Winning Without Losing: When the Road is Rough
Winning Without Losing, the CMI award-winning book as “the best book for New Managers,” explains 66 strategies on how to be successful in business, without neglecting your personal life. Martin Bjergegaard and Jordan Milne interviewed a variety of successful entrepreneurs, and through their search they found that the key to a happy and successful life, is a healthy work life balance.
Every Saturday for 7 weeks, we will be sharing unique strategies that aim to inspire how you can achieve success without sacrifice.
This week, the selected strategy is chosen from Winning Without Losing‘s ‘When the Road is Rough’ section.
#3 Remember there is always a way
When success doesn’t come as easy as they would like, some are all too quick to blame their circumstances and surroundings. Success would be possible if, and only if, the odds hadn’t been so heavily stacked against them. Maxim Spiridonov represents a refreshing change from this mentality. His story and his attitude illustrate what is possible.
At our interview, 34-year-old Maxim speaks in a calm and confident manner about his favourite business ventures. One of them publishes two Russian web magazines, each with approximately 100,000 users. Another is a business podcast site, the best known in Russia, which he started in 2008. Today he has sold half of the business to a Moscow-based VC firm and has inked a deal with the Russian version of Forbes magazine to publish their podcasts in text form.
Maxim hasn’t limited himself to the media industry. His newest start-up is a software program for buying and selling foreign currencies. When I met him, this business had been going for only 8 months and had already grown to 40 employees: programmers, analysts, risk managers, dealers. They generate revenue by charging a fee for every transaction, and are impressively enough already profitable.
Maxim looks fit as he sits there in his black T-shirt. Even though it feels awkward, in the name of my mission I muster up the courage to ask him if he works out often. ‘Yes, 30–40 minutes of daily morning exercise, stretching and yoga,’ is his easy response, which indicates that I might have managed to hide my embarrassment. ‘Plus two to three times a week at the gym.’ Actually, he is going to the gym after the interview. How does he get the time?
‘I don’t have time not to keep fit. Being healthy is the foundation for success.’ I get the idea that this is something he has said before, perhaps to his co-founders and colleagues, or maybe at his frequent lectures at entrepreneurship events. There, his favourite message is about the importance of creating trusting, respectful and mutually enriching relationships with your partners and colleagues. ‘It’s really all about trust,’ is his favourite saying.
One of the benefits of the digital generation is the freedom to work anywhere. Maxim spent the month of January in Thailand, and all he needed was an internet connection.
Maxim spent the entire month of January in Thailand. ‘It doesn’t matter where I live, just as long as there is a reliable Internet connection,’ he explains. The last 3 months have taken him on trips to Israel, Ukraine and Switzerland, in addition to tours of his vast homeland, including one to Siberia. Next stop is a trip to Turkey with his two daughters. They are 9 and 12 years old, and have their base in Nuremberg, Germany, with their mother. The time Maxim doesn’t spend travelling he splits evenly between his businesses in Moscow and his daughters in Nuremberg. It works fine, and Maxim enjoys the fact that in this way he is integrated into two cultures simultaneously.
It all seems a little too easy, and I start getting suspicious. Are his parents possibly among those oligarchs I have read about in the newspapers? Was he born with a silver spoon in his mouth?
None of these speculations are close to the truth. Maxim has earned every rouble he owns. He was originally educated as an actor, trying to scratch a living in the theatres of St Petersburg. When he started a family, he needed to bring home more money than the acting profession could provide him with. It was 1998, and a crisis of historic proportions shook the foundations of the new Russian market economy.
In my conversations with him, Maxim does not mention a single word about the crisis. Nor does he mention the fact that it was difficult to get started as an entrepreneur without capital, without the relevant contacts or the right education. It does not seem to be a part of his way of looking at the world. Instead, he talks about how he and some friends from the theatre started a company organising events: ‘We knew about showbiz, and had lots of contacts who could help us set up some amazing events. We enjoyed it so much that for us it was a game more than a business. We reached a turnover of 4 to 5 million US dollars a year and in 2004 I sold my share and moved to Germany to try something new.’
‘Doing business is about having fun,’ says Maxim, and it sounds like another one of his mottos.
“Doing business is about having fun.” Maxim’s motto is a testament to his character.
A few years ago, he created a social community, where people could vote on who they thought should be the next president of Russia. It was thought of as a practical joke, but it attracted thousands of participants and lots of publicity. Next month he is starting tango lessons with his girlfriend.
‘He is one of the most famous young IT entrepreneurs in Moscow,’ my Russian contact tells me later, as we push our way onto the subway that transports as many people as the subways of London and New York combined; 8 million people a day, half the population of Europe’s biggest city.
I understand why Maxim is so popular. His story and his charisma made an equally strong impression on me. How often do we meet people of potential who hold themselves back because they lack money, live in the wrong country, are in the middle of a crisis, have the wrong education, are too young or too old, lack an idea, or don’t know the right people?
Maxim reminds us of what we all know but often forget; that there is always a way. And that the only necessary prerequisite is the ability to see possibilities instead of limitations.
The post Winning Without Losing: When the Road is Rough appeared first on Pine Tribe.
