let's make plays and write our own plays. But then they never got the money, and everyone left. That's when I realized I had to do something."

In the middle of nothing, Li Jing has changed from a CCTV host to a real "north drifter", but she still spends money like water, eating out with friends, drinking coffee, basically she pays for it. The reason is very simple, one is to be the host these years to save some extra money, the second is good economic conditions at home, no pressure.

"So when I said I was going to start a company, my whole family laughed their heads off. My mother said that you are a confused child, from the small ledger even not clear. So when I said start a company, my mom thought it was funny, and it happened. Now many people say to me, "Sister Jing, I want to be like you. I say no, because I think I am a special case. If you follow my method, you will definitely be broken."

Unleash Her Power

After paying tuition fees for more than a year, Li Jing decided to give up living solely on patch ads and instead came up with the idea of selling shows. "I remember very clearly, I called the distribution chief over here, I said I want to sell the program, he said impossible, said that has never sold the program, Chinese television only buy drama, never buy the program." Ms. Li said she decided to take matters into her own hands and talk to local television stations about selling shows.

At that time, Lee gave them a plan to give all five minutes of the advertisement to the TV station, and leave 30 seconds of the advertisement to Lee. Li Jing told her that if the program's audience rating is first, you can sell a few minutes of advertising, and you don't have to invest a penny, only need to spend two or three thousand yuan; If the ratings are low, you pull the plug. The TV station agreed to give it a try, offering Li 2,000 yuan per episode. In this way, Li Jing became the first person in China to sell a program to a television station without attracting advertisements. This sale, is 50 stations, a program can sell 100,000 yuan, and the cost of a program at that time is more than 30,000 yuan. Li Jing began to make money.

After successfully selling the show, Li Jing was not satisfied with the profit of 70,000 yuan per episode. And "Super Access" also quickly pulled to the title of the red Eagle.

The TV station that PAYS TO BUY PROGRAM IS not willing, BUT at this time LI Jing negotiATES with full CONFIDENCE: "SUPER INTERVIEW" IS UNIQUE. Because IN JIANGSU STAGE AND NANJING STAGE THE PERSON RUNS TO Beijing AT THE SAME TIME TO SEEK HER TREAT TO HAVE A MEAL, SHE DISCOVERED CHANGE: ONESELF HAVE BEGUN TO OCCUPY THE INITIATIVE OF THE SELLER'S MARKET.

These changes and practices slowly let Li Jing find that it is right not to follow the routine, as long as the logic works, we should try, nothing is absolutely impossible.

"Those two things had a huge impact on me and made me realize that this is what marketing looks like. I moved Super Access to a new platform. It's like a star transfer. Once it's done, it's worth more. When Super Access started making money, that's when I realized it was a company."

Holding hands redwood

"I spent the whole college doing nothing but playing the piano. Am I playing now? No. I learned so much later, writing, management, hosting, television, and then brand, because I constantly broke yesterday's me, has formed a habit. So I think a lot of things are chosen, but then it becomes a kind of ability that you have. If tomorrow the East popular in the country opened a hot pot restaurant I am not surprised, of course, from the company must have their own business spindle, but from the perspective of personality, everyone should have such a ability, some people just did not try ".

The second half of 2007 was a difficult time for Li Jing.

At that time, Oriental Pop already had many programs including Super Interview, Beautiful Woman, Emotional Equation, etc., and its annual profit reached nearly 10 million yuan only by content sales and advertising. In the domestic television program production company, the size and revenue is second only to Wang Changtian's Enlight Media.

Wang Zhongjun's Huayi Brothers media showed strong interest in the acquisition. The initial price set by the two parties was met with resistance by Huayi Brothers' board of directors.

At the same time, Li met Nanpeng Shen, founding and managing partner of Sequoia Capital China, at a dinner arranged by Wang Ran, CEO of Yi Kai Capital. She had no idea that this stranger would change the course of her and the company.

The second day after the MEAL, SHEN did a quick survey of the Oriental popular, understand Li Jing himself and the program in the circle of public praise. Ms. Li's four programs, which run a total of about 400 minutes a week, cover more than 30 satellite channels and local channels across the country. And because it faces consumers directly, its programs and products will have a broad industrial market that can be extended.

Shen quickly went on the offensive, and in addition to the attractive valuation proposal, he helped her outline a vision beyond her imagination: to develop her own brand and retail, backed by content.

Li Jing knew that if she chose Huayi Brothers, it meant that Oriental Fashion would become the content production platform of Huayi Brothers, and she would not have to fight alone. She would also get a large amount of cash and shares of Huayi Brothers, just like Feng Xiaogang and Zhang Jizhong of Huayi Brothers. If Sequoia is chosen, the company will be able to sell a minority stake to get the money, but the individual will have to cash out much less, and more importantly, the money will be the beginning of a new struggle.

In the third round of negotiations, Shen invited Li Jing and her husband Huang Xiaomao to sit down for dinner, hoping that things could be finalized. Huang Xiaomao was there because Shen thought it was not only a choice of capital for Li Jing, but also a choice of lifestyle. Two weeks later, Li Jing finally chose sequoia.

Feel your transformation

At the new e-commerce company, Ms. Li's seemingly innate sense of direction still plays an important role. Shen once asked Li Jing: What would you do if you had the chance to make your own product? She blurted out: Essential oil. She sees it as a product that goes beyond care products and cosmetics to help the soul. Later, Jplus(under the brand name Jingjia) made essential oils its first major product, a decision that was made without rigorous market research, but generated millions in sales in 2009.

In fact, Li Jing chooses a lot of products have a common character, is IN this product there is no absolute dominant, essential oil is a typical. On the other hand, "Pretty Woman" also broadcast a series of essential oils, introducing the various uses of essential oils, to give play to the communication advantages of television media. Because it is a private label,Jplus can achieve a gross margin of more than 40%, which is exactly what the content platform supports for retail.

Shen also gave Li Jing a new channel to gain a deeper understanding of business. In early 2009, Li Jing was pushed to the Yaburi China Entrepreneur Forum by Shen amid hesitation and unease. She had been to many big occasions before, but this one was different. She had to go alone, leaving her assistant and makeup artist behind in Beijing.

Participants in the forum are basically male, Li Jing even a little nervous. Once there, she had to force herself to forget she was the host and treat it as a party. Soon, she found that what they were talking about was not as difficult as she had imagined. She chatted with Feng Lun, with investors, and even with economists. She also dared to give a speech on outsourcing. She talked about the development space of logistics from the perspective of women's shopping experience, which made a group of men applaud. She was still not a businesswoman, but she understood women and human nature.

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Winfred Parker

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