Chapter 1 — From "Will to Receive" to "Will to Give": The Formula for Sustainable Value

Opening: The Man Who Refused to Profit More

When Jim Sinegal founded the retail giant Costco, he established one ironclad rule that caused Wall Street analysts to pull their hair out: The company would never mark up any product it sold by more than 14%. And for its own private label (Kirkland), the strict maximum was 15%.

The analysts laughed. Shareholders demanded he raise prices, especially on popular items that people were perfectly willing to pay twice as much for. Sinegal’s refusal was absolute. "Once you get used to taking more," he said, "you start destroying what you built." In addition, he refused to lay off workers during recessions and paid them a wage significantly higher than the industry average, consciously sacrificing the company's immediate bottom line.

A decade later, competing retailers were reporting an annual employee turnover rate of 60% and closing branches. Costco, on the other hand, thrived with an employee retention rate of over 90% and revenues exceeding $250 billion (as of 2024). Its stock crushed the broader market indices.

How did a deliberate sacrifice of profit become their greatest growth engine? Without knowing it, Jim Sinegal had cracked one of the most ancient secrets in the architecture of reality—the transition from the code of the "Will to Receive" to the code of the "Will to Give" (Ratzon Lehashpia).

The Cosmic Secret: Humanity's Two Operating Engines

At the foundation of Kabbalistic psychology lies an observation that is deep, simple, and simultaneously powerful. Kabbalah asserts that every human action—every relationship, every transaction, and every managerial decision—is driven by one of two forces (operating engines): "The Will to Receive" (Ratzon Lekabel) or "The Will to Give" (Ratzon Lehashpia).

The Will to Receive is our primal force, our survival drive. It is the need to accumulate, to conquer territory, and to maximize our personal utility. There is nothing inherently "evil" about it; without it, cities, markets, and technologies would never have been built. But the problem with the Will to Receive is that it forms a closed system. Its logic is that of a Zero-Sum Game: what I gain, someone else loses. Every piece of market share comes at the expense of a competitor. This is a format that ultimately leads to exhaustion and shattering.

The Will to Give, on the other hand, is not the negation of self-interest, but its expansion. It is a state of consciousness where the goal is to generate abundance that flows onward to the collective. A system driven by the Will to Give is an open system. In open systems, the pie grows. If I ensure that my clients, suppliers, and employees profit—the total value of the system rises exponentially.

The Business Translation: From Value Extraction to Value Creation

When businesses operate solely from the "Will to Receive," in modern language we call this Value Extraction. Such a company will squeeze the maximum out of every customer and every employee. It will present incredible profits for the upcoming quarter, but it is burning trust, exhausting its employees (burnout), and will ultimately lose the decade. Its customers leave the moment a cheaper alternative arises.

But businesses that operate from the "Will to Give" perform Value Creation. Kabbalah does not suggest that businesses forfeit profit. A business that does not profit collapses, and cannot benefit anyone. The secret is to change the location of the profit within the equation. Instead of profit being the ultimate goal (the "Why"), profit becomes the natural by-product of a system that generates massive value for others.

Costco built a system that operates to create trust. Every dollar they forfeited and didn't "squeeze" from the customer (Will to Give) returned to them as stable, recurring revenue from Membership fees, absolute loyalty, and massive savings in marketing costs.

The formula of the "Will to Give" in business looks like this: Value Creation → Trust → Retention → Sustainable Growth.

A leader who understands this asks less "How can we extract more from them," and asks more "How can we create more value for them than anyone else." The answer to the second question is what builds empires.

🛠️ The Toolkit

The true test of transitioning between these mindsets doesn't happen when everything is going well. It happens when cash flow is tight, when a new competitor enters, or when an investor demands an excellent quarterly report. Here is how you ensure you are operating from the correct code:

⚠️ Common Mistake (And How to Avoid It)

Focusing on the wrong KPI: Managers are obsessed with measuring the "Will to Receive" (Revenue, Gross Margin, LTV). The Fix: Design an "Impact" metric. Add one question to your monthly management report: What is the net value we created this week for our customers or our employees?

🧠 Mental Exercise (The 3-Year Test)

Take a heavy decision (a major contract, a new pricing structure) that you are currently facing. Ask: If the other party discovers everything I know now about this deal 3 years from today—will they feel I beat them, or that we made a genius deal together? If the answer is "they will feel exploited," you are building hidden debt that will explode. This is a warning sign of a blind Will to Receive.

📋 3 Questions for the Board Tomorrow Morning:

1. Where in our organization are we doing Value Extraction (squeezing a lemon) instead of Value Creation (planting a new tree)?
2. Do our employees and suppliers consistently profit from working with us, or do they feel that only we are profiting?
3. If we were to cap our profit margins on our best-selling product (like Costco did)—what would we be forced to optimize in order to survive, and how would the customers react?