Business in Russian

The business of the 2000s was marked by the search for "topics" and tax evasion. The businessman who earned his first million on some "topic" was not engaged in the painstaking development of the created one. He said that he was "moving away from operational management" (as if he had once visited him) and was going to look for a "new topic". As everything grew, there were a lot of topics. Usually, the entrepreneur moved from the prosaic to the sublime – with «themes» and switched to «theme » furniture or jeans, without stopping anywhere. As a result, ugly Frankenstein holdings were born, where the clothing business was adjacent to the import of green peas and a garage for the manufacture of plastic windows. The cherry on the cake in the holding was necessarily a restaurant to show off to friends. Clouds hung over the holdings «management companies– lazy armies of accountants generous with meaningless directives.

But the time of frenzied growth has passed, the price of oil has fallen, and with it the demand for gilded toilets. Of course, new "themes" will always arise, but in order for you to have something to finance them, you need the old "themes" to generate income. That is, you need to do the same dull operational management – go to work every day and read reports. Or hire a manager, but not someone you can yell at in front of subordinates, but a professional. It takes a long time to search, to make mistakes, but to find and hire. And by hiring – trust and listen.

The strategy is not a prophetic dream of the owner who read the Funk Business the day before, but a boring, multi-letter development plan with numbers, tables and graphs.

You can develop a strategy yourself, you can contact specialists. But firmly remember that the strategy is not a prophetic dream of the owner who read the Funk Business the day before, but a boring, multi-letter development plan with numbers, tables and graphs. To explore the market, and not just to have a drink with key customers, but to really explore – with focus groups, desktop resets, online surveys, interviews, etc. To hire a marketer – not to come up with how to finally sell what has been in stock for years, but to help create the product that they want to buy. Stop considering the presence of net profit as a sign of success. Discover the concepts of «turnover» and «working capital». To suddenly discover that only morons agree to work where they are called morons. To teach and develop staff, because there is no other way out:in the labor market, there are mainly Neanderthals in the assortment in free access, professionals, even in a crisis, rarely stay out of work for a long time. And if we invite strategy consultants, then only those who not only take money, but work for them.

As for taxes, I am not a moralist here, everyone determines the measure of elasticity of his conscience himself. Business evades taxes everywhere. But if you take a risk and go into "schemes", then at least make sure that "tax optimization" is not the only source of profit for your business. If the mafia earned as much as an honest business, it would be engaged in the production of cookies. But illegal business implies risk, and risk implies excess income. If the tax cushion is pulled out from under Russian businesses now, few people will remain on the horizon.

If the mafia earned as much as an honest business, it would be engaged in the production of cookies.

It can be fairly noted that there are enough scoundrels and crooks in any country, that initially the bulk of businesses in the world are based on "buy cheaper and sell more expensive". But this style of work is now coming to an end in any country in the world, and only fools learn from their mistakes.

Yes, we have a special country in general. We believe that our knowledge that the taxes we have paid will be stolen gives us, on the one hand, the moral right not to pay them, on the other hand, a reason to be upset about bad roads. However, this is a completely different story.