There is nothing wrong with capitalism, starting an essay like this by pretending otherwise would be childish, as if the very word must be preceded by a shudder and a prayer. But capitalism is not the same thing as greed; it is not the feverish itch for instant profit at any cost, not that inner rash that makes a person claw at their own face and then call the blood “growth.” And this distinction, unfortunately, many of you no longer recognize. Not because you are stupid, but because the age itself has trained you: to measure life in quarters, and thought in deadlines “by Friday.” For you, a horizon of one or two years already feels celestial, what, then, of decades? In your imagination, decades begin where fog begins, where respectable people do not build and do not live.

And yet this is not written in order to judge you. Judging is easy; it is almost sweet. It contains the same short dopamine, the same pleasurable click you love in “quick results.” I am not your judge, and you are not defendants. You are subjects of your time: where everyone runs—and I run too. Where to? Still unclear. Perhaps toward a cliff. Perhaps toward a new radiant world. To know, one must live a little longer; it is too early to pass sentence—and that may be the only honest restraint I will grant myself here.

But something is already visible—not as a hypothesis, but as a face that pushes itself into your field of vision. It is the desperate pull of short-termism, that very disease of the short distance which certain corners of the world have already suffered through: the wild nineties, the music of “fast money” and “new efficiency.” The chase for immediate outcomes. Impossible promises. Empty speeches about values, reputation, and brand. Not that these words mean nothing—on the contrary, they mean too much. And that is precisely why they have become small change: tossed, flipped, and juggled for speculative purposes, as if meaning were a stage prop and not an internal bloodstream. You say “reputation” as casually as a cashier says “Do you need a bag?” and then act surprised that no one believes you—least of all yourself.

The truth, as always, is offensively simple: only cats are born quickly. Everything else requires time and patience. Patience has become almost archaic, a word from a dictionary you keep not on your desk but somewhere in the basement of consciousness. Over the last decades, patience has been devalued: some blame the digital environment, some blame medication, some blame the physiology of attention turned into a trembling coin. But it hardly matters where the deficit of attention came from. What matters is this: at today’s speeds, patience has somehow begun to look like a flaw—like braking; not like strength, but weakness; not like a way to win the long game, but like something “inefficient,” something that burdens growth. You have begun to feel ashamed of the mechanism of life itself, as though time were your enemy.

Any skill—and especially mastery—demands patience. You cannot become a professional overnight, as those promise whose posts you are reading. You cannot become, quickly and without pain, the sort of person who can take a blow, hold a pause, hear subtext, see a human being whole. You cannot win success quickly and cleanly. You cannot rapidly earn the trust of the richest people on earth. You simply cannot. YOU CAN’T. Every claim to the contrary is an echo of the same short-termism, the same childish belief in a magic button: press it, and the world drops at your feet.

From this comes the decline of respect for expertise. Expertise no longer carries the scent of gray hair, of life-wisdom not purchased in courses and “use cases,” but mined from decades of forcing your way through the impassable thickets of fate—mistakes, shame, rare victories, long silences in which you finally understand: a person is more complicated than any scheme. And of course it is your right to believe whatever “experts” you wish. I am not here to pry open your eyes; it is dangerous to fling eyes open too suddenly—one can go blind from light. And let us be honest: without a fool, life is dull. You will understand this one day—when you pay for the lesson not with money, but with time.

I am here to speak about what actually works—but only for those who think in decades. For those who build a business while looking into the future, rather than sprinting away from an inner poverty, grabbing whatever can be carried. I will say nothing new: these words are an echo of time. I am merely repeating unshakable truths on which “everything we have” stands. Every culture has its own formulations of the same law: water wears down stone; patience and labor grind down mountains; seed does not sprout from shouting but from care. At its core it is one weapon of change: time and steady effort, directed toward a result.

But it is precisely here, in this “banality” as you might call it, that real complexity begins. Because what comes next is not technique and not tricks, but the art of influence. And this art is not about crablike little solutions ripped from context—popular books, glossy cases, fashionable frameworks. It is the skill of deeply understanding human nature: those tightly stretched strings of individuality, each person tuned differently. Hand many of you an instrument with three strings and you still wouldn’t play anything decent; what then of people who carry hundreds of strings—memory, pride, fear, family wounds, shame, vanity, duty, longing for meaning, the habit of solitude, secret oaths made to themselves?

You cannot simply start strumming. First comes basic literacy: the notes. Then the structure of the instrument. Then years of practice when your fingers ache, when you want to quit, when it feels like nothing is happening. With people it is similar, only the variability is far greater: every person is a separate instrument. What sounds like care to one will sound like humiliation to another; what seems like courage to one will look like insolence to the next. And you cannot grasp this instantly. It requires time, approach, tact, creativity, talent—and something no checklist includes: inner discipline, the ability to tolerate silence, the ability not to climb into a person with dirty hands.

And it is certainly not a sponsored post on social media.

On a long enough timeline you can persuade almost anyone—if it does not contradict their nature. And to shape someone’s attitude toward a product or service is not cosmic at all. But it takes time. And you want everything at once. You pinch pennies because someone told you it is “cheap now,” as if attention and trust are discounted like last season’s coats. But in truth it was never cheap.

Ask yourself: what is time worth—now, and a hundred years ago? When was it “faster” to win someone’s trust—then or now? And if you answer honestly: it is the same. A hundred years ago there were fools who believed in miracles, and there were suspicious people who believed in nothing—just as there are now. The difference is only in the numbers on the price tag, and in how many hours you must burn before a person begins to hear you. The nominal cost of time has changed; life expectancy has shifted a little, but not enough to cheapen a year of your life. In money terms, the cost of an hour looks insane—yet it was just as insane then, if you count fairly, with relativism: a person always pays with themselves.

That is why trust has always been expensive: to earn it, you spend hundreds of hours—sometimes thousands. And if you think you can spend thirty minutes of your time and secure the trust or attention of the richest people on earth, you probably do not understand the nature of trust itself. Trust is not a “side effect” of a pitch; it is not an accessory to your offer. Trust is time lived in your vicinity—even at a distance. It is a sequence of meanings that do not contradict each other. It is the experience that you do not lie—not because it is “wrong,” but because you do not know how to live that way. But this is a separate conversation.

The art of invisible persuasion is not about your marketing strategies, not about your tools for results. It begins with the skill of your own patience. If you cannot wait for a positive answer to a structured sequence of approaches for two or three years, you should change professions. Sell something with a faster turnover: impulse purchases, adrenaline, fuss, cheap hope. The long game does not tolerate those who are inwardly cowardly—those who fear silence between messages, those who cannot hold a pause, those who need constant confirmation of their own importance.

And if you believe there is a shorter road, and you have “proof,” usually there are only three reasons. Either you yourself—without realizing it—spent years getting there and now you see only the short current segment, like a man who forgets the entire climb and remembers only the last step. Or you have a story heard or read without personal experience—that is, a myth you accepted as a map. Or you were simply lucky. But luck is gambling, not strategy. Try to repeat it two or three more times and we’ll revise our opinion. Just don’t forget: if your “repeats” stretch across years, the same principle will apply—the principle of sufficient time. Time is the one currency you cannot cheat.

In this essay I will not reveal the mechanisms themselves. They are not sacred and not unique—just as letters are not unique. What matters is what words and sentences they form, what meanings they carry. The epistolary genre is dying, and with it dies the understanding of how words can move people: how meanings create an invisible landscape along which the reader inevitably arrives where you are waiting. But these are only subtle touches. And to correct the route you will need not one touch, but hundreds. Only then can we speak of a result—not as a trumpet-blast finale, but as a quiet fact: a person has shifted.

Still, not everything is bleak. If there were only one wealthy person on earth, it would be almost hopeless. But there are many. And on the scale of extending credit of trust, not each one is an absolute, impenetrable skeptic. If you engage large groups, a “result in one day” is possible—as a statistical gleam of long work, not as a miracle. Think of it as cultivating an orchard: years pass before fragile saplings begin to bear fruit. But once they grow, under your patient care, they will bear regularly—not hysterically, not as a sudden “sales spike,” but like a garden that lives its own life and no longer demands daily proof of its reality.

What is sad is something else: this craft is disappearing. True masters—rather than online chatterers who pose as great strategists—are fewer and fewer. Time is not powerless—time is absolute power. It takes those who have exhausted their portion. And then what remains are students—if there were any. If instead of students there were only followers, what remains is a void and an archive of stories.

It is for you to decide what you will spend your time on: endless petty maneuvering in pursuit of quick profit, or the building of something that outlives you and becomes your legacy. We serve our clients for decades, and this cannot be compared to what you call marketing. This is rooting downward. This is roots biting into bedrock. These are subtle touches that sink deep into the neural networks of those we touch—and we cannot be scraped out of there: not because we are “geniuses,” but because we endured time. And time is the only real censor—and the only real ally.

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