This is a translation of a book written by Yuri Moroz, a retired businessman who’s purpose in life is inspiring young  entrepreneurs. He doesn’t teach the rules of management, cash flow, marketing or investments – those things are taught by the universities. Instead he focuses on expanding one’s mind and awareness, utterly destroying limiting beliefs and misconceptions about starting a business. He concentrates on variety of topics such as strategy and tactics, negotiation and a variety of personal development aspects through seminars, or rather “do-inars”, that let you experience business life for real.

On the financial or stock market stable profit is gained not by those who are guessing the movements of the currency, but by those who actually influence it. A price of a stock is a reflection of forecasts from the heads of stockbrokers and customers. If participants of the stock market suddenly realize that stocks (or other valuable papers) will fall in price, the price WILL fall. Later, it may seem that the price might rise, and the price WILL rise. Moreover, the economic situation of a company whose stocks or shares are traded might not change at all during that time. What exactly does the price of shares reflect? You are right; it reflects the assumption of the price in the heads of buyers. Nothing more! What reflects the price of a painting on the auction? You are right again; it reflects the assumption of the buyers about how much that painting might cost.

And which is the best way to influence the assumptions of millions of feebleminded people? Correct, mass media. And who pays for the commercial, with which viewers and readers are ‘fed’ in enormous doses? Correct again, the viewers and readers themselves, paying that way and cost of goods, and costs of commercials, and profit of producers, and costs and profits of the entire chain of sellers, starting from wholesale to retail. And buyers of shares pay costs for their misinformation. There would not be so many commercials if you did not pay attention to them. But this is already a case of a social fiction.

Thus, the skillful usage of mass media, in fact, is the best way to influence changes about the price assumptions in the heads of buyers. Thereby, while watching TV, reading an article or a book, you must be clearly aware of who and in which way is trying to make money off of you. The change of view about anything is a way to get profit. Price is a consequence of an assumption about the price. People often pay more for the label of a company than for the good itself.

The most profitable business is the knowledge of creating trust.

If you know how to create the trust of buyers for your good, or the trust of a banker or an investor for getting credits or investments, or the trust of inventors toward yourself – by definition, you are a very rich man.

The second place goes to businesses based on inventions (by embedding it to your own company). For example, if you have invented a personal computer, succeeded to produce and sell it by yourself – you are a millionaire. An attempt to sell patents which have not gained profit yet almost always results with failure. In third place is a technologically based business (again, by embedding); to gain profit because the technology at your enterprise (or sales company) is more efficient then at your competitors’.

And fourth – it is not a business. It is the selling of your own efforts: efforts of specialists are more expensive than unqualified efforts.

An entrepreneur goes through the entire pyramid, stepping on every level. He has to create trust and get property and money; obligations to be paid later. I want to advise you right away – it is always hard to get money. If you want to buy a truck on loan, try to do it in installments. It is easier to agree about that than to get a loan and the conditions might be also better. If you want to play at the stock market, try to borrow shares rather than cash.

Furthermore, you should use someone else’s business invention and create a technology based on that invention. Technology has to be better than the one of competitors’. There is a dilemma here: what to concentrate on? On inventions or on improving the technology? For me the choice is clear. One more invention is a gain by a hundred percent, the improvement of technology – only by ten, in the best case.

And all of these are created by an entrepreneur’s efforts. This is, in fact, the sale of an entrepreneur’s efforts and abilities. The market buys it, not an employer. And the market is a discerning buyer. If you are the best, you are getting everything, and letting loser pay for it.

Business is like sport. All runners spend almost the same amount of energy on trainings and competitions, but only winners get everything. And you will not soften anyone by arguments that you work hard.

Nobody forces us to attend competitions every day, but if you didn’t finish the race as a winner that means that your efforts were in vain. And no one is going to pay for it. It is more likely that you will get bills, which have to be paid. Unfortunately, you cannot get trained for business. There is no possibility of running a distance with a stopwatch in your hand to evaluate if you are ready to go to the start point or if you need more practice and training.

Lectures in various schools for business training of future entrepreneurs are as useful as watching a movie about sport for gaining muscles.  A sportsman needs to go to a racetrack and to achieve results. Besides, every coach has his own training methodology, on which the success of future champion depends. The result is not proportional with the time spent on training, not at all.

An entrepreneur coaches himself. And every successful entrepreneur has its own training methodology, which he is improving throughout his life, although he is not always aware of it.

A good entrepreneur has a good reflective ability; he is capable to objectively observe his own actions and to honestly admit to his own mistakes. This is possible because an entrepreneur loves and trusts himself. He is capable of finding an enormous amount of mistakes and nonsense in his actions but to still stay self-confident and still continue to love himself.

Mistakes provide valuable information. They point out the possibility of development. There are no accidental mistakes. Contingency is still an unknown regularity. Every mistake is a consequence of a distorted image of the world. You make mistakes not because of ignorance, but because you are overloaded with the wrong knowledge. Mistakes are like tracer bullets; they point out the deviation from the target. Because of that, to reach the target, you have to start an action. If there is no entrepreneur’s activity, there is no training, and, in the end, there are no corrections of it. Training on the shore will not give any result; only when you find yourself in the water will you start to receive habits and get in shape. I will repeat once again, since it is impossible to get prepared for the entrepreneur’s activity up front, you have to bring together business,  training and corrections (as corrections of business itself, as corrections of methodology of trainings).

Let’s get back to assumptions of the prices in the people’s heads. If we totally agree with the thesis that there is no objective price and that there is only an opinion of the price, then we will come to the conclusion that we have to work not with price changes of the good, but with the assumption of the price in the heads of buyers. That is exactly what talented sellers do. They don’t sell a good; they change the opinion about the good. And after that a buyer himself wants to buy it.

So, when somebody tells you a price of a good, you can be sure that it is not accurate; they are only creating an assumption of the price in your head. There is always a similar good on the market (and I emphasize, always) which is at least twice as cheap. You only have to find it. There are always people who need the money urgently; there is always a property which is being sold to pay off debts; there are always people who don’t know the real market prices.

By the way, the expression “market price” is totally absurd. What is ‘market price’, when every act of purchase and sale is a unique process? It doesn’t depend on the good’s quality; it depends only on assumptions of participators of the deal. People can be very deluded, especially under the impact of mass media or a good orator. If from every huge purchase in your business you will gain 100% of the economies, you will get rich very fast.

Entrepreneurs visit stores for their own purchases and satisfaction, and for their business they usually use stores which have not better services, but cheaper prices.

When you get into a very expensive store or in a good company, right from the entrance they begin to impact your assumption about the price. And they are successful in most cases. You will say that a car is always more expensive than a piece of soap, and that would mean that a thesis about the price not depending on quality would be incorrect. Yes, a car is more expensive, but you can buy the same brand of a car at different prices. Especially if you try to find a car which has been already used for a week or a month. What has changed inside such a car? Only your assumption about its price. You wouldn’t notice the difference between such a car and a new one.

Therefore, what are you paying more for? For vanity. Your self-esteem suffers when you are buying something that has been already used. Your self-esteem suffers when you are looking for a product without high prestige. Your ego is so satisfied, when you are just saying to wrap something, without even asking about the price.

When you are getting rest, you are getting satisfaction. But when you are doing it in your own business, or when all of the sudden you notice the expression of superiority on the face of one of your associates while he is buying something for your company, be sure that you are a potentially bankrupt. If your associate is suffering from humiliation while bargaining a few cents, then you can count on some profit. You will pay a price of hundred times more or even more for every cup of coffee which you drink in someone’s expensive office while reading different luxury brochures.

There is nothing better than a feeling of self-esteem in business, so sell it to your clients, but never pay for it yourself. Furthermore, the better the behavior of the business partner toward you, the more it should alert you – is this deal too profitable for him? Aren’t you paying too much? Maybe somewhere in a street right next to you the same good in some dirty basement costs 30% less.

Due to that, try to encourage the feeling f self-esteem in the eyes of your business partners, and especially in the eyes of their associates. Drink as much coffee or expensive whiskey as you wish, but don’t give any discounts. Pay your attention only to earning 10000 (ten thousand) percent of profit per every bottle of whiskey. You have to argue hard with an associate who suddenly got the idea that if a company has money, it can be spent nicely and easily, without bargaining, especially on things that you don’t need.

“They are always too expensive – the things we do not need.”
Cato.

As soon as someone in your company mentions that you should purchase the best (and that means the most expensive) computers, telephones and desks, it means that an infection has already begun. And you should erode it with a red-hot iron. Even Parkinson discovered a law that says while the organization is still in a cheap and uncomfortable space, it will develop explosively. However, as soon as it is moved to a more expensive and luxurious office, the spirit of death starts to hunt it.

A reason for that is very banal. While sitting in a luxurious office, surrounded by expensive furniture and the latest computers, an employee has already enough reasons to respect himself and to think that he has achieved a lot in his life. And you’ve paid for all of that from your pocket.

Do you want your employees to stop working? Just give them enough reasons to respect themselves. Tell them that they are working in a very good company and they can be proud of that – and they will be proud, and they will not feel a need to work anymore. The only one who is allowed to be proud is the owner of the company (when he is retired and writing his memoirs). The price for pride is too high. Even to a British queen it is available only with a support of the government budget of the United Kingdom.

All a poor man has is his pride. I am poor, but I am proud. It can be paraphrased: I am poor, because making money is below my dignity. For real aristocrats the spirit money doesn’t matter.

And I have an answer for this.

When some millionaire gives his money and spreads the word that money doesn’t matter for him in this world, I can believe him. Because he had money and had an opportunity to test himself about money’s meaning.

But when something like a person, who never pays his bill in some expensive restaurant, who never saw the way beautiful girls look at him while he drives a luxury car, who never knows how much power money means for people – I don’t believe that person. At first he must try to have money and decline to use it for himself, if he can of course. It’s possible to abandon something only if you have that something. But you can’t abandon something you don’t have. You can play a role for other people pretending that you don’t want something unreachable. But why cheat yourself?

Cheating yourself is the shortest way to becoming a loser. A loser is a person who is satisfied with something reachable for him and he shows others that that it is exactly what he wants. A loser perceives every situation not as one he makes by himself and can change, but as inevitably given. It’s very easy to become a loser. It’s enough to use every good occasion to complain about their circumstances. But it’s hard to become lucky; for that, you must think that all that is happening to you is created by you. A loser can always find somebody to blame. In case the loser bears out his guilt, he doesn’t do anything. A loser is pretty sure that there is nothing to do about it. A loser is weaker than failure. Even some small failure is stronger than some huge loser. What popular people say about failure is this:

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill

Here is one more saying from Nikolaus B. Enkelman’s book “Succeeding with joy”.

“The crisis is a chance.”

I will try to comment on this. Through the successes you go towards failure. Through failures you go towards success. If you have several successes in a row, it means that you set tasks that were too easy for yourself. If you fail, you have a huge amount of material for progress. And the fastest progress occurs during the chain of failures, if you can mentality stand all of this. If it can’t, you stop with progress.

Many people have a subconscious fear of failure. Year by year they set for themselves only those tasks they are sure will have success. And year by year they make any progress impossible. Fear of failure makes success impossible. And progress goes always with some crisis. Crisis is, in fact, that state of mind when you deny everything that has been done before, because it is exactly what lead to this crisis. Something radically new has to be done. You should look at the situation with different, new eyes in a goal to see the opportunities which you were unable to see before.

Crises force you to change the image of the world. Because of that you should yourself create a crisis to prevent circumstances putting pressure on you. I will emphasize this once again – a crisis is indication of progress, absence of crisis is an indicator of congestion, stagnation.

By the way, the absence of a crisis during the process of writing this book also means stagnation. Every good play consists of exposition, culmination and denouement. And I think in this case the exposition is already taking too long.

This is a translation of a book written by Yuri Moroz, a retired businessman who’s purpose in life is inspiring young  entrepreneurs. He doesn’t teach the rules of management, cash flow, marketing or investments – those things are taught by the universities. Instead he focuses on expanding one’s mind and awareness, utterly destroying limiting beliefs and misconceptions about starting a business. He concentrates on variety of topics such as strategy and tactics, negotiation and a variety of personal development aspects through seminars, or rather “do-inars”, that let you experience business life for real.

It is enough to only react on what is coming into your hands. You don’t need to create situations; you need to wisely use what is happening by itself.

“The limit of cunning is to manage without using power.”

A couple words about this wisdom. There is a famous saying that a smart man can deal with a difficult situation; a wise man doesn’t even get involved in one. A Wise man, a Master, is not in such situations, he is right next to it. A Master is not a chess piece on a chessboard, he is a chess player.

Creative work is not a local thought from the point of view of a chess piece wondering where to make its next move. Creativity is the comprehension of entire chess game at one moment, from the beginning to the end.

Creativity fits into the context of the whole history of development of mankind, and is NOT the solution of problem of one man only. To be more precise, it doesn’t fit it exactly, it denies everything created before.

I will repeat once again, it doesn’t develop it, it denies it. It doesn’t create, it destroys. It doesn’t cause an endorsement, but a protest. In a TRIZ practice for problem-solving analysis and forecasting there was a psychological phenomenon found, such as the fear of making huge and strong decisions. One of the typical reactions of a man facing strong decision is ‘It can’t be! It can’t be true, for a problem that generations of engineers struggled with to be solved that easily’.

Here is an example. An industrial enterprise purchased imported equipment for the exact measurements of the sizes of the balls for ball bearings. One sunny day that equipment, worth over one million dollars, has broken, its warranty over. They invited two TRIZ specialists. They have been trying to understand the complicated mechanics and electronics of this ‘engineering miracle’ for a couple of days, but then they became tired of trying and started using the TRIZ approach. Then specialists invited the company’s management and showed them a metal bar on which, one by one, balls were rolling down. If some balls were not perfectly round, they could not roll down until the end of metallic bar, they fell down on left or right side in the basket for products with defects. Managers experienced psychological shock, but a thorough check showed that this “instrument” sorted the balls without any mistakes.

Without special psychological training, even if somebody finds such kind of solution, he’ll deny any consideration that it can really work, because it can’t really happen that way. Psychological inertia and an inferiority complex, or, in other words, a lack of confidence and fear of questioning the benefits of civilization – all of it prevents the seeing of strong solutions.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Walter Kelly

 

“Who is strong? He who turns an enemy into a friend.”
Eastern wisdom

The modern tendency is this: if we take, for example, ten of the richest people in the world, the majority of them started with nothing. However, just a few decades ago the richest people in the world were receiving their capital from their rich parents. The basis of any such huge amounts of money is through one or several ‘know-how’s in the field of technology, marketing or sale technology; but without ‘know-how’ they obviously needed some kind of invention. You can’t call a man to create, if he really wishes to invent but just cannot.

Henry Saulovich Altshuller (TRIZ’s creator) succeeded in creating an algorithm of creativity in engineering. He did this by analyzing approximately 40,000 (forty thousand) strong inventions from the patent fund. Inventions that have not just improved some processes, but have fundamentally changed them.

But in technology there are patent funds, where inventions are indicated and copyrights are protected by law (if the author wants it). The question about creating a fund for the business’s inventions was posed by some enthusiasts, but I still haven’t heard about the real results. But even if a fund for the business’s inventions was created, we needed some genius like Altshuller to construct an algorithm to solve the problems business has.

It works in technology and exceeds all expectations. But TRIZ’s specialists very often – who knows why – don’t have that business instinct. They can’t create the necessary promotion of their technologies and receive huge amounts of money for solving some technological problems, even despite a very strong economic effect. It is clear that solving the technological problem at a facility with a capacity for making several million dollars per month can be paid much better than in the case of a facility where the volume of production is twenty thousand dollars per month.

This is an interesting phenomenon. For example, why can’t inventors apply their inventive talent to sell their own inventions? There are several reasons, as I see it: firstly, a lack of self-confidence, which manifests itself in a modest estimate of their own abilities (in dollars). Secondly – a lack of basic marketing moves. The third and most important is an American saying – “Whoever invented it gets a dollar, those who produced it – 10, those who sold it – 100.”

If you go into negotiations, just rent an expensive jacket, cell phone and a nice car for a couple of hours. Your ability in the eyes of your interlocutor will rise dramatically. It’s very easy to invent, but not so easy to produce. The hardest thing is to sell, although inventors will object to that which means that we are near the truth.

The scope of the case is very important. Very often a man works on a project with a small amount of cash flow, but with the same efforts and with a cash flow a hundred times bigger, the same project would result with two hundred times the personal profit. The principles and amount of work in a small or big project are almost the same, but the difference in revenue is enormous.

What defines the size of the project? The amount of self-confidence and the level of aspirations involved. If a man wishes to earn one million dollars, he is searching for a suitable project and suitable people; the man who wishes to earn 1000 dollars will do the same. I will repeat it once again, since I know it from my own experience, nothing changes with the size of a project; furthermore, the bigger the project the less competitors you will have. In fact, there are only a few people with ambitions and without inferiority restrictions.

So, if you wish to get rid of competitors, enlarge the scope of your projects. How many people in your town/city are selling cold beer during the summer? And how many people are trying to buy a brewery (not for own money, of course)? I guarantee that you can earn much more money by reselling the brewery than by selling beer, even in case you succeed in selling boxes instead of glasses of beer.

You can teach in a university without creativity. For selling beer you need some amount of creativity, a goal to withstand the competition, to find yourself in a place without competitors, and an invention. If you wish to be super-efficient, get rid of the competitors. It is well known that super profits are gained by monopolies. And when your competitors appear right behind you (and they will need time to find out with what you are making such a profit), invent something else and disappear into the horizon.

The truth is that there is still no its own Altshuller nor TRBP (theory of resolving business problems) in business. You should not count on that. Even if somebody eventually invents such a theory, he will be able to sell it very well (since he will have to understand business very well). And to buy such a theory, you will have to invent at least one business-invention yourself.

There is another thing. An invention compensates for a lack of elementary knowledge in business, but no knowledge compensates for a lack of inventions.

This can explain why some completely unprepared people can start successful business, and, on the other hand, someone with several diplomas is forced to look for employment from almost uneducated entrepreneurs who pay high wages. While working hard and with a lot of effort, a specialist is capable of increasing the revenue by 3-5 %, while an entrepreneur is finds the solutions which are give 100-1000% increase.

The state of a business without a specialist is chaotic, with a huge amount of elementary mistakes, but it develops very fast. Without the entrepreneur there are no mistakes, everything is in order, but the business starts to inevitably fade.

An entrepreneur brings in chaos and development, and a specialist – order and stagnation. An entrepreneur is self oriented, while a specialist thinks of property and financial resources.

In the best case, a specialist can use what he has; an entrepreneur creates new property and new resources. They live in two different worlds and they speak two different languages.

After finishing a drawing, a painter can burn the picture if he doesn’t like it. A sales agent will only see the material value, which is now lost. I will paint another one, says the painter; but we could earn money on this one too, says the agent.

An entrepreneur creates business as whole; a specialist sees everything dissected: real estates, financial resources and people. An entrepreneur develops the whole business; a specialist raises some coefficients and looks forward to economies with some parts of expenditure. An entrepreneur may be worried about stagnation, while a specialist might be looking forward to the maximum profit for a month, while the company still exists. An entrepreneur grows and inspires, while a specialist dissects and mortifies. An entrepreneur treats business like a living person, while a specialist – like a corps.

You might say that special knowledge will not harm an entrepreneur. But it will. Firstly, it will be harder for him to invent, if his mind start to offer regular solutions; secondly, it is not profitable from the Pareto analysis point of view. You should not waste your time and efforts on ineffective actions; you should concentrate on effective ones. You shouldn’t get special knowledge, which will provide you 3-5 % increase in profit, when there are ideas waiting to be fulfilled, which will give you a 100 % increase. And in case an entrepreneur asks a specialist for advice, he will get insistent advice to increase productivity for 3-5 %. Specialists just don’t know any better. And they will continue to defend their point of view even if the life and health of an entrepreneur is at risk.

An entrepreneur is a lonely man. He doesn’t have anyone to discuss his business with, except for the competitor. The competitor will listen and understand him, but under the impact of entrepreneurial passion, which is much stronger than a hunter’s ardor, he will not be able to resist the temptation to use what he has heard, and he will defeat the entrepreneur.

Others don’t understand him. It is interesting, is it possible to create a team of entrepreneurs? The history of business is not familiar with that. However, maybe it is possible; the thing is, nobody’s made a proper invention so far.

We can say right away, it has to be a team that is not gathered only for the division of profit. Imagine yourself artists, who gathered just to find out which of them is the most talented. And a share of profit, in fact, defines who the best is. Let’s assume that the unifying start could be an ambitious goal – to achieve dominance on the global financial market, for instance.

But let’s avoid fiction and sayings, after which you might ask yourself if this some kind of a mockery of the reader. But I have warned you that I will not write seriously, the most important thing now is to get satisfaction from the process itself. Money will come later. Getting money is also a very pleasant process.

If a reader gets at least some satisfaction during the reading process, it might shift up the volume of this book’s sales. You have to agree with me, not succeeding in earning money on my personal book after all this writing would be a complete failure and I would be a demagogue. So, reader, if you want to buy the rights for distribution or promotion of this book, do not hesitate to contact me. I think we can agree. Following all above mentioned, using a creative approach, after several visits to a restaurant, I think we could start a business. That is in case if this book ‘suddenly’ doesn’t become a bestseller. In case if it does, we could visit the restaurant many times.

And beyond that? To earn even more, another market is necessary. Financial, for example. The shortest way from the idea to implementation is at financial and stock market. Only a few steps are enough to make you a millionaire or bankrupt. This is the place where you immediately become aware of your mistakes. But don’t you dare to think that the stock market is a place where you buy stocks and just wait for their price to raise. Millions of feebleminded people are doing exactly this, and that means that someone is profiting from it.

This is a translation of a book written by Yuri Moroz, a retired businessman who’s purpose in life is inspiring young  entrepreneurs. He doesn’t teach the rules of management, cash flow, marketing or investments – those things are taught by the universities. Instead he focuses on expanding one’s mind and awareness, utterly destroying limiting beliefs and misconceptions about starting a business. He concentrates on variety of topics such as strategy and tactics, negotiation and a variety of personal development aspects through seminars, or rather “do-inars”, that let you experience business life for real.

A revolution in office work happened in the West in the early 60s. Each office of a western company is a conveyor. And of course, the efficiency of this office would be a lot higher than the efficiency of a single professional. Modern software already performs all the simple office operations. But for everything to work perfectly you don’t need to connect computers into a network, you need to connect the workers. The bigger part of your work is turned into a handicraft, the bigger part of your entrepreneurial work will be done by your firm.

Of course it is hard to break your work down to separate elements and operations. But it is possible. Mechanisms do more and more work for people every day.

Increasing the efficiency of an entrepreneur’s work involves breaking down his work into elements and then passing it on to the conveyor (but not a single person). Each operation should be simplified; it should be as primitive as it can be. Leave no space for imagination. The more you do that, the more time you will have left for creative work.

The simpler your firm is, the more effective it is going to get. The most complex element of the firm is a human. It means that you must minimize human participation in the work of your firm, and then it will become simple and reliable, and work as well as a plane flies. Fortunately, this is what most of the people dream of. The simpler and more primitive the work is – the better. People feel comfortable when not many things depend on them.

When I was attending military meetings I once felt that way. I felt that pleasure – you do not have to think about anything at all. You just need to look at the back of a person who is walking in front of you and keep going. It does not matter where you go. If you are told to stop – you stop, if you are told to sit – you sit etc. But when I realized that I had not been thinking for over 40 minutes, I began to worry. I tried to stop the process of this mental degradation. You can always think of some problem and start solving it in your mind. But most people do not need this. They would rather not think. That is why I ask you to be humane and help them.

In these terms, look at how cruel the October revolution was. From their usual routine people were suddenly thrown into a situation completely new to them, completely unusual. Of course, after a few years of chaos people started demanding a dictatorship, a master. And they got one.

Speaking of dictatorships, I think they are bad for the whole country, because everyone is left with no alternatives. It is good for a firm though – and if you don’t like it, you can go and work someplace else. Or create your own business.

But it is very hard to be a dictator. It is hard to convince yourself that you are always right. Imagine what feeling a designer of a plane gets when his plane is being taken out for a test-run for the very first time. Sometimes people die during such test-runs. It is hard to be a dictator, but you have to be so. Otherwise you will keep losing money. It is not only a very heavy psychological burden, it is a lot of responsibility too, since you decide everything on your own, and solve all the problems alone. If you tell someone to go and solve their problems on their own you stop being a dictator. You planted a mine into your firm’s plane.

The only thing left for you to do is learn how to be in this role. The first step is learning how to explain your decision – “Do this because I want so”. You are a Dictator.

So, let’s look at your created firm, or the one which is about to be created, from the dictator’s perspective. You need to think of someone evil, perhaps Mangiafuoco, a cruel wealthy director of the theatre, from the book “Pinocchio”. Do not let Pinocchio come anywhere near you or your firm! How much work do you think those theatre puppets got after Mangiafuoco got defeated? I think that they were simply forced to go work at some other theatre. Find some other Mangiafuoco. If you are serious and absolutely calm while creating and changing your firm – you are more likely to be successful. If you want another example like Mangiafuoco’, you’ve got Korolev who sent rockets into space. He was a very cruel man.

I can give more examples and talk of more business laws. “Sapienti sat” (For a smart one it’s enough), and the rest cannot be helped anyway.

When we talked of technology, we determined it as an answer to the question HOW? But there is also the question WHAT? And a wrong answer to the question WHAT cannot be fixed with any technological process, no matter how perfect it is.

You need to make an invention in order to answer the question “WHAT to do”? Since I do not know have any technology (yet) of making inventions in business, you will need to use creativity. By the way, I still have not given an answer to the question “What is creativity”?

Well, creativity is a unique act, unlike labor. Labor is a repetitive sequence of actions; creativity is not an action; it is an event, an experience, a phenomenon. Since it is a phenomenon it obeys laws of phenomena – it happens under certain conditions and a certain state. Creative work is not being done, it just happens.

By the way, it happens not as often as everybody thinks. Sometimes the “creative work” of a poet or an artist is the duplication of one single real act of creativity all their life. If you are suffering to express creativity, you are suffering because of lack of your skill. These sufferings are connected to a lack of mastery in expressing the image which appeared as a result of an act of creativity.

As Stephen Covey says in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” there are two stages in every activity: an act of creativity and its embodiment in physical world. For example, an image in the mind of an architect and building an actual structure. Since the laws of physical world are much stricter, sufferings begin when one is trying to embody the image. A Master can embody the image in his mind right away – there is no gap in time between a creative and physical act (embodiment). Because he considers the difficulties he might face during the implementation of his ideas to the physical world at the point of making a creative act, he gets the right image in his mind. That is why the embodiment looks immediate. There is a transition, but it is invisible.

If there is no creativity, what do you do to make it come to you? Creativity comes when there is emptiness and when there is a place for it to come to, when everything is deleted from a piece of paper and when the backpack is thrown out. Creativity is a holistic perception of the world – unlike work, which is just an act for a dissected world. Creative act creates a multi-dimensional ‘image’, from which an author may create more and more new projections of one ‘image’.

I use the word ‘image’ because there is a lack of correct words; it can also be called an idea, or a thought. Anyway, this is just a label, a conventional sign on the trolley of sense. In the same way the name of a person is just a label – a name doesn’t reflect even the smallest part of a person’s being.

Behind every word there is an abyss of meanings. You can write a book on every meaning, not just one. Let’s look at the words from the last sentence: sense, meaning, word, understanding. Every word in this row could be the subject of a doctoral dissertation. And not just one dissertation. But we easily operating with thousands of these doctoral dissertations and we seriously think that we understand each other. I took a risk and tried to use words to explain the meaning of creative work, and now I am suffering the ‘creative consequences’ (consequences of creative work). And in fact, as we can see now, there is only a lack of mastery in word usage.

Creative work is a voluntary dive from a boat straight into the river, and because of this it rarely occurs. There has to be an absence of survival instinct to be capable to accomplish such actions. This is not about physical, but mental health. To decline personal experience and to look at the world as a newborn – this is an act of creative work. It is a state/condition, not an action. And what you have seen, you can then describe for ages.

As usual, there is a question. How does this relate to business? Directly.

Look at the market with the eyes of a newborn and you will see millions of possibilities and milliards of nonsense. The truth is that a possibility to decline all the knowledge and explanations – which are archived in our memory, about what is right and wrong, why is this or that impossible – is the privilege of few.

You will say that a child can make business only when he or she gathers a whole set of knowledge and will be capable of distinguishing what is right and what is wrong. Yes. But during that period of time he will stop being a child, he will stop being creative.

It is about priorities. What should determine your actions, creative work or burden of special knowledge? If you wish to be effective, you can probably guess what I would recommend. How can you become more creative in your actions? The answer remains the same – more trust in yourself and the denial of all the so-called achievements of mankind.

Only when you realize that everything made by civilization should be thrown away in the trash, are you ready to create. If you keep for you even a small piece of authority, you will pathetically imitate it.

“Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.”

Albert Einstein

Since you can learn only from a Master (all the rest are taught the craft), and a Master is impossible to find, the only thing left is to teach yourself and learn from yourself. You must create as well.

I will mention one of the Taoist principles. Do not go against the nature of things. Against the nature of things is everything that requires efforts, stress, struggle and resistance in overcoming. What is not against the nature of things happens by itself. The action of a Master is a rock which provokes lava. The action of a feebleminded person is the hard work of dragging and dropping stones. Idleness is, in fact, not acting against the nature of things. Such as, let’s say, breathing.

Creative work can be as easy as breathing or as hard as hewing the stones. But in the second case it is not creative work anymore. From the perspective of an external observer, a Master does nothing, but the events are obedient to his will. The reason for that is that Master doesn’t initiate situations that are not ripe yet. He gathers woods and puts a match to it. The influence of Master tends to be nothing, while the effect tends toward infinity.

While we are not Masters yet, we can use this in the following way. Never overcome resistance. If there is stress, that means you are doing something against the nature of things. Help the situation to be resolved, do not resist it instead. The situation is wiser than us.

If a struggle for power has begun, sell the power under profitable conditions, because you could lose it later and get nothing in return. If there is a competitor, a rival, try to discuss and agree about sharing the market. Or sell him you part of market. If a valuable employee is leaving, help him to find a new job and invite him to become your consultant. It is often the case that events are wiser than you are. Life itself helps you, just do not disturb it. As an Eastern wisdom says “If you do not fight, you are impossible to defeat.”