Student Question
Master Chi, I often hear people talk about cultivating your network, leveraging your connections. Some people even think that adding a big-name figure on WeChat counts as expanding their network. What’s your take on this?
Master Chi’s Response
I don’t think you need to deliberately “cultivate” anything.
Here’s an example. When you’re a teenager, a teacher might tell you: you need to pursue growth. So how do you grow? The teacher says: surround yourself with people who are also growing.
That’s how you come to understand — you should be around the best people of your generation, even if you’re not yet at their level. Just being in that circle, moving with them, naturally produces what people call a network.
Think about it this way: the friends someone keeps close after graduation in their twenties — the ones they called the driven, ambitious types — if they were out there doing things together back then, they’re likely accomplished people today. So it’s not about “cultivating” a network. It’s about actively finding your own kind. Find what you’re meant to do in this era. Seek out the most capable people you need alongside you — even if they don’t know you yet, grow alongside them, do things together. Eventually, that group all rises together, and that becomes what you’d call a network.
As for adding someone on WeChat, or asking someone to help you once — that’s not a network. That’s a learning interaction. You might get something out of it once or twice. But the kind of mutual nourishment that builds a real network? That’s unlikely to come from that kind of exchange.
If you want to think about it constructively, a network is a circle of friends — a field. It’s a source of latent, reciprocal resources, and it’s built over a long time. If you’re not the same kind of people, they won’t keep showing up for you.
Let me share a story from within our community. Some years back, a friend was going through a difficult stretch with his company. An older brother figure offered to introduce two people to join as senior executives. When he heard their names, he was astonished — these were people he’d looked up to, people he felt were previously out of his reach. He was thrilled, but also genuinely puzzled: why would they want to come work for him?
The answer was simple: they had always seen him as one of their own, so they were willing to help. Even though he was young at the time.
That left a deep impression on him. He was in his early thirties then. The two who came on were a decade older than him — people he might have tried to visit before, only to be turned away.
And yet here they were, joining his company as executives, contributing enormously to his growth. All because of one simple reason: they saw him as the same kind of person. They recognized his values.
So I believe the old saying still holds: like attracts like, and people cluster by kind. Just look around you. Who are the most outstanding people nearby? Go find them. Even if they have no fame yet, no visibility — if they’re the best of your generation, you should know them. Grow alongside them, rise together.