The most important thing Zhao Yao learned in his three years at Jiangnan University was not any particular skill, but rather the ability to execute tasks.
Many people have numerous ideas, all of which sound excellent, but when it comes to actually implementing them, they always find excuses to stay in bed and refuse to move.
In fact, most people who attend university, when faced with the daily task of getting food from the cafeteria, have certainly thought about how much money they could make if they specialized in fetching food for others, or running errands for others.
At least sixty to seventy percent of people have considered this idea, and they also know that this idea can definitely make money, and that there is a market for it.
But will they act on their ideas?
Of course not. As soon as they think about having to shamelessly approach classmates to ask if they have any orders, and then imagine having to work hard under the sun, going back and forth between the cafeteria and the dormitory every day, the newly conceived entrepreneurial idea will immediately vanish, as if it never existed.
This is, in essence, a problem of execution. The idea is good, but without the ability to execute it, it is all for naught.
And what Zhao Yao developed most during his three years at Jiangnan University was his execution ability. Moreover, this execution ability was different from that of a typical student union president who receives the so-called spirit from school leaders and then assigns tasks to student union members, merely acting as a communication bridge between the school and students, or dealing with some necessary political tasks assigned from above.
These, in fact, are very abstract things, all administrative work that requires following existing rules and regulations, with no innovation.
However, the student union president of Jiangnan University was different. Due to the different teaching methods at Jiangnan University, the student union president of Jiangnan University never had any formalistic elements, but only tangible tasks.
For example, arranging for students to divide labor, or leading students to organize a large-scale practical activity, and the entire process, all tasks were handled by Zhao Yao alone. Through these tasks, Zhao Yao developed excellent execution ability.
For instance, after getting the idea of campus procurement this time, just the day after communicating with Fan Rui, Zhao Yao went to a nearby university alone. He easily posed as a student of that school, made friends with many students, used their meal cards to buy food in the cafeteria, familiarized himself with the entire university layout, calculated the routes and distances between dormitories and the cafeteria, and so on.
The next day, Zhao Yao began his work. He first found a printing shop and printed over a thousand exquisite cards.
The back of these cards had the words "Zhao Yao's Errands" in large print, followed by a line of small text: "Fetching meals, shopping, mailing, picking up packages, and everything else. Anything you need, I'll run the errand for you!"
Below that were a phone number and a QQ number, which served as contact information.
All these texts were printed on the back of the cards, while the front of the cards featured a very beautifully printed character still from the recently popular Xianjian Qixia Zhuan 3, specifically the male protagonist Jing Tian.
In addition, there was another version with a picture of Xianjian Qixia Zhuan 3's female protagonist Xue Jian printed on it. Both photos were chosen to be extremely beautiful, representing the most stunning moments of these already good-looking actors in the drama. Even a student who didn't recognize them would be drawn to collect the exquisite male and female portraits.
This was a small trick of Zhao Yao's. He had noticed that many of his classmates were collecting small cards.
These small cards were not Shui Hu Ying Xiong cards or Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, but rather those small cards that were usually slipped into car door handles or inserted into the gaps of hotel doors.
Originally, these cards were extremely trivial, and the phone numbers listed on them were mostly scams, the kind that would first ask you to pay a few hundred yuan as a security deposit. Therefore, Zhao Yao himself would usually throw such cards directly into the trash.
However, two of Zhao Yao's roommates never threw away such cards, or selectively discarded them. This made Zhao Yao very curious at the time, as the school was very strict about such things, and they shouldn't have had time to consume these cards.
Later, they mentioned it in a casual chat. It turned out that they had never intended to call the numbers on the cards. Instead, they found the beautiful women depicted on the cards to be extremely attractive. And because they were for a specific purpose, the women on the cards were all making extremely seductive poses and expressions, making them reluctant to throw them away. So, they simply collected them and looked at them to pass the time when they had nothing else to do.
At that time, Zhao Yao didn't think much of it. But when he himself planned to distribute small cards, he realized that this strategy was a god-tier marketing technique.
Originally, most people would discard such advertising cards the moment they received them, with a retention rate of perhaps no more than 1%.
But if beautiful women's pictures or handsome men's pictures were used, the retention rate could very well increase to over 10%.
Of course, considering that he was distributing these cards within the school and to avoid any unnecessary trouble in the future, Zhao Yao dared not print pictures of women wearing minimal clothing on the cards. Instead, he opted for photos of the hottest current stars, which would avoid the aforementioned problems.
Of course, this behavior might also bring about copyright and portrait rights issues. However, Zhao Yao was only using them on a small scale, and it should not attract the attention of these two major stars.
When he plans to expand on a large scale in the future, he can find other legal photos to use.
Zhao Yao's execution ability was astonishing. He had the cards printed in the morning and began distributing them in the dormitories of the school that afternoon.
For those who were in their dormitories, he respectfully presented them with both hands. For those who were not, he simply placed them on their beds. Most students would not object to this kind of errand service, so over a thousand cards were all distributed in a single afternoon.
It was at this time that Zhao Yao received his first order, which was to buy more than a dozen bags of potato chips from the school supermarket, along with two blind boxes of Jiangnan Group's newly launched "Misty Journey" Series 6.
Although this trip only earned him a runner's fee of 2 yuan, the fact that he received a business order so soon after distributing the cards told Zhao Yao that this was indeed a viable business.
Zhao Yao was busy in the school that day until 8 PM. He received a total of 12 orders, earning 16 yuan.
Therefore, while this amount of money was still very small, it was a perfect start.
The next day, the total number of orders surged to 42.
On the third day, it broke one hundred, reaching 121 orders.
By the fourth day, Zhao Yao could no longer handle it alone. He found a student in the school who also wanted to make money to be his employee. In fact, Zhao Yao had originally proposed that this person be his partner, with each keeping their own earnings from running errands. Zhao Yao only needed the other person's data and experiences from running errands.
However, to his surprise, the person adamantly refused, insisting on being Zhao Yao's worker and receiving a fixed salary instead of uncertain income. In the end, Zhao Yao hired the student for 1500 yuan a month, with a working time of 5 hours per day. This way, two people were responsible for running errands at the school simultaneously.
The number of people in a school is limited, and the number of wealthy students who can afford to hire someone for errands is also limited. Therefore, the daily orders stabilized at around 300, which was just enough for two people to complete all the work. In just one day, Zhao Yao earned nearly 400 yuan in pure profit, which would be 12,000 yuan in a month. However, this student worker could only earn 1500 yuan per month, which was quite laughable.
Through a month of work, Zhao Yao also summarized many problems.
For example, while distributing small cards could quickly attract customers, cards were not a sustainable method. Moreover, receiving orders via phone and QQ meant that Zhao Yao's phone was almost constantly busy, which also occupied a lot of Zhao Yao's time.
In addition, there was the issue of order arrangement. Since all phone calls went directly to Zhao Yao, he had to arrange the work for his subordinates, which was also time-consuming.
There was also the problem of employee management. Zhao Yao discovered that many times, if he didn't keep an eye on his employees, they would find a shady spot to rest. After all, they received a fixed salary, so why would they work hard to take orders and make money for the boss?
Problems like these were innumerable. Zhao Yao filled an entire notebook and intended to solve these problems continuously in the future to build the best model.
"It would be best to have software and a website to handle order reception and dispatch, so that I can be freed from making phone calls!" Zhao Yao's first step towards innovation was to establish a website and accompanying software to solve many problems that did not require human labor and could be directly solved by computer calculations.
And this was not a difficult task for Zhao Yao, as Jiangnan University, where he was studying, was not short of all sorts of programming jobs.
"But I studied Quinary programming. Wouldn't it be starting from scratch to create websites and programs on a computer?" Zhao Yao patted his head with some frustration, seemingly regretting why he went to Jiangnan University to study, and moreover, learning Quinary programming, which was completely unusable in the market at the moment!