At the end of 2024, during an entrepreneur symposium, entrepreneur Cao Dewang said a powerful sentence: "When you can earn 10 or 30 thousand yuan a day, you will realize that through hard work, you simply can't make a fortune. It can only solve your basic needs. Making a fortune depends on your intelligence, vision, and opportunities."
This was Cao Dewang, the founder of Fuyao Glass, expressing his insights. With just a few words, he revealed the truth about wealth accumulation.
Many people believe that growth means continuous learning. As their educational qualifications keep improving and they obtain various certificates, their own abilities also become stronger, and they get closer to financial freedom.
Actually, that's not the case.
The truth might be that after spending 20 years studying hard, you are not as successful as someone who focuses on making money and takes advantage of the opportunities and yield quick results just in one year.
We all know that learning is important, but we should also understand that what we learn is more crucial than simply learning itself.
In this world, there are too many people with high educational qualifications but who are doing poorly.
If what you study cannot be converted into something tangible, then you are merely using your diligent study to numb yourself.
Most people have a cognitive mindset bias, always thinking about studying hard to achieve a good grade, getting into a prestigious university, and then entering a well-known company to earn a high salary. Such a plan may fall into a vicious cycle, always revolving around work, exams, promotions and salary increases, turning oneself into a mere cog in the machine.
However, some people were able to break free from this situation and found a different path. This resulted in some people being able to accumulate substantial wealth and achieve financial freedom, while others could only barely make ends meet.
Making money has its methodology.
The fastest way to make money is to boldly try and make mistakes.
Many people study hard but lack the courage to turn their knowledge into the will to act. That's why they can't earn a lot of money.
In this era where education is losing its value, a high degree is no longer the core competitiveness. Applying what you have learned is the key. Only by practicing can you deeply understand the market rules, business logic and the essence of human nature.
These are the means to make you stronger. True experts are not made by studying in books, but are developed through trial and error in practice and repeatedly learning from failures.
Studying how to make money is the most direct way to cultivate a growth mindset.
Those who can really achieve things understand one principle: they review their failures.
For instance, if you want to make short videos but your quality is poor, you will study algorithms, editing, and topic selection.
If you start a small business, even if it's just setting up a stall, you will naturally think about location selection, costs, and customer psychology - these profound insights are often not born spontaneously but are forced out by the realistic goal of "making money".
The essence of making money is the process of constantly facing problems and solving them.
Studying how to make money is the most direct way to uncover the truth of business.
For instance, they believe in "effort leads to success" and "the rewards of hard work are abundant" - but the reality is that choice is far more important than effort by a factor of ten thousand.
You think that education determines income, but what actually creates the gap is not the level of diligence - but rather the business acumen and execution ability.
For instance: Even if a chef cooks the best dishes, he is merely an excellent executor who earns a salary. But if he knows how to run a restaurant, build a brand, handle takeout services, and create a popular store - he might earn ten times more than others in a year.
What's the difference? The former operates within the system, while the latter creates value in the market. The essence of business is not what you "know", but what the market "requires" - and whether you can keenly seize it and meet it.
The process of making money is essentially a process of converting one's knowledge into actual earnings. Once you understand this, you are close to wealth.
So, how to do it? The essence of growth is to find a benchmark, imitate, and then surpass.
Step 1，
To only learn skills that can be directly monetized.
If you want to make money, you should first let go of the "high-end and sophisticated" knowledge that is difficult to be converted into actual value.
Studying philosophy can make you more rational, but learning marketing will enable you to become wealthy;
reading history can broaden your horizons, but developing business thinking will allow you to truly earn money.
Step 2，
Don't wait for perfection before taking action - conduct low-cost experiments and quickly validate the results.
If you want to start a self-media platform, first write a few articles to test whether readers will be interested in them.
If you want to offer consulting services? First, take on a few low-cost projects to see if the market responds positively.
The market feedback will not deceive you. It is particularly adept at curing all kinds of fantasies and pretentiousness.
Step 3，
Truly effective learning involves absorbing the experiences of those who have achieved results.
No matter how good the theories in the books are, they are not as good as the practical insights gained by those who have actually made money in reality.
If you want to start a business, you should study the million-dollar entrepreneurs instead of getting self-pleased by MBA case studies;
if you want to make short videos, you should analyze the hit works, imitate the rhythm, and optimize the content - rather than getting stuck in the illusion of knowledge and standing still.
If learning fails to lead to practical application, it is essentially an act of evading reality. No matter how hard one studies, if they cannot turn their knowledge into money, it is merely a respectable form of laziness.