Do not let the chapter title mislead you. We are not advocating unethical moves designed to secure short-term gains for personal benefit. But as Sun Tzu teaches us, victory is victory, and defeat is defeat. When you fall, no one will say, “What an honourable defeat.” For that reason, anyone pursuing success must make victory their primary objective, without exception. Not every action is permissible on the road to victory—but anything is fair game provided it does not compromise your integrity so deeply that victory itself becomes meaningless.
Every industry has its own dynamics, and every person has their own interests. Even when we do everything perfectly, we must never lose sight of this. Our own business offers the clearest example. For the first year to eighteen months after Sellf was founded, we were barely scraping by. We struggled to find clients, faced difficulties at every turn, and kept asking ourselves how we could grow. The answer came through two expensive lessons.
We once competed against other agencies in a pitch. Three finalists remained. It looked as though the account would go either to us or to another, global agency. Just days before the decision was due, the owner of the third company—the least likely contender, whose capabilities did not actually match the brief—suddenly “happened to run into” the decision-makers. The following day, that company was awarded the account. Much later, we learned that the decision-makers at the prospective client had been offered a 50% share of the gross profit from the account. The arrangement suited them, and they placed their own interests above what was best for their company.
That sounds terrible, of course. But 80% of business happens around the negotiating table, and a substantial majority make their decisions this way. Here, we repeat our earlier point about how important it is to distinguish between individuals and the organisations they represent—a distinction we must always uphold within our own venture. We cannot fix the world; we can only put our own house in order. We need to accept reality and, at times, know how to get our hands dirty.
Decisions are often driven by personal interests. That is why, even when business formally takes place between companies, it is usually between people at its core. Over the years, I have seen construction companies buy air rights to block a competitor’s development, pharmaceutical companies submit anonymous reports to the Ministry of Health to disrupt a rival cosmetics brand’s production, and many other examples. Of course, there is a significant difference between using such tactics as part of competition and using them in ways that tarnish your own name. The company owner who took that account from us is now facing multiple competition-law cases and criminal charges because he crossed the line far enough to damage his own reputation. The others I mentioned stayed at the top because they acted shrewdly enough to avoid drawing scrutiny to themselves.
Circumstances may change. Industries and people may change. But anyone who wants to succeed must remember one simple truth: business is personal. Even when it should not be, it is. That is why victory must be your primary objective, whatever the cost—short of sacrificing who you are.
Some of you may be thinking, “This is not a war.” Yet among artists, just as among companies, there is always a cold war underway. Ceasefires, agreements, mergers, and partnerships do not change that reality. If you look closely, they reinforce it.
So what does this look like in practice?
1. Positive Example: Blocking a Competitor Without Drawing Scrutiny—Apple and Supply Asymmetry
Apple is one of the great masters of playing by the rules while still playing “dirty” and ruthlessly. When the first iPhones and iPads were entering the market, it did not waste time in court trying to stop competitors such as Samsung, HTC, and Nokia from accessing comparable display and flash-memory technologies. Instead, it paid cash upfront to secure the production capacity of the world’s largest suppliers—and even their screen-cutting machines—years in advance. Its competitors designed technically excellent phones but could not find the components needed to manufacture them. Apple did nothing illegal and bribed no one. Yet by buying the supply chain’s equivalent of “air rights,” it choked off its competitors before their products even left the factory.
2. Positive Example: Understanding the Decision-Maker’s Personal Interests—Ray Kroc and the Real Game Behind McDonald’s
Everyone knows that the McDonald brothers built the world’s best and fastest hamburger operation. What people tend to forget is that they did not remain its owners. The brothers focused on creating the “perfect product”; Ray Kroc recognised where the real leverage lay, both within the system and among its decision-makers. When he realised that he could not overcome the brothers’ contractual rights through direct confrontation, he established a separate real estate company to purchase the land beneath the franchised restaurants. While the franchisees and the McDonald brothers sold hamburgers, Kroc came to own the ground they stood on. Eventually, he cornered the brothers within the very system they had built and bought the brand outright. He did not cross the red line. He simply rewrote the rules of the game in his own favour.
3. Negative Example: Crossing the Line and Tarnishing Your Own Name—Enron and the Danger of Drawing Scrutiny
The global equivalents of the rival agency owner who took that account from us are cases such as Enron and, more recently, FTX. Those who lose sight of the line between playing hardball and sinking into outright fraud and bribery eventually hit a wall. Enron’s executives went beyond exploiting regulatory gaps in the energy market. They crossed the line into manipulating decision-makers and inflating their financial statements through sham entities. In the short term, they won at every negotiating table. But the scrutiny they brought upon themselves ultimately destroyed the company and sent its executives to prison. If you cross the line so far that victory becomes meaningless, the table where you won becomes your grave.
4. Negative Example: Losing Through the Naive Belief That “The Best Will Win”—Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison
On the other side of the coin lies the tragedy of those who say, “My technology is flawless. I do not need to play dirty at the negotiating table.” In engineering and science, Nikola Tesla was leagues ahead of Thomas Edison. But Edison was more than an inventor. He was a ruthless operator who understood how to navigate the personal interests of politicians, financiers such as J. P. Morgan, and other decision-makers. To discredit Tesla’s alternating current, he exploited every grey area available, from lobbying to manipulating public opinion. The result? Tesla, one of history’s greatest geniuses, died penniless in a hotel room, while Edison remained at the top through the General Electric empire he had built. As we said: when you fall, no one will say, “What an honourable and technically justified defeat.”
Pride and ethics are luxuries reserved for the victors. Reputation, meanwhile, is the most valuable asset in business. Those who take the necessary steps without forgetting this will not lose.
