Caution should be the watchword for young guns

In my opinion, young people who quit their jobs to start businesses need to be cautious, and they should not underestimate the risks and difficulties.

Many young people have an ambition to start a business and find financial security rather than work for others. I think society needs the pioneering and innovative spirit of entrepreneurs, but at the same time, new businesspeople need to have a clear understanding of themselves.

Not everyone is a suitable business founder. Some young people underestimate the risks and blindly resign from their jobs to find a business idea when they experience a little setback in their current work, but the result is often failure.

When starting a business－thinking it will be as easy as some films or promotional videos suggest－entrepreneurs face the problem of how to increase their income and pay for various expenses every day, as well as criticism from people around them, such as family and friends, which is far from easy to handle.

In 2020, my family ran a store that sold imported snacks in a small city. It was considered a good project at the time, but after investing a lot of time and money, we found that business was far from as good as expected.

Employee wages, plus rent and utilities exceeded 2,000 yuan ($315) a day, but the turnover was less than 1,500 yuan. Also, many of the snacks had short expiration periods, meaning we lost money if we could not sell them.

Every day, we had to face the fact that the store was in the red. After three months, we closed it quickly, with a loss of about 400,000 yuan.

Many people share their stories on the internet about starting their businesses. Some have been successful, but many struggle.

As one of my interviewees put it: "Success today doesn't mean success tomorrow. Starting a business is like moving against a current and you can't stop trying (to push forward)."