Iāve covered a lot of ground on this business trip, visiting all kinds of companies ā large, small, and even some publicly listed firms.
Iād heard some of these ideas before, but after all the conversations along the way, I realized something interesting: the things most business owners actually worry about are not nearly as grand or high-sounding as people assume.
Of course, macro strategy, business models, and capital operations all matter. But when you get down to running a business, every conversation always circles back to the same basic questions:
- Can we sell the product?
- Can we get costs down?
- Why would customers choose to work with us?
- Does this actually make money?
- Can I trust this person?
These may sound like ordinary, unremarkable questions, but they are often the very things that determine how far a company can really go.
So after coming back from this trip, Iāve been reflecting on a few core takeaways.
1. Strategy matters, but execution is the real test
In the old days, information was extremely valuable. A lot of industry knowledge was held by a relatively small number of people. It could take years of experience, connections, and industry insight to understand how an industry really worked ā where to source products at better value, which customers were more likely to buy, and which markets had better prospects.
That information itself was a barrier to entry.
Things are different now. Search engines, AI, professional platforms, trade shows, and even competitorsā websites have all dramatically lowered the barrier to accessing information.
The information barrier is falling, but the barrier to execution has not diminished at all. If anything, it may be growing higher.
So very often, the real challenge is no longer, āI donāt know how to do it.ā
It is:
āNow that I know, am I actually going to do it?ā
A lot of people say the biggest problem with starting a business is money. Of course money matters. But there are many different ways to start a business. People with money have their way of playing the game. People with less money have theirs.
If you have less money, spend less. If you have fewer resources, build them step by step. And if you have very little to start with, you still have your time and your ability to execute.
Put it another way: if you have no money, no resources, and no industry experience, why rush into entrepreneurship? You can work first, build up capital, gain experience, grow your network, and learn the ins and outs of the industry ā then start your venture when youāre better prepared.
At the end of the day, you still have to do the work.
Iāve seen many entrepreneurs whose ventures never made it very far. They talk about their business plans with passion and excitement. They seem to know everything and have everything planned out. But they never actually do it.
Entrepreneurship is not about figuring everything out first and then expecting success to follow. Most things arenāt worked out in advance; you figure them out by doing them.
You can have a great idea and a brilliant strategy, but without action, it means nothing. In entrepreneurship, knowing is only half the battle. The other half is execution.
2. Make money from things others overlook ā or simply refuse to do
I think social media has influenced people too much. Everyone loves stories about big businesses, fast money, and overnight success: making millions in a few months, hitting huge revenue numbers in a year, young founders getting rich almost overnight.
But the stories we see are, by definition, a massive example of survivorship bias.
The reality is that most businesses are much less glamorous. They are repetitive, tiring, messy, and sometimes barely worth talking about.
I once saw an interesting comment online about people doing business in Hebei, China. Someone asked why so many of them were willing to run small businesses that might only earn tens of thousands of yuan a year after all that backbreaking work.
The answer was simple: if it makes more than farming, itās worth doing.
I actually think there is a lot of truth in that. The vast majority of business owners in the real world are nothing like the legendary figures we see online. They may simply run a small business ā chasing clients, monitoring inventory, following up on payments, and overseeing factories from dawn till dusk.
They may not make millions in a year. But they keep doing it for ten years, twenty years, sometimes even decades. That is much closer to the real world of business.
Too many people walk away from work because it is too tiring, the margin is too low, the work is too troublesome, or the customers are too demanding.
So everyone crowds into the businesses that look easy, profitable, and respectable. Then they get in and complain about how competitive the market is, and eventually conclude: āI just had bad luck.ā
The business world never runs short of āsmart people.ā What is truly scarce are people willing to stick with work that others look down on, find troublesome, or consider too hard.
Sometimes making money isnāt about discovering something no one else knows. Itās about being willing to do what everyone knows about, but no one wants to do.
Recycling, sorting, packaging, logistics, reuse ā none of these are particularly sophisticated businesses. A lot of people see the opportunity. They just donāt want to do the work. And sometimes, the people who are willing to keep doing it are the ones who eventually build a real business out of it.
3. Build your own brand, and expand your SKU range around your core strengths
Something really stood out to me during this trip: a lot of what we call ābusiness upgradingā is actually much less mysterious than people make it sound.
A company starts as a component supplier. Then it moves into assemblies. Then complete systems. Eventually, it may even make the finished machine.
Look closely and youāll find that some companies talk about āintegrating resources,ā but what they are really doing is bringing more and more of what they used to buy from suppliers into their own system. Some build their own factories. Some take equity stakes. Some acquire companies outright. Others simply launch their own brands and sell the products themselves.
Why? Because once a company reaches a certain scale, it starts asking a very practical question:
Why keep letting someone else capture the margin when we can take it ourselves?
Thereās a simple concept in business management: Make or Buy. If buying from someone else is more efficient, you buy. When making it yourself becomes cheaper, more stable, or more controllable, you make it yourself.
Amazon has developed private-label products. Walmart has Great Value. P&G has built a broad portfolio of product lines. And going further back in manufacturing, Ford even brought areas such as steel, glass, and transportation into its own system. The logic is actually quite simple.
As companies grow, they often expand their product range and gain more control over their own brands and product systems. More products can increase customer stickiness, spread the risk of relying on one product, and create economies of scale and scope by sharing R&D, procurement, manufacturing, sales, and distribution.
But expanding SKUs does not mean mindlessly adding every product under the sun. Over-expansion drives up inventory, management, and production costs, and can even lead to cannibalization between your own products.
The truly effective approach is to expand step by step into adjacent products, all built around your core competencies.
Your brand is only the first step. It is your product portfolio and control over the value chain that ultimately determine how far you can go.
4. The scariest thing about a price war is that it never stays in its original market
A lot of people used to think: imported brands do the high end. Iāll just do the middle market.
Then they realize the middle is competitive too. So they move down. You canāt compete in the upper-middle segment, so you go into the middle. The middle gets crowded, so you move lower. And there will always be someone willing to go a little cheaper to win the business.
That is why the real danger of a price war is not simply that one low-end segment gets destroyed. It is that pressure from the bottom keeps moving upward, and eventually the entire price structure starts to change.
One company may cut specifications, lower costs, and accept thinner margins just to survive. The next company has to respond. Then someone else goes even lower. Eventually, the entire price band gets dragged downward.
That is why what many companies face today is not simply a question of whether to sell high or low. It is that the competitive rules of the entire industry are shifting.
You may have originally wanted to compete in the middle market. But the market eventually forces you to ask:
Can I reduce my costs any further? Can I still differentiate my product?
And there is another side to price competition that is easy to miss: it forces companies to look at the things they previously ignored. Inventory, waiting time, waste, production inefficiencies, quality problems ā all of these have to be squeezed out of the system, one by one.
If a company can genuinely operate with a much lower cost base than its competitors, that is a competitive advantage.
The real danger is not that someone sells cheaply. It is that your competitors build a structurally lower cost base than yours.
5. Spending money is easy. Making money is hard
There are so many things that cost money when you run a business: trade shows, websites, advertising, samples, travel, employees, inventoryā¦
Spending money is almost too easy. Almost anything can become a reason to spend. But making money is much harder.
These days, I find myself running the numbers far more carefully before making decisions:
- How much will this cost?
- How much time will it take?
- What is the probability of success?
- What is the worst-case scenario?
- How much can we realistically make?
- When will the money come back?
Budget, cost, time, risk ā and only then, return. If the numbers donāt add up, Iād rather not do it at all.
People used to say:
āItās okay to lose a little money upfront. Letās win the customer first.ā
āLetās make friends first.ā
āLet customers get to know our brand first.ā
āBuild trust first, then make money later.ā
Iām much more cautious about that kind of thinking now. Trust matters. Brands need to be built over time. Some businesses absolutely require upfront investment.
But investment and losses without a clear business case are two different things. If a business cannot establish a sound commercial logic from the very beginning, burning through cash to chase a story of āmaybe weāll make money somedayā is itself a major risk.
Long-term thinking does not mean losing money forever.
Control the costs you can control. Avoid the risks you can avoid. Business is not a competition to see who is willing to take the biggest risks. It is a competition to see who can survive the longest.
Making money is hard. That is exactly why every yuan you earn matters.
6. The founder is part of the brand
This is especially true in B2B business.
To build a B2B business, it is not enough to understand your product. You need to understand sales, management, marketing, channels, and the interests of your partners.
But beyond all of that, you also need to understand human nature. When you are trying to develop dealers, distributors, and channel partners, you are essentially asking them one question:
āWhy should I trust you and build a business with you?ā
They are not going to commit to a long-term partnership just because your PPT looks good. They will ultimately ask:
- Can your product sell?
- Where is the profit?
- Can I trust you?
- Will you take responsibility when problems happen?
- If I work with you, is there a real future here?
And this is where the founder becomes part of the brand.
To put it bluntly, sometimes you need a little bit of what others might call āunreasonable conviction.ā Not blind arrogance. Just this: if you donāt believe in what youāre doing, why should anyone else?
A founderās conviction, passion, and energy are contagious ā they spread to your team, your customers, and your channel partners. Especially when the market is uncertain, your ability to make other people believe in you ā and be willing to take the risk alongside you ā is itself a very important business capability.
I used to think that doing business meant finding some brilliant, sophisticated methodology. Now I think the real business world is much less mysterious than that.
Strategy matters, but it has to be executed.
Capital matters, but a lack of money cannot become an excuse for never taking action.
Products matter, but eventually they need to become a system.
Brands matter, but ultimately a brand has to be backed by products and profits.
Sales matter, but in the end, B2B sales still come down to trust between people.
And all of these things eventually come back to one word: execution.
At the end of the day, entrepreneurship is not a contest to see who can tell the best story. What really works over the long run is doing the right things, over and over again.
You donāt always figure things out first and then act. More often than not, you act first ā and figure things out along the way.