Chapter 204: Creating Opportunities
“Hahaha, let me put it this way, for example, if one person opens a gas station and it’s very profitable, then others will imitate it. So, around this gas station, one opens on the left, one on the right, and one in front and back. Can it still be profitable then?
But there was a very intelligent person who opened a supermarket next to the gas station. The gas station was in fierce competition, but the supermarket was still making money. After a while, it started again. More people imitated it, and supermarkets popped up one after another nearby, two, three, four. So, supermarkets also didn’t make as much money as before.
Whatever you do, you must avoid engaging in fierce competition. If you really want to do something, be unique. Get it done and reap the rewards first. When others start competing with you, you can change direction, use their competition to find opportunities, compete again, find again, and surround them to profit. This way, you can always be the first person to eat the crab.
“This? How do I do that, Big Brother?”
“Look at short videos nowadays, aren’t they all the same? One becomes popular, and a bunch of people imitate it, trying to piggyback on the traffic. But they can never surpass the first one that became popular, because the first, unique one is the one eating the crab.
I know an Elder Sister who was the first person to sell Jianbing Guozi in our area. In our area, it’s called Jianbing. This Elder Sister bought three houses after a few years, and she also sent her daughter and son to university, just because she was the first to set up a stall and sell Jianbing Guozi there.
If you want to start a business, then look for the differences between north and south in life, and then adjust those differences to suit a certain region, and you can acquire wealth from that region.
It’s like many things we do now start by learning from others. For example, mobile phones weren’t invented by us, but the first person to sell mobile phones here definitely made money.
If you can’t create something unique, then you can borrow strength from other places and exert your effort in a place where no one else is doing it. That’s also eating the crab, do you understand?
“I understand, Big Brother, I do. And I have some ideas, but are there no others playing this game? How can I confirm that I’m doing something unique?”
“This requires you to do market research. Don’t think something is too simple. If it were that simple, wouldn’t someone have done it long ago? It’s precisely because most people think this way that they want to do it but dare not, and remain stagnant. Years later, they regret and say, ‘Actually, I thought of it long ago, but I didn’t do it.’ That kind of talk is useless. Thinking is useless; daring to think and daring to do is what’s useful.
Do you remember an advertisement called Brain Gold? The slogan was, “No gifts this festival, only accept Brain Gold.”
Do you know how this shopkeeper got started? He was deeply in debt. He borrowed 500,000 from a friend and then found a region, hired a group of people to call every pharmacy endlessly, asking if they had Brain Gold.
He also hired a group of old men and old women to go to pharmacies with empty Brain Gold bottles they had drunk from. After half a month.
When all the pharmacies were researching what this Brain Gold was, he then spent money to find a manufacturer to produce a batch, hired reporters to create buzz, and booked a newspaper’s entire monthly space.
He built up the product’s reputation and made his first profit in that region. After that, he went to other cities to replicate this pattern and made a fortune.
Although he later disappeared, this tactic completely paved the way for himself.
When Big Brother didn’t know anything, he also did something similar. When I used to stream, nobody knew me, so when I connected microphones, I would brag that half the people in the Looks Section knew me. After the stream, when I made friends in other streamers’ channels, I would say the same thing, hahaha. A few months later, a large portion of the people in the entire section had heard my name, and nearly half of them had connected with me. And when they talked about Big Brother behind my back, they would say, ‘Hey, do you know Gui Gui? He’s awesome, so many people know him.’
This spread from one to ten, then to a hundred. It started with me bragging, and eventually, I made it a reality.
Although I was actually just intentionally chatting nonsense for fun, I really got to know a huge group of streamers, and when people needed to line up to connect with me, imagine what that effect would be like?
People shouldn’t wait for opportunities; they should learn to find opportunities. If there are no opportunities, then create them yourself.
Our smartest old saying is, “If there’s no way, think of a way. If there’s still no way? Then think again.” There are always more ways than difficulties.
Whether it’s technological innovation, enterprise development, or some trivial matters in life, the prerequisite for doing them well is having methods. Without methods, even tightening a screw would be exhausting.
Therefore, methods, ways, and tactics are the conditions for success.
Take cultivation for example. I don’t practice cultivation because I’ve read many Buddhist Sutras; rather, I understood what the Buddhist Sutras were saying, and then I comprehended various cultivation methods, thus creating a simple, direct, and fun path.
If I had no methods, what good would it be even if I understood so much? Wouldn’t I still be trapped?
The reason why many people find it difficult to cultivate their hearts is because they lack methods. They only know to be calm, calm, but don’t know how to be calm. They only know to reduce distracting thoughts in their brains but don’t know how to reduce them, so it’s no different from not knowing, hahaha.
“I understand, Big Brother. Your meaning is that no matter what you do, whether the matter succeeds or not doesn’t depend on the matter itself, but on whether the person doing the matter has a method.”
“Yes, no matter what you invest in, you must first think of a way. With the capital you invest, can you open an exit? You have to open it yourself.
Never assume or listen to others talk about good or bad. If you haven’t done it yourself, you’ll never know. People who are tricked are never tricked by themselves; they are tricked by believing others.
If your vision is broad enough and you can look at things from various directions, then your methods will naturally become numerous.
Don’t think that different industries are unrelated. All things are connected. Pollution doesn’t just affect seafood harvesting; it can also affect seafood farming.
If a city isn’t developing well, even beggars don’t like to beg there. That’s reality.
There was a young man in his twenties, plump, who started begging at fourteen or fifteen. People didn’t like to go to small, poor places, thinking there were too many poor people and they wouldn’t get much. So, he only went to first and second-tier cities to beg. In the end, he spent over a million to buy a house and still had over two million in savings. When a reporter interviewed him, they asked him why he didn’t buy more houses.
He said, “One house is enough. Buying too many is useless.”
Hahahaha, can you grasp this? Don’t underestimate anyone you think is foolish. Perhaps when we think we are smarter than others, we are actually the most foolish.”
