Zhuang Thinking: How to create the impossible like Musk?
Note that although "making the banker" and "taking the banker" sound similar, there is a difference between them.
"Being a banker" is a dynamically adjusted gaming thinking habit!
"Being the banker" is a static advantageous position in the game, but most people are leeks most of the time and cannot naturally obtain the banker's position.
At this time, you need to think "making a banker".
Don't do anything that isn't "taking the bank" or do it less, because in a world where stocks fight and others set rules, your probability of survival is very slim, let alone development.
Therefore, "making a banker" thinking is a way to win by unifying the "philosophy of survival" and "philosophy of development" in life.
By "playing the banker", you can gain an advantageous position in various games, thereby reducing or transferring your risks and obtaining the maximum input-output ratio.
1. What is bankrolling?
On the road to success, ordinary people rely on the accumulation of battles in which the weak defeat the strong. Each time is a game of nine deaths.
To ensure that you can win with a high probability every time, you must always put yourself in the position of the banker and be wary of falling into other people's games.
Before the emergence of the modern legal society, the fastest way to accumulate wealth in the final analysis was "robbing" and "cheating". Then the vested interests will start to formulate laws and regulations in order to protect their fruits of victory, and it will be difficult for those who come after them to have the opportunity of bloody primitive accumulation.
It is difficult to achieve the so-called financial freedom simply by relying on your own hard work and a little cleverness under purely market-oriented conditions. This is also an important reason for the solidification of class.
However, in the long run, the classes are still moving slowly, and there are always some people who use their "talent for being a banker" to gradually climb up.
Of course, the fastest way to financial freedom is through wealth transfer rather than wealth creation, and bankrolling is the best way to achieve wealth transfer within the rules of the game.
Being a banker is, to a certain extent, "legal" "robbing" and "cheating".
Although the victim is in pain, gambling is completely within the rules, and the victim can only admit defeat.
For example, in recent years, I have done a lot of research and investment in the consumer field, and I have discovered a characteristic called "Everything is a banker, and everything can be a banker."
The most common example is: shopping mall investment.
Shopping malls are naturally big market makers. The big stores you see like Starbucks, KFC, Wal-Mart, etc., these so-called "anchor stores" are invited by big market makers to "jointly operate the store". Usually shopping malls will give them a lot of rent-free periods and even Decoration subsidies.
After the main store is established, there will naturally be a bunch of sub-main stores that follow the market. These "institutions" and "big players" occupy the best traffic entrances of the mall, drive up the rent of the mall, and the rest is The self-employed "Chongtou" (people who are laypeople in Shanghainese, leeks, and can easily be instigated and deceived by information asymmetry) can be slaughtered.
They used prices higher than the market price, did the most tiring work, and began a lifeless entrepreneurial journey.
As for the bookmakers, they don't care at all about the life and death of small business owners and small brands. They even hope that self-employed people can sell more frequently to keep the mall fresh for customers.
Individual businesses or small brand physical stores are basically in a weak position when competing with shopping malls. In this kind of game, the shopping mall is basically in the "invincible position" mentioned in Sun Tzu's Art of War, with 360 degrees of omnidirectionality and no dead ends for you to control.
If you have ever opened a physical store, you will find that the rental contract you signed with the landlord is a naked "unequal treaty."
Every move you make may have to be approved by the mall. Without his approval, he has the right to deduct your deposit at any time.
In addition to having to pay a high deposit, if you can't go on, not many people think about it - stop the loss yourself, and the landlord will return the deposit to you. You will find that in most rental contracts, not only is the deposit not refundable, but you also have to pay liquidated damages in addition to the deposit.
Before it's over, the landlord will also ask you to spend money to knock down and restore the decorations that you invested a lot of money in before. Labor and garbage removal will cost a lot of money.
Everything is controlled by the landlord.
So why would you be willing to sign such an unequal treaty with your landlord?
Because there is a huge information asymmetry between you and the landlord.
Generally, shopping malls have professional investment departments. These investors have stable customers, and a large number of different people give them quotations at the same time. What they have to do is to stimulate competition among these potential tenants, so as to obtain the best result in the game. advantageous position.
And you can only figure out the landlord's trump card through the approximate flow of people and vacancy levels in the mall. Because you lack experience, you don't have a lot of mall resources, and you don't know anything about the mall's operating data. Shopping mall investment is a little scary. You said that if you don't make a decision, the shop with good traffic will be gone - you just pay the money.
2. How to make a comeback in this dead-end game?
If you cannot become the biggest banker, then you should first become a small banker and slowly accumulate gaming chips;
Either seize the opponent's weakness, gain a local advantage in the game, and then turn around and become the banker.
The way out for small brands is to start franchising early, run your own business, spread the risk downwards, and then achieve brand effect through the increase of franchise stores, and in turn ask for preferential conditions from shopping malls.
Or try to figure out the landlord’s needs in order to gain leverage in the game.
For example, many shopping malls now require two-dimensional and IP concepts. If you can tell a story that convinces the landlord, you can get very good conditions.
Because many shopping malls are willing to sacrifice small-scale interests in order to attract traffic, in order to obtain greater returns for the overall shopping mall. It is now popular for shopping malls to pay some IP operators to hold exhibitions to attract young people.
If we put ourselves in the shoes of these companies that operate IPs and organize exhibitions, they can not only get free exhibition and sales peripherals, but also IP licensing fees from shopping malls.
For a physical project, if you can waive the rent, get subsidies, or at worst be able to obtain preferential conditions such as deductions based on turnover, it cannot be said that you are bound to win, at least you are already "invincible."
This banker status is not out of reach, it is often just due to laziness in thinking and actions.
Whoever wants something from others will be at a disadvantage in the game. This is a bug within the rules. Smart people know how to do things smartly.
So as long as a person has needs, he will have weaknesses that can be exploited.
This is why it is said that as long as you continue to change, you will be cut, but if you lie flat, you will not be cut.
Whatever you do, never put yourself in danger.
Sun Tzu's Art of War said: In the past, those who were good at fighting first acted invincible, then waited for the enemy to become victorious.
The main idea of Sun Tzu's Art of War is not to teach you how to defeat the strong with the weak, or defeat the many with the few, but to teach you not to fight, not to lose, not to be reckless, and to do less or not do things with a low winning rate.
Those who always like extreme operations, always stud, and always think that they can escape and ascend to heaven and create miracles every time have no respect for the law of large numbers and objective laws.
In fact, there are many opportunities in a person's life. Most people just play stud a few times and lose all their chips, so that they will never be able to turn over.
In a sense, entrepreneurship is an operations research that seeks optimal solutions within limited resources.
I won't do anything that is not my job as a banker, because the probability of success is too low. Once it fails, there will be huge sunk costs and opportunity costs.
Because when you are at the end of the information chain and in the fog of war, your available resources will be wiped out by the dealer at any time with the force of thunder.
3. Let’s talk about some of the mainstream methods of “making a bank” in the market.
Around 2016, when we were working on a buyout fund, a listed company came to us and asked us to do market value management together. We would publish good news at each node, pump and sell, wait for the stock price to fall back, and then do it again, and so on. If you go back and forth, you will be financially free.
We were too timid to turn down this opportunity for financial freedom.
Market value management is a typical form of joint bank making.
There are several main purposes: reducing holdings after raising prices, pledging after raising prices, supporting the market at low prices to avoid liquidation, and raising the stock price before the private placement to reduce the dilution of the private placement shares to the major shareholders' holdings. .
This is very particular. At that time, the mainstream method in the market was to do market value management and M&A funds together. I would first buy the stocks of listed companies in the secondary market with my money, and then I would recommend the M&A targets to you. This was a side-step and avoidance to a certain extent. Suspicion of insider trading.
If you know that a listed company is going to be merged and you buy a large amount, then your insider trading must not be excessive. But if you buy heavily first and then engage in mergers and acquisitions with listed companies, then this cannot be used to determine whether you are insider trading.
Some M&A funds operate two seemingly unrelated funds. One fund invests in potential M&A targets, and the other buys stocks of listed companies and lurks. Once the M&A target is acquired by a listed company and the stock price rises, both funds will make huge profits.
Therefore, the best investment institutions operate in the primary and secondary markets at the same time. This type of primary and secondary linkage has greater chances of winning and requires higher resource integration capabilities.
Let’s look at the primary market.
Some VCs started out in a very simple and crude way. They actually had no core investment logic at the beginning. They just took over celebrity projects from some celebrity angels, then joined the capital MLM chain, and worked with the angels to fool the subsequent acquisitions. Xia, until the market is listed and the market is strong, it will be easier to go public where the capital is grouped together, and the chance of winning will be greater.
For example, a certain OLED company, as a representative of pseudo-demand and pseudo-technology, we judged in the past two years that it would definitely be able to go public, because it is a group of big guys and giants, and they need to exit, so there is no need to worry about the issue of going public.
There is an essential difference between making a bank and speculating. Speculation is just a free ride, while the essence of bankrolling is to make a game. From the perspective of success probability, the winning potential of bankrolling is much higher than that of speculation. This requires the ability to integrate resources on the one hand, and at the same time, you also need to be passionate about your MLM "career".
Therefore, the so-called banker is essentially making a game.
As the saying goes, what a person does can be divided into three realms: doing things, being a person, and doing things.
Those who only know how to do things are tools and ears; those who know how to be a human being can at least have enough food and clothing; and those who are at the highest level are all game makers.
4. How do you know whether you are "making a banker" or "making a leek"?
In fact, any business is the same, it is easy to make money, and many of the losers are novices and retail investors.
In other words, the easiest projects to make money are often TO Xiao B. Why do you say that?
I have talked with many friends, such as those who work in the supply chain, and everyone said that although TO Big B's business is large, it does not make any money.
Because Big B customers have a department responsible for purchasing, there is no information asymmetry, and prices are too transparent. Being these customers is just "moving bricks", which is very tiring. At best, you can only guarantee that you will not starve to death in the early stages of starting a business.
If you advance funds, what you actually earn is interest. If the customer runs away, the risk is very high.
Doing this kind of business is actually just the level of "doing things" mentioned above. In a traditional Red Ocean industry with no room for imagination, it is absolutely impossible to achieve so-called financial freedom.
Only when the kind of "novice entrepreneurs" appear every once in a while come to buy goods, they don't know anything, they pay first and then buy goods, and they are ruthlessly slaughtered.
If your business model can continue to be the bookmaker in a zero-sum game, then you are in an invincible position.
This is not a lie, this is education, a lesson for novices. He doesn't pay the tuition here, he has to pay it elsewhere.
Leave the risk exposure to others and leave the power of life and death to yourself.
I often joke with my friends that the essence of Xiao B’s entrepreneurship is not entrepreneurship, but a kind of consumption.
In most cases, they just spent money to experience the feeling of starting a business and being a boss.
With their knowledge, experience, resources and abilities, it is impossible to make money in this life.
Many business models themselves are based on being a banker and letting small B players enter the game, because only by facing these novices can they obtain high premiums.
The market as a whole is a zero-sum game. If you make more money, others will make less money. If others make more money, you will make less money.
The so-called win-win cooperation can only be established on a small scale. Two companies, one with products and the other with traffic, cooperate to sell products to consumers at the highest price. The two companies win together, but consumers pay IQ tax.
The banker and the leek are at the two extremes of information asymmetry and risk asymmetry. When you hand over the power of life and death to the banker, you are already in a dangerous situation of ambush from all sides.
For example, if several people start a company together, the major shareholder will have the most shares and voice, and control the business. In this case, the major shareholder is the banker. Although the small shareholders have some nominal power, they are in a completely unequal position with the major shareholders.
Many people often have this experience. A friend comes to you to invest. He says that he has a good project and has relevant experience. He hopes that you will provide money and he will occupy the technical shares.
He can contribute money or not. Even if he contributes money, he can find ways to evacuate the registered capital. If the company does well, he can use the benefits to himself; or the company can use your money first, and then he can use it after it is used up. Bankrupt or dissolve the company, or just leave it there.
5. The most important thing in “making a banker” is to understand human nature
In the mall, human nature cannot stand the test. Don't think that because this person used to be your friend, he won't do anything that harms your interests.
Whether he will do something that infringes on your interests does not depend on whether he was a good person before, but on whether you give him a chance.
Because people are fickle, even if this person has been your classmate or friend for many years. It is basic and important to agree on various contracts and protect your own interests, but as long as you are not in the position of the banker, once you are in a fight, you will find that you are being manipulated in various ways, unable to move, and in the end you will only feel trapped.
Many people do things that infringe on the interests of others, not because they are a bad person from the beginning, but because you are kind and give them the opportunity to be a bad person.
"A gentleman does not stand under a dangerous wall." Don't take chances. In the face of huge interests, most people will choose interests and betray their friends.
A truly great person, even if it seems that he is playing into someone else's game, he is still the one who takes the lead in the end.
This is called forever Party A.
To use an analogy, this is a bit like the difference between ordinary Qimen, Wuhou Qimen and Fenghou Qimen.
In ordinary Qimen, the opponent is in the middle palace. He is the host and I am the guest. I always look at the opponent's position and then deal with it myself. This is usually how Liek does it.
If it is a one-on-one or single game, this does not show any obvious disadvantages, and the amount of information processed is not very large. But once you are in a continuous game environment with multiple people, the amount of information processed increases exponentially, and it is almost as if you are blind.
Wuhou Qimen is my central palace. No matter how many enemies come, I am the master, and everyone else is a guest. They are the "manager". Everyone must play according to my rules. I have rights for everyone. Information advantage.
Fenghou Qimen is based on Wuhou Qimen, adding the ability to change the opponent's conditions, and has the ability to "play the banker". I am the direction, I am the good or bad, and I determine the time, space, and the life and death of the four disks.
"Innate leads Zhou Tian, overturns the changes in Zhou Tian, and turns me into a king." It constantly changes the conditions of the opponent's world, earth, and people, so that the opponent is always at a disadvantage in the game.
In Hold'em, if a rookie has just encountered a bad beat, he is likely to be on tilt. In the next game, the master may use his tendency to bet randomly after encountering a bad beat to induce They bet or bluff.
Masters, on the other hand, can completely ignore sunk costs and focus entirely on the present. There are still 5,000 chips on the table. He doesn't care whether the 5,000 he just won by stealing the bear and chicken from the 1,000, or the remaining 5,000 from the 10,000 he encountered a bad beat and lost half of it.
Lao Tzu said that it is better to keep the center than to talk too much.
Ordinary Qimen means you guess other people's cards; Wuhou Qimen makes others guess your cards; Fenghou Qimen makes others think your cards are the cards you want them to think.
Let me take charge and mobilize the enemy. Sun Tzu also wrote in the Virtual and Real Chapter of The Art of War: Therefore, those who are good at fighting will cause others but not harm them.
Those who are good at fighting must learn to mobilize the enemy and not be easily mobilized by the enemy.
In business wars, there are countless cases like this, where opponents are thrown into disarray through some seemingly inconspicuous micro-management.
In January 2015, Didi Chengwei called Zhou Hang of Yidao Yongche, a pioneer in domestic online ride-hailing, and asked him to meet to discuss the merger. The two had dinner at a luxury hotel near the Summer Palace.
Soon, major technology media began to spread rumors that Didi would acquire Yidao. Zhou Hang was surprised because only the two of them were present that day. He asked Cheng Wei if he intentionally leaked the news, but Cheng Wei denied it.
Just one month later, on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2015, Didi and Kuaidi jointly announced their merger on this meaningful day, leaving Yidao alone and messy in the wind, as if she had been hurt by a scumbag.
According to the latest "China Taxi-hailing Software Market Quarterly Monitoring Report for the Third Quarter of 2014" released by Analysys International, as of September 2014, Kuaidi Taxi ranked first in the market share with 54.4%, and Didi Taxi ranked first with 44.9%. The ratio ranks second.
In December 2014, Didi just announced a financing of US$700 million, and soon after, Kuaidi announced a financing of US$800 million.
It can be seen that at that time, Didi was obviously not in the position of market maker in the market competition.
The second child and the first child were talking about merging. Naturally, they had no advantage in the game. Cheng Wei's some cool moves gave Didi an instant increase in chips out of thin air, which made Kuai start thinking.
Has Didi and Yidao already integrated?
If Didi acquires Lao San, Didi will become number one, and capital will be concentrated in Didi. Will your own escape route be taken away?
Kuaidi had two options before him at that time:
The first is to quickly advance the merger with Didi and avoid long nights and dreams.
The second is to have a chat with Zhou Hang and compete with Didi.
Obviously, option one is the most advantageous. If the negotiation with Didi is completed, an oligopoly will be formed and the company will win. The negotiation of option two is highly uncertain. Even if it is easy to win, the subsequent outcome is still unknown.
Cheng Wei's trick is a signal game, just like stealing a chicken and bluffing in Texas Hold'em. It sends a signal to the opponent that my trump card is better.
Afterwards, Zhou Hang analyzed that he became a bargaining chip in the game between Cheng Wei and Kuaidu, prompting Kuaiduo to quickly pass the merger plan with Didi.
In the stock market, it is easy for large shareholders to usurp the interests of small shareholders. Major shareholders can find seemingly unrelated people to set up shadow companies, purchase goods and services at bargain prices, and transfer benefits to their affiliated companies.
Never expose your risk exposure, and never give the power of life and death to others.
6. The last words I want to say
During the 2008 financial crisis, Musk faced a difficult choice:
Both Tesla and SapceX are on the verge of bankruptcy, and he only has $40 million in borrowed money. If he saves one company intensively, the other will inevitably go bankrupt; if he saves two companies separately, both companies may go bankrupt.
At that moment, which was already a cold winter for capital, Musk was almost at the end of his rope, almost at the mercy of others in the game with capital. Musk borrowed $20 million himself and then expected other investors to lend the company an equal amount.
But VantagePoint, one of Tesla's major investors, refused to sign the agreement because they had their own agenda.
At that time, they were already preparing to expel Musk, and then sell Tesla to traditional automakers in Detroit, making Tesla a supplier of their electric systems - real capital has no idea of stars and seas.
VantagePoint's partners rejected Musk's request to fly to meet with them immediately. They knew Musk was anxious and deliberately delayed the meeting so that Musk could surrender.
“The only reason they had the meeting in their office was because he wanted me to get down on my knees and beg him for money so he could say ‘no’ to me with all his might,” Musk recalled. “What a jerk.”
Capital may have become accustomed to using this method to force startup CEOs to surrender, swallow their anger, and give up their dreams. But this time is different, their opponent is Musk.
The debt plan didn't work, so Musk had to go back to equity. Of course someone as strong as Musk knows that in this case, if he continues to ask for help in a low profile, he will only make the capital market completely lose confidence in him.
So he let the capital know that Tesla could borrow another $40 million from SpaceX and survive.
This caused a stir among investors in Silicon Valley, and Tesla's financing share suddenly changed from a target that everyone avoided, or even abandoned like a pair of shoes, to a scarce investment opportunity.
Financing is like looking for a partner. You will end up with nothing in the end. Anyway, death is inevitable. Musk's best strategy at this time is to bluff and try again.
Doing business, like relationships, relies on the "Law of Attraction".
Through a bluff, Musk successfully returned to the position of bookmaker, and can even choose investment institutions again. Because once the project itself becomes attractive, the greedy nature of investment institutions will be stimulated and exploited by Mas.
In December 2021, Musk played a similar trick to manipulate Party A.
While SpaceX was making rapid progress, Musk made another outrageous move and suddenly sent a letter to all employees, saying that the "Starship" "Raptor" engine may not be successfully developed as scheduled, and SpaceX may face the risk of bankruptcy again.
This email shocked NASA, and it quickly offered commercial contracts for space travel.
Because SpaceX and Boeing are the two main suppliers for several current NASA projects, if SpaceX has any shortcomings, NASA will have to spend more taxpayer money to purchase services from Boeing at high prices.
This is Musk. No matter how external conditions change, he himself has become Party A forever.
To be a banker, you need to make a game, and you need to make something complicated, mysterious, and extremely asymmetrical in information, so that it is easy to harvest leeks.
For example, there are few people who can really understand blockchain and digital currency, but this does not prevent a large number of people from achieving financial freedom through this.
Does it matter whether the thing itself is reliable?
unimportant.
If you can become the banker in a thing, the attributes of the thing itself are no longer important.
So why is it said that human society is a large-scale pyramid scheme. MLM makes the impossible possible, and the possible becomes more explosive.
Whether Musk is promoting Dogecoin, selling tequila, or supporting GameStop, Musk has long since broken away from the vulgar tastes of opinion leaders and has become the new spiritual leader of the global village.
You said Musk is a pyramid scheme? I think so.
But he made all mankind believe in him, and he was able to create the impossible in the simplest and crudest way.
There are many people, although their influence and ability are far less than Musk, but they can seize the greed in human nature and the unrealistic fantasy of becoming a "superior", and they can sell you a bunch of things that you actually If you don't need anything at all, you can sell air as gold.
Playing games is addictive. Why can't people who have successfully done capital operations start an industry? It's because it's too easy to make money through capital operations.
As Soros famously said, world economic history is a series based on illusions and lies. The way to gain wealth is to recognize the illusion, get involved, and then get out of the game before the illusion becomes public knowledge.
Therefore, a cruel fact in this world is: understanding bubbles, joining bubbles, MLM bubbles, may be far more likely to achieve financial freedom than doing business.
The ability to make decisions takes time to accumulate. If you want to ask those who have achieved financial freedom at a young age what they did right, I think they only did two things right:
If you accidentally stand in the spotlight, this is called a good reincarnation and a good life;
I participated in the creation of the trend. This is called MLM spreading well and having good luck.
Destiny is within the light cone. If you can't be the banker or the game, then you have to accept the psychological preparation that there is a high probability that you will not be able to have financial freedom in this life! #一起来跟单 #注意资金安全 #美联储是否加息？ #带你看看币安Launchpad
