How to ruin everything and ruin the fb2 business. "How to ruin everything and ruin a business": Five useful tips. Development of new products

03.02.2022

As promised, I take out from the comments the history of the ruin of entrepreneurs. The brutal statistic says that most start-up businesses go bust - and my experience is that the statistic is completely correct. However, businessmen are usually stubborn and thick-skinned, having gone bankrupt once, they start again, and having gone bankrupt a second time, they take into account mistakes and start again at zero. The third or fourth attempt is usually successful.

The main business for 20 years is logistics, customs, foreign economic activity. By the way, it has also been transformed all the time - at first it was in-line cargo of the same type, container lots, now it is groupage cargo from anywhere in the world.

The first "left" experience - atelier for tailoring shirts by individual measurements. Pros - it was very interesting as we were one of the first. We bought fabrics in Italy from the Albini factory, then from the Turks, buttons (mother-of-pearl) first in Australia, then in China. A manager went to each client: he took measurements, chose the fabric, style, then sewing and embroidering the client's initials.

Pluses - it was very interesting, the production was located in the church on the cadet line of the VO right under the dome, there were many interesting customers. The process is one continuous creativity, we even came up with a name at random - Cagliari (the capital of Sardinia). Mistakes - did not calculate the limited demand, especially in the early 2000s. If you look at how most men look in Russia and, for example, in Italy even in 2017, everything will become clear.

The mistake was a large number of partners. I had 4 of them - it's prohibitively many. The ideal option is two. There were also problems in management: I appeared at the production site once a month. Once discovered hazing and theft. I can talk for a long time about this business, as it left me with good memories with zero profit.

Number 2. After a pause of 4-5 years, I again drifted into another fornication. The fact is that my main business is a great guide to many businesses - I had dozens of different clients, from construction companies to sex shops. We sometimes find any goods in different parts of the world for our clients, conclude foreign trade contracts for them, deliver goods to the country, perform customs clearance and certify.

As you can imagine, we have seen the economics of many businesses, and we were constantly tempted to do something else. After analyzing the profitability, we saw that the biggest money is earned on women. That's how I became the exclusive distributor of two American cosmetics brands.

We bought goods in the USA, brought them, cleared customs and went to the Nevsky Berega exhibition. We built a creative crazy stand: we had a corner of California - a hip 1974 California T2 Volkswagen, beach umbrellas, sunbeds, an 80s surfer board, girls in T-shirts and appropriate music. Everyone liked the stand, both the owners of the exhibition and visitors, but it did not achieve its goal. The emphasis was on the show and the entertainment of the audience, not on the products we presented.

Then there were four more exhibitions in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Our mistake was choosing the wrong brand. We took a product of a high price category, high-quality a la natural, while at that time there were already about 100 hair brands on the market. Despite the fact that the consumer liked the products, the price was high, especially after the dollar exchange rate jumped. In order to raise the brand, you need to spend a lot of time, money and get used to the messy business of the beauty industry in Russia.

One of the most problematic moments is that you are forced to give the product for sale, and even if it is sold, it is very difficult to collect money from beauty salons and cosmetics stores - 90% of them keep records in squared notebooks.

Of the pluses, again, a lot of positive emotions from “money thrown away for entertainment”. To some extent, I became my own for the participants in this closed business and now I provide them with services: that is, I have acquired new customers for my main business, and today they give me 50% of the turnover.

Summing up, advice - any business should first of all bring pleasure: from the process, from making a profit, from communicating with people, from experience. Ideally, if there are two of you - one partner should complement the other. I'm lucky I found one. Even if you have different interests and lifestyles, this is even good, but you must trust each other and share powers at the very beginning.

Remember, any monetary loss is an invaluable experience. Take risks, try different areas.

I'm thinking now, maybe it's time to open a sex shop? There is experience in delivery: from Hastlera itself, they somehow carried a whole container of toys to a client in Novosibirsk (it's cold there in winter - people warm up).

el_marka

My brother was a pawn shop manager. Opened it on shares with two partners. One far from perfect day, these partners came to the pawnshop with the police and presented an order to conduct a survey on operational information about illegal activities at this address.

They took out everything that was in the pawnshop. Three boxes of gold and other valuables, security notes, director's work notes, computers with accounting, all documents, a video recorder that filmed what was happening. 19 sheets of protocol. The next day, the police handed over the seized valuables to the mentioned partners. They "lost" these values.

As a result of the audit, a decision was made to refuse to initiate criminal proceedings against the brother due to the absence of corpus delicti. With regard to police officers, the case has already been dismissed three times for lack of corpus delicti.

The “partners” have not been prosecuted because the police do not see any evidence of their participation in the crime.

epic_slowpoke

All my attempts have always been broken by a lack of traffic (both Internet and live). For example, once we bought things from China and let's sell them. Since there was no money to rent a point, they sold it on the Internet.

It sold poorly. Few people visited the site and yf ads on Avito. Somehow, in two months they managed to recapture the money and even earn 2,000. After that, everything was turned off and they did not do it again.

The rest of my projects suffered the same fate. It is not enough to do something good - you need to tell the widest possible circle of interested people about it, and this is really difficult and very costly.

mari_v_polnoch

Incorrect calculations: the starting amount was 1.5 times higher, since a bunch of nuances were not taken into account when purchasing and paying rent. They also miscalculated the payback period. In general, working capital ran out very quickly and I had to take out a loan. Interest on credit funds was crazy, because the company was new and with low turnover. It ended with the fact that we barely paid off the debt, sold everything that was possible and we are learning math so that next time we don’t trust the numbers in everyone’s business plans.

saintjohnny

There was the first unsuccessful experience, it was the purchase of an allegedly working business. And since this business was the first, there was no experience. Therefore, we bought a deliberately unprofitable business and flew by.

The most important advice is to never buy "profitable" businesses, or buy only physical assets (real estate, equipment, goods) and not pay for an "idea", "passing place", "special dealer agreement", etc.

I worked for several years at the end of the last century (mid-90s) in a small private company that tried to develop and produce mini-automatic telephone exchanges in Moscow. Then it was a novelty, every businessman or entrepreneur wanted his own ATSku, the Soviet ones were condo and huge, and the imported ones were beautiful and expensive.

We (I was on the technical team there - the developer of several blocks) made a mini-ATS, and certified it in the Ministry of Communications (LONIIS - whoever knows in the know) and successfully sold it for more or less a couple of years. We managed to manufacture and sell several hundred pieces with a capacity of 20 to 200 numbers. Our price was very competitive, if not dumping - 4-6 times less per number than all kinds of Siemens and domestic "quanta" - domestic manufacturers with small-capacity automatic telephone exchanges were generally strained.

But then it crashed. Panasonic and LG broke into our market with the inexorable force - those who already led a conscious life in those years, they remember the most aggressive advertising campaign - Panasonic-san and other narrow-eyed commercials that were played on TV around the clock in every commercial break.

Then we learned what real dumping is. The interventionists lowered the price of their ATS for sales on the Russian market by 8-10 times from the selling prices of the same models in Europe and America. The monsters could afford to use the profits in other countries to sponsor the capture of the market by another one.

We "grunt our hearts" lowered the price of our mini-ATS to the minimum survival rate of the company. It turned out only 20-30% cheaper than Panasonic. But this did not help - any buyer would prefer to buy, roughly speaking, for 100 thousand rubles a device with the Panasonic logo instead of an unknown domestic manufacturer for 80 thousand.

After a year and a half of such existence, the company safely fell into poverty and self-liquidated. The interventionists, having captured the market and finally ruined domestic producers (large ones in the first place, we fell under the guise), began to slowly raise prices. Now the price of their ATS per telephone number is about 10-15 times higher (in dollars) than it was at the time of the intervention. Such a classic seizure of the market by dumping, right from the textbook. No bribery is also clearly not done.
And how, tell me, could you survive in such a situation?

I went bankrupt for the first time when, after the collapse of the USSR, I built a business using Japanese technology, an ear on clay feet, without money on a commodity loan, and on my reputation. The accountant made a tax mistake, and I was so busy growing the company that I didn't keep track.

The second time I went bankrupt, when I did a lot of construction work for the budget on credit, and in 1998 the crisis began, the ruble depreciated greatly, I bought materials for foreign currency - I went bankrupt.

We did a technological scientific startup. They took a state grant for several million, opened a laboratory, went to conferences. The team included a human generator who started and steered it all, a couple of human scientists, a master with hands, a couple of sales people with connections, a couple of people on the hook. Everything you need for this kind of business.

The matter ended with the fact that the man-generator began to slowly raise his salary, and there was not enough money for the rest. The people on the hook left, then only one scientist remained, the salesman began to earn extra money on the hook, the master with his hands found another job, and the generator received more and more.

The grant money ran out, no result was achieved, but the generator repaired itself.

father_gorry

My three in the piggy bank

1. Web studio in the early 2000s in Novosibirsk. At first, everything went fine, almost every office building on Krasny Prospekt had our client. The prices are below average, its chic engine ... it was he who, apparently, ruined us. It became so perfect that we even stopped fighting for every revision on top of the TK, because it was easy and natural to make them. And clients suddenly began to want sites on common, then still buggy engines - PHPNuke, Mamba, Drupal, etc. In general, regular customers began to fall off. Then, of course, they cursed, but did not return. The new ones were also wary of self-written technologies. I was faced with a choice - either move to a lower level and earn money, or change activities. Chose the second.

2. Whistles (Irish flutes). We studied the demand - it was. I set up production, distributed samples to familiar musicians - everyone was delighted with both the sound and the cost. The partner sent a few pieces to unknown people from an authoritative Internet hangout for Celtic music. And the local guys scolded the flute to smithereens. Verdict: "does not play." Without any construct and details - just "we don't like it". Maybe they just didn’t know how to play or were distinguished by aversion to everything Russian, but there were no other ways in the niche market and the project had to be closed. The moral is that you should be in contact with the focus group that represents effective demand, and work only for them.

3. Indestructible copter. A drone with a camera and other body kit, the same as the others, only it cannot be destroyed in an accident - even against stones, even into water, even against stones into water. Huge money savings and risk reduction. Here I don’t understand at all what’s the matter - but the project did not take off. Among the half-dozen focus groups that have been run, no one has so far been able to elicit interest. While I do not draw conclusions, the project froze, but did not quit.

alexbomboom

In short, I first bought the goods, then I just started to think about how and to whom I would sell it. The first injection was relatively small, about 200,000 rubles. Not to say that he went bankrupt, but he stuffed a little cones.

Time number. Gaming computer club. They took out a loan, agreed to rent a room, made some kind of repair, and made furniture with their own hands. We bought bulk computers, assembled them ourselves, set them up, installed games. Agreed with a local provider on a dedicated Internet line. They made a sign. And away we go... At first we worked with the partner ourselves day after day, then we could afford to hire admins. Raised their game servers, StarCraft, Diablo, LineAge, Contra. And storage servers with content. We signed an agreement with a provider and, under a sublicense, began to connect the residents of the house to the Internet. Joined the Russian eSports League. No one in 2001 could have thought that high-speed Internet would come to every apartment and local servers and clubs would become practically useless to anyone. I left the business, my partner gave me my share in iron, which I sold myself. By the way, he is still doing the same thing, but the exhaust is only enough to cover expenses.

Number two. The three of us gathered for a glass of tea, two 1C nicknames and I, like a techie. And they decided to stir up an unprecedented business in our wilderness, a company for integrated automation and maintenance of enterprises. There were no special problems, everyone had an accumulated customer base, certificates and other dregs. It was a blessed year 2005. They rented an office, hired a secretary. We attended to agreements with software companies, organized iron supply channels. We started to work. Things went smoothly: by 2007, the firm had more than a dozen 1C programmers, 6 technicians, a couple of secretaries and an office manager. We even set up our own training and certification assistance. There were more than three dozen enterprises on service.

But then came 2008. Enterprises began to massively jump off contracts, switching to pay-by-call. We worked efficiently, so by inertia everything continued to work without maintenance and did not break. Contracts for ITS were not renegotiated. Procurement of new hardware and software has ceased. People had to be reduced, we could not provide all the staff with work and, accordingly, pay. Then the rattling of one of the partners surfaced, who let fatty orders past the company into his pocket. Swearing and parting finally finished off the firm. Everyone again fled to the sides with their own clients.

Personal experience: a bank with working capital went bust. That's it, end of story. What places need to be strengthened so as not to be knocked down?

zorin_ivan_1982

Tried to start a software development business. It didn't grow. The reason is that I had to create my own software and sell it, and I tried to develop custom software. It doesn't fly.

Yuri Bystrov

They engaged in the production of polystyrene, or rather, they bought equipment and supposedly production technology. Before buying the equipment, we did a market analysis, identified a steady demand for products, purchased equipment, launched advertising, certified a trial batch of products ... but the foam plastic of the proper quality did not go into series production.

The equipment manufacturer merged, shrugging, like it’s like that for you, for others everything works out (in fact, it was not so). As a result, the business, with all the investments in raw materials, in staff training, in the cost of premises, and in the salaries of staff, went down.

cat_shred

Moscow and the region, in chronological order. All examples are after 2005.

1) Pawnshop in the market. After the market closed, the pawnshop also closed “automatically”. They were no longer able to “raise” the business from scratch in a new place.

2) A company selling paint and varnish products. At the height of the season, the company and the management were accused of selling acetone to drug manufacturers, the warehouse was sealed for this case and the computer network was confiscated. A month later, the charges were dropped due to insufficiency, the warehouse and computers were returned. But the season was lost, the firm never recovered.

3) Firm for small wholesale trade in beer. As retailers were forced out by chains, the client base narrowed (it is easier for chains to bend the factory directly). After a period of slow fading, the business was closed, the director left for another area.

4) Pizzeria cheese factory. As milk production declined in the Moscow region, problems began with raw materials (to drive tanks from Krasnodar - not the same volumes).

5) The owner of a successful business decided to invest his spare money in buying a restaurant. There was no personal experience and ideas, just maintaining quality and cleanliness in Moscow is not enough. For a while, the business worked by inertia from the old team, but eventually died out.

6) Brokerage firm. After the sudden death of the director, there was no worthy replacement. When all the money was spent, the company closed.

7) Construction company, finishing of apartments and offices. After the license was revoked, the bank's working capital "hung". The business managed to be kept, compensating for the losses by selling the owner's personal apartment and car.

In the early 1990s, he transported food (not to St. Petersburg) for small-scale wholesale trade and chose the wrong storage warehouse. Chased for cheapness and chose a warehouse far away. It didn't make sense for my customers, the food stalls, to come to me because of the discount I could give due to the cheapness of renting a warehouse. It was necessary to choose a warehouse on a promoted wholesale base.

I also noticed that all initial calculations in a new business (we are talking about a small business, where calculations are often done on the knee) can be safely doubled to get closer to the real figure. If the business scheme has already been tested, then the calculations are more or less accurate. It is very useful at the beginning of your "business career" to tune in to hard work and constant savings, instead of the expected explosive growth in consumption.

pasha_1980l

A financial advisory firm. The owner organized it at the very end of the 90s and very successfully caught the wave of economic recovery, when this market in 2000-2008. grew at a tremendous pace, essentially created from scratch.

As soon as the first money went in 2000-2001. he immediately pulled away from current affairs and all the time dreamed of finding a good manager who would do everything for him, as well as salespeople who would promote the business. And he himself will be engaged in the type of "strategy".

As a result, what happened was supposed to happen. Salesmen and managers were of two types: either unskilled or smart. The smart ones very quickly realized that it was much more profitable to open their own company, which they did, taking away customers.

At the same time, on the general wave of the market upturn, the company inertially existed (stagnated) until the beginning of 2009, when a decrease in the number of orders led to salary delays, since the working capital was also withdrawn by this owner and there were absolutely no reserves. And these delays also stimulated the remnants of still loyal employees to seek their fortune on the side, taking with them the remnants of customers.

yra22yra

My friend has such a story, though not yet finished, while he is fighting: he created a small business, things went well. Signed good contracts and urgent expansion was required. He invested in equipment, in the supply of raw materials, and then bam - there is not enough electricity capacity. A trifle question, I wrote an application for an increase in power in IDGCs by 630 kVA instead of the existing 160 kVA and, having waited for approval from there and new technical conditions, I began to read them with interest.

Having read up to the line 6,400,000 rubles (six million four hundred thousand rubles!) For 630 kVA, I threw out this piece of paper and is now looking for workarounds where you can connect without having any dealings with this unworthy organization. Udmurtia, Izhevsk, if anything.

alhambra13

My first business was in the 90s: I borrowed money and bought multi-colored harvester jackets in Krasnodar in the amount of 20 pieces for 2500 rubles. I gave the brothers a few pieces, they sold them to friends, earned 1,500 rubles from each jacket. Then he gave back the borrowed money and bought a few more jackets from the profit, sold it again, then, when the markets appeared, he rented a point in the market and connected all the brothers again.

We are prem in life together: if someone has an option to earn money, then he will definitely pull up the rest.

There should not be any friends and acquaintances in business, they are needed for buzz and pastime, and for business only family. My friends did not follow my path and started a business with acquaintances. As a result, they quarreled and barely covered their debts.

carbophos

Design and installation departments are often dumped from the multidisciplinary parent organization as a whole team.

There was a wonderful story when the first card turnstiles were introduced in the Moscow metro. After the delivery of the project, one of the directors with all the “metro builders” dumped from the contractor and sat down on a contract for the operation and support of the new system. For a circle, this was much more money than the project itself, and a new successful integrator grew up on them. And in many respects the same cash flow was not enough for the initial integrator to survive the crisis of 1998;

The moral of the story is different. Firstly, the once great integrator had a mess with cash flow. The loss of one reliable payer therefore became critical, and not just a shamefully lost profit.

Secondly, the management simply did not realize the importance of the contract for support (and the clever director of the direction, of course, did not enlighten on this topic) - it lived mainly in the paradigm of selling projects as such. And the moral here is that a service is the best product in terms of cost, and value-added generators are highly mobile.

Thirdly, of course, the same “partner” factor, which is also the factor of a cunning hired top.

Anton Bogatyrev

There are such special people: arbitration managers and auditors are called. We can spend days and nights telling stories about a broken business. In general, there are not so many reasons:

1. Gross marketing mistakes, underestimation of the competitive environment and consumer properties of a product or service.

2. Debt load, both financial and commodity.

3. Underfunding - that is, just a lack of working capital caused by improper financial planning (this is also true for paragraph 2).

4. Negative balance sheet structure - accounts payable overtakes receivables, after which a cash gap, non-payments and bankruptcy inevitably follows. The reason for this is the non-use of accounting, internal control and analysis mechanisms directly prescribed in the laws.

5. Lack of risk management. Gross mistakes and negligence in the conduct of business and paperwork, gross neglect of all types of security, from fire to economic.

6. Corporate theft.

7. Corporate conflict.

8. External fraud, theft, robbery, raiding and other criminal schemes for the forced withdrawal of assets, "forceful" mergers and acquisitions.

9. Administrative pressure and corruption burden. At the same time, it must be said that the last point is relevant only for over-margin markets. Corruption exists only where there are superprofits, that is, now it happens, but in a very narrow segment.

All the stories of our oppositionists about corruption are greatly exaggerated. By the way, the criminal component is now rapidly decreasing, it is almost always based on the participation of internal agents - partners of the businessmen themselves, or, alternatively, hired managers and leaders who have decided to deceive partners / owners a little.

In short, the main causes of the collapse are the cash gap and the subsequent default and bankruptcy. But their reasons are, first of all, the lack of planning, analysis, risk management and internal control, and, well, due diligence in doing business and paperwork.

If anyone wants to listen in more detail, then my colleagues and I give lectures at the St. Petersburg RS ISAS - the revision school of the Institute for the Preservation of Shareholder Property. For one thing, I highly recommend the multi-volume work of our institute “Register of Corporate Fraud”, which analyzes in detail by situation all the schemes we have identified over a third of a century.

silverlj

Several times I tried to launch non-standard products for the Russian market in the hope that the absence of competitors would bring fabulous profits - marketing audit, subscription services for HR functionality, and some others.

Almost everything went down the drain, bringing me only losses for advertising. Only one direction quickly shot, which after a couple of years became widely known, and now feeds entire companies of different bastards who stole my idea.

I can advise the following - if you have opened some kind of profitable direction, do not give mass advertising, and even more so shove your vanity away, send journalists to the stump who will offer to write an article about you. Keep everything under wraps.

If your product is really good and exclusive, only the end consumer should know about it, but not a bunch of people who want to quickly get rich on the same one.

Of course, this applies primarily to all kinds of consulting, which is easy to organize for almost any entrepreneur with minimal capital.

prioskolje

1. When renting a room, think about whether the landlord will be tempted by your business and turn you off at some point when everything is going well in order to earn extra money yourself. It happened to me with the production of cabinet furniture, when six months later I had to look for a new premises, the rent of which subsequently ate up all the small incomes.

2. A classic mistake - having brought my second business (wholesale of wallpaper in the Russian markets from a warehouse in Ivanovo) to about zero and a small plus, I did not pull just my own residence in Moscow. I did not have a part-time job that was convenient for combining with business.

In 2005, he opened a point of sale for men's shirts, socks, underpants and all sorts of crap. Then another one. Then he handed over the second one to print photos, since the clothes didn’t go for something.
As a result, by the summer of 2008, he was driven into the red and closed both points.

I consider the reason for the closure to be the lack of my attention to business, caused by the fact that I myself worked at that time. It was necessary to delve better, and seriously engage in one thing, without spraying.

dr_denim_spb

My wife and I have a small business in common - a veterinary clinic in St. Petersburg. They started not so long ago, but so far they seem to have made one important mistake - they hired too many staff for direct veterinary work, and they themselves took up other work - getting the business on its feet (fire, SES, labor protection, Rospotrebnadzor, Tax, accounting, cash documents , licensing, advertising, reporting, and so on).

When three months passed, the mistake was realized and half of the staff was fired, leaving only the most intelligent. Themselves also stood "to the machine."

On the other hand, it may not have been a mistake - we won these first three months to set up the entire system from scratch to working condition. If we would immediately start working ourselves, we would save on staff, but I feel that the mess in the documents and all sorts of permits would still be the same - there would be no time to fix everything. A mess in documents and accounting often leads to large costs and problems with government agencies.

cergey_p

Pskov region, peasant farming, apiary. Two years in a row low-yielding honey.

juvisuel

1. Trying to build a video design studio with a cool level of work. They did not take into account the fact that delicious orders were distributed among their own, there were no connections to get good projects. They were crushed by crumbs. It was Belarus. They were afraid to raise prices so as not to scare away customers, so there was never a free turnover. For seven years they tried to put everything on their feet, lost the team four times. In 2008, the crisis finally knocked down.

2. The story is not over yet - three years ago I became very interested in creating unusual business cards. For me then it was as strange as it would be strange for a builder of skyscrapers to start sculpting pots. But it really drew me in. Decided it was a hobby. In general, there were no calculations, plans, just did as it was done. Invested in this money from the main work. I bought equipment, took assistants, people admired the work.

Again I fell for the same rake - I was afraid to raise prices, so after doing a bunch of just awesome work, I ended up in the minuses. As a result, the prices had to be raised fivefold. Old customers were scared for a few months. There was nothing to feed the team, they let them go on vacation. Now customers have started knocking at the new prices. It would seem that this is it, but I can not dare to start again. It seems that it didn’t burn out, but it’s as if it came from the war, and you don’t want to go back.

alex_kozlofsky

The story happened to my friends. A small network of stores with discs (dvd, audio, games) worked and expanded on credit money. At its peak, there were 5 stores in two cities. Everything quickly ended during the crisis of 2008, when sales fell sharply and there was nothing to pay salaries to sellers and loans. The main mistake was that there was no financial cushion in case of a drawdown in income. All the money earned was immediately spent, so at the first drop in sales, the business went bankrupt almost instantly.

Well, some simple advice:

1. Do not do business with friends and relatives.
2. Write a business plan and follow it.
3. All agreements between partners must be recorded in writing.
4. If you can do without partners, then do without them.
5. Cut to a minimum spending on yourself.
6. Keep accurate financial records.

I had an IT firm with 15 employees. I appointed a manager, and he destroyed everything, all the clients left. The curtain.

We tried a manufacturing business with three partners, but it never “wound up”. We had a guaranteed sales, but we were never able to arrange the supply of materials, the main of them was in short supply, as well as a suitable premises.

Conclusions: do not start investing until a complete business chain is built: suppliers, customers, premises, equipment are found. And it’s probably better to start alone, so as not to rely on the others. As an option: choose the main partner who makes decisions and is responsible for the entire enterprise.

TekBoris

At the dawn of the Internet, there was a chic business where my buddies and I, in all seriousness, raised 30,000 bucks a year each. They laundered online casino, poker and booker bonuses. They just registered new accounts and scrolled through the bonus loot. It was a bit of a chore to do it, but the returns were fabulous. Especially in the early 2000s, when a good salary in Moscow was 500 dollars, and laundering bonuses brought 2-3 thousand.

It all ended with the fact that large companies increased their customer base with the help of bonuses and bonuses were practically canceled. But we warmed our hands well on such an attraction of generosity, I personally earned myself an apartment in Moscow in 4 years. And notice all this in between times, without interrupting your studies and the main place of work.

father_gorry

Friends projects.

1. Producing beginner musicians, label, CD publishing house. Started in 2004, burned out in about 2007 due to piracy. Sales were down, but scrobbler last.fm plays were up. Moral - protect the content.

2. Tailoring of curtains, 1998-2008 approx. The firm was unable to grow into a large enterprise, as the founders systematically hired managers who scammed them, cheated them and scored on customers. Moral - you can not save on the salary of employees.

3. Intelligent algorithm for composing and arranging music. At the time, this was a huge breakthrough. The founder and author of the technology was not only the smartest person, but also a talented organizer - he revived the company several times and produced a product of excellent quality and capabilities. Modern sequencers regularly implement bits and pieces of the features that were in the Onyx Arranger, and musicians willingly use them. The reason for the failure is not entirely clear to me. Perhaps it's a combination of a not very user-friendly interface and a focus on the machine, and not on the user, but this is unlikely, since programs with much less convenience and more complexity are now in use.

Not broke, but almost broke:

1. When he transferred the brigades to time wages instead of piecework. People just stupidly stopped working. Managed to get everything back.

2. Underestimation of costs. Little things can add up to so many costs that they completely gobble up profits. Constant monitoring of overhead costs is required. If you can not buy a chair for an employee - do not buy. Be sure to have a budget for the project and constantly monitor its implementation. If this is not done, for some reason it starts with contractors and employees: but you still need to buy - pay.

3. I ran into a tax - barely fought back. Chemistry with taxes. If I hadn’t chemized, I would have gone bankrupt right away - stupidly within a month.

alexvlad7

His own: a kid came from a person with whom he periodically collaborated and did not communicate idle - he seemed to use me unnoticed by the bulk of those around him, then he completely switched to drugs ... a kid - and disappeared for six months. And less than a month later, a government agency arrived with searches and seizures ... More than six months of nerves. It is very difficult to “get up” from scratch and without initial capital in some topics, and in this and so on, it is also a matter of reputation.

From a former partner: at the beginning of the 2000s, employees of a state agency “squeezed” the club from two partners in favor of a third.

Christmas tree

No matter how many businesses I started “with partners”, garbage always came out, and it doesn’t matter if there was a profit or not. Didn't live for more than a couple of years. The last couple solo - all the way through.

The same badass. As soon as there are partners, business is kirdyk. To a size in which one person can not cope until he has grown.

In the 90s, three very chic different businesses opened and closed one after the other. The reason is the deception of companions. Simple deception. There were very few means of control then. Invented, developed and implemented a specific network for the distribution of any services. People believed, but a year later, in almost one month, they stole everything, everyone they trusted. All capital has always been mine.

Net profit

One of the most enduring and invincible myths common among Russian entrepreneurs is the myth of net profit. Net profit is perceived by them as successful, understandable and, even worse, the only measure of a successful business. Such a delusion has brought bankruptcy to more than one enterprise, and not only in Russia.

According to numerous memoirs, Steve Jobs, returning to the management of Apple in 1997, often criticized his predecessor, John Sculley, for excessive passion for net profit, which, according to Jobs, became the main reason for Apple's loss of its market positions and, paradoxically, unprofitability . It was under Jobs, who did not put profit at the forefront, that the company not only got out of losses, but also became one of the most profitable in the world.

On May 3, 2012, the Russian version of Forbes magazine published an article by Adam Hartung "How Sony was dying." The author links the company's 2012 loss forecast of $6.4 billion to a company strategy that places too much emphasis on industrialization, that is, production efficiency, economies of scale, and low costs, and too little on new products, ideas, and technologies.

These examples suggest at least two thoughts:

1) - the presence of a company's net profit in itself is not a sign of its success;

2) - the close attention of the first persons of business to net profit and, in particular, to business costs does not always make the company more efficient and sustainable.

However, many Russian entrepreneurs still consider net profit as the main indicator of success. “My company's profit grew by 25% last year,” the businessman, a resident of a city that recently became a millionaire, proudly said. “In terms of production volumes and net profit, we are the largest in Moscow,” the owner of a capital production company said. At the same time, the first did not fulfill its ambitious plans, remaining a regional middle peasant, and the second went bankrupt, while indebted to its employees, creditors and suppliers.

The myth of net profit among Russian entrepreneurs is very tenacious, especially in small and medium-sized businesses. In some companies, the owners tie the motivation of the CEO and top managers to net profit, believing that in this way they turn them into their allies. Although sometimes, as will be shown in the example at the end of this chapter, the exact opposite effect is achieved. What is the reason for such love of Russian businessmen for net profit?

This is the simplest and most understandable indicator of business performance - the difference between income and expenses, between understandable and tangible values. Since many Russian businessmen do not have a financial education, other indicators (for example, ROE or ROCE) are too ephemeral for them.

Net profit - a fund for the payment of dividends, that is, the personal income of the entrepreneur. The growth of net profit is psychologically connected for him with personal success, which, in turn, can be converted into symbols of success - cars, houses, yachts, and so on.

Even if an organization does not keep management records, and there is no experienced financier (or at least an economist) in its staff, it submits financial statements, including a profit and loss statement, and pays income tax. Therefore, the business owner faces the concept of "profit" from the first days of its existence.

But what, after all, is wrong with an organization increasing its profitability? Why can an over-enthusiasm for net income be detrimental to a business? There are several reasons.

Profit - the value of "paper"

The first reason is obvious, unfortunately, not for everyone. Net profit (both in accounting and in management accounting) is a calculated value reflecting the difference between income and expenses attributed to a given accounting period. At the same time, income received from the point of view of accounting and expenses incurred, as a rule, do not correlate directly with cash flows. In other words, the product can be shipped, but the money for it is not received. Costs may be incurred, but the money has not yet been paid. The same manufacturer from Moscow fell into this trap - the presence of "paper" net profit did not save him from bankruptcy caused by excessively inflated receivables and inefficient inventory management. He had a profit, but there was no money - they were either with clients or in a warehouse in the form of raw materials and semi-finished products.

The "paper" net profit is also affected by non-monetary items of income and expenses. One of them, depreciation, we will analyze below in a little more detail. However, there are other virtual costs that distort the value of net income. For example, the revaluation of assets (property, foreign currency loans, investments in the capital of other organizations) or the write-off of bad receivables can lead to an increase or decrease in net profit. None of these actions reflects the success of the organization in what it is doing at the moment, but it affects the net profit.

The company's net profit can be affected by such a virtual income item as “deferred profit”, regarding which even accountants and financiers do not have a common opinion. However, it is sometimes used by unscrupulous financial or CEOs to present a company's financial performance in a more favorable light. In particular, the most notorious bankruptcy in recent business history, the collapse in 2001 of the American energy company Enron, is associated with a similar way of misreporting. Here is what the economist Sergei Guriev says about this in a lecture, the summary of which is given on the portal Slon.ru :

“What is market-to-market accounting? Let's say we signed a gas supply deal with you. I agreed that I would buy gas from you in twenty years at such and such a price, and sell it to someone else at a different price. I can put each specific transaction on the balance right now. How? I know that I will earn so many dollars on this transaction, so I can write it down as an asset today. If I know that I will make money on this trade, then I have generated profit this year, which I can show as this year's profit. What is the problem here? That how much I earn on a deal to buy gas in twenty years depends on what my assumptions are about the price of gas in the market in twenty years. Accordingly, by making different assumptions about how much gas will cost in twenty years, today's profits can be manipulated. This is a relatively legitimate procedure as long as your assumptions are transparent, understandable to the market, and, generally speaking, not crazy. The easiest way to make money from market-to-market accounting, if you do it in a non-transparent and secret way, is to make two deals: one to sell gas in twenty years, the other to buy gas - and put in different assumptions about gas price in twenty years. This was practiced quite often at Enron.”

Russian financiers and economists are generally not that resourceful, but they are smart enough to improve net income. For example, in a regional company whose profits increased by 25%, it was customary to frame any activity to create something new (for example, opening a store or developing a product) as a “project”. The company's financiers, with the consent of the owner, began to attribute the costs of such "projects" not to current costs, but to investments. On the one hand, it was justified - the cost of repairing the premises for the next store should be attributed to investments. On the other hand, many employees who were also engaged in operational work were involved in the “projects”, however, part of their payroll fund (PAYB) began to fall out of operating costs. For example, 20% of the legal department's payroll became an investment as lawyers worked on leases for new premises, and 30% of the HR department's payroll became an investment because its employees recruited and trained staff for new stores.

All these reporting manipulations (which were also almost impossible to verify) led to an unprecedented increase in the company's "paper" net profit without visible improvements in labor productivity, business processes, production efficiency or sales margins. This was due to the fact that not only the owner measured the success of his business in rubles of "paper" profit; the motivation of all top managers, including those responsible for reporting, was tied to it. The more costs they attributed to “projects,” the higher their bonuses were.

If market-to-market accounting is hardly often practiced in Russian companies, then almost any businessman faces the concept of "depreciation". This non-monetary cost item is important because it affects accounting profit and therefore income tax. However, its influence can be misinterpreted. For example, the management of one manufacturing company near Moscow, when summing up the results of the year, was especially pleased with the increased net profit. However, upon closer analysis, it turned out that this growth was largely due to the fact that the company's equipment had exhausted its depreciation period - economists simply stopped accruing it, since more than eight years had passed since the purchase of the machines. And because the equipment was capital intensive, depreciation costs dropped substantially. However, from our point of view, this was not a reason to uncork the champagne, for us it was a signal that the company was working on worn-out equipment, which could cause problems in the near future.

Conversely, a “heavier” “depreciation” item on the income statement due to brand new (and possibly not yet running) equipment that has just been put on the balance sheet does not yet signal that your company has suddenly started to perform worse.

Profit - short-term indicator

The financial aspects of "paper" profits are quite obvious and understandable to many experienced entrepreneurs. However, Steve Jobs and Adam Hartung did not criticize Apple and Sony because their management did not understand the principles of costing. The essence of their criticism was different: focusing on short-term (quarterly or annual) profits, company managers sacrificed long-term promising projects for the sake of momentary profit.

Apple sells its devices at a high price (and makes a big profit) not because of the stylish design and not because of the big name, as many believe. The company follows the strategy of developing advanced products of its time, which requires significant costs, which are covered by profits. For example, the development of the iPhone took several years and cost the company many millions of dollars. The high price that Apple was asking for its product was necessary to recoup its investment and the future investment needed to launch new products. The company got through the troubles it got into in the 1990s by being willing to take risks and incur additional costs in creating marketable products that sometimes directly conflict with quarterly earnings goals. The source of its excess profits in the 2000s was not cost reduction, but, on the contrary, an increase in the cost of innovation.

Adam Hartung criticizes Sony for the fact that, carried away by the scaling of production and downsizing, it has lost the ability to generate new ideas. The company has evolved from a technological leader to a hulking industrial giant whose products are lost in the ranks of fast-growing competitors in South Korea and China. Excessive focus on profits yesterday led to losses for the company today - the lack of new ideas and savings on investments deprived the company of unique and profitable products.

Yitzhak Adizes compared profits to a tennis score. If you, running around the court, look at the scoreboard all the time, you will inevitably lose. You should focus not on the score, but on the flight of the ball, on the actions of the opponent, on the direction of the wind, and so on. And if you do everything right, then the account (that is, profit) will grow in your favor. It's the same in business - instead of constantly monitoring the "net income" line in the reports, you need to focus more often on the question: is my company creating value for the consumer that others cannot create and for which the consumer will be willing to pay me not only today but also tomorrow?

Profit - retrospective indicator

The income statement is usually prepared at the end of the month following the reporting month. But even if the collection of information occurs quickly enough, it will contain only retrospective (as some financiers say - "posthumous") data reflecting the state of affairs in the ended period of time. They will not talk about how things are now, much less about how they will be in the future. In other words, the presence of profit for the past quarter, month or year does not say anything about the current state of the business and its prospects. All that can be learned from the report is that in the reporting period you had a "paper" profit (or loss).

I like to compare net income with body temperature. If you have a normal temperature now, this does not mean that you are healthy. You may be sick, but at the moment the disease is not in the phase where the temperature rises. But a dangerous virus that has not yet manifested itself may already be sitting inside. Translated into business language, this means that the presence of net profit for the last quarter or year does not mean that the company does not have structural problems that will affect business performance tomorrow. For example, a product that you made good money on last year may be out of fashion in the next quarter, and if you have nothing to offer the market in return, you will be in trouble. Thus, for a comprehensive diagnosis of a business, the profit indicator is clearly not enough. This is just one of many indicators that will be discussed later.

Profit - relative indicator

Most Russian owners think like strategic investors, that is, people who build a company for centuries, for children and grandchildren. They, unlike portfolio (or financial) investors, do not view their business as an object of short-term investment, which must be disposed of as soon as it ceases to generate income or a better offer appears.

Timur Dergunov

From the author

Russian business, if we count from the first cooperatives, is under thirty. We even have our own business legends, such as Oleg Tinkov or Evgeny Chichvarkin. We admire the rapid development of the Magnit network, led by the masterful hand of Sergei Galitsky, and the gradual transformation of Sberbank from a clumsy, unfriendly monster into a convenient and technologically advanced bank under the leadership of an experienced German Gref. And when we hear the words "Russian business", perhaps, first of all, we remember these people.

Meanwhile, according to the State Registration Bulletin website, as of March 2015, 4,045,120 commercial legal entities were registered in Russia. Every nameless convenience store, every online store, every car wash, every hairdresser are also businesses that are not run by Galician or Grefs. Most of their owners do not even have a special education.

As I travel across the country to the business community, I meet smart, well-read, knowledge-hungry, out-of-the-box entrepreneurs, but they are in the minority. The big contrast between the abundance of training centers, books and magazines on business topics and the level of business thinking is striking, not only in the regions, but also in both capitals. According to some reports, there are more than a hundred business schools in Russia offering MBA programs, and thousands of more modest educational institutions. Dozens of business seminars are held weekly, thousands of people receive business education every year, but during conversations with real and potential clients, one gets the feeling that the 90s have not yet ended for Russian business.

In my opinion, there have been two waves of entrepreneurship in modern Russia. The first happened in the 90s of the XX century, when yesterday's workers, doctors of sciences or former military men opened their own companies, some out of a desire to earn money, and some forced, out of lack of money. The second wave came in the early 2000s, when the Internet was just promising to turn into a profitable business. Programmers and students then went into entrepreneurship. However, the face of Russian business is still defined by representatives of the first wave, who import, produce and sell the lion's share of what we eat, put on ourselves, buy for the home, and so on.

Most of them developed their ideas about business in the 1990s and finally took root in the 2000s, in the era of the consumer boom and the unprecedented growth of all markets. Representatives of the first wave were adventurers, enterprising young people who were not afraid to invest their own, and sometimes others' money, taken at cannibalistic interest, in trucks of imported goods, in machine tools, real estate, commercial vehicles, and construction. By now, most of them - those who have received a diploma or self-educated - have become more conservative, more cautious and distrustful.

They are not written about in magazines. But I often meet such businessmen at seminars, visit their enterprises, get acquainted with the documents that they call “strategies”. Having heard sensible proposals for optimizing their businesses, they agree, but prefer to act in the old way.

I have not seen a single Russian enterprise that could not be significantly improved in three or four years, that is, by tens of percent, and sometimes many times over. I see how much entrepreneurs lose because of the monstrous inefficiency, poor organization, wrong motivation. Nevertheless, the old ideas about how to build a business firmly hold their positions, despite the fact that many of them are far behind reality. They were forgivable in the 90s, but today they are more like a myth than a guide to action.

Therefore, I decided to dwell on the myths that exist in the field of entrepreneurship. Enough books have been written on how to build an effective business. So I will talk about how not to do it. More precisely, how not to do it in Russia. The material of the book is entirely based on my own experience of working with a wide variety of companies, both owned by businesses with a turnover of more than 10 billion rubles a year, and smaller ones.

There are many entrepreneurs and managers in Russia who are open to new ideas and willing to learn. I hope that this book will be useful for the development of their business, and that objections and disagreements with my arguments will lead them to fresh and interesting thoughts. I hope that in this virtual dispute with me, the truth will be born that will help them make their companies more successful.

Myth 1
Net profit

On May 3, 2012, the Russian version of Forbes magazine published an article by Adam Hartung "How Sony was dying." The author links the company's 2012 loss forecast of $6.4 billion to a company strategy that places too much emphasis on industrialization—that is, production efficiency, economies of scale, and low costs—and too little on new products, ideas, and technologies.

These examples suggest at least two thoughts:

1) the presence of a company's net profit in itself is not a sign of its success;

2) the close attention of top business officials to net profit and, in particular, to business costs, does not always make the company more efficient and sustainable.

However, many Russian entrepreneurs still consider net profit as the main indicator of success. “My company's profits grew by 25% last year,” the businessman, a resident of a city that recently became a millionaire, proudly said. “In terms of production and net profit, we are the largest in Moscow,” said the owner of a capital production company. At the same time, the first did not fulfill its ambitious plans, remaining a regional middle peasant, and the second went bankrupt, while indebted to its employees, creditors and suppliers.

Net profit is a fund for the payment of dividends, that is, the personal income of the entrepreneur. The growth of net profit is psychologically connected for him with personal success, which, in turn, can be converted into symbols of success - cars, houses, yachts, and so on.

But what, after all, is wrong with an organization increasing its profitability? Why can an over-enthusiasm for net income be detrimental to a business? There are several reasons.

Profit - the value of "paper"

The company's net profit can be affected by such a virtual income item as “deferred profit”, regarding which even accountants and financiers do not have a common opinion. However, it is sometimes used by unscrupulous financial or CEOs to present a company's financial performance in a more favorable light. In particular, the most notorious bankruptcy in recent business history, the collapse in 2001 of the American energy company Enron, is associated with a similar way of misreporting. Here is what economist Sergey Guriev says about this in a lecture, the summary of which is given on the Slon.ru portal:

“What is market-to-market accounting? Let's say we signed a gas supply deal with you. I agreed that I would buy gas from you in twenty years at such and such a price, and sell it to someone else at a different price. I can put each specific transaction on the balance right now. How? I know that I will earn so many dollars on this transaction, so I can write it down as an asset today. If I know that I will make money on this trade, then I have generated profit this year, which I can show as this year's profit. What is the problem here? That how much I earn on a deal to buy gas in twenty years depends on what my assumptions are about the price of gas in the market in twenty years. Accordingly, by making different assumptions about how much gas will cost in twenty years, today's profits can be manipulated. This is a relatively legitimate procedure as long as your assumptions are transparent, understandable to the market, and, generally speaking, not crazy. The easiest way to make money from market-to-market accounting, if you do it in an opaque and secret way, is to make two deals, one to sell gas in twenty years, the other to buy gas, and put in different assumptions about gas price in twenty years. This was practiced quite often at Enron.”

Russian financiers and economists are generally not that resourceful, but they are smart enough to improve net income. For example, in a regional company with a 25% increase in profits, it was customary to frame any activity to create something new (for example, opening a store or developing a product) as a “project”. The company's financiers, with the consent of the owner, began to attribute the costs of such "projects" not to current costs, but to investments. On the one hand, it was justified - the cost of repairing the premises for another store should be attributed to investments. On the other hand, many employees who were also engaged in operational work were involved in the “projects”, however, part of their payroll fund (PAYB) began to fall out of operating costs. For example, 20% of the legal department's payroll became an investment as lawyers worked on leases for new premises, and 30% of the HR department's payroll became an investment because its employees recruited and trained staff for new stores.

If market-to-market accounting is hardly often practiced in Russian companies, then almost any businessman faces the concept of "depreciation". This non-monetary cost item is important because it affects accounting profit and therefore income tax. However, its influence can be misinterpreted. For example, the management of one manufacturing company near Moscow, when summing up the results of the year, was especially pleased with the increased net profit. However, upon closer analysis, it turned out that this growth was largely due to the fact that the company's equipment has exhausted its depreciation period - economists simply stopped accruing it, since more than eight years have passed since the purchase of the machines. And because the equipment was capital intensive, depreciation costs dropped substantially. However, from our point of view, this was not a reason to uncork the champagne, for us it was a signal that the company was working on worn-out equipment, which could cause problems in the near future.

Russian business is not so many years old, and, according to the author, only two big waves of entrepreneurship took place in Russia. The first happened in the 90s, when yesterday's workers, doctors of sciences or former military men began to open enterprises - some out of a desire to earn money, and some forcedly, out of lack of money. The second wave came in the early 2000s, when the Internet was just promising any income - then mostly programmers and students went into business. However, despite the fact that the Internet is growing rapidly and playing an increasingly important role in our lives, the face of Russian business is still determined by representatives of the first wave, who import, produce and sell a significant share of what we eat, wear and purchase. for home.

The thinking of the lion's share of these people was formed in the 90s and finally took hold in the 2000s, in the era of the consumer boom, the unprecedented growth of all markets, which happened in our country once and will never happen again. In the 90s they were dashing adventurers, brave and enterprising young people, not afraid to invest their money in trucks of imported goods, in machine tools, in the purchase of buildings, commercial vehicles, in construction. By 2015, most of them have become conservative, ten-year-old ideas, cautious and extremely distrustful people.

Meanwhile, almost any Russian enterprise can be optimized, developed, and accelerated. Over the years of his entrepreneurial and consulting career, the author has seen many times how companies lose money on monstrous inefficiency, on poor organization, on the wrong motivation.

This is a book about myths. Myths, forgivable in the 90s, but completely unacceptable for a developed enterprise in 2015. Myths that prevent building effective companies in Russia.

From the author

We have to travel a lot around the country, communicating with far from the last representatives of the business community in Russia. We meet smart, well-read, knowledge-hungry, out-of-the-box entrepreneurs, but we have to admit that they are in the minority. Too often we are surprised at the contrast between the abundance of business books, magazines, business schools and training centers and the level of business thinking, not only in the regions, but in both capitals.

We have not seen a single Russian enterprise that could not be significantly, that is, by tens of percent, and sometimes many times, improved, optimized, developed, accelerated in three or four years.

This book is about myths. We decided that enough books have already been written on how to build an effective business. And we decided to write about how not to do it. More precisely, how not to do it in Russia. We drew all the material for this book from our own experience of working in Russia - both the experience of managing enterprises with a turnover of more than 10 billion rubles a year, and the experience of advising Russian enterprises of various sizes, forms and types of activity.

Who is this book for?

This is a book for entrepreneurs, business owners, managers.

Expand description Collapse Description

Good afternoon, colleagues.

This is the third part. is dedicated to the victories of the Federal Tax Service of Russia in collecting taxes: with the growth of the economy over the past five years by 1.2%, the growth of collected taxes amounted to 58%. Read this part: you will like it very much.

The third part is devoted to cashing out. Mr. Mishustin, head of the Federal Tax Service of Russia, discussed the issue of combating cash withdrawals with the President of the Russian Federation. And he told about this in his interview to the Kommersant newspaper. He reported to the President on the success of the tax authorities in the fight against cashing out. What are these successes?

According to Mr. Mishustin, in 2011 there were 1.8 million companies that fall under the definition of one-day businesses. Approximately 40% of the total number of registered legal entities. And in 2017, I quote the head of the Federal Tax Service: “Today there are about 300,000 of them. It was not we who first calculated these data, but Interfax-SPARK, according to its own data, our data are the same: a decrease in “one-night stands” by almost five times over seven years, now it is about 7.3% of all legal persons in the country, of which 4.26 million in total.

We believe that these figures are evidence of how the economy is being cleared of unscrupulous taxpayers.”

Of course, this is a great result. That is why the cost of cashing out increased from 5% to 20%. As the deputy chairman of the Central Bank promised us: "We will make cashing out economically inefficient."

And the journalist asked Mr. Mishustin a question: “What technical and legal solutions do you consider the most important ones that have worked in this area?”

Those. the journalist asked what made it possible to achieve such grandiose victories in the fight against cashing? Answer: “The automated system for monitoring VAT refunds has given a lot, although this is the result of many measures - on the part of the authorities it was joint work with the Central Bank, with Rosfinmonitoring and colleagues from the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance and with the law enforcement bloc.”

Yes, I confirm these words. I am ready to give a lecture for 25 hours on the contribution made by Rosfinmonitoring, the Central Bank, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance, and law enforcement officers to the fight against ephemera. And I'm ready to give the corresponding figures. Everywhere solid victories ...

Another thing is that as a result of these victories, for some reason the economy does not grow. But there are many victories. I quote further Mr. Mishustin: One-day trips simply became unprofitable, it became dangerous, it became impossible to refund VAT, which no one paid. In the future, all this should have a very good effect on the economy: a conscientious business should not have unequal conditions in competition with those that use aggressive tax planning and participate in smuggling operations”.

I will comment on this point. I would 1000% agree with Mr. Mishustin and his anti-cashing campaign, if not for one small "but". I have done financial and economic analysis in hundreds of various Russian companies from various industries. My employees annually do a similar analysis in at least 700 Russian companies from the most industries ... To my deepest regret, if we are talking about a company on the classical taxation system. if a company does not know how to legally save VAT, income tax, insurance premiums, personal income tax, but simply, following the wishes of Mr. Mishustin, gets off the cash out of fear, because of common sense and starts stupidly working legally, it goes bankrupt ... How As a rule, such a company goes bankrupt. Not always, but this happens very often.

I, Turov Vladimir Viktorovich, am against cashing out!

Example. A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a businessman. A decent business, billions of dollars in turnover ... I suggested: “Let's count. Maybe you can work on the "classic", paying all the taxes? I asked a stupid question, because before that I did an economic analysis of his business. He answered me: "You know that we will automatically become bankrupt ...".

I don't know how to be... Victory is victory, but common sense must be present. VAT rate 20%, income tax 20%, insurance premiums 30%…

Even if VAT is left at 18% ... If you want to pay an employee a net 100 rubles, then with a VAT of 18%, you must pay 76.7 rubles to the budget. Well, how can one work legally with such a tax burden? Explain to me please. What should be the profitability, and where to get it?

I would go out with a poster on the street, on which it would be written: “I, Turov Vladimir Viktorovich, stand for the final elimination of all ephemera. I'm against cashing in!" I would have come out with such a poster if the state had done one simple thing before that: 10% VAT for everyone without exception. They would remove all the benefits, article 145 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation to hell ... They would make it so that I, too, working on a simplified tax system, would pay VAT. They would make sure that businessmen pay VAT on UTII, and on ESHN, and on a patent. All… But for all 10%. The same rules of the game.

As a result, the budget would receive 2 times more VAT, the cash would disappear by itself, no one would have to unfasten 20% of the cashed amount to cashers. The situation would straighten out on its own. Illegal VAT refund would disappear automatically, especially in the presence of full, total control of ASK VAT-2. In general, the budget would win, and the business could really start to be legalized. And now… What are we talking about?

A couple more words from the head of the Federal Tax Service: “We continue to actively remove abandoned companies from the register. In 2016-2017, more than 1.2 million such companies were excluded. We mark the remaining one-day companies in the register of legal entities with a special entry so that everyone can see that the information on these companies indicates the unreliability of information about them. This information is used by other departments, banks, contractors.

As a result of our work, the level of companies that do not provide tax reporting has decreased from 23% in 2016 to 10% today. Those are pretty good numbers by any measure.” End of quote. Yes, those are good numbers. Except for one thing, dear Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin… You have done a colossal, wonderful job… But do you know that by doing all this work and not creating normal conditions for doing business, you are killing the economy?

Do you understand that you are killing the economy? You are killing micro-businesses, medium-sized businesses, small businesses... You are tightening the noose to such an extent that you can neither breathe nor fart. Apathy…

No. 488-FZ: do not leave the company, otherwise you will be “destroyed”

Guys, since the Federal Tax Service continues to liquidate abandoned companies, in no case do not leave the company. According to №488-FZ, in Article 3 No. 14-FZ"Ob LLC" has a new clause 3.1. Now, even if you left the company, and the tax authorities liquidated it, then within three years from the date of liquidation, the tax authorities can come and re-check this company. Information about this company is stored in banks, you can check all the relationships ... The tax authorities can charge additional taxes to this company, and since the company has already been liquidated, you, the former founders, will pay all taxes, penalties and fines. The statute of limitations is 3 years, plus another 2 years is given to the tax authorities to restore the missed deadline. So, if you left your company, for example, in March 2018, they can come to you in 2019, and in 2020, and in 2021. And even in 2023... Don't leave the company! See what victories the tax authorities have, and they are going to continue these victories.

Nevertheless, the journalist asked Mr. Mishustin one more question: “How justified are the fears of the transition of schemes with “one-day” to individual entrepreneurs?” That is, what will the tax authorities do now, when businessmen stop cashing out money through ephemera and start cashing out through individual entrepreneurs? What are the prospects for such a cash out?

The answer of the head of the FTS: “We will do the same now with fictitious individual entrepreneurs. Together with colleagues from the Ministry of Finance, we prepared and submitted to the government amendments to the law on registration, according to which the tax authority will be able, as in the case of legal entities, to terminate the status of an individual entrepreneur if he has not submitted tax returns for more than a year and has unsettled tax debt or debt on payments to extrabudgetary funds. The tax authority, as in the case of legal entities, will publish a decision on the upcoming exclusion, and if there are no motivated objections within three months, the IP will be excluded from the USRIP.. We are talking about fictitious individual entrepreneurs. Thank God, so far only about fictitious ones ... Whether the tax authorities will pester those individual entrepreneurs who withdraw some pennies through themselves or not, it has not been said ... But, based on my practice, I think they will.

While commercial banks are engaged in this: they click such individual entrepreneurs one by one. And at the seminar I will tell you how to make sure that you don’t get hurt for it ... And there was nothing at all.

Only 0.24%: coverage is meager, but the results are flying!

There is another interesting thing in this interview. Actually there are a lot of interesting things here. What is the result of all this struggle with cashing out?

I answer, according to Mr. Mishustin: "In the courts, about 80% of the contested amounts are considered in favor of the budget." Those. tax specialists provide 80% of wins. Well done. At the same time, in terms of the quality of work, I was, frankly, stunned. Tax revenues have grown by 58% over the past 5 years - solid wins. Tax authorities are steadily reducing the number of on-site inspections, increasing efficiency. They don’t even call camera checks now ... As Mishustin says, all this is done by robots ...

And in this interview there are numbers that, frankly, really struck me. With all the victories, the tax authorities check only 0.24% of taxpayers: less than 0.3% per year of the total number of registered taxpayers. The coverage is meager, and the results are stunning. And this is a very, very low result ...

For example, in the UK, which has one of the lowest levels of on-site inspections by European standards, 1.5% of taxpayers are inspected. In Japan, field tax audits cover 3% of taxpayers. In Belgium - 17%, in Norway - 33% of taxpayers annually. And in Russia 0.24%, while the results just fly away!

Mishustin is a good manager, and the number of on-site inspections continues to decline: “According to the results of the first quarter of 2018, the number of tax audits decreased by another 26% and amounted to 4.1 thousand, and the level of penalties is quite high in them - the risk analysis gives us the opportunity to understand well who they came to and for what purpose”. That is, to get to the on-site inspection now, you have to try very hard.

And, of course, Mishustin was asked the question, to whom will the tax authorities go first of all? First of all, the tax authorities will go to those companies that were associated with cash withdrawals, and secondly, to those companies where the business is highly fragmented ... Incredibly interesting interview!

Tax monitoring: put an inspector in your accounting department

I really liked this moment. There is such a thing, the so-called institute of tax monitoring. You can set up a tax post in your company. A tax inspector will come to work for you, who will work for you and tell you what to put on costs and what not to put, to accept VAT for deduction or not to accept. So far, only 30 largest Russian companies out of 4.26 million have used this institution. This idea, according to Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin, is a good one, and he is going to expand this institute: “Today, the participants are about 30 largest companies, but we are considering extending tax monitoring to a larger circle of taxpayers and improving its mechanism. This is one of the global tasks - the transition from traditional methods of tax control to the most effective and least conflict. Indeed, the most effective and least conflicting method is to put a tax inspector in the accounting department! Cool…

I sincerely congratulate the Federal Tax Service of Russia on the victory!

Finishing the third part, I want to write the following. You are patriots. You should be proud of our country, be proud of our tax officials. Because our tax authorities are ahead of many countries in the world. A few days ago, Mikhail Mishustin spoke at a major seminar of the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation, dedicated to tax administration. He shared with colleagues from other countries our best practices in using a variety of control methods, online cash registers, the digital economy, tax administration and other things. In this regard, we are indeed ahead of many countries in the world. With what, in fact, I congratulate you! Of course, we are proud of our tax officials, who are ahead of the rest in terms of their ability to replenish the budget and levy taxes.

This is the final part. Read this interview on your own and you will learn a lot of interesting things: about the automatic exchange of tax information with other countries of the world, about the population register of the Russian Federation based on the registry office. I quote: “As for the population register. The new federal resource, which we are conceptualizing now, should link information about citizens of the Russian Federation, as well as foreigners who arrived in Russia, from various resources, there should be data on an individual, his education, marital status, employment, benefits, industry identifiers , about the same TIN, SNILS, other identifiers that people need in everyday life. In the system, both the citizen himself and the authorities should have access to this “golden profile” - it seems to me that this is a very important functionality, we need an absolutely unambiguous correspondence between acts of civil status and information about the person himself in the federal cloud. In fact, this file will remove the problem of a single identifier for records or information about a citizen.

The resource is planned to be created within three years from the date of adoption of the relevant federal law. It is currently in the process of being coordinated with other departments.

And there the opportunities are already very high, and the value of the resource will be enormous. Thus, on the basis of objective data, the state will be able to provide targeted social support, plan and implement state programs more effectively, and generally abandon the population census. This is a qualitatively different level of the digital state.

They won and continue to win. Who and how, by what methods - I don’t need to explain to you ...

What to do? Of course, these victories can bring you to apathy ... When you close your eyes and think: “Well, that's it ... There is no way out, there are no solutions ... Nothing can be done. They gave me cancer." Many businessmen tell me: “Vladimir Viktorovich, there is only one thought - to blame!” Guys, this is all nonsense!

I think that you will still not believe me again, but in our country it is possible to work legally. You just need to know how. There is hope. I don't guarantee you any 100% security. You wouldn't believe me if I guaranteed it to you. I am not going to guarantee that you will be able to optimize all taxes and fees, as I teach in seminars. You won't believe me. But nevertheless, there is hope.

There is something we can do! We can loosen the noose, loosen it just a little... We can reduce the pressure on the brain. We can even secure assets. And I talk about this in great detail at each of my seminars. The next one will take place on August 1-2 in Moscow. Come - you won't regret it.

Thank you, good luck with your business.

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Net profit

Profit - the value of "paper"

Profit - short-term indicator

Profit - retrospective indicator

Profit - relative indicator

From the author

Myth 1
Net profit

Profit - the value of "paper"

From the author

Who is this book for?

Interesting articles

Interesting articles

Net profit

Profit - the value of "paper"

Profit - short-term indicator

Profit - retrospective indicator

Profit - relative indicator

From the author

Myth 1 Net profit

Profit - the value of "paper"

From the author

Who is this book for?

Interesting articles

Interesting articles

Myth 1
Net profit