Million - Annual - Salary Series 008: An employee from a big tech company with a high - school education, who has been a drifter in Beijing for 15 years and engaged in consecutive entrepreneurship.

36Kr's "Career Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

Behind most six - figure annual salaries, there is always the support of dividends.

Although a six - figure annual salary has now become a label for countless public accounts to tease in their titles, it must be admitted that it is not easy to achieve. Behind every six - figure annual salary story, there are a large number of dividends boosting. Region, industry, mentor, profession, personal talent... We believe that these dimensions determine the odds of a person's career development.

The amount of annual salary is not the only standard to measure success and happiness. We neither want to teach everyone the "art of intrigue" nor write stories of "survivorship bias". This series will take you to explore the choices made by each interviewee with a six - figure annual salary at critical moments and their visions for the future. May we see the direction of the dividend tide from it.

"I'm Guo Xiaoli, an ordinary person with two sons and have lived in Beijing for a long time."

Whether in public or behind the scenes, when Guo Xiaoli introduces himself, he always avoids some packaging words: such as titles like "former founder of Mubu" and "former employee of ByteDance's Feishu". He doesn't like to use them. The name of his fan group is also "Xiaoli's friends". He explains that he thinks everyone is in an equal relationship, and he sincerely hopes to make friends with everyone. In his heart, he is just an ordinary person.

He was born in a rural area and only has a high - school education. He skipped classes to go to Internet cafes during his school days and struggled with going to work after graduation. From these past experiences, Guo Xiaoli really seems like an ordinary person.

However, some other experiences make him seem less ordinary: He started a business four times, kept struggling all the way until he could support himself and his team, and created the popular mind - mapping tool product "Mubu". After Mubu was acquired by ByteDance, he didn't settle for working in a big company all the time. He stayed at ByteDance for three years and then came out to start a business again, reaching an annual income of one million again.

As the well - known investor Zhu Xiaohu said, "Start - ups should stay away from the direct firepower of big companies and find jobs that big companies are not willing to do. That's the moat for start - ups." Looking back on his 15 years as a migrant worker in Beijing, Guo Xiaoli seems to be steering a small boat in the storm. Rebirth and risk avoidance are two constant topics.

In his eyes, success is just depositing the failure experiences of previous business start - ups into the "bank" and withdrawing them with interest in the next spring.

Choose to work to avoid working in the future ╱ 01

Choose to go all - in on side hustles and learn to monetize traffic ╱ 02

Choose to focus on product development ╱ 03

Choose to start a business again, small but stable ╱ 04

Epilogue ╱ 05

Choose to work to avoid working in the future

Age: 21 - 26 | Monthly salary: 2000 - 4000

After failing the college entrance examination, Guo Xiaoli chose to study SEO [1] at a training school. Guo Xiaoli, who almost missed the learning opportunity, cherished it very much and ranked among the top in his class during the two - year study. In the second year, approaching graduation, while his classmates were waiting for job assignments from the school, Guo Xiaoli had already started looking for a job on his own.

"January 1, 2011." Guo Xiaoli can always accurately tell the date when he started his "migrant life in Beijing". In an era when the monthly salary of a Baidu product manager was 10,000 yuan, Guo Xiaoli started his Beijing journey with 500 yuan given by his parents.

When he first arrived in Beijing, Guo Xiaoli didn't rush to find a job directly. Instead, he built several Taobao affiliate websites first, hoping to make money through what he had learned. But at that time, he was just starting out, and his websites didn't make much progress.

On the tenth day after arriving in Beijing, Guo Xiaoli found his first job with a monthly salary of only 2000 yuan. But Guo Xiaoli never gave up the idea of making money to support himself.

After working for three months and accumulating some "cash flow" (actually only about 4000 yuan), this young man who didn't like working resolutely quit his first job and tried to make money on his own.

Guo Xiaoli calculated that 3000 yuan was enough to support himself for three months. So he planned to take three months as a deadline to test whether he could make enough money to support himself through his own ability. If he couldn't reach the same income level as his salary, he would go back to work - this rule also applied to all his subsequent business start - ups.

During his first "business start - up", Guo Xiaoli still wanted to make full use of the SEO knowledge he learned in the training class to make money and support himself. He started building websites and doing search optimization. "If I can earn 2000 yuan a month, I won't go back to work," Guo Xiaoli thought.

But the three - month experience of building websites only brought this 21 - year - old boy a maximum daily revenue of 50 yuan. This "struggle" ended in failure for the time being. Guo Xiaoli was a person who could accept defeat. After the failure, he continued to look for a job. But the seed of entrepreneurship was deeply rooted in his heart and kept growing.

His second job was in Shucun with a monthly salary of 4000 yuan. From this job on, "working for others" was just a temporary stop for Guo Xiaoli. He completed his work tasks during the day and went back to his workstation after dinner to continue working or made some advertising fees from his small websites. It was also here that he met his fellow - townsman Wang Xu, who would later become his business partner in Mubu, and his wife Lijiao, who has accompanied him for more than a decade until now.

It only took Guo Xiaoli one year to go from a new employee to a department manager through his own efforts. He had been doing SEO before. In the second half of 2012, Guo Xiaoli saw the opportunity in PHP [2] and started learning and doing it at the same time. He was also a beginner in PHP and faced difficulties in progress. In order to better master PHP, Guo Xiaoli signed up for a JavaScript training class. But after the training, Guo Xiaoli realized more deeply that he was really not good at, didn't like programming, and was not suitable to continue doing PHP, so he quit his job again.

● On January 30, 2013, a blog post by Guo Xiaoli during his second business start - up

After leaving his job, Guo Xiaoli still first thought of starting a business by building websites. This time, his attempt to start a business with a traffic website following the trend ended in failure again. And the movie website he had been insisting on was almost "abandoned" due to untimely updates. The emptiness after hard work made Guo Xiaoli fall into confusion.

[1] SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a method and strategy to improve a website's ranking in the natural search results of search engines by optimizing its content and structure.

[2] PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open - source, general - purpose server - side scripting language mainly used for developing dynamic web pages and web applications. PHP code can be directly embedded in HTML and can also be combined with other web development technologies (such as MySQL databases, JavaScript, etc.) to achieve complex interactive functions.

Dividend review:

Guo Xiaoli always ranked among the top in all aspects during his "college" days. He was the first among his classmates to look for a job. "If waiting for the school to assign a job, it might not be a good one," he, who was good at observing and thinking, realized early on that he had to find a job on his own, which put him ahead of many people. In his career, Guo Xiaoli is not only a keen observer but also a brave doer. When he sees an opportunity to make money, he will go all - in without hesitation: if he doesn't have the skills, he will learn hard; if he doesn't have the experience, he will find ways in practice. However, focusing too much on a single point may lead to limitations in perceiving the overall situation.

Choose to go all - in on side hustles and learn to monetize traffic

Age: 23 - 26 | Monthly salary: 6000 - 100,000

In June 2013, Guo Xiaoli started his third job, responsible for the product operation of ProcessOn with a monthly salary of 6000 yuan.

The three years at ProcessOn were probably the most stable years for Guo Xiaoli. In this job, Guo Xiaoli found his area of expertise - growing To - C efficiency tools. Guo Xiaoli, who was in charge of product operation, and Wang Xu, who was in charge of technical development, appeared in the same company again, complementing each other.

Meanwhile, Guo Xiaoli never stopped his side hustles. He opened Taobao stores, built websites, did purchasing, set up street stalls, and handled temporary entry permits for Beijing... He never missed any opportunity to make money. Promotions, salary increases, and good news in life came one after another, creating a kind of comfortable and beautiful life.

● In 2014, Guo Xiaoli took his parents to visit Beijing

But for Guo Xiaoli, comfort may also mean crisis. The smoothness of his life and career seemed to make him almost forget his ideal of "freedom".

A discussion with a friend about "asking for help or being self - sufficient?" triggered Guo Xiaoli's thinking. He compared the employment relationship to two sides, asking for help and being self - sufficient: working for a boss seems stable, but you are always in a passive position, and the boss can fire you at any time - asking for help, selling your time, and never having control over your own destiny; but being your own boss is different. You are the self - sufficient side. Although the risk is high, you can control your own destiny.

In March 2016, when the user volume of ProcessOn exceeded 200,000 and Guo Xiaoli was in the rising period of his career, he chose to "start over" and start a business again. This time, he wanted to control his own destiny.

This time, Guo Xiaoli started posting on various platform accounts. In September 2015, Zhang Yiming, the then founder and CEO of ByteDance, announced that in the next year, the Toutiao platform would ensure that at least 1000 Toutiao account creators would earn at least 10,000 yuan per month. Also in this year, many ordinary people made a living by posting on Toutiao accounts and achieved a monthly income of over 10,000 yuan.

After trying platforms like Baidu Hao, Toutiao Hao, and Sohu Hao, Guo Xiaoli found that Toutiao Hao had the highest traffic, so he chose to focus on posting on Toutiao Hao. At that time, he guided traffic to the private domain to do WeChat business through methods such as posting, optimizing search terms, and leaving recommended messages under Tieba posts.

Even though his income was not stable, Guo Xiaoli, who caught the "express train of the era", succeeded in his business start - up in less than a month. The Toutiao Hao account brought about 200 users to the private domain every day. After accumulating private - domain users, Guo Xiaoli also sold products such as jewelry, shampoo, and soap. He achieved a monthly income of 100,000 yuan in just two months of doing WeChat business.

● A Weibo post by Guo Xiaoli after his first successful business start - up

"For five years on and off, I never gave up. I finally achieved the small goal of not having to be an employee and being able to pay others' salaries," Guo Xiaoli recalled.

Just like the water people pour on trees will bring a harvest one day.

Dividend review:

"Your circle of competence is not equivalent to the role of a cog arranged for you by the company," Guo Xiaoli realized this early on. In 2016, it was the second year when Baidu stopped large - scale recruitment. The reduction of recruitment by big companies means that the competition for jobs in the market will also intensify. If the business start - up fails, one may face the risk of not being able to find a job. Even at such a time, Guo Xiaoli could resolutely choose to break out of his comfort zone and pursue his unfulfilled entrepreneurial dream. This tenacious vitality is also a kind of ability. In 2015, the revenue of ByteDance was only more than one billion yuan, while Baidu's revenue had exceeded 60 billion yuan. Douyin and Kuaishou were still new forces at that time. But Guo Xiaoli keenly captured the latest trend and didn't choose the "broad - river fishing" approach. Instead, he set sail on his own small boat on ByteDance and Kuaishou.

Choose to focus on product development

Age: 26 - 31 | Annual salary: over 1 million

When the income from e - commerce was enough for him to live a comfortable life, Guo Xiaoli didn't want to "retire" for the rest of his life. He was troubled by the fact that his use of his own abilities seemed scattered, and he hadn't done anything "with compound interest".

"At this time, I thought of developing Internet products," Xiaoli mentioned. Developing Internet products could not only make full use of his accumulated experience in traffic acquisition but also bring compound - interest results. This thinking led to the beginning of Mubu.

During a dinner with Wang Xu, Guo Xiaoli mentioned the idea of starting a business to develop a product, and the two hit it off immediately. The next day, they went to rent an office. At the early stage of the start - up, Guo Xiaoli swiped 60,000 yuan from Lijiao's (Guo Xiaoli's wife) credit card as the company's start - up capital. Guo Xiaoli temporarily continued his previous e - commerce and WeChat business to maintain the company's cash flow, while Wang Xu started developing the new product.

"Developing Mubu was not a planned thing. It was because