In this world in which we live, it seems that everything is negotiable: products, services, favors, salaries, laws, ideals, people and even sex and figurines (sex figurines too). Everything has a price in the business world. There is the price that you put on yourself, which depends a lot on your self-esteem, and the price that others put on you, which depends on how little they esteem you.
Then there is the “market” price – which never looks like your “market” salary -, and the most common price of all: the price re-marked in the supermarket.
What bothers me the most is the business that those who do big business do. Because they hit her before everyone else and then they even negotiate the story of how they hit her to make a book or a series. And that’s where the business of doing business grows.
That is not something for everyone. There are people who have it clear: they are the first to set up a dietetics, a craft brewery or a political party. And they are the ones who later sell you the franchise, and continue to sell franchises, until they melt down all those who bought them by saturating the market.
And how do you realize that you don’t have that instinct? Easy: when you feel like putting on a brat after having seen 15 on the way back home, which is just 20 blocks. It’s too late. And if you enter the business, the one who ends up on the grill is you.
And it is that not all of us were born to do business. It’s like an instinct. You have it or you do not. As much as you go to university, what nature does not give, Salamanca does not lend. Not even in installments. There is a reason why those who teach business at the university barely live on a teacher’s salary, which does not seem to be a big deal, and in many other cases, they teach at the university just to have a social work.
Nor is it much use buying the autobiographical books of the great businessmen to see how they made their fortune, because they won’t give you the post, much less for the filthy 4,500 mangoes that the broli can cost you. Nobody is going to sell you the secret of success for the price of two kilos of peceto. (For posterity, approximate price in October 2022).
Also, the deal that made them billionaires is done. Internet, Google and the tamgochis have already been invented. You are already late for the business of the blue dollar, the lithium mines and the figurines for the World Cup. And if you’re like me when it comes to business, the day you set up a 24-hour kiosk, one of the 48-hour chain of kiosks opened next door.
And even the passage of time plays against you. You merged with some paddle tennis courts in the late 90s, and it took you years to get rid of the ground. Luckily, you finally managed to sell it, albeit for much less than you bought it for. And the one who bought it is filling his pockets because he put paddle tennis courts, because paddle tennis is back in fashion!
Like everything in life, to do a great business you need, in addition to health, money and love, three other things in life:
1. A little knowledge. It is not a question of going to set up a craft brewery in Qatar.
2. A little common sense. It’s not the best time to dedicate yourself to making chinstraps for the pandemic. It’s over.
3. A bit of luck, for example, to set up a clandestine pool agency so that the numbers that people bet on don’t come out, or so that you don’t get caught. No luck, you’re fried like cornalito from Mardel’s shoulder.
One of the great secrets to doing good business may be, above all, to be a good negotiator. And for that you have to be cold, calculating, inexpressive because like in poker, even if you have a royal flush to the ace, you have to keep your face of nothing. And it’s no use overreacting either. You have to put on the right face. Like when your partner asks you: “Do you love me?” One wrong gesture, and you went.
And to top it off you have to put up with the rich saying that “you don’t know how difficult it is to have a lot of money”. And in that I give them the reason: I never knew what it is to have a lot of money. If I knew, I know and I will know what business and life are like: much more difficult if you don’t do big business.
But in order not to leave them with a bitter taste, a piece of advice. Not to lose faith, and if you lose it, try to remember where you lost it.
