CH Group's Principles

1

Excellence costs

Aim for excellence.

It's easy to say that and even easier to believe you do it. But how many of us are actually ready to pay the price for excellence?

Excellence implies Simplicity, The Power of No, Timelessness and Elegance.

If you're aiming for excellence, act accordingly in your day to day life. Honour excellent things (like yourself, presumably!). Yes, don't take yourself too seriously. But don't also take yourself too unseriously.

3

The Power of No

We must define what we're simply not interested in.

Yes, the world is your oyster. You can become anything you want to be.

But you cannot become everything at the same time.

Once you've decided which one it is going to be out of that spectrum of possibilities, you must say no to everything else.

In other words, you must use the power of No to become what you've chosen.

It's more comfortable to live in the "anything" than in the "one thing". The majority of people is living in "anything" — the undefined-yet feels safer.

4

Virtual

There's the virtual and the real.

The virtual has it purpose: visualising the future is one of them. But too much virtual can be mistaken with the real.

What's virtual?

Internal or external voices that create noise within you: "Caring about what people think", as it's commonly pointed out in culture, doing things one way because "that's how we've always done it", unnecessary worrying in bed late at night etc.
A character you might play, depending on the situation: the boss character, the son/daughter character, the mom/dad character etc.
Concepts set by an exterior source: what success is, what friendship means etc.
Consequences of other virtual concepts: e.g. the need to show off (virtue signaling), because it's based on a need to derive your sense of self from other people. "The need to show off" is virtual because your sense of self is derived from a virtual concept.

What's real?

Whatever comes with peace and silence. Don't try to understand this at the mind level though.

5

Timelessness

Timeless is another way of saying long-term.

What's trendy or hot is not timeless. What's made based on the virtual is not timeless.

We compromise timelessness for anything.

How can you know what is timeless? Your mind won't know what is timeless. Give yourself a gap in thinking and you'll "know" what timeless is — but this "knowing" is not at the conceptual level.

6

The Spirit

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The whole = the Spirit.

You can understand the parts with your mind. You can "understand" the Spirit through your consciousness.

The greatest things we, Humanity, have ever done, are imbued with the Spirit. Write down what you deem as the greatest inventions Humanity has ever made: you'll notice the Spirit was what awed you.

7

Eclectic

Inspiration is fine. Imitation is not.

We're afraid of being called copycats because we overestimate what is imitation.

The more you're driven by virtual, the closer you'll steer into imitation.

The more you're driven by non-virtual, the more you'll steer into inspiration. Inspiration is only drawn into "the sum of the parts" - the Spirit will add your personal contribution to the creation.

Dare to be eclectic.

8

Product Fit

We build things that fit like a glove. We say no to Swiss knives: it's not what we're interested in.

Every tool must have one overarching use. Sub-uses are fine, but there's no such thing as "The product is made for this AND...that".

The moment there's an "and" in the unique value proposition, there's a problem. "And" contradicts "Unique".

Rather than one product with 5 use cases, it's better to have 5 products, each with their own use case.

It's better to be lost in so many products than to get lost within the product.

9

What's Really The Aim Of Life (And Business)

Ask yourself why are you doing what you're doing.

After you answer, keep asking the same question about the answer. Repeat.

Sooner or later you'll get to the bottom answer: to advance the Human Species.

Why would we advance the Human Species? Because one day we will compare our Civilization to another one.

Now that you've read this, the responsibility is in your hands as well. Try to advance it.

+

We could use the Kardashev scale to measure ourselves: measuring how advanced a civilisation is based on the amount of energy they can use. I believe it's a good indicator — currently we're at 0.73. Worth noting: you don't have to work in the energy field to improve the Human Civilisation. The second last answer before the bottom answer would be bringing utility to humans (because if utility is increased, it will reach those who improve our Civilisation's energy.

10

Scale

Scale = an energy machine.

This energy machine is built on two pillars:

An investment: you're investing energy to create an energy-efficient machine.
Processes: inside the machine are automated moulds where energy is the fuel.

What we commonly call scale is a working energy machine: you deploy energy to this machine and at the other end you'll receive "more".

That "more" = "results that would have taken you more energy to achieve, if it wasn't for the machine".

Something out of nothing is created within the machine.

‍

Understand this and you'll understand business.

+

Random examples of products with scale: kitchen mixers, McDonald's set of management processes, bicycle, megaphone, springs, the Gutenberg Press

11

Legacy

We're aiming at compounded growth.

Our legacy must aim at multi-generational continuity. Why?

There are compounded results within multi-generational efforts.

Family is #1.

12

Elegance

There's Yin-Yang in everything. Where there's simplicity, timelessness, eclecticism, when the virtual is deafened and there's an aim towards excellence —— there's Tao.

Take for example the "Power of No" principle: within the definition of "anything" lies the elimination of "anything minus that one thing you've chosen" (which is over 99%)

Yin-Yang or Tao don't have any political or religious affiliation in our case. They are there to represent the mental concepts: a serpent eating its own tail, the Möbius strip explaining the 4th dimension or the beginning and the end being connected. If this paragraph feels too abstract, think of mastery: we call mastery what looks like amateur, but done skilfully and elegantly. That's the beginning and the end being connected.

That's elegance.

13

From the ground up, every now and then

Innovation happens only through thinking from the ground up.

Thinking from the ground up means everyone thinks for themselves: not all the time, but when it's most needed. It's not comfortable, but it's how we can assure we're not (too) stuck in our own thinking.

Thinking through basic principles from the ground up is based on one paramount other concept: transparent truthfulness.

14

Shorter or longer?

Perfectly-sized measures are too short rather than too—

The Last Principle

Nothing really matters.

Not even the last principles we've written – we can't afford to be attached to the principles as dogma. Otherwise we risk getting attached to virtual voices.

We've written them down to solidify our thinking. The same way you might write down notes in an attempt to read the book, in this case we're attempting to read our brain's successful thinking.

But ultimately, they're virtual.

So we cannot afford not to break the principles where needed, simply because we've written them. It would mean we're attached to a dead version of ourselves: the version of ourselves that is from the past.

Principles must be broken every now and then.