Some money is profit. Some money is a debt to the future
Originally written in Chinese. Translated with AI, reviewed by Gary. Read the Chinese original →
Recently a friend and I got talking about something interesting.
Last month I ran into 明光老师, the teacher whose class I wrote about before, and in a casual chat he said something I still remember.
He said: if a wolf is hungry and kills a sheep to eat, there is nothing wrong with that. That's how nature works. Living things have to survive, and survival means competition.
But if a wolf pushes a sheep off a cliff and kills it without eating it, just for the thrill, heaven will punish that.
I think this fits the business world very well.
There is nothing wrong with a company making money.
A company has to survive, pay salaries, grow and compete. It needs profit to do that.
The question is: how do you make your money?
If you make money because you created value, giving customers a better product, giving staff better opportunities, and letting suppliers grow with you, then that money is earned cleanly.
But if a company that is already making a lot of money squeezes suppliers, drags out payment terms and pushes others right up to the red line just to make more, until suppliers do things they shouldn't just to survive, then that money starts to become a problem.
On the surface, it looks like cost control.
In the long run, it comes back to bite you.
Because business isn't a single transaction. It's a web. Squeeze your suppliers, and they will find room somewhere else. Squeeze your staff, and they lose their passion. Squeeze your customers, and sooner or later they leave. Squeeze the whole ecosystem, and in the end the ecosystem squeezes you back.
It reminds me of the story of Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
When Gates shorted Tesla, Musk was furious. From his point of view, Tesla made electric cars and was pushing the energy transition. To talk about the environment, do philanthropy, and at the same time bet that Tesla would fall, was hard for him to accept.
Of course, from Gates's side, shorting a stock may simply have been an investment call. In capital markets, some people are bullish and some are bearish.
But the interesting part of the story isn't who was right.
It's that once someone already has great wealth, resources and influence, none of their decisions are ordinary money-making any more.
When ordinary people make money to live, everyone understands.
But when you are already standing very high, you have to ask yourself: am I making this decision to create value, or just to make more?
That difference is huge.
What a founder really has to work on in the end isn't just the business model, or the ability to raise money. It is their own appetite.
Making money is a company's basic skill. Restraint is a founder's character.
If a company doesn't make money, any talk of vision is fake.
But once you do make money, what will you use that ability for?
To keep squeezing others so you can make even more?
Or to make your team steadier, your supply chain healthier, and give your customers something better?
Some money is profit. Some money is a debt to the future.
A hungry wolf that hunts is surviving.
A wolf that isn't hungry but hurts others just to prove it is strong isn't surviving. Its appetite is out of control.
Companies are the same.
The truly great company isn't the one that makes the most money.
It's the one that, after making money, still hasn't forgotten why it exists.