Student Question
Hello Master, I’ve been unemployed for nine months. I’ve tried three side businesses and failed at all of them.
Street vending. Around the Lantern Festival, a close friend and I went to sell lanterns and balloons at a stall. The lanterns arrived too late — we missed the festival entirely. The balloons fell apart because I couldn’t figure out how to inflate them properly, so we gave up. Total inventory costs: 1,000+ yuan. Revenue: 500+ yuan. Net loss: over 500 yuan.
Self-media content creation. I went out and got a new phone number, opened a new account, and set out to become a travel blogger. I posted for a month and got essentially zero followers.
Freelance article writing. Thanks to some old contacts, I had the chance to write advertorial content for an account — ten yuan per hundred characters. Not much, but not nothing. One article earned about a week’s worth of coffee money. I call it a failure because it isn’t sustainable. Assignment opportunities are rare, there are too many writers competing, and sometimes a whole month passes before a suitable topic comes up. I never even got through enough coffee before the money ran out.
How should I think through an approach to side businesses?
Master Chi’s Response
At the very start of building a side business, your fundamental goal is to find your beachhead — not to chase growth, not to chase metrics. Your first job is to find your first working model.
What kind of customer market are you targeting? What sub-segments can you carve out within it? And what approach will you use to break in — one that is three times or five times better than what existing competitors currently offer?
After that comes replication and expansion, building your moat, then breaking through to the next level.
Building a side business happens in stages.
The first stage, at its core, is the beach landing. Find your starting market, establish a foothold and a point of entry. But nailing this step isn’t the end goal — it’s just the beginning. Ranking well in some niche isn’t the final destination. The real aim is to move from one to many. Going from zero to one is never enough.
Your actual objectives are:
- Scale up for large-scale expansion and growth.
- Build execution capability — if necessary, bring people in to form a small team.
- Find a repeatable growth methodology.
- Define the key KPIs that drive that growth.
But here is the problem most people run into: how do you capture a small market when your resources are scarce?
The fundamental prerequisite is that you’ve already identified a large domain and a large market. The basic principle is then to choose a small market — one where the money and resources in your hands are enough to win decisively. Fight only battles you can win.
To find your entry point, there is one absolutely essential principle: finding an entry point means finding where you can win — not just finding demand. In plain terms: within a massive market or space, find a temporary blue ocean. One where you can win with the resources you have on hand. Where you have a team, you have an opening, and victory is within reach. Don’t go chasing a position you simply cannot win.
There are four factors to weigh together:
- First: Identify a specific problem and real need.
- Second: A method that differs from the conventional approach.
- Third: What are you personally good at?
- Fourth: The development stage and pace of the market you’re entering.
If you want to build a side business, you truly need to understand yourself. Never — under any circumstances — do something you’re not good at or don’t understand.