Can a Side Hustle Make Money? 屯卦九五 (Nine in the Fifth Place of Difficulty at the Beginning) Tells You: Small Earnings Are Wins, Big Ambitions Are Traps

Can you actually make money from a side hustle?

I’ve been asked this question at least fifty times over the past year.

The people who ask fall into all sorts of groups: those who slack off at their day jobs and want extra cash, those whose main career is struggling and want a backup plan, and those who’ve made a little money on the side and want to quit their job to go all in.

Everyone’s situation is different, but they all share one thing in common: they all feel like they’re not making enough, and they all want to earn more.

Every time, I start by asking the same question: How much do you currently make from your side hustle per month?

The answers are all over the place—some make a few hundred, some two or three thousand, and some even make over ten thousand.

Then I ask another question: Do you think it’d be easy to double that?

Most people say it shouldn’t be too hard. They claim they just don’t have enough energy right now, and that putting in more time would definitely mean more earnings.

I tell them, don’t rush to invest more time or money just yet. First, take a look at **the Fifth Line of the Zhun Hexagram**.

What Is the Fifth Line of the Zhun Hexagram?

The Line Text for the fifth line of the Zhun Hexagram is just nine characters: **屯其膏，小贞吉，大贞凶。 (Tun qi gao, xiao zhen ji, da zhen xiong: Hoarding the rich bounty; perseverance in small matters brings good fortune, while perseverance in great matters brings misfortune.)**

What does that mean? Let me break it down in plain language.

“Gao” refers to fat, or valuable things—in this case, profit. “Tun qi gao” means the good stuff is hoarded, stuck, and can’t flow out.

Put simply, there’s only so much profit in the market, and you can’t squeeze more out of it.

“Xiao zhen ji, da zhen xiong” is even more straightforward: if you stick to the right path and keep things small-scale, it’s auspicious. If you try to go big and expand, it’s inauspicious.

Why is that?

Because even though the fifth line is the main line of the Zhun Hexagram, holding a noble, central, and proper position that should mean good fortune, it exists within the context of the Zhun Hexagram itself—and what is the Zhun Hexagram? It’s the great environment of all things being newly born, full of hardship and difficulty.

When the overall environment is bad, it doesn’t matter how high your position is.

The *Xiang Commentary* puts it even more clearly: “Tun qi gao, shi wei guang ye” — the bounty is stuck because the path for distributing it hasn’t opened up yet; the light hasn’t shone down.

To put it bluntly: it’s not that you’re not capable—it’s just not the right time.

Times change, and methods keep getting simpler. But one thing has never changed: whether you can make money depends 30% on your ability and 70% on the overall environment. There’s only so much “fat” in the environment. You can get a bite if you take small mouthfuls, but if you open your mouth too wide, you’ll choke.

Why You Shouldn’t Rush to Scale When Your Side Hustle Makes Money

I have a friend who does cross-border e-commerce selling small home goods on top of his day job.

At first, he just worked on it after work, making two or three thousand yuan a month. He was pretty happy about it, telling everyone he met that his side hustle was almost half his salary.

After six months, he thought the business had real potential.

Then what happened? He quit his job. He rented an office, hired three people, and stocked up on inventory. He said, “If I can make 3,000 yuan working alone, with four people we should at least triple that.”

What was the result?

In less than three months, he lost 80,000 yuan.

Why? Because when he was working alone, his costs were almost zero—no office rent, no salaries to pay, no taxes, and his own time didn’t count as an expense.

As soon as he scaled up, costs popped up everywhere.

And he didn’t understand one key thing: those two or three thousand yuan in profit came from him personally selecting products, handling customer service, and packing orders. After hiring people, he found they didn’t do as good a job as he did—return rates went up, negative reviews increased, and profit margins dropped.

All the money he made went straight to paying employee salaries and rent to the landlord.

This is exactly what the fifth line of the Zhun Hexagram means by “perseverance in small matters brings good fortune, while perseverance in great matters brings misfortune.”

When things are small, you make money because you *are* the cost. You put yourself into it, and the output is pure profit.

Once you scale up, you’re no longer just you—you become a manager, a boss, someone who has to pay other people’s salaries. At that point, the rules of the game are completely different.

Side hustles can make you money, but don’t treat a side hustle like a main career.

What makes money is the “side” part. As soon as you turn it into the “main” thing, the whole dynamic changes.

What Is an Investment Trap? It’s When You Get Cocky After Making a Little Money

Let me tell you another story.

A few years ago when the market was good, a colleague of mine made over 100,000 yuan investing in funds.

He said, “So making money is this easy.” Then he got cocky, mortgaged his house, used leverage, and poured everything into the market.

You can probably guess what happened next.

I won’t say how much he lost, but it was pretty bad.

This story stuck with me because it’s exactly like the “tun qi gao” (hoarding the rich bounty) from the fifth line of the Zhun Hexagram.

When you make your first bit of money, you think it’s because you’re skilled. But that’s not it—you just got lucky: the “fat” in the market happened to flow your way, and you caught it.

But you think that fat is unlimited, and that you have what it takes to catch all of it.

You’re wrong.

“Tun qi gao” means the fat is limited. Being able to catch some of it is a mix of your luck and ability. But trying to catch all of it? Impossible.

What is an investment trap?

It’s not someone digging a hole for you to fall into—that’s too low-level.

The real trap is: you get a little taste of success, then you think you’re a genius, then you go all in, and then you get wiped out.

Traps aren’t dug by other people—they’re dug by your own ego swelling up.

Wen Laoshi often says that most of the time, the “misfortune” talked about in the *I Ching* isn’t a natural disaster—it’s man-made. It’s because you couldn’t hold yourself back, because you got greedy, because you thought you could pull it off, and then you fell right into it.

Perseverance in small matters brings good fortune, while perseverance in great matters brings misfortune.

These six words are for everyone who’s made a little money and immediately wants to do something huge.

How to Actually Build Wealth During Hard Times

After all that scary stuff, what should you actually do? It’s not like you can just stop making money, right?

Of course not. The fifth line of the Zhun Hexagram isn’t telling you to stop making money—it’s telling you to figure out what the right way to make money is when the overall environment is full of hardship.

I have three suggestions for you.

**First: Make slow money, not fast money.**

What’s slow money? It’s money you earn through your skills, your time, and your accumulated effort. For example, if you’re good at design, take on freelance projects; if you can write, help people with copywriting; if you’re a good cook, run a small private kitchen on weekends.

This kind of money comes slow, but it’s steady. It won’t make you rich overnight, but it won’t make you lose everything overnight either.

What’s fast money? It’s money you make from information gaps, luck, or gambling. Things like trading crypto, chasing the latest trend, or jumping into something just because someone said it’s profitable.

Fast money comes quickly, but it goes even faster. And what’s even scarier is that it gives you the illusion that you earned it through your own skill.

By the time you actually try to rely on your skill, you’ll find you can’t make that kind of money anymore.

During hard times, slow is fast.

**Second: Test the waters with small steps, don’t take giant leaps.**

If you want to grow your side hustle, that’s fine. But don’t rush it.

Test it first—say you currently make 3,000 yuan working alone. Try spending 500 yuan to hire a helper, and see if you can make an extra 1,000 yuan. If you can, scale up a little more. If you can’t, stop.

Don’t quit your job, rent an office, and stock up on inventory right out the gate.

Taking steps that are too big can really trip you up.

Why does the Zhun Hexagram say “it furthers to establish feudal lords”? Because it’s telling you to set up a basic framework first, test the waters, and work out a small-scale model before you jump into big battles.

Survive first, then talk about growth. That’s the number one rule for any business.

**Third: Protecting your principal is more important than anything else.**

What’s the core of the Zhun Hexagram? It’s the “zhen” (perseverance/correctness) from “Originating, Penetrating, Advantageous, Correct” — stay true to the path, hold steady, don’t act recklessly.

During hard times, the money in your hand is your lifeline.

When you hear about investments, trends, or get-rich-quick opportunities, ask yourself first: what if I lose money? Only invest if you can afford to lose it. If you can’t, don’t touch it.

A lot of people have a bad habit: when they make money, they think it’s because they’re skilled. When they lose money, they think it’s just bad luck. Actually, it’s the opposite—making money might be luck, but losing money shows your real level of ability.

So don’t be in a hurry to invest your money. As long as it’s in your pocket, it’s yours. Once you invest it, there’s no guarantee whose it will be.

A Few Final Words

My friend who lost 80,000 yuan on cross-border e-commerce went back to his day job later.

He told me, “Looking back now, making two or three thousand a month working on it after work was pretty nice. Why did I have to quit my job? People just never know when to be satisfied.”

I told him, not being satisfied is a good thing. It’s how people progress.

But not being satisfied is not the same as not knowing your limits.

You can want to make more money, but first you have to figure out whether your current ability, the current environment, and your current resources can support you making more.

When they can’t support it, don’t rush.

Hoarding the rich bounty; perseverance in small matters brings good fortune, while perseverance in great matters brings misfortune.

These nine words aren’t telling you to lie flat and do nothing—they’re telling you to face reality. Making a little money isn’t losing; blindly scaling up is.

Wait until the overall environment changes, the path opens up, and “the bounty hasn’t spread widely” becomes “the bounty spreads far and wide” — then you can scale up, and it won’t be too late.

Until then, making a little money is winning.

Staying alive matters more than anything.