Category Archives: Visible stories

Minimalism and business

Minimalism is something that builds on simplicity and honesty. In the right places.
It is a style of art, music, etc. that uses very simple ideas or a very small number of simple elements. And why not, it is a style in business.
Minimalism in business is simplifying your story. Your product. Your ingredients…Minimalism in business is to debunk the myth of a manifold product.

Always imagine that your product is like pizza. Consequently, the story of pizza is the story of your product. With the use of scarce resources, you create a piece of magic that solves problems, alleviates pain, increases pleasure, creates a better life, puts a smile on your face.

Everybody likes pizza. It is tasty and delightful and we all have a secret hankering for being delighted. No matter what you sell, your customers ache for new experiences, new things, new stories.

Not everybody likes pepperoni pizza. Don’t forget to personalize! Your product is (still) pizza, nevertheless build on it. Invent new flavours, create cutting-edge toppings and serve everything with a twist of originality and adventure.

The lesson learned: simplicity and personalization are the Holy Grails of modern business. Simplifying my products and tailoring my words have created shortcuts and countless smiles.

Art – Simplicity and delight by Fukutaro Terauchi.

Terauchi_Fukutaro 2

 

Do business in Equilibrium

As business owner, always imagine you are based in Equilibrium.
This film is a fine piece of art about an utopian society governed by the banning of emotions and, consequently, every form of art.
To sum up in a few gentle words, your product appeals to the feelings and emotions of your consumers, but your business dealings don’t.

When dealing with customers, you have no feelings. Because you will get a lot of rejection, and this might shred your courage into so tiny bits that you will not be able to recognize yourself. Then you start doubting the magic problem-solving power of your product. Don’t. It is still you, and your product is wonderful.

Don’t care what people say or think about you. Care if they don’t respect you and your work. And care if they don’t respect your time.

Trust your intuition. If you have the feeling that you are wasting time with a non-client, you are probably right, so stop the swapping of emails as this leads nowhere. Your time is as precious as any other asset in your company.

Businesses are not about passions. Yes, your product is your passion, but selling it (with a profit) involves cold calculations.

Don’t overthink. There are two types of clients: people who want to do business with you and people who don’t. The challenge is to detect the latest category (ASAP) and distance from them.
To be continued.

Art by Michael Cheval.

About Iulia Halatz
“Writing is an Iron Tale, must be tough and sincere to the core of human perception of pain as valor. I am the grumpy T-Rex who started writing out of pain, not because of a polished world. Writing out of love is painless and herbivore. As we sometimes taste blood, ours or others’. Nevertheless, some words are so expensive that we are better left with them unspoken or write them with the ink of a Ghost…” She is a teacher, author, small entrepreneur and cyclist.

Writer’s block

Imagination doesn’t come easy or cheap. Sometimes words slide gracefully into polished sentences and sometimes they stumble in incredibly incongruous ideas that represent nothing.

Write what goes through your mind. Then shape and polish the sharp edges. Have your thoughts run wild and tame them a little. Not too much.

Find sources of inspiration in everything you see, read, watch. Write them down and make up a story.

Listen to people. They are stories on two legs. They can give you hints of lives you could never know.

Write the truest sentence that you know. “I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.”
Ernest Hemingway
I always start with the truth, it is more illuminating and saner than everything we can imagine.

Vincent Van Gogh 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art by Vincent van Gogh.

Engleza de joi/ Axe

  1. Axe = a tool that has a heavy metal blade and a long handle and that is used for chopping wood.
  2. The axe = the situation in which someone loses their job.

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.” -Franz Kafka

I illustrate with one of the incredible worlds of Vladimir Kush.

Vladimir Kush 3

Engleza de joi/ Poramboke

Poramboke = land that belongs to the government.

As this word has something of a tribal connotation, I illustrate with a tribal picture, not necessarily pertaining to the same culture. Just a beautiful painting epitomizing traditions and stories any culture should cherish and preserve.

Cheng Weidong

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art by Cheng Weidong.

Quote

“No one and nothing can harm us, child, except what we fear and love.”
Sigrid Undset, Norwegian – recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928.

I illustrate with Errol Le Cain‘s art for The Snow Queen.

Quote

“Do you know that every perfect life would mean the end of art?”
Robert Musil – author of The Man Without Qualities.

 

I have started my poems out of an imperfect heart. I have started my business out of an imperfect life wanting to do more – for me and for others.
Every person enters your life fighting the same conundrum. Your art can touch their souls and perfect some angles. Your magic might cast some threads in the community and create a better life.

John Singer Sargent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Craving for the perfect life as illustrated by John Singer Sargent.

Engleza de joi/ Dither

Dither = to delay taking actions because you are not sure about what to do.

“Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.”
Robert Musil – author of The Man Without Qualities.

As fairytales got mentioned, I illustrate with Tim Kirk‘s art for the Hobbit by J.R.R.Tolkien.

Be human!

“The lesson for the small is: be human! Accept that being human involves
some amount of epistemic arrogance in running your affairs. Do not be
ashamed of that. Do not try to always withhold judgment—opinions are
the stuff of life. Do not try to avoid predicting—yes, after this diatribe
about prediction I am not urging you to stop being a fool. Just be a fool in
the right places.*
What you should avoid is unnecessary dependence on large-scale
harmful predictions—those and only those. Avoid the big subjects that
may hurt your future: be fooled in small matters, not in the large. Do not
listen to economic forecasters or to predictors in social science (they are
mere entertainers), but do make your own forecast for the picnic. By all
means, demand certainty for the next picnic; but avoid government social security
forecasts for the year 2040.
Know how to rank beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the
harm they may cause.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

I illustrate with a beautiful car* (which makes me a fool in the right place as I know nothing of cars) by the British painter Alan Fearnley.

The serpent slayer

She quit pretending she needs a hero.
She is her hero
Her own sun and stars.
She is her sunset above the sea
She is her moon in late twilights
She is her words making pools of smiles
For whom she adores.

She is the serpent slayer
and every day is a day of thunder and love.

 

Water serpents By Gustav Klimt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art – Water snakes by Gustav Klimt.