What is your career?

Doing ten thousand things right and handling ten thousand customer complaints earns you zero credit; but if you make a single mistake or get screwed by an incompetent subordinate, you’re the one who takes the blame.

That’s your destined career path.

Just because you get things done doesn’t mean the credit goes to you. Whether it does depends on whether you’re one of their own.

The essence of making money is information asymmetry, and in China, what matters is your position within the collective.

A rat in a grain store and a rat in a sewer aren’t fundamentally different; they’re just in different positions. One eats until it’s stuffed, the other gets beaten while eating shit. It’s the same with people.

When a mouse or keyboard malfunctions, you replace it—no one cares why. We all know customer service reps represent the company image, but in reality, bosses don’t genuinely expect these people to never make mistakes. The boss doesn’t even know these people; they’re consumables, no different from mice and keyboards.

What’s the first lesson of the workplace? You must reach a position that’s visible.

The path for employees is very clear. You need to climb as fast as possible to the lowest position where the boss recognizes you. Only by reaching that position will your subsequent labor and efforts not be wasted on someone else’s gain.

It makes a huge difference whether the boss knows what you’ve done and has your credit recorded under your direct supervisor’s name versus the boss not knowing what you’ve done but still having your credit attributed to your direct supervisor. The futures are completely different. Doing the work isn’t what matters; it’s who you do it for.

If you don’t understand this early on, no matter how much you do, it’ll all be for nothing.

When you’re young, you must push upward relentlessly. Don’t think about staying grounded—that’ll cost you your youth. What’s “staying grounded”? If you were given twenty customer service reps who don’t even know whether a liter of soil and a liter of water occupy the same volume, and you had to mentor and guide them—would you take that? If you spend all day handling such things and dealing with these kinds of people, your youth is wasted, and how can you possibly rise?

When you’re young, you must find every way to extricate yourself from trivial matters and from unimportant people, and to get as close as possible to higher ground.

What you consider important may not be important to your boss. Even what’s important to the company may not be important to your boss. And even what’s important to your boss may not be important to your direct boss.

So what exactly is an opportunity? Personnel changes.

Right now, your director just got fired, and the manager is leaving soon. Who’s the next manager? That’s you. This is your opportunity. When the new director meets with everyone to chat, that’s your opportunity—to express three things clearly.

1. “The former director and current manager have always sidelined me. I did all the work, but none of the credit was mine.”

2. “I’m relatively low-ranking anyway, so they didn’t include me in their private dealings. I’m not aware of what they do behind the scenes.”

3. “I’ve always admired you, and I admire you as the new director. Previously, I lacked the opportunity to get closer to you and learn from you.”

After expressing those three points, if the new director was already favorably disposed toward you, once you declare your allegiance, you’re theirs.

Knowing what to do is more important than knowing how to do it.

Your opportunities arise from others’ personnel changes, and they disappear with them.

A person who doesn’t strive, isn’t diligent, can’t manage their time well, and can’t consistently move toward a fixed goal—following the so-called 10,000-hour rule—has no future. Even when opportunities come along, they won’t be able to seize them.

You need screen time; you can’t be a stunt double forever. Knowing what to do is more important than knowing how to do it.

Once you’re on the right track, three more things come into play:

First, are you actually suited to lead people? What does leading mean? It’s about adding leverage.

Horses don’t get fat without night grazing; people don’t get rich without leverage. If you rely solely on yourself, you can’t add leverage.

Individual competence and leadership ability are two different things.

If you’re an excellent shooter—so good that it builds personal worship and establishes authority—that’s a reason to let you lead a team. But there’s someone else who joined earlier and has deeper roots among the group. Maybe they recruited and trained all your teammates, and have built emotional bonds with everyone. In reality, they also have leadership ability and authority, perhaps not much lower than yours, which was built on individual marksmanship.

These are the common foundations of leadership: power and emotion. Humans are emotional creatures, not just worshippers of power.

Second, do you have resources backing you behind the scenes?

When there’s no clear entity supporting you, you’re fighting alone.

Third, what’s your premium?

Those who talk a lot are actually inflating their premium, not just being flashy. Because your value depends on how many people understand you well enough.

The same piece of jade sells for 500 at a street stall, 5,000 at a store, and maybe 500,000 at auction.

Because the traffic differs.

At a street stall, only a few people pass by each day, glance at it, and often don’t have money. At a store, foot traffic is larger, and more importantly, store customers have stronger purchasing power. What about an auction? It gets news coverage, letting the whole world know something is for sale.

A street stall is like someone who’s only known by a few colleagues within their own department or team. They’re few in number and have no voice.

A store is like getting executives and the boss to understand your abilities and contributions. Within your company, these people clearly have more status and influence than your colleagues.

An auction is the industry. If every boss in your industry knows you’re a capable person, then even if your company goes bankrupt, countless people will line up to court you.

In fact, their vocal approach is leveraging the premium principle—building their personal brand so more people know and understand them, thereby raising their premium.

Ten years ago, how did pioneers like Kai-Fu Lee play this game?

They were all multi-hyphenates. In their primary field, they maximized their premium by building personal brands, while also operating as investors entering investment circles, and as media figures entering media circles.

All these resources create a resonance effect.

In investment circles, because you’re an insider in certain industries and can provide useful “insider” information, you have a premium. It’s like the ocean: water is worthless everywhere, but take it to the desert, and it’s valuable because there’s no water there. The ocean is your industry, water is industry information, and the desert is the investment circle. Something worthless in your industry might not be worthless in another circle.

This is the first premium: cross-industry premium.

When you’re well-known in investment circles, trust is built. If you start a business in your original field and seek investment, it’s easier than for others. Because investors prefer investing in founders they understand.

This is the second premium: cross-industry fertilizing the home industry.

You’re also part of the media circle, so you can promote your own company.

That creates a third premium.

If you stubbornly insist on keeping your head down and believe “good wine needs no bush,” your premium is the lowest—no one can understand your value.

If you promote yourself within the company, you’ll more easily get promoted and valued. If you promote yourself within the industry, you won’t fall along with one company’s decline; you’ll gain a broader stage.

If you play this hand across industries, the game truly becomes interesting. That’s when you become a real player.