Ten thousand words of good article, it is recommended to read carefully

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The cruel truth of this world is that the probability of realizing financial freedom is much higher if you know about bubbles, join bubbles, and sell bubbles than if you do real things. If you can't be the banker or run the game, then you have to accept the reality that you may not be financially free in this life.

How to achieve financial freedom before the age of 30, as well as the thinking and characteristics of successful people, these characteristics can be summed up in one word:

The banker's mindset.

After reading this article, perhaps you will understand why Musk can continuously create successful companies and become a frequent visitor and idol on the global wealth list.

Note that although they sound similar, there is an essential difference between "being the banker" and "sitting on the banker".

“Being the banker” is a game thinking habit of dynamic adjustment;

"Being the banker" is a static gaming advantage, but in most cases, ordinary people can only act as leeks and it is difficult for them to obtain the status of the banker.

Therefore, we need to adopt the "banker" mentality.

Being the banker is something that is rarely done, because in the world of stock competition, the one who makes the rules is the banker, and you and I are just participants with a very small probability, let alone full-scale competition.

Therefore, the so-called "dealer" thinking is a winning way to transform "self-existence philosophy" into "global philosophy".

By being the banker, you can gain an advantageous position in various games, thereby reducing or transferring your own risks and obtaining the best input-output ratio.

What is banker?
The path to success for ordinary people is built on a series of battles where the weak defeat the strong, and each battle is a life-and-death gamble.

To ensure that you have a chance of winning every time, you must always put yourself in the position of the dealer and be wary of falling into the trap of others.

Before the emergence of modern legal society, the fastest way to accumulate wealth was basically "robbing" and "cheating". Then, in order to protect the fruits of their victory, the vested interests would begin to formulate laws and rules, and latecomers would no longer have the opportunity to accumulate wealth. It is difficult to achieve financial freedom under purely market conditions by relying solely on one's own hard work and a little cleverness, which is also an important reason for the solidification of classes.

But in the long run, the classes still flow slowly, and there are always some people who use their "talent for being a banker" to gradually climb up.

The fastest way to achieve financial freedom is of course through wealth transfer rather than wealth creation, and being the banker is the best way to achieve wealth transfer within the rules of the game.

Being a banker, to some extent, is a "legal" form of "robbing" and "cheating".

Although the person being cut is in pain, the dealer plays within the rules and the person being cut can only accept the loss.

For example, in recent years I have studied the characteristics of the investment and consumption fields and summed up a point of view: "Everything is Zhuang, and everything can be Zhuang."

The most common example is: shopping mall investment promotion.

There are naturally dealers in shopping malls. Some of the so-called "anchor stores" you see, such as Starbucks, KFC, and Walmart, are invited by dealers to "jointly manage the business." Usually, shopping malls will give them many rent-free periods and even renovation subsidies.

After the main store is taken care of, there will naturally be a group of secondary main stores that "follow the trend" to follow suit. These "institutions" and "users" occupy the best traffic entrances of the mall, raise the rent of the mall, and the rest is to slaughter the individual business "leeks".

They started their entrepreneurial journey with a high probability of failure, doing the most tiring work, paying prices higher than the market price.

As for the dealers, they don’t care about the life or death of small brands. They even hope that individual businesses will go bankrupt more frequently to keep the customers in the mall fresh.

Self-employed individuals or small-brand physical stores are basically in a weak position in the game in the shopping mall, and in this game, the shopping mall is basically in what Sun Tzu's Art of War calls the "place of life and defeat", and can control you from all angles.

If you have ever opened a physical store, you will find that the rental contract signed with the landlord is a naked "equality treaty".

Every move you make must be approved by the mall. Without approval, they have the right to deduct your deposit at any time.

In addition to paying a high deposit, you will also suffer many unexpected losses if you continue to do business, and the landlord will not return the deposit to you.

You will find that in some rental contracts the deposit is non-refundable, and you have to pay a penalty in addition to the deposit.

That’s not all. The landlord will also ask you to spend money to dismantle and restore the previous decoration, which is another expense.

Everything about you is controlled by the landlord.

So why would you be willing to sign such an unequal treaty with the landlord?

Because there is a huge information asymmetry between you and the landlord. Generally, shopping malls have special investment promotion departments. These investment promotion personnel have stable customers and will give them quotes once there is a vacancy. Their job is to stimulate competition among potential tenants and gain an advantage in the game.

And you can only guess the landlord's cards through the traffic and vacancy situation of the mall. Due to lack of experience, you don't have many mall resources and know nothing about the mall's operating data. The mall's investment promotion will scare you a little and say that if you don't make a decision, the good shops will be gone - and you will just pay the money obediently.

How to turn the tables in this game where there is no chance of survival?
If you can't become the dealer with the best advantage,

Then first become a small dealer and slowly accumulate gaming chips;

Or you can seize the opponent's weakness, gain local gaming advantage, and then turn the tables and become the banker.

The way out for small brands is to start franchising early, become their own dealer, spread the risk among smaller brands, increase the number of stores and achieve brand effect through franchisees, and then seek preferential terms 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 need to develop two-dimensional or IP concepts. If you can tell a story that convinces the landlord, you can get very good conditions.

Because in order to attract customers, many shopping malls are willing to sacrifice small-scale interests in order to obtain greater returns for the mall as a whole.

Nowadays, shopping malls even pay some IP operating companies to hold exhibitions to attract young people.

If you put yourself in their shoes, these IP operation and exhibition companies can not only get the venue for free to hold exhibitions and sell peripherals, but also get IP licensing fees from shopping malls.

If a physical project can be exempted from rent and can also get subsidies, or strive for preferential conditions such as a commission deduction based on turnover, it has at least "standing in a position of survival or failure."

This kind of banker status is not out of reach; it is often just a matter of thinking.

Whoever needs help from others will be at a disadvantage in the game.

This is a loophole in the rules, and smart people know how to do things smartly.

Therefore, as long as others have needs, they will have weaknesses and can be exploited.

This is why as long as you don’t change, you will be cut, and if you lie down, you will inevitably be cut.

Whatever you do, never put yourself in danger.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu says: Those who were good at fighting in the past first prepared themselves for victory and then waited for the enemy to be defeated.

The main idea of ​​Sun Tzu's Art of War is to teach you how to defeat the strong with the weak and the many with the few, rather than to tell you not to fight, not to be defeated, not to be reckless, or to do less or not do things with low winning rates.

Those who always like to play at the extreme, go all in, and always fantasize about escaping from death and creating miracles will eventually face the punishment of objective laws.

In fact, there are many opportunities in life, but some people lose all their chips after a few all-in games, which leads to their failure to recover.

In a sense, entrepreneurship is about finding the optimal solution within limited resources.

So don’t become a banker easily, because the probability of success is too low. Once you fail, you will pay huge sunk costs and opportunity costs.

When you are at the end of the information chain and are in the fog of war, the few resources you can mobilize can be destroyed by the dealer at any time with lightning speed.

Let’s talk about some “banking” methods in the market
Around 2016, when we were working on an M&A fund, a listed company approached us and asked if we could do market value management, release good news at certain points, increase shipments, wait for the stock price to fall back, and then start a new round. This cycle would inevitably lead to financial freedom. We were timid and rejected this opportunity for financial freedom.

Market value management is a typical example of collusion to manipulate the market.

It has several main purposes: reducing holdings after a price increase, pledging shares after a price increase, supporting the market at a low price to avoid liquidation, and raising the stock price before a private placement to reduce the dilution of old shareholders' holdings due to the private placement shares.

This period was very particular. The mainstream market approach at that time was to combine market value management with M&A funds. First, stocks of listed companies were purchased in the secondary market, and then M&A targets were recommended, skirting the rules and avoiding suspicion of insider trading.

If you know that a listed company is going to make an acquisition and you buy a large amount of shares, then of course it is insider trading. But if you buy first and then make an acquisition with the listed company, then this cannot be defined as insider trading.

Some M&A foundations set up two seemingly unrelated funds, one to invest in potential M&A targets, and the other to buy stocks of listed companies in ambush. Once the M&A target is acquired by the listed company and the stock price rises, both funds will make a fortune.

Therefore, the best investment institutions all operate in the secondary market together. This secondary linkage approach has a greater chance of winning and requires higher resource integration capabilities.

Now let’s look at the primary market.

Some VCs started out in a very simple and crude way. In fact, they did not have any core investment logic at the beginning. They just mindlessly took over from some star angels, and then joined the capital pyramid scheme chain, and together with the angels, they deceived the subsequent takers until the listing. Only when capital gathers together can it be easier to go public and have a greater chance of winning.

For example, a certain OLED company is a representative of pseudo-demand and pseudo-technology. We judged two years ago that it would definitely be able to go public because the giants were banding together and they needed to exit and were not worried about the listing issue at all.

There is an essential difference between being a banker and speculation. Speculation is just a free ride, while being a banker is setting up a game. From the perspective of the probability of success, the chances of winning as a banker are much higher than speculation. This requires a high level of resource integration ability, and also requires a passion for the "serving the country" that you are promoting.

Therefore, the so-called being a banker is essentially setting up a game.

As the saying goes, there are three levels of doing things: doing things, setting up a plan, and doing it with a purpose.

People who only know how to do things are tools.

People who know how to set up a scheme will at least have no worries about food and clothing.

People who have reached the highest level are all good at setting up schemes.

How do you know whether you are the banker or the loser?
It’s actually the same for anything you do. The models that are easy to make money often cut off newbies and retail investors.

In other words, the projects that are easiest to make money are often those that target small B. Why do you say that?

I have talked to many friends who are in business, such as some friends who work in the supply chain. Some of them said that although the TO big B business has a large volume, it does not make money.

Because big B customers have a dedicated purchasing department, there is no information asymmetry, and the price is too transparent. Serving these customers is like "moving bricks", which is very tiring. At best, you can only guarantee that you will not starve to death in the early stage of entrepreneurship.

Moving goods from your own warehouse to a major customer's warehouse is actually just earning a logistics service fee.

If you advance the money, what you actually earn is the interest, but there is still a great risk in case the client runs away.

Doing this kind of business is actually just about "doing things". It is absolutely impossible to achieve financial freedom in the traditional red ocean business that has no room for imagination.

They can only face those "novice entrepreneurs" who appear every now and then, who don't purchase goods, don't know anything, and charge you money first and then the goods, and then rip you off.

If your business model can continuously put you in the position of the banker in a zero-sum game, then you are in a position of survival or failure.

This is not cheating, but education, let Xiaobai come to class. During this period of time, he will give it to you, and it is better to give it to others.

Leave the risk exposure to others and keep the right to kill to yourself.

I often joke with my friends that Xiao B’s entrepreneurship is not essentially entrepreneurship, but a form of consumption.

In most cases, they just spend money to experience what it's like to be a boss.

Because of their knowledge, experience, resources and abilities, they will never be able to make money in their lifetime.

Many business models are designed to be dealers that allow small players to join the game, because they can only get high premiums when facing these newbies.

The business world as a whole is a zero-sum game. If you earn one more dollar, others will earn one less dollar. If others earn one more dollar, you will earn one less dollar.

The so-called win-win situation can only be achieved in a small scope. Two companies, one with products and one with traffic, cooperate to sell to consumers at the highest price. The two companies win, but the consumers are harvested.

The dealer and the investors are at the two extremes of information asymmetry and risk asymmetry. When you hand over the power of killing to the dealer, you are already in a dangerous situation with ambushes from all sides.

For example, several partners start a company, and one shareholder holds the largest shares and controls the business. In this case, the shareholder is the banker, and although the small shareholders nominally have some power, they are in a completely unequal position compared to the shareholder.

Many people have had this experience: a friend comes to you for investment, saying that he has a good project and relevant experience, and hopes that you will provide the money while he takes a share of the technical knowledge.

He can choose not to pay money or he can pay money. Even if he pays money, he will find ways to withdraw the registered capital. If the company does well, he will transfer the profits to himself; or the company will use your money first, and when it is all used up, he will bankrupt or dissolve the company, or just abandon it there.

The most important thing about being a banker is interpretability.
In the business world, your ability to interpret is tested. Don't assume that just because someone is your friend, they won't do anything that infringes on your interests.

Whether he will do something that harms your interests does not depend on whether he was your friend before, but on whether you give him a chance.

Because people are fickle. Even if the other person is a temporary friend of yours who you have known for many years.

It is certainly basic and important to agree on various contracts and protect your own interests, but if you are in the position of a banker, once you tear the B, you will find that you are being controlled in various ways, unable to move, and finally you will be left with a feeling of being trapped.

Many people do things that infringe upon the interests of others, not because they are bad people, but because you, out of kindness, give them the opportunity to do bad things.

"A gentleman does not stand under a dangerous wall."

Don't be complacent. When faced with huge profits, most people will choose profits and betray their friends.

A truly great person, even if it seems that he has entered someone else's game, is still the banker in the end.

This is called the eternal winner.

To give an example, this is a bit like the difference between ordinary Qimen, Wuhou Qimen and Fenghou Qimen.

Ordinary Qimen is to get a palace in your hand. He is the host and you are the guest. You always see the position of the hand and then deal with it yourself. This is usually the way of leeks.

If it is a single game, there is no obvious disadvantage, and the amount of information is not large. But once you are in a multiple-game environment, the information asymmetry will increase exponentially, and you will be in the dark.

In Wu Hou Qi Men, you decide a palace. No matter how many enemies there are, you are the host and others are guests. You are the "dealer". Everyone plays according to your rules and you have the information advantage.

Fenghou Qimen is based on Wuhou Qimen, but adds the ability to change the opponent's conditions and thus has the ability to "be the banker".

It determines your position, good or bad luck, and the changes in time, space and the four plates are all determined by you.

"The Xiantian leads the Zhoutian, and the changes of Zhoutian turn me into a king."

Constantly change the opponent's conditions so that the opponent is always at a disadvantage in the game.

In Texas Hold'em, if a rookie has just suffered a bad beat, he is likely to get carried away (on tilt). In the next game, the experts will take advantage of his tendency to bet randomly after a bad beat and induce him to bet or bluff.

The expert will not care about the sunk cost at all, and will focus completely on the present. If there are 5,000 chips left on the table, he will only care whether the 5,000 chips are just won from 1,000 or are left after losing half of the 10,000 chips.

Lao Tzu said, "Too much talk will lead to exhaustion; it is better to keep to the middle."

Ordinary Qimen is to guess other people's cards.

Wu Hou Qi Men is to let others guess your cards.

Fenghou Qimen is about making others recognize that your cards are the cards you want them to recognize.

Regarding mobilizing the enemy, Sun Tzu's Art of War also wrote in the chapter on the real and the fake: Therefore, he who is good at fighting attacks others but does not become attacked by others.

A good warrior always mobilizes the enemy and is not easily mobilized by the enemy.

In business wars, there are countless similar cases where opponents are thrown into disarray through some seemingly insignificant micro-operations.

In January 2015, Cheng Wei of Didi called Zhou Hang of Yidao, a pioneer in online car-hailing, and said he wanted to meet to discuss a merger. The two had dinner together at a luxury hotel near the Summer Palace.

Soon, major technology media began to spread rumors that Didi was acquiring Yidao. Zhou Hang was very surprised because they were the only two present that day. He asked Cheng Wei if he had leaked the news, but Cheng Wei firmly denied it.

Just one month later, on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2015, Didi and Kuaidi Dache suddenly announced their merger, leaving Yidao, which looked like it had been hurt by a scumbag, in disarray.

According to the "China Taxi-hailing Software Market Quarterly Monitoring Report for the Third Quarter of 2014" released by Analysys International, as of September 2014, Kuaidi Dache ranked first with a market share of 54.4%, and Didi Dache ranked second with 44.9%.

In December 2014, Didi announced a financing of US$700 million, and soon after, Kuaidi announced a financing of US$800 million.

It can be seen that Didi was clearly at a disadvantage in the market competition at that time.

When the second-largest player talks about a merger with the largest player, Didi is naturally at a disadvantage in the game. Cheng Wei's bold move instantly increased Didi's bargaining chips and made Kuaidi think a lot.

Has Didi reached an agreement with Yidao?

If Didi acquires the third largest company, Didi will become the largest company, capital will gather towards Didi, and its own retreat will also be blocked?

There were two choices before Kuai.

The first is to quickly advance the merger with Didi to avoid any further complications.

The second is to meet with Zhou Hang for a talk and continue to compete with Didi.

Obviously, the most advantageous option is to negotiate with Didi and form an oligopoly, which will ensure victory. The second option has high uncertainty. Even if Yidao is snatched away, the subsequent outcome is still unknown.

Cheng Wei's move is a signal game, just like bluffing in Texas Hold'em, sending a signal to his opponent that he has a better hand.

Afterwards, Zhou Hang analyzed that he became a bargaining chip in the game between Cheng Wei and Kuaidi, prompting Kuaidi to quickly pass the merger plan with Didi.

In the stock market, it is easy for major shareholders to encroach on the interests of small shareholders. Major shareholders can set up shadow companies and transfer profits to affiliated companies by purchasing goods or services at high prices.

Never expose your risk exposure and never give your power to kill to others.

Final Words
During the 2008 financial crisis, Musk faced a difficult choice. Both Tesla and SpaceX were on the verge of bankruptcy, and he only had $40 million in borrowed money. If he saved one, the other would inevitably go bankrupt; if he saved the two companies separately, both would probably go bankrupt.

In that capital winter, Musk was almost desperate and at the mercy of capital. Musk borrowed $20 million himself and hoped that other investors would lend the company the same amount of money.

But VantagePoint, Tesla's main investment institution, refused to sign because they had their own plans. They were ready to expel Musk and then sell Tesla to traditional automakers in Detroit to make Tesla a supplier of their electric systems - there is no such thing as the stars and the sea in real capital.

VantagePoint's partners rejected Musk's request for an immediate meeting. They knew that Musk was anxious and deliberately delayed the meeting so that Musk would surrender.

Musk recalled: "The only reason they held the meeting in their office was because they wanted me to get down on my knees and beg them for money so they could say 'no' to me with all their might. What assholes."

Capital may have become accustomed to using this routine to force founders to surrender, swallow their anger, and give up their dreams, but this time they met Musk.

Regardless of the debt plan, Musk had to return to the path of equity financing. As powerful as Musk is, he certainly knows that in this situation, if he continues to beg others in a low profile, the capital market will completely lose confidence in him.

So he spread the word to investors, saying that Tesla could borrow another $40 million from SpaceX and survive.

This news caused a stir among Silicon Valley investors, and Tesla's financing share went from being an avoided target to a scarce investment opportunity.

Financing is like finding a partner. If you keep licking, you will end up with nothing. Anyway, you will die anyway, so Musk's best strategy at this time is to bluff and give it another try.

In business, just like in relationships, the “law of attraction” applies.

Musk successfully returned to the position of the banker through this bluff, and can even choose investment institutions again. Because once the project itself becomes attractive, the greedy nature of investment institutions will be stimulated and used by Musk.

In December 2021, Musk performed a similar trick again.

When SpaceX was making great strides, Musk once again made a bold move and suddenly sent a letter to all employees, saying that the "Raptor" engine of the "Starship" might not be successfully developed as scheduled, and SpaceX might face the risk of bankruptcy again.

This email scared NASA so much that it quickly handed over the space tourism contract. This is because SpaceX and Boeing are the two major suppliers of almost all NASA projects. If there is any problem with SpaceX, NASA will have to spend more taxpayers' money to purchase services from Boeing at a high price.

This is Musk. No matter how external conditions change, he has become the eternal winner.

To be a banker, you need to set up a scheme, you need to make things complicated, mysterious, and extremely asymmetric information, so that it is easier to harvest leeks. For example, blockchain and digital currency, many people still don’t understand these things, but this does not prevent many people from achieving financial freedom through them.

The rise of digital currency is still in full swing, and quantum technology has taken over as an important tool for bankers to reap profits, while the metaverse has caused the VR industry, which was originally wiped out, to resurface.

But does it matter whether these things are reliable? Not really.

If you can become the banker of something, the attributes of the thing itself are no longer important.

That’s why it is said that human society is a large-scale pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes make the impossible possible and make the possible even more explosive.

Musk promotes Dogecoin, sells tequila, or supports GameStop. Musk has long since left behind the vulgar tastes of opinion leaders and has become the new spiritual leader of the global village.

You say Musk is a pyramid schemer, he thinks so.

But if he makes his peers believe in him, he can create the impossible in the simplest and most brutal way.

Although many people are far less influential and capable than Musk, they have also grasped the greed in human nature and the practical fantasy of "dependency".

They can sell you a bunch of stuff you don't really need.

You can sell air like gold.

Setting up a scam is addictive. That's why people who have successfully run capital operations cannot run an entity business. Because it's too easy to make money through capital operations.

As George Soros famously said, the history of world economy is a series of illusions and lies. If you want to get rich, the way is to recognize the illusion, invest in it, and then quit the game before the illusion is recognized by the public.

Therefore, the cruel fact of this world is that the probability of realizing financial freedom by recognizing bubbles, joining bubbles, and participating in pyramid schemes is much greater than that of doing practical things.

The ability to set up a plan requires time to accumulate. If you ask people who have achieved financial freedom before the age of 30 what they have done, I think they have only done two things.

Accidentally standing at the vent of the wind, this is called reincarnation, good luck;

Participating in the creation of a trend yourself is called pyramid scheme, and it is good luck if it is spread well.

Everything within the light cone is destiny. If you cannot be the banker or manage the game, then you have to accept the reality that you may not be financially free in this life.