I've seen a point of view, very popular, called:
Do what is valuable, not what makes money.
Do you believe it or not? I don't believe it anyway.
What is the difference between what makes money and what is valuable?
"Poor Dad, Rich Dad" tells a story about repairing water pipes, which is very vivid.
The village chief asked two young men to bring water to the village. The first person brought two buckets and carried water from 10 kilometers away every day, and the villagers were paid every day. The second person went outside to find a construction team, pull investment, repair water pipes for the village, send water directly from the lake to every household, and then install a water meter for each house, charging as needed.
The moment the pipes were repaired, the first person was unemployed.
In reality, working for the boss, paying wages every month, delivering takeaways, running Didi, and setting up stalls to sell snacks are all things to make money.
One day when you lose your job, you have no money to make. If you can make money now, it's a matter of making money.
The valuable thing is how likely it is that you can continue to make more money in the future through this matter, and the bigger it is, the more valuable it is.
Venture capital invests in valuable companies.
In the future, the company's market value can grow explosively, which is the real return. There is a question on Zhihu, which is more successful, Brother Xiao Yang or Lei Jun? It's hilarious.
There is no doubt that Lei Jun is better than Brother Xiao Yang, I don't know how many orders of magnitude.
It is the gap between Du Yuesheng and Zhang Zuolin.
Even if he comes up with a down-and-out business tycoon, it is not something that Brother Xiao Yang can compare.
It is important to understand here that the person who makes the cake is completely different from the person who divides the cake.
Entrepreneurs are those who make cakes, providing scientific and technological products for the benefit of the masses, providing jobs, and driving the industrial chain to achieve prosperity.
Entrepreneurs don't make money now, but they can get high returns in the future.
Musk built rockets to bet on the future at the beginning.
And Internet celebrities are the people who share the cake, mainly enriching themselves, and whether they can continue to make money in the future is still unknown.
The platform can come at any time. This is also the clear difference between making money and being worth it.
To sum up: the matter of making money is short-term, and the money comes quickly.
The valuable thing is to bet that you can make a hundred, a thousand times more money in the future, it is worth investing now, and you can continue to make money.
So do you want to do things that make money, or do things that are valuable?
Of course, it is both profitable and valuable. But this kind of thing is hard to come by for ordinary people, individuals, and small teams.
Even if you encounter it, you will soon be beaten down.
So, it's going to be done in stages.
For most people, it's about making money first.
Because the problem of survival must be solved first.
What we call survival today does not mean to have enough to eat, but to lift a state.
What status? I call it an existential fear state.
There is always a string in my heart.
What should I do if I am unemployed?
What should I do if I can't pay off my mortgage? What should I do if I get sick?
What should I do if I'm old and not married?
Every day, I think about how to save money, I have to repeatedly calculate the cost performance when I buy things, I want a good one is too expensive, the cheap function is too bad, I always calculate cheap and good things, and I can only eat a few big meals this month.
In essence, they are all - no money in your pocket, panic!
Once a person falls into it, he will fall into a negative cycle and will not be able to get out.
For example, go through these problems in your head every day, even though you can't think of a solution.
Another example: I can't make up my mind when making decisions, and I always worry about a lot of problems. Today I saw a money-making side hustle that dragged on for a month and didn't start doing it. This is internal friction. People who don't have internal friction will already be able to get started tomorrow when they see the project today.
Do something to make money first, save enough money, and relieve the fear of survival, so that you can consider something that is not profitable, but valuable. Now you are still afraid of survival, and the future is worth little to you.
What to do? Find some tuyere projects, go all out, invest 100% of your time and energy into them, and make money quickly.
After having a foundation, you are more confident, more sunny, and more motivated, and then you can dare to stick to yourself and do things that do not make money now and have a bumper harvest in the next 2-3 years.
Cattle people emphasize that whether they make money or not, they must be valuable, because they have capital and will not be worried about survival.
But for most ordinary people, it may be a better choice to dispel the fear of survival and then consider whether what is being done is worth it.