Lessons on entrepreneurship from the hit Kdrama ‘Crash Landing on You’
Stick the landing with a healthy obsession
North Korea has become a genre in itself within Korean dramas and movies, but ‘Crash Landing on You’ (사랑의 불시착) took the fictional possibilities of the two Koreas colliding to whole new level. At its center, global fashion and cosmetic brand Seri’s Choice owner and CEO Yoon Seri lands deep in North Korea via paragliding accident.
Of course, this being a romantic comedy she doesn’t get shot at or imprisoned on sight (although to drive tension they do leave that possibility hanging). Instead the North Korean captain who finds her caught in a tree, Ri Jung Hyuk, houses her and for the rest of the series devises plan after plan to get her safely back across the border.
Now what can we learn from this drama when it comes to business? Thanks to the main character Yoon Seri being an ass-kicking entrepreneur, there are some points I found interesting and relevant:
[Spoiler alert! But I don’t reveal anything key to the plot that you wouldn’t already probably be able to guess even without watching a single episode]
The value of obsession
Though I initially thought being CEO of Seri’s Choice was a plot point set up solely to get her into and out of North Korea, I realized that the mindset that got her paragliding in the first place is likely the reason she was successful as an entrepreneur.
The paragliding accident was a final product testing for their brand’s sportswear line, and she saw to it that she was present, even being the one conducting the test herself. The night before she had been appointed to inherit her estranged family’s conglomerate, but she postponed meeting with her father to be at the product testing.
Later on in the series, as Seri tries to blend in North Korea, she and a couple of housewives she befriended make a trip to the local market where they encounter several Seri’s Choice products being illegally sold. The seller makes her spiel, but Seri finds it jarring that the seller could not accurately list all the ingredients that went into her products and mistakenly quoted gross sales.
Seri’s character is far removed from the traditional depiction of chaebol family members, who often are at the helm of large organizations but have no apparent attachment (or on the other side of the spectrum, have a violent, unhealthy attachment, as in Itaewon Class) to whatever their business does. Instead, she portrays an entrepreneur who consistently knows her business in and out even when it has scaled globally, even in North Korea.
What Seri exhibits is the value in being obsessed as an entrepreneur. This is especially true today where consumers have more leverage via online platforms and customer experience has become more widely professionalized (eg product managers, UX professionals) and productized (eg chatbots, SEO monitoring).
Scaling (healthy) obsession
It is relatively easy to be obsessed as the business is single-product or just starting out. But as the business grows, leadership needs to maintain a healthy level of obsession to create a standard of consistency and quality as the layers of bureaucracy multiply. With it the entrepreneur is able to allow her employees to help grow the business while still being sensitive to what is happening in the business.
Seri’s Choice in particular is a case where the entrepreneur’s own person is tied to the brand. That’s means her obsession with the business, even as it scales, entails her consistent public presence. Her own leadership style, being very charismatic and personality-based, also influenced this approach. In general, however, there are many ways leadership can manifest the obsession mindset and ensure it is communicated effectively throughout the organization.
Netflix is a one example of a business that managed to scale its own brand of obsession as it grew internationally, which leadership managed to concretize through a culture code. Even customers can judge just how obsessed leadership is with business, comparing what they say with their own customer experience is like.
Business is personal
I suspect that this obsession is rooted in what this business means to Seri personally. She had started the business after a quarter-life crisis, estranged by her family and feeling no sense of fulfillment in life. Being an entrepreneur was a response to that emptiness — Seri’s choice to live.
And throughout the series we see how Seri’s experiences in North Korea change her leadership style, which her employees gossip over as she settles back in to her role. Towards the end of the series, when Seri decides to set up a foundation for music scholarship, it is very obviously tied to her desire to reunite with Captain Ri, who left the military and joined the National Orchestra.
Even with all the frameworks, metrics, and models to guide business decisions, many of these moments are still highly personal and revolve around relationships. From a marketing perspective, this is why venture capital investors often say they invest in founders and not businesses, and why most VC landing pages will have faces and quotes more than logos and metrics.
Asymmetry of value
Another interesting element in the drama was the pawnshop scene. Seri, desperate for cash, offers her limited edition watch at the local pawnshop, expecting US$20,000. Instead, the pawnshop owner cuts off three zeroes and weighs it at 20,000 won.
The punchline comes in when another customer comes in and pawns a leather belt for 35,000 won. She finally settles for 25,000 won, which her friend remarks as “generous,” and also seems to be enough for Seri to get a change of clothes. This scenario happened again later on in the series, with Seri still shocked by how in-valuable the items become when judged by the pawnshop’s weighing scale.
It was interesting to me how this scene reflects overlooked market asymmetries, which often exact a toll on business expansion across markets. Leather by weight is gold standard at the North Korean pawnshop, so a limited edition watch designed to be lightweight stands no chance against the weighing scale, no matter how valuable it is elsewhere.
Doing business in any specific locality or market segment requires an understanding of what is valued and what measure is used to ascertain such value. This has a role to play in determining how to effectively develop and distribute products or services. Water doesn’t sell for the same price everywhere.
For technology startups, these asymmetries become significant moving from more urban centres to the rural economy. For example, ecommerce will not necessarily work in a community where (1) logistics is an issue and (2) potential customers don’t have enough consumption power. Knowing this, it would be more practical to start offering financial services or logistics first so that these barriers to adopting ecommerce could be lowered.
Another example is offering financing to consumers vs businesses. While the narrative is strong for supporting consumers, businesses are a more effective starting point for a lending platform because (1) they need financing more regularly and (2) such loans are productive (ie they enable the business to generate revenue). Because of this, businesses are better equipped and more incentivized to pay back loans than individuals.
Going back to my earlier point, having the ability to study and stay on top of these asymmetries also requires a certain amount of obsession as an entrepreneur.
I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more to pick up throughout the series —comment below what other business tidbits can be found!
