Many young friends who are just starting out in the workplace are curious about me and my studio. Different people always ask me the same question: "How much did it cost you to learn your craft? How much did it cost to set up the studio? What is the future of the industry? How much do you make a year?" Here, I would like to sort out my thoughts and chat with you. In fact, I started my journey of clay entrepreneurship from a mobile phone.

As mentioned above, I have been fond of art since childhood, and later I went to an art school. This kind of creative ability is actually my parents' investment, which is not included in my book for the time being. Fortunately, when I needed real money to open an online store, I caught a modest opportunity. Around 2008, Sina.com was making great efforts to develop micro-blog. In order to gradually change people's online writing habits, Sina.com launched a new product called "light blog" and held a "like" activity to encourage people to contribute. After I saw the advertisement on the homepage of the website, I looked at the prize bar again. The first prize was a popular domestic mobile phone, which was quite a big prize at the time. Although I was not sure of winning the prize, I still tried my best to participate in this activity. I updated my light blog on time every day and interacted with netizens. After nearly a month of creation, I was very lucky to win the first place of "likes" among the creators from all over the country when the result was announced. Of course, the phone was mine. I sold the mobile phone for 2000 yuan, paid a deposit from the online shop, bought some clay and tools, and started a small business in clay products. After slowly accumulating some funds, I began to contact my friends in South Korea, Japan and Germany, asking them to help me collect high-quality foreign clay, which I sold to "local friends". Although the unit price of these products is very high, my profit is very low due to purchasing fees, logistics fees and wastage. With the gradual rise of domestic clay products, online sales are even worse, unable to make ends me

et. Even so, I did not reduce the quality requirements, but half closed the shop, began to do BBS, Weibo, wechat public number and so on. To do this is to change the way of thinking and track -- since the production and sale of clay products is not as good as those companies, then go to the path of content output, after all, they rely on craftsmanship and creativity to start. My wife and I also contacted the publishing house to recommend our own clay course and soon published a clay course, "No. 7 Man Easy Clay Handicraft Class." We worked very hard on this book. My wife and I did the molding, photography and typesetting together. At that time, other manual books on the market were old in shape and rigid in layout. This book brightened the eyes of many manual lovers, so it soon appeared on the new list of manual books on a famous book sales e-commerce website. After the success of the first book, the offers from publishers continued. Over the next few years, I published 16 popular clay books and became well known among clay lovers, many of whom chose the "Number Seven" series for their introduction to clay. At the same time, the book tour in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing and other cities also won me a lot of fans. A lot of people think I must be making a lot of money, but it's not like people think it's enough to rent a house and start a studio. The studio was first chosen in a school near my home, where there happened to be a 30-square-meter classroom for rent. After months of paying rent in advance, my wife and I found we didn't have much money, so we bought our own paint and tools, folded newspaper into hats, and painted our own walls and roofs. After a lot of hard work, the room was bright, but our heads, faces, shirts, and pants were covered in paint. It was pretty full of lost money, but the sense of accomplishment was really full. In order to save money, the wooden floor we bought online was carried by me alone on the sixth floor, with more than 1600 pounds of material. We carried it up again and again, step by step. When I was out of breath, my wife bought me a 1.5 liter bottle of drink. I drank it all at once with great pride. I didn't feel how bitter or tired I was working, but my heart and mouth were sweet. This should be the man who is struggling, with a big goal in mind, and doesn't mind toil.