An interesting story: a relative's family runs an old shop that has steadily built up a good reputation over decades. The older generation plans to retire and wants to pass the shop to the next generation, but the younger generation is very resistant. They think running such an old shop is too tiring, and they've heard that someone running a breakfast stall selling pre-made dim sum makes easy money, finishing work by noon with no need to prepare ingredients. So, they want to start their own similar venture.
It sounds quite absurd but also very real, and similar stories are playing out everywhere, all the time.
Many so-called "opportunities" seem understandable to everyone, but very few people actually make money from them. Because what most people understand is not the opportunity itself, but the result packaged by a narrative. They see "someone did this and made money," but they don't realize that this statement itself is already the product of selection.
Moreover, when a person has already made a choice in their heart—for example, they simply don't want to take over the old shop—then all subsequent information gathering, analysis, and judgment will unconsciously serve this conclusion. They won't systematically understand the real survival rate of breakfast stalls, the gross profit structure, the difficulty of location selection, nor will they dissect the supply chain, channel costs, and operational details behind those "seemingly easy" cases. They will only selectively see the fragments that "prove this is feasible."
The underlying issue with this kind of judgment is not just "information asymmetry," but "motivational contamination." Because of "not wanting to take over the old shop," they construct a set of decision-making conditions for themselves. A business decision that should be serious is simplified into an emotional expression.
This reminds me of the concept of "activism blind spot" I learned before. It means believing that as long as you start doing something, you think you are right. But "doing first" is originally meant to get feedback faster, not to bypass thinking. What some people call execution is actually just amplifying an unclear judgment into real-world costs. Truly effective action is based on knowing what you are verifying and knowing the cost if you are wrong. It's not about believing that as long as you do it, you will succeed.
Decisions based on imagination sound very rock and roll. In various celebrity biographies, you can see many business leaders taking small steps toward the peak of their lives through subtle observation and practice. But what those leaders see is demand; they charge forward to meet that demand, not because they heard someone made a fortune by carrying night soil and then rushed to do the same.
Whether it's seeing others make money and thinking you can too, or doing first and thinking later, both are abandoning business logic to find excuses for "I want to do something." People who support their actions with this logic don't care about failure because, in their minds, there is no narrative that includes failure. They all think they are uniquely smart individuals in the world, able to spot opportunities that others can't see.
And once someone points out the problems in this, it shakes their "I want to do it" values. So, often, they are not making business decisions but defending their dignity.
Why can some people make money that you can't?
Because most of the time, you only see the results after others have succeeded. You don't see the demand, supply, costs, competitive environment behind the results, and most crucially, how the person involved makes decisions and adapts when all conditions change. That's why they can make money.
When you take others' results as the reason for your actions and treat action as the result of thinking, it's like being a feudal-era farmer in the 21st century, treating luck as business rationality and using simplistic causal logic to understand a complex business system.
When you start getting used to first dissecting the structure before deciding whether to act, you'll find that many seemingly attractive opportunities have nothing to do with you. And some previously overlooked paths may actually be closer to real feasibility.
This doesn't make decision-making easier; instead, it makes it slower, more restrained, and even more boring. But business is not a system that rewards emotions; it only rewards those who have a sufficient understanding of reality.
I think the problem is never "whether there is an opportunity" or "whether you dare to do it." Before answering "whether it is," first think about why the question "whether it is" exists. Only by understanding this question can you know whether what you see is an opportunity or just another sci-fi fantasy about making a million a day.