Books
Writing as a way to slow thinking down. To examine decisions, influence, trust, and value beyond the moment they are made.
There’s that feeling.
Not the one from management textbooks, nor the one measured by quarterly growth charts. I’m talking about that quiet, deep feeling in your gut that surfaces in the middle of a board meeting, while a seemingly perfect presentation unfolds and the numbers align in a flawless sequence. Everything is logical. Everything is backed by data. But something is off. Something vital is missing, yet no one has the courage to even name the void.
It’s the feeling that precedes million-dollar losses born from a single, unspoken doubt. It’s the weight in the air of a room filled with the company’s brightest minds, where the silence is thicker and louder than any strategy written on the board. It’s the moment a CEO, with a title that exudes confidence, feels a sting of insecurity so sharp it must be hidden behind a facade of authority.
This book isn’t about what you see in business reports. It doesn’t analyze market trends or offer five dry steps to success. It’s about what you feel in the pit of your stomach as you sit at your desk wondering, “Why does everything make sense, but nothing moves?” It doesn’t deal with 2 numbers, but with the story behind the numbers. It doesn’t deal with strategies on paper, but with the human friction that grinds those strategies to dust. This is a book about the invisible, yet omnipresent, force that drives or stalls every business venture: human psychology. It’s about the fears that masquerade as arrogance, the ego that destroys teams more effectively than any market crisis, and the decisions made not based on data, but on a quiet, internal need to prove one’s own worth.
In business, the most expensive currency is feeling. When people lack it, they lose their compass and blindly follow procedures that lead nowhere. When they have too much of it, they lose control and are guided by emotion instead of reason. In that delicate, uncharted space between instinct and analytics, the most important decisions fall. This is where battles are won and lost. That is why this is not an academic dissertation for university libraries, but a manual for the arena.
This isn't just another marketing book.
If you picked it up looking for formulas, instant fixes, or “ten steps to success” lists, feel free to put it back on the shelf. You’ll save yourself both time and money. This book offers no shortcuts, because in a field built upon the most complex system in the known universe, the human mind, shortcuts simply don’t exist. There is only depth. There is understanding. There is a willingness to look behind the curtain, not to where decisions about budgets and channels are made, but to where doubts, fears, hopes, and beliefs are born.
Which is where everything is truly decided.
For years, I have worked with companies that seemingly have everything they need. They have a product but no emotion. They have an impeccable team but no vision to guide that team through a storm. They have an ambition that could move mountains, yet they don't know how to find their way into the heart of a single customer. And always, without exception, the problem lies in how they think about what they do.
A marketing campaign can have world-class visuals, colors calibrated to perfection, and copy crafted by a poet. It can precisely target the ideal market segment you’ve identified, at the exact right moment. It can use the perfect media channel at the perfect time of day.
And still, it can fail. It can be met with silence. A void. Complete indifference.
Why?
Because the deciding factor is the state of mind that receives the message. That’s why this book focuses on trust. A sale is a transaction, the outcome of a single interaction. Trust is the atmosphere, the prerequisite for every future interaction. A sale happens once; trust is built over months, even years, and can be destroyed in a single second. It is the invisible currency on which, at the end of the day, everything depends. When you have trust, price becomes less relevant. The competition becomes less relevant. A mistake you make becomes forgivable.
Without trust, even the most perfect product is just another item on the shelf, destined to gather dust.
Have you ever wondered why you feel different buying a €50 watch at a shopping mall versus a €5,000 one in an exclusive boutique downtown? The numbers are, of course, drastically different, but let's ignore them for a moment. Let's focus on the feeling.
In the first scenario, you're standing under fluorescent lights. The watch is displayed on a plastic stand next to dozens of others. The price is clearly marked. The transaction is quick, efficient, almost forgettable. You have purchased a tool that tells time.
In the second scenario, the boutique door opens with a quiet, satisfying click. You are greeted by the scent of fine leather and polished wood. The lighting is warm, precisely aimed to catch the glint off perfectly cut glass and cool steel. The salesperson does not rush you; he gives you space, then approaches with a respectful whisper. He tells you a story - of heritage, of the hundreds of hours of precision work by Swiss masters, of a mechanism that will outlive you. When he finally places it on your wrist, you don't just feel the weight of the metal. You feel the weight of its story, its status, its achievement.
The same object, a watch, performs the same function. But the value? The value is never the same. It isn’t in the object. It’s in the performance.
This book is about that performance. It is about the invisible architecture behind every price, the psychological stage where the verdict is passed on whether something is a "cheap copy" or a "priceless investment." It is about a fundamental business truth that most entrepreneurs, managers, and marketers persistently ignore while focusing on spreadsheets, margins, and competitor analysis: price is not a mathematical equation, but a psychological event.
This book offers a different path. It argues that price does not begin with the market. Price begins with you. It is a mirror of your brand’s confidence. If you, as the creator, as the company, are not convinced deep in your bones that your service is worth €500, how on earth can you expect anyone else to believe it? Customers can smell uncertainty. It’s in the way you communicate, in the hesitation to state the number, in the hasty offer of a discount at the first sign of resistance.
Everything is decided in the space between the number and the feeling. And to make that abstract journey tangible, this book will have a soul. It will have a heroine.
Throughout the chapters that follow, I will guide you through the fascinating theories of neuroeconomics, behavioral psychology, and brand strategy. But to ensure that theory doesn't remain dead on the page, we will experience every lesson through the eyes of one woman. Her name is Clara Dubois, the young and pragmatic owner of a perfumery in 1920s Paris, who inherits the craft of her father, a chemist, but dreams of becoming an alchemist.
There are moments in business, in life, and especially in sales, that defy any explanation neatly packaged into a PowerPoint presentation. These are the moments when the air in the room seems to tremble. When a gaze is held for just a second longer than is customary, piercing the facade of professional distance. When the ensuing silence is so laden with meaning that it rings louder than any word. In that fraction of a second, without a single lip moving, without a single paper signed, you know: the sale has already been made.
If you work in sales, you will recognize this feeling. It is the intuitive flash that separates top professionals from those merely following a script. It's the moment a perfectly prepared pitch loses its power if you haven't sensed the customer's energy, and the moment numbers cease to be the measure if you have failed to read their silence. For years, we have been taught to trust in data and metrics, in the cold logic of arguments. And all of that is important. But none of it explains that crucial, elusive moment of decision. This is the space where the most important battles are won and lost, and the one least spoken of.
It is the blind spot of modern business. A blind spot where all the difference lies.
It is precisely because of that blind spot that you are holding this book in your hands.
Its title is "The Merchant of Dubrovnik: The Psychology and Methodology of Sales - A Book About the Unspoken and the Provenly Effective (From Thought to Method)." I chose this title because, centuries before modern science gave names to concepts like the amygdala, mirror neurons, or social proof, there was a class of people who lived and breathed these principles. In the narrow streets within massive walls, in bustling ports at the crossroads of worlds, the merchants of the Republic of Ragusa built their fortunes and influence upon a single skill: a superior understanding of human nature. Their world had no emails or CRM systems. Their currency was reputation, information, and the ability to read intent in a counterpart’s gaze, to sense opportunity in silence, and to seal the fate of a caravan traveling for months with a handshake.
To make this ancient skill tangible and applicable in the 21st century, this book follows a unique structure. After each chapter, where we will break down modern psychology and methodology, we will journey back in time. Through a short, illustrative story, we will follow the life of our Dubrovnik merchant. We will watch him in the port of Constantinople, negotiating the price of silk by using silence to create pressure; in Venice, reading the nonverbal cues of a banker; deciding, based on a single conversation, whom to entrust with a fortune. These historical examples will be living proof that the principles of influence, trust, and negotiation are timeless. They will project modern science onto the canvas of real, harsh practice.
You will realize that your meeting with an important client is neurologically identical to the negotiations our man from Dubrovnik conducted in the Rector's Palace. The problems are the same. The fears are the same. The human brain is the same. Then, as now, it makes decisions before logic enters the stage. That old, fast part of the brain always asks the first questions: "Friend or foe? Opportunity or threat?" The answer to those questions defined the fate of trading missions then, just as it defines the outcome of your sales meetings today.
Through this book, you will not only learn to recognize these signals, but you will also learn to send them consciously. You will become the conductor of an invisible orchestra of neural reactions, because your internal state is your most powerful export. This book begins from within. Just as a Dubrovnik merchant never set out on a journey without precise information and inner peace, you will not enter negotiations without internal alignment.
Listen for a moment. Do you hear that sound? It is the relentless, deafening noise of the modern marketplace. A cacophony of millions of voices vying for a sliver of attention, each louder and more desperate than the last. It is the sound of the hunt. We are living in the era of hunters. Armed with the latest technologies, scripts, and sales funnels, they rush through the digital forest, treating clients like prey to be caught, taken down, and converted. Their tools are aggression, urgency, and pressure. Their goal is the transaction. And their greatest fear is silence.
For decades, this paradigm has ruled. We were taught to be assertive, to "always be closing," to be the alpha predator in the corporate jungle. We were taught that influence is something imposed, a force by which we bend the will of others to our own ends. And for a while, it worked. But the sea has changed. The tide has turned.
Today's "prey" is no longer naive. It has evolved. Inundated by noise, it has become immune to the clamor. Armed with information available at a single click, it has become skeptical of grandiose promises. Its most precious currency is no longer money, but attention and trust, and it guards them more jealously than ever. The old tools of the hunter, shouting, gimmicks, and pressure, no longer work. On the contrary, today they trigger an ancient alarm system in the modern mind. Every time a client feels hunted, their reptilian brain takes control, the walls go up, and the doors to genuine communication are hermetically sealed. The hunter, in his desperate sprint, no longer even notices that he is chasing ghosts in a forest that has long since gone barren.
This book is a call to rebellion against that obsolete, exhausting paradigm. It offers a radically different path. It does not offer you new, sharper arrows for the hunt. It offers you a blueprint for building something entirely different.
Something enduring. Calm. Powerful in its stillness.
This path is not for everyone. It requires the courage to be different, to reject quick wins in favor of lasting value, to embrace silence in a world that celebrates noise. It requires you to realize that your character is your most powerful marketing tool and that integrity is your sharpest sales strategy.
The world has too many hunters. We are tired of their traps, tricks, and racket. The world is desperately searching for beacons. For steady, reliable signals that cut through the fog of confusion and point the way to a safer shore.
It is time to stop hunting.
It is time to shine your light.
There is a story about Winston Churchill’s pocket watch, the legendary "Breguet No. 765," better known as ‘The Turnip.’ Tucked inside his vest pocket, that object measured more than just minutes and hours; in its quiet ticking echoed the weight of decisions that shaped the fate of the world. Its gleam was a reflection of polished gold, but also a reflection of human will in history’s darkest hour. People who saw it were looking at resilience, at strategy, at defiance. That watch, long before it became a priceless museum exhibit, became a symbol. It became an accomplice. It gained a soul.
This book does not live in sterile boardrooms where charts are dissected. It lives in that intimate, yet infinitely powerful space between your palm and the object you hold. It lives in the silence that precedes the first sale. In that elusive moment when the thing in our hands crosses the threshold of the material and becomes something personal. Something ours.
We live in an era of deafening noise. Algorithms track us, brands scream from screens, from shelves, from billboards. They offer flashing discounts, highlight features nobody needs, and promise happiness in plastic packaging that expires the moment the seal is broken. It is a noisy and exhausting battle for the eyeball, for the click, for the wallet. It is a world of speed, superficiality, and oblivion.
But a real connection, the kind that endures, is not born in that clamor. It is born in a whisper.
This book is about that whisper. About the silent psychology of objects that brands, in their feverish race for metrics, too often forget. We explore how a perfume becomes a memory of a moment when we were bravest. How the weight of a bag on the shoulder becomes armor in a world that wants to break us. How the sound of a box snapping shut becomes a ritual that restores our peace.
Right there, in that invisible space between function and feeling, lies our central question: What happens inside a person when an object ceases to be just a tool and becomes a part of them?
The answer does not lie in theory. It lies in life. That is why this book is not written as a dry textbook. Psychology is the science of human drama, and drama is best learned through story.
To show you how these principles are used not as tricks, but as weapons of survival, I am taking you on a journey. Through the pages of this book, at the end of every chapter, we will not analyze faceless case studies. Instead, we will follow a tense, continuous saga, a thriller set in the ruthless world of high fashion. We will enter the ateliers of Paris and the glass towers of New York. We will follow the war between Elena Varon, a woman who believes objects must have a soul, and Luciano Thorne, a man who believes everything is merely merchandise.
Through their struggle for the survival of a fashion house, you will see how abstract psychology transforms into concrete moves. You will see how Haptics is used to humiliate the competition. How Mythology is used to build an impenetrable fortress around a brand. How the Common Enemy is used to turn customers into an army.
These examples, this story of "The Last Luxury," is your training ground. It is proof that the soul of a product is not created by accident. It is forged. It is designed. It is defended.
For a thing without emotion is just an object. Waste waiting to happen. And an object without a soul never becomes a habit.
This book is dedicated to all of you who create—designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, marketers. To all of you who ask yourselves, not how to trick the customer into buying, but how to enrich their life so they never want to leave you.
Before we speak of sales, let us listen to that silence.
In it, everything begins.
Forget everything you think you know about sales. Forget the charts, the CRM systems, the A/B testing, the landing pages, and the cold, calculated strategies. Purge your mind of terms like "sales funnel," "target audience," and "conversion metrics." Empty your thoughts of the formulas that promised you success but delivered nothing but the feeling that you were working against your own nature.
Now, picture the scene.
On one side of the street stands a young, ambitious salesperson. In his hand, a tablet glows with a perfectly designed presentation. In his head, a script rehearsed to perfection. Every step is planned, every possible objection anticipated, and his goal is clear: to guide a potential client through a carefully defined process, from awareness to action. He is a soldier of modern capitalism, armed with data and convinced of the infallibility of the system he represents. He waits for the right moment, the right signal, the perfect opportunity to begin his performance.
On the other side of the street, leaning against a brick wall, stands a man who has none of that. No tablet, no presentation, no office, no business card. His "strategy" isn't written on any paper; it lives in the way he observes the world. He doesn't analyze the market; he feels the pulse of the street. He doesn't think about "buyer personas"; he looks directly into the eyes of the person in front of him, seeing their fatigue, their hopes, their hidden desires, and their quiet fears. His tool is not technology, but pure, unfiltered humanity.
While the first salesperson is still waiting for ideal conditions to open his presentation, this other man looks up. His eyes meet the eyes of a passerby. There is no rehearsed speech, just one sentence, spoken in the right tone, at the right moment. One smile. One gesture of the hand. A few quiet words exchanged on the wind. And the sale is closed. No process. No plan. Not a single chart.
Welcome to the world of the Roma Sales Philosophy. Welcome to the system without a system.
I write because I believe it is worth understanding what is not written in any textbook. And so that this philosophy does not remain merely theory on paper, a real-life guide will accompany us throughout the book. We will conclude every chapter with a story from real life, the story of a young Roma man who grew up in the poverty of the Sarajevo neighborhood of Švrakino Selo[FN], without a single formal tool, but with instincts honed on the street. We will follow his path, from his first improvised trades to his status as a successful merchant, watching how every principle in this book—instinct, emotion, and improvisation—refracts through real victories and defeats. His story will be our mirror and proof that this philosophy is alive, powerful, and, above all, applicable.
One man. One look. One moment of truth.
It is the only formula that has sold for centuries. And the only one that will truly matter in the centuries to come. I will show it to you.
I am sitting on an old, stone bench in the garden of our home in Provence. The sun is low, soft and golden, and the air smells of lavender, of dry earth, and of that sweet, deep sorrow of autumn that is, in reality, nothing but peace. Before me, on the wooden table, stands a glass of red wine. It is not Lucien's wine. He is gone now. But it is his son's wine, just as honest and full of stories. And next to the glass, there it lies. My most sacred relic. An old, black, leather-bound notebook, its pages long since yellowed, its ink faded under the weight of decades. Our "Black Notebook." Sometimes I open it, not to read, but simply to trace my fingers over the verses, sketches, and anonymous confessions that inscribed the very soul of our little Parisian miracle.
Nearly forty years have passed. Forty years since that mad, beautiful, terrible adventure. I read the title of this secret book of mine, this journal: "How I Built a Million-Dollar Restaurant." And I smile. A quiet chuckle, just to myself. How young I was. And how naive. How I had framed the question all wrong.
Because, did we make a million dollars? Probably. And much more than that. The numbers have long since been lost in the mists of time, in the columns of ledgers that my son, Marcel, now keeps. But that, I realize now, was never the real tally. The true value of alchemy is never measured by the gold it creates, but by what survives the fire.
This book is an attempt to explore a single, timeless truth: how does a human being behave under extreme, unimaginable pressure? How do the principles of communication, influence, and negotiation function when life itself is at stake? And what happens when all the external trappings of civilization are stripped away, leaving only the raw negotiations between hope and despair, intellect and brutality, compromise and annihilation?
"The manuscript of this book lies before me. The last page is written. For years, I ran from these memories. I buried them deep, afraid that if I allowed them to surface, they would swallow me whole once more. But the debt the debt to those who could not tell their story was stronger than the fear. The writing was not easy. Every sentence was like reopening an old scar, reliving the pain to distill a lesson from it. But now that it's finished, I feel a kind of... peace. As if by transferring this burden to paper, I have finally managed to set it down from my shoulders.
Sometimes, people ask me if I have forgiven. It's a question asked by those who were not there. Forgiveness is a simple concept in a world that makes sense. In my world, the question is meaningless. Can I forgive Schmidt's obsession with order? Can I forgive Richter's sadism? It would be like forgiving a hurricane for destroying a city, or a virus for killing a child. Some forces are simply... forces. They are beyond the realm of forgiveness. No, I have not forgiven. But I have learned something harder. I have learned to understand. Understanding is not the same as justification, but it is the only path to peace. I realized that they too, in their own monstrous way, were prisoners. Prisoners of their own ideology, their own fear, their own emptiness. Their prison had no barbed wire, but it was just as deadly. And in the end, it destroyed them from within, far more thoroughly than the camp ever destroyed us.
My story is not one of heroism. It is a story of survival. It is a story of negotiation, not only with people, but with fate, with God, and with my own demons. And if there is but one, single insight worth taking away from it, it is this: even in the deepest darkness, as long as you are breathing, you are at the negotiating table. And as long as you are at the table, there is a chance. Maybe only five percent. Maybe only one. But a chance exists. And your only, true task is to sell that chance, that small, tiny sliver of light. First to yourself. And then to the world.
And yes, in the end, when all is said and done, to have the strength not just to survive, but despite all the scars, to feel the warmth of the sun on your face again. And when your daughter waves at you, to smile.
Truly. As if for the first time.
And the last."
How is it possible that a small, landlocked nation, devoid of oil, diamonds, or fertile plains, with a territory comprised of 60% barren rock and ice, has become synonymous with wealth and perfection? How does a country with a population smaller than London’s hold the keys to global finance, pharmaceuticals, and precision engineering?
Many seek the answer in "secret bank accounts" or "stolen gold." That is a lazy answer. It is a consolation for those unwilling to understand the true mechanism. Banks are merely vaults; they are not money factories. True wealth is not what we store, but what we create.
This book, "The Swiss Code," is my attempt to demystify that "magic." I want to prove a single thesis to you: Swiss quality is not an aesthetic choice. It is a historical survival imperative.
I want to show you that the "Swiss Model" is not genetically preordained. It is "Open Source" software. The principles of precision, reliability, long-term planning, and compromise can be installed into any culture and any economy, provided there is the discipline to apply them every single day, without exception.
This is not a book about Switzerland. This is a book about you, and how you can construct your own fortress of quality in a world increasingly veering toward chaos and superficiality.
Welcome to "The Trust Code." This book is not about tricks. It is not about manipulation. It is not about defeating the other side. It is about the single key that unlocks the door to every "YES" that matters to you. That key is trust.
For too long, we have been taught that trust is a "soft skill", something nice to have, but not essential. We view it as the icing on the cake of business success. This is one of the greatest fallacies of our time. Trust is not the icing. It is the flour, the water, the eggs, and the sugar. It is the cake itself. Without it, you have nothing but a mess of disparate ingredients.
This book is not merely about becoming a better salesperson or negotiator. It is about becoming the kind of person to whom people naturally want to say "YES." This is a fundamental shift. It is the difference between pushing a boulder uphill and watching it roll downhill. When you master the Trust Code, you stop fighting for every inch of progress and start attracting opportunities and people to you. This shift impacts not only your bank account but the quality of every relationship you hold.
The purpose of this book is not to bog you down with theory. Its purpose is to install a new operating system in your mind for how you interact with the world. And the core code of that system is one powerful principle:
Stop selling. Stop convincing. Start building trust.
Focus on becoming the most trusted advisor, the most genuine partner, and the person who delivers value first. When this becomes your priority, sales, deals, and agreements cease to be targets you chase; they become the natural byproducts of who you are. A "YES" is not something you seize; it is something freely given.
This is the promise of "The Trust Code." The key is now before you. It will not always be easy; it will require you to confront your habits and challenge your beliefs. But the doors this key unlocks lead to a life of greater influence, deeper relationships, and true success.