Student Question: Hello Master, what are the things that truly broaden one’s horizons? Work, travel, reading — or stepping outside the circle you’re comfortable in?
Master Chi’s Response: My answer is this: learn to become a producer.
Most people in this world are timid as producers, but relentless as consumers.
Reading fifty thousand words a day — effortless, pure pleasure. Writing two thousand words a day — stumbling at every step. Spending a hundred thousand a month — light as breathing. Earning a hundred thousand a month — nearly impossible.
Consumption is the easiest thing in this world. Anyone can do it, because you’re simply feeding someone else’s profits. But production demands a hundred times more from you.
First, you must read people — truly understand what they need. Then you must find or create something genuinely valuable, a product worth putting your name on. From strategy to operations, from front-end marketing and sales to back-end supply chains — managing people, money, and business all at once, in coordination. You need to connect the entire chain, upstream and downstream.
And that’s still not enough. You must push toward your goals while carrying the full weight of risk and pressure.
Hard, exhausting, and maddening — right?
That is the tearing sensation of real growth.
As a producer, you come to see the world for what it truly is. You understand people at their core. And you discover a version of yourself you never knew existed. Time will carry you to places you once didn’t dare imagine — to higher vistas, and to things far greater than you ever thought possible.