There are so many articles out there on the business prodigy and best-selling author Iliyan Kuzmanov. The focus is often on his book If You Meet Buddha, Kill Him, which reached the top 15 rankings on Amazon and was listed for awards. Or they concentrate on his multi-million-dollar business in the UK and how he uses it to fund his activism across the world, most prominently in Bulgaria. However, that is not what we want to focus on today. We want to take a look at the motive behind the man, the reason he started his fight, and that is a one-word answer… women.
Yes, like an old-style romantic Cavaliere, Iliyan Kuzmanov’s journey was fuelled by love and lust, as all the best rock and roll stories are. One Bulgarian journalist even described Iliyan as the modern-day Don Quixote, and she was right. For there is no more noble reason to start a fight than for a woman. This is no simple fight that we speak of. Not a drunken bar brawl at 2 am. Not even a cowboy western duel at dusk. This is a fight that echoes long throughout history.
However, do not make the mistake of thinking this is a love story about the good man fighting the good fight for his one and only lady. Iliyan Kuzmanov is a ladies’ man at heart, with a simple affinity to women who need to be saved. Like Casanova mixed with a knight in shining armour. A real-life Bruce Wayne, if you will. He certainly has the fighting spirit to rival the infamous Dark Knight, and the fame, money and adoring women to match Wayne.
Countless women have passed through the life of Iliyan Kuzmanov, some of them famous and known, but it is the troubled ones that served as his true drive. After all, you do not travel all the way to knock on the Dalai Lama’s door for any old acquaintance. For Iliyan, that particular quest was a matter of life and death, someone else’s to be exact, which made it all the more important. Some of the most famous professors around the world were trying to save her life, all contacted and funded by Iliyan Kuzmanov, of course.
Interpol, narcs, human trafficking, hitmen, international crime syndicates, radicals, corruption, bureaucrats, criminal NGOs, this story even involved the mafia as Iliyan paid the price for one lost business in London, although that is a tale for another day. But the one thing that remained a constant throughout the crime, drama and adventure for Iliyan Kuzmanov was women. Rock and roll forever, as Iliyan always says. All is for love and we humans are for love.
Iliyan Kuzmanov came from nothing. He started on the brink of poverty in Bulgaria before grafting for an education in Canada and carving out business success in London. He is the ultimate self-made man who fought tooth and nail for his own freedom. A rock and roll start who rose from the ashes. As Iliyan always says, we need to be free. Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is treated to such ideals. Some former or current communist countries remain stuck in the ‘traditional family’ fetish, denying all individual liberties.
But how can you write about freedom if you do not know the price that has to be paid to be free? How you can you write about love if you have not felt its warm embrace? How can you write about women if they are not the centre of your world? How can you write about individuality and personality if you do not ooze those qualities yourself? Iliyan Kuzmanov made sure to systematically tick all these boxes to ensure that he can indeed write about them with authority.
He said: “You have to love yourself in the first place. We do not have to follow tyrants, who preach to us nationalistic ideals, which deny our personalities, our happiness. There is nothing wrong with making money, to be rich, it is up to you how you will spend them. But spend them for someone else as well, to help even a lady.
“If you are the big man, help the ladies, do not buy them. That is the miracle of money, the ability to create instant miracles. The reason why I hate so much the communist(socialist) anti-capitalists, who are trying to take us all these amazing moments and put us into a routine with no free choice and personal expression.
“Even to express yourself as a great admirer of the most beautiful creatures- the ladies. By the way, do not take me wrong, I like men who were discovered their feminine side as well. Very much by the way!”
“We have to be free, to be able to be creative. We should explore our imagination, our fantasies. We should look for pleasure and love. If we love more, we will do all the things with love!”
