A willingness to say no at the right time is an essential skill for anyone wanting business success. Six years ago, in Moscow, a well- known businessman, evidently enjoying himself, explained the basis of his success which was study followed by study leading to work and yet more work. He never knew, perhaps didn’t care, the exploration of youth and its pleasures but made his choice and rose to business prominence and appointment as a Governor. I watched his ascension and wondered if the personal cost might be too high but he made his choice, a choice only he as an individual could make.

To choose priorities is also a defining step towards success in business. For me business success is first of all the embodied idea within the people involved. There is attraction in business atmosphere. I like gambling, feeling the energy entering ‘tabula rasa’, then idea begins to vest into the company material, energy and activity of other close spiritually and conceptually people union. The magnetism of the common interests starts to attract the missing puzzle pieces turning the horizontal into the vertical.

Thoughts can come true and ambitions be realized almost in a mysterious way when one least expects it and real things go through amazing metamorphosis.

Doors we considered to be completely closed open. You suddenly meet like-minded people needed for the business in a totally different part of the globe. The world restores its recently lost freshness, ice cream tastes like in your childhood and hopes acquire the delight of youth. And most important is that divine feeling of your inner freedom. And not money but embodied ideas give it. And money has its classic property, it helps to realize that nothing is permanent in this life.

Julien Gracq wrote of the imaginary war between imaginary coun- tries which created a real and not imaginary fear in his book ‘The Opposing Shore’. Perhaps the story of endless money generation is also like following ‘Fata Morgana’ and of course, it is better to be rich than to be poor. But when you want your electric kettle to boil faster its boiling time becomes twice longer. And sometimes even the electricity is suddenly cut. But you didn’t have time to notice the beauty of the dusk or dawn or the nice smile of that passer-by. It is spring or autumn outside, life with its beautiful consequences. And money, it is just some horizontal line comparing to the vertical trajectory of life.

Lara Lychagina

Editor-in-Chief