Student Question: Master Chi, I’ve been thinking about starting a side business on Xiaohongshu or Douyin. But I feel like I’m missing a cohesive overall strategy. Could you walk me through exactly how to approach this?
Master Chi’s Response:
Running any kind of project involves far more than people realize. Let me break down the key questions you need to think through before launching on Douyin or Xiaohongshu.
First: The Business Side (Product)
Recently someone came to me for a consultation. They said they wanted to start a side business but didn’t have anything they were good at. What should they do?
Nothing they’re good at.
It seems like a lot of people have told me this same thing — that year after year, they have no interests or hobbies. Many say their family circumstances never gave them the chance to develop any. I disagree. Look at the people running small online businesses: wool felt animals, resin jar crafts, custom portrait drawings, little logo designs — all of them grew from a personal hobby, step by step, into a side business, then into a full-time income. Have you noticed those wool felt custom animal makers? Lead time is a full month, and they have a waitlist. You have to wait. I once bought a 150-yuan resin pumpkin jar and waited two months for it. That tells you her business is genuinely thriving — and it almost certainly started from a hobby.
Student Question:
Master, recently the collapse of the Zhongzhi Group has been an even bigger shock to the market than the real estate crash. With four major wealth management subsidiaries failing to honor multiple products, Zhongzhi Group has been swept into a full-blown redemption crisis. A massive wave of high-net-worth investors have been left devastated.
Over the years, we’ve seen one dazzling investment scheme after another — P2P lending platforms, abandoned property projects, restaurant franchise chains, crude oil structured products, rural and township banks — yet the outcome is always the same: investors get hurt. For middle-class people with a bit of savings, how do we protect ourselves and hold on to what we have?
Most importantly — when the era is favorable and the environment is right, even ordinary people can ride the wave to prosperity.
For ordinary people, no investment is more significant than buying property. Most people won’t put hundreds of thousands into stocks, but they will put hundreds of thousands into real estate. Property is the investment tool most capable of widening the wealth gap among ordinary people — because in investment terms, this is a heavy-position, leveraged play.
I’ve been in North America for a while recently, and since it’s been many years since my last extended stay, I’ve reconnected with many old friends and caught up on the world of overseas Chinese communities.
On top of that — for reasons everyone knows — emigration has become a hot topic again in China, both last year and this year. Every day, readers in my community ask me: at this particular moment in time, should they go out and see a new world?
Tonight, let me speak with you plainly, heart to heart.
You see, I’ve always believed that the greatest wealth in my life was never the assets and money I accumulated through years of hard-fought effort.
On the contrary — my greatest wealth has always been the suffering and failures I once endured.
Those experiences were the raw materials that truly forged who I am at my core.
I still vaguely remember the lowest years of my youth.
Some say: “Better to marry well than to work hard” is a distorted idea, and we shouldn’t be promoting hypergamy for women.
The first part, I agree with: whoever said doing well in your career and marrying well are mutually exclusive? Both are fine.
“Well” is something quantifiable. If you earn a million a year versus marrying someone worth ten million — which is better? Everyone has their own values.
Human destiny lies in constant maneuvering. Throughout long stretches of history, people could only manage a partial understanding of society’s past. On one hand, this was due to the biases of the ruling class, which routinely distorted the historical record. On the other hand, it was the small scale of production that narrowed people’s vision.
The limitations of human understanding come down to two things: class bias and the scale of production. One is ideology, one is material — two shackles binding every individual, every group, every tier of society.
This morning, a friend posed a thoughtful question: “Master Chi, do you think the days ahead will actually improve?”
He was asking against the backdrop of a world in quiet turbulence — shifting global conditions, the Wagner leader’s death, Japan’s mass discharge of radioactive water. Something in him felt unsettled. Like life had become impossible to carry forward.
My first instinct was to brush it off: Don’t stress yourself out. Don’t overthink it. But that felt wrong. So instead, I wrote something longer. Might as well share it here.
It’s only on Friday evenings like this that I have any free time to write and share more “informal” articles. My habit on regular workdays is to stay focused on sharing various insights on ascending wisdom and esoteric knowledge. This week has been a bit busy, so I’ve written a little less — but next week things will return to normal.
Let me start with the reason I’m writing this.