Читать онлайн The Secret of Movement
About the author.
Lipinskyi Vladimir Alexandrovich was born on June 4, 1988, in Odessa, Ukraine. He was born into a very poor, small family. Mother – Elena Bloschak, Father – Alexander Bloshchak, and older sister – Irina Bloschak. He finished secondary school No. 11, and went to study at school No. 54, with specialization in “chef”. After graduation, a year later, he entered and graduated from Moscow State University, with specialization in “International Economic Relations”. He created his first business in 2011 called PlayStation Club.
Knowing all his relatives and their unsuccessful lives, Vladimir Bloshchak was ashamed that he bore the surname of a family in which no one was distinguished by anything and achieved nothing grandiose. Vladimir lost his father in 2007; he lost his mother in 2012.
In 2012, Vladimir met his future wife Christina Lipinskaya, and after marrying her in 2013, he took her surname. In 2021, he earned his first million dollars for the first time.
The secret of movement
See through their eyes
Sitting in Dubai, in a great apartment overlooking the sea, it’s hard to believe that once upon a time I was running down the street, at a temperature of +30 degrees in wool pants with a sewn-in fly. Because there was no zipper on the pants. Though to tell the truth, that’s complete nonsense, as I always knew that the shit I was living in was definitely not for me.
I always believed that I was destined for something more than cutting through the streets of the sloboda. I didn’t know how, of course, but I knew that I had to do anything to get out of that God forsaken place. So that you understand what I mean by the word shit – this is when you live in a family of four in a house with an area of 55 sq m., of which 20 are in disrepair. In a house where there is no water and legal light. There was so little space that the sofa on which I slept barely fit into the room, and the impression was, looking at it, that it was placed before those clay walls were erected. Yeah, you got that right, the house was made of fucking clay. There were three rooms and a kitchen in that 55-square-foot space. The biggest room was uninhabitable because the ceiling was so sagging that it could fall off at any moment and kill someone. As you understand, a shower or a bathtub was out of the question. We had to take turns washing in a basin in the far room, as all the rooms were walk-through. We often did not wash, as I had to carry the water from the neighbors, who lived not very close. Don’t think that I am trying to complain a little and pull at heartstrings. I want it to be clear what and how things were. I can’t say I had bad parents. I loved them very much, although I cried in childhood like a tearful girl. Every day, for any reason.
I always wanted to grow up as soon as possible so I could go to work, earn money, save it, and start doing something that would bring me a personal income. Even as a child, I did not understand why, in schools providing secondary education, there is not a word about how to become an entrepreneur or a businessman. An incubator that produces service personnel. I’m not saying that you don’t need to send your children to school. Since basic knowledge of the same mathematics, reading, etc. is necessary for any person. I am saying that children should also be told that they should become not a cashier in a store, an operator in a good company, or any other hired personnel, but also an entrepreneur, a businessman, and, in the end, an investor. A person working for himself. The master of his destiny and his income. Actually, a lot depends on your thinking. You should always imagine what you want to see yourself. Naturally, you don’t come to this in your school years.
I only knew then that I would be rich, or at least live in abundance, but how I was supposed to do it, I had no idea. Nor do I now, to tell you the truth. Wealth, it’s a very fuzzy concept. There’s always someone wealthier than you. You have to understand what you’re going for. If you’re ambitious and you want to be rich, this race will be over for you when your light dies out. Just so you understand, my friend Dennis “Spacker” in my childhood, who I hadn’t seen in about 10 years, got a job that paid him $800 a month. It was around 2000-2002. I was only 12 or 14 years old. And I thought he was practically a rich man. I thought that he had caught God by the balls, as they say, or he was just cheating and carrying bricks somewhere on a construction site. Which was more likely. It didn’t occur to me that a guy who was nicknamed “Spacker” could get a high-paying job. I mean, that at that moment, he was practically a rich man to me. When someone else started earning that kind of money and more, that someone else was the rich man. And it happens all the time. The more you earn, the more you need. And there is no definition of a rich person. Unless you’re in the top three, or at least the top ten richest people in the world. I have always been involved in sports, and like all children in the ‘90s watched movies with star athletes like Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme, Stallone, etc. So, in one of Steven Seagal’s movies, he played a calm, peaceful chef who, if necessary, crushed everyone around him and knocked the shit out of them. That’s how I knew I wanted to be a chef until I came up with something else. Well, and as we’ve all often heard from adults, “A chef will not remain hungry.” I wanted to be like Steven, but I could not even imagine that I would be sitting with him in the same restaurant. So here I am sitting in a restaurant with my beautiful wife and I see Steven sitting at several tables away from us! Of course, not as fit and young, but still the same Steven. When I saw him, we were already about to leave, but I could not leave without approaching my childhood idol. Steven was sitting with his family and having dinner. I had to sit for about an hour and wait for him to finish his dinner. I really did not want to approach him like all his fans and ask him something obtrusively. I thought about accidentally meeting him while leaving the lavatory, for example, and accidentally starting a conversation. Since he did not even think about getting up from the table, I had to approach him and ask to take a photo with him. Naturally, I waited until he stopped eating. I approach the table, politely apologize for distracting him, and ask if I can take a photo with him. His wife turns around and says:
“Can’t you see he’s eating?”
He looked at me as if apologizing for his bitchy, in my eyes, wife. Because he’s definitely finished eating.
Meeting your childhood idols isn’t always how we imagine it would be. So, I was studying to be a chef at a vocational school. After two years of theory, I was sent to practice in an Italian pizzeria. After two weeks of practice, they didn’t want to let me leave that place, and agreed with the class teacher of my group, for some regular commission “retro bonuses”, as we called them, to keep me on a permanent job. I was insanely pleased, because since childhood I, like many children, wanted to have my own money with which to buy some new things. I wanted to be liked by girls and to be able to invite them somewhere. After about a month, I met a girl on the beach who was a top totty! I turned to look in her direction from time to time, and I could see that she wouldn’t take her eyes off me. I had no idea how to hook up with her. I just actually splashed her when she went in the water. She laughed and, as the conversation continued, left me her phone number. I still remember writing it down with a pen on a piece of paper at the time. And to call her, I had to go to a friend and ask him to call me from his home phone. It was much more complicated, but also more interesting than it is now. We went to a fancy disco. I had saved a tidy little sum by my standards. And we decided to have a bite at a restaurant nearby. That decent girl drank so many martinis that I was afraid to go to the disco with her. I often found myself in a situation when I sat at a table with a girl and ate nothing, worrying that I wouldn’t have enough money to pay for the table. Now, I realize that it was not for nothing. I had never lied about my financial situation. I never said, like many at that age, that I was the grandchild, nephew, or even the child of a wealthy family. Naturally, I lost my head and skittled away all my savings in less than a week. And I realized that something had to be done… When the girl realized that I was not joking about the fact that I am far from rich, and even on the contrary, she fell in love with me even more. She began to behave more modestly in restaurants. My appearance always misled people when they first met me, because when I started earning some money, I tried to look impeccably. I always thought that appearance was a business card. That’s the way the world works. You are always judged by your clothes. So, appearance was so important to me that I even boiled over when someone stepped on my foot. Like a lot of kids, I hated to read anything. It didn’t matter books or magazines. So, there was no way for me to know about business or anything close to it. In my black neighborhood, as I called it, it was hard to meet any businessmen to give a couple of lessons and instructions on life. And those who were small businessmen only socialized with their own kind, unfortunately.
I knew that I was going to succeed sooner or later. I had shown entrepreneurial spirit since I was a kid. That my friend Denis Spacker was in all the shit next to me. He was a greedy, lying and cunning bastard, but he was almost always there. He lived just as poorly as I did. He had money more often than I did, but he was so greedy that, buying peanuts in chocolate, he always said:
“I bought that for my mom!”
To eat it stealthily and not share it.
We found a fella who had a father who was a diver and always had money. He was much younger than us, and naturally, he was not allowed to go anywhere far from home. We were always dare-devils. We could go anywhere and anytime. Our parents didn’t worry about us. My parents had different parenting practices.
“Do what you want, but study hard! And then you won’t be like me.”
My father used to tell me. But no one even checked the diary. My father was a junkie, but he was a good man. I used to think he was. So, I had a living example of what not to do to avoid becoming one too… So, we went to the market, bought firecrackers, and fireworks, at wholesale low prices, and brought them to that daddy’s boy ten times more expensive. Tell me that’s not a great business model? We lived on the street next door to the biggest crack house in the city. There, junkies were crawling out like ants from an anthill. And in the same quantity. Several times with my friend Denis, nicknamed “Spacker” (he was nicknamed so by his elders because he was dumb), we went to the market and bought sunflower seeds, chocolates, candies, and various sweets. We took crates for bottles, put a crown on them, put everything we bought into the midst of the freaky bustle, and made them pay through the nose because we knew that all “druggies” had a craving for “sugared” after giving themselves an injection. I’ve always been easy to get along with any adult. Since I had met and already knew one of those drug lords, we were the only ones allowed to sell the stuff we bought there. It didn’t last long, as a few times we were passed by neighborhood girls from wealthier families on pink and red bikes. As I remember now, we had to hide to avoid being seen. We decided not to take the risk of continuing our business. I never lied about being from a rich family, but I was incredibly embarrassed to show where I lived, so I didn’t. I lived in a corner house with a wooden fence. If you can call it that. It was made of sparse, rotten, unpainted boards that folded over one-by-one like in old cartoons where dogs run through.
That fence was barely poised. When the weather was windy, I was always going out to see whether the fence was lying in the middle of the street, and I fixed it as best I could. “Spacker” knew that I liked those girls very much, and they liked me.
He often went for a cycle ride with them, while I picked all the cherries off the tree for the neighbors. In exchange for a couple of buckets of those same cherries. After picking the cherries, I walked home, niggered like “Mowgli” with two buckets of cherries. Each bucket was like half or three-quarters of me. You can imagine the picture. I’ve always been, so to speak, not very tall. I turned the corner and saw “Spacker” sitting against my gate with those girls on bicycles, waiting for me to come. That foul rogue knew that after that, I would feel uncomfortable and stop communicating with them. As soon as we had a squabble, he was always so low, trying to humiliate me in every possible way. I was always afraid of him a little bit because he was older than me and much bigger. So, I just had to tolerate, at most verbally humiliate him. Mowgli with buckets of cherries, walked into the yard calmly, without giving any sign of alarm. But once inside the house, if you can call it that, he started crying like a girl. It was not necessary to come even close to the fence to see that huge mountain of garbage in the yard and how poorly I lived. My mom asked me:
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
I often said that phrase:
“Why did you give birth to me? So, I could be ashamed and suffer?”
I can’t believe I was such a wimp and a crybaby. I’ve felt out of this world for my whole life. Like there was just a mistake at the factory, in the department that assigned the children to families, and I was in the wrong place. I knew for as long as I could remember that I was definitely going to get out of this beggary and that I was definitely not a part of that and those around me. I firmly believed that I would get my chance, at the right time and in the right place. I knew so well that it wasn’t my thing, that when my parents passed away, I immediately decided, “It’s time to sell this house for even 5 bucks, and get as far away as possible, only in no way to never be able to go back there again”. I put the house up for sale for $27,000 with no paperwork except for the household register, which was registered to my uncle. The same uncle who, after my father died, called and told me to give him the keys to the house or he would come and throw us out. The uncle, after his military service, was just registered in our house, which belonged to my father conditionally, in order for my uncle not to be homeless documentarily. And that piece of shit decided to throw us out of the house a week after my father died.
When another client came to see the house, I told him that all the documents were in order and the deal could be concluded at any time. That was the first client who agreed to come inside to see the house. All the previous ones, could at most glance into the yard, apologize, turn around and leave. I decided that there was a client who was ready to give that $5))) But if he would be willing to give more, I needed to feel it. I could see in his eyes that the man was cunning. And I wasn’t wrong. He tried to lower the price in all sorts of ways. We started haggling and dropped the price to $26,000. Then he said:
“I got $5,000, and the car is for sale at the used car dealership. I can give you an earnest payment of $5,000 and, when the car is sold, the rest of the money.”
I realized that “the boar is in the hole.” I asked him what kind of car he was selling. He immediately decided to sell the car to a little punk who clearly didn’t understand anything. He described this Lexus as the most perfect car for me. Just like I described to him the story of buying a house.)) I drove with him to the used car dealership knowing that I would take this car, no matter what condition it was in, because the point was to get the deal done, and not miss that chance. I remembered I was ready to sell it for $5. The main thing was not to give it away for free. And for a pretty car and $5,000, even so much the more.
How do you think I was going to sell the house? Naturally, I didn’t have the money to do the paperwork for it. Since childhood, I have tried to look a few steps ahead. I tried to understand which people could be useful to me in life and which ones could be helpful. And it is useful to me to this day. When I had to do some certificates for school, I would come to the house administration (the name of the place where they issued various certificates of residence, including the household register, which was the basis for applying for legalization of the house). I always smiled at a woman of about 50 years old coming out of one of the offices and told her all kinds of compliments. She adored me and always smiled back. She was sitting in the office, a bigshot), my thinking was like that. She often asked me:
“Why are you sitting in the queue? Come inside, we’ll take care of it.”
As you understand by now, it’s always necessary to be polite and agile. It came in handy for me. When the client asked how we would re-register the house, I said that there was no problem. We write a receipt for the earnest payment, we go to the house administration, we register you, write us out, and then you, based on these documents, do all the other documents. I realized that I could not do that, as I was not even registered in the house, not that I was the owner according to that book. After receiving the earnest payment, I realized that I now had to solve the problem that had arisen. I went to the house administration and sat in the queue for one of those offices. But unfortunately, it was not to the woman with whom I had already established contact.
There were only two or three rooms there, and I always met her when I came to the house administration. And naturally, at that time I met that woman again. She was as usually all in gold and wearing makeup. After my usual compliments, she melted, and as if according to a worked-out and planned scheme, she told me not to wait in the queue. She took me into a room she wasn’t sitting in and told me to do whatever I asked. And walked out of the room smiling at me. That’s when I was flabbergasted to find out she was the head of that local department. She ordered me to do whatever I asked, without realizing what I might ask. I remembered that lesson forever. It goes without saying that her subordinate, thinking that I was her son, grandson or nephew, was ready for any request, even if not quite legal. The name of the woman I was taken to was Viktoria Semionovna. I told her the truth and said I’d just lost my parents. The goal was to become friends. And since Viktoria Semionovna knew who I was from, she pursued that goal herself. Why, you might ask, would I want to be friends with Viktoria Semionovna? So that she wouldn’t be tempted to ask me if she could really do anything I asked. So, I decided to entangle her a little deeper. I told her that I was selling that house, and I was doing all those documents for that purpose. And I wanted to thank her for her help and for the speed I was asking for by giving her 5% of the sale price. Having received such generosity, Viktoria Semionovna wouldn’t even think of asking her director for permission) It was the lesson I remembered for the rest of my life. “Be generous to smile at people around you”, because you don’t know if this or that person will be useful to you in the future. I managed to pull it all off in 2-3 days so that my uncle, a moral freak, did not have time to realize what had happened)) Thus began a new chapter of my life. I got a chance and had no right to shit on myself. I really broke out into the open ocean, where I had to get acquainted with completely different people and new rules.
At that time, I dated a girl who worked in a company selling ready-made businesses. She came across a business plan for a gaming club, which was very prospective on paper. It cost $50,000. At that time, I had only those $5,000 that were needed to pay for a rented apartment, food, and petrol for my new car). The wheels became a pass for me and a business card for meeting people on the next “step”.
A search for the algorithm of success, finding useful acquaintances and finding the right strategy to buy that game club was going on constantly in my head. Being a talkative and agile guy, I worked simultaneously in a Dating Agency, where I helped Ukrainian girls and American guys get acquainted.
I constantly had to surf popular social networks and find girls willing to register in our agency to meet Americans. We were making money on it. I had to find a different approach to each girl to convince her to register with our agency. Of course, I perfected my skills at that time almost to perfection. Needless to say, it wasn’t a business I saw myself doing in the long run. I, spending another night looking for clients for the site, came across a girl with whom one of my acquaintances was dating. Andrei told me what a rich family she was from and how smart she was. “Do anything, and something will work out well.” This has been my motto since early childhood, and up to the present day. You don’t have to sit still and wait for an idea to come along, for a chance to turn up, for luck to knock on the door. You should always drive a car, ride a bike, and walk in new places. It is necessary to get out of your comfort zone and be attentive to the little things and details that surround you. In your head, there is a constant activity, the analysis of what you see and hear, and as a result, you get an idea to create a business. You make new acquaintances and this is your further growth.
At the time, I read a lot of business literature and psychology. I still do it to this day, to be honest. The first book I read was written by a businessman named Donald Trump. It was called “Why We Want You to Be Rich.” This book talked a lot about the shortcomings of schooling, which I agree with. In school, they explain all the time, that you have to study hard and you will be able to get a good stable job. We are trained from an early age to become payroll employees. But not a word is said that we can and should create companies, holdings, corporations. There is no financial education in school, and I think this is a huge mistake. In Donald Trump’s book, there are no complicated formulations, and there are no intricate, abstruse descriptions of anything.
For someone like me, it was the ideal book to start reading business literature. Strange as it may seem, my parents were never able to convey to me a key point of the phrase that I heard many times, including from them: “Who keeps company with the wolf, will learn to howl.” And it was Donald Trump’s book that revealed this phrase at a 100% level. He clearly described what that looked like, and I began to notice that in life, just like in school, people clumped together around common interests. Athletes to athletes, crammers to crammers, slackers to their peers. It’s the same in the adult world. Only the choices are more conscious.
If you keep company with five millionaires, you will be the sixth.
If you keep company with five beggars, you will be the sixth.
So, I started intentionally to be on friendly terms with successful and potentially successful people. I wrote on social media to a former girlfriend of my comrade some made-up nonsense, but which would allow me to get caught up in the conversation. I don’t remember exactly, but if I’m not mistaken, that sentence was like:
“Hey, you know, you appeared in my dreams today.”
She was interested curiously in what had happened in that dream. That was when my imagination did not fail me. I coldly replied that I didn’t want her to worry, she was behaving properly in the dream. She appeared in my dreams that we were buying a PS club together. The content of that dream was most likely the consequence of the fact that I yesterday all day stared at the Business Plan of the club that was in the dream)))).
“I just have a lot of free time now, so tell me, what is the PS club?”
The exact wording was lost, but the gist of it was as follows.
And then, with the boar in the pit, that would be that! I told her everything in colors, how it was described in this BP. Kira Leonidovna was very interested. We started discussing that club in detail, and we went to see it, but still, I had no plan where and how I would be able to find not even the full amount of money to buy that startup, but half of it. As Deepak Chopra said in one of his books, if you can’t solve a problem, no matter how hard you try, step away from it and let the strength of intention solve it for you. I let the PS club seller believe that I could afford to buy the club, let Kira Leonidovna believe that I could buy it, and at some moment I believed it myself. Everything was shaping up quite nicely according to the stories of that seller who was selling us a pig in a poke. He showed us excellent numbers and the growth dynamics of this PS’s profit. And he let slip that he urgently needed to sell it, as he had big plans and needed to move to another city. That was when I saw an opportunity for myself, something to latch onto. I adhere to the slogan: “Everything that happens, happens for the best”. Always try to see the glass as half full, not half empty. He didn’t have time to sell the business for long, which meant I didn’t have much time to find the money to buy my share. Unfortunately, that’s how most people think. At that moment, I realized that the seller needed to sell, and there was not enough time to defend all his wishes for the deal. We talked with Kira Leonidovna for a few minutes and decided that the offer was very worthy, but not verified. Kira said she was willing to pay 60% of the price.
And it struck me. I offered her to pay the advance for the club with her money and pay the second part two months later after all the figures written in that BP were confirmed. I had two months to accumulate that money. But the club was essentially already ours. Not one dollar was spent, and the business was acquired. Thank you, Donald Trump! After a while, we became convinced that the club wasn’t that fast-paced and dynamic, and we didn’t pay the rest of the money for it. Within a couple of months, I returned to Kira half of the amount she paid and enjoyed my firstborn business. It all happened very simply, quickly and easily. And the first time, when I read that BP, and saw the requested amount of $50,000, I almost broke my head where I could get it. I tempered my ardor a bit, let go of the situation, reduced the importance of what I wanted and allowed myself to have it. Don’t be afraid to desire and allow yourself to have…
With the PS club, I became a real pride even to myself. That business wasn’t that big, but it was a huge win for me. It was 2012 and I was 24 years old. I wanted to tell and brag to every passerby. I wanted to drive my car around the neighborhood with my middle finger on my hand out the window higher so everyone who didn’t believe in me would shut up!)) I was emotionally on such an upgrade, like “Rocky Balboa” when he was able to run a long distance and run up a flight of stairs during a training session). You feel like you’ve finally hit a wave of success and you need to make sure you don’t miss that chance. I was 24 years old; I had my own gaming club, I had extra income in a dating agency that was also growing very dynamically, and a fancy car. But I was still the little person that no one had heard of. It always stressed me out a little bit. I’ve been in sports all my life and I’m used to the competitive spirit. In this case, my rival is my ego. Enjoying winning, that’s not my thing. I’m always in tension and always worried, what if something happens and tomorrow everything collapses? And where do I go? What do I do? Who will help me if I have no relatives or parents? I was at the bottom and I definitely don’t want to go back. These thoughts visit me occasionally even now. But the more I read and listen to my wife, the calmer and more confident I become. When you’re at the bottom, you’re not afraid of anything. When you’ve dredged up a bit, you don’t want to go back to the bottom anymore, and you start feeding your fears. Having traveled a certain path and read a certain number of books, I’m happy to give you a recommendation for books to read to be able to deal with your fears. First of all, read a few books by Deepak Chopra, as well as Vadim Zeland’s “Reality Transurfing”.
These books are delightful. You will find a lot of interesting things for yourself in them and you will know yourself. If you are at peace with yourself, your business, friendships, or personal life, you will be at ease with yourself.
In 2012, when the Mayan tribes predicted Judgement Day, I traveled abroad for the first time in my life. Let me remind you, when I was 16 years old, my mom, sister, dad, and I didn't have passports at all. We were like real Ukrainian gypsies. At the age of 16, thanks to my sagacity and resourcefulness, well, and a little bit of corruption, I made a passport for my mother and myself respectively. At that moment I didn't understand what for, as I had been in another city once in my whole life. I had never been abroad. Intention. There was an intention. It was Dubai, UAE. It was another world, another dimension! I was in a state of shock, delighted, and psyched… It was something unreal. This world was like no other. The brilliance and luxury of that place was off the charts. The emotions overwhelmed me. I wanted to bring something to the table and be a part of that beautiful thing. I traveled all over Dubai with my mouth open with excitement. My wife and I have been one team in everything since we met and always had the same goal in mind. Faster, higher, stronger. That’s pretty much the whole mood of Dubai, though. The tallest fountains in the world, the fastest roller coaster in the world, the tallest building in the world, the biggest Ferris wheel, and so much more. There was a myriad of hugely expensive, exclusive cars on every corner. We, after reading about the economy of Dubai, realized that 90% of the economy was tourism. What could we invent and give to tourists, in addition to what we already have in that city, we thought. Coming back to Ukraine, to Odesa, where I was born and lived, I sat in my office and began to study the Business Plan development rules. My wife suggested to me to think over and develop an idea connected with exclusive and expensive cars for Dubai. In that city, every resident thought it was necessary to stand out with a beautiful, expensive, exclusive car. We came up with the idea to create a BP for a shopping center for expensive cars, with all representatives of tuning modifications of cars in the world. “Toretto Emirates”. The total investment required to launch that project was 12 million dollars. By design, it was the largest auto shopping center in the world. Its passive profit at the start was from 500 thousand dollars a month. The pay-off period of the project was 2 years. A very attractive prospect. A few months later after finishing our business plan, we flew to Dubai in search of an investor. The first few meetings were unsuccessful. And at the 7th meeting, we did it. We sold the idea for 3 million dollars and 5% of the profits. I never worked again. It doesn’t sound bad, but it’s boring. That business plan even up to the present day (2022) has not found its owner. It sounded good, right? There are always ups and downs. It’s important to see every fall as an opportunity and during every upswing not to bask in the glory for too long. Life is the movement and excitement to win. If you are not ready to work throughout your life and go to the top without stopping, accepting hard defeats and sweet victories, do as you are taught in school and work all your life in a stable job, spend no more than you can afford, and wait for a quiet old age and social security, hoping that the state will take care of you in your old age. If that’s okay with you, close this book. There is nothing useful for you here.
It’s do or die
From an early age, I didn’t like clutter. Everything had to be in its proper place. I loved cleanliness and punctuality so much that I developed an automatic sense of being on time so as not to be late. I wanted to be everywhere at once, not to miss something significant and that would help change my life dramatically. I didn’t choose which direction I wanted to go to be successful. To be successful in everything or what is it all for? That’s what I determined for myself at a young age. My sports lifestyle definitely helped me in that. I had a love for sports since early childhood. Sports is a character building first of all, it is discipline. Perseverance, decency, discipline, trimness, diligence, punctuality, optimism, and a little humor. These are the basic elements that I recommend you start with. In any situation, even if it seems unfavorable to you at first glance, learn to see the upside. This will allow you to focus on success. How? What is in it for me, and what can I get out of it? Questions you should be asking yourself continuously. During friendship, parties, dating, studying, and any pastime you should regularly ask yourself the question what can I get out of that? Walking around with boys and friends who think, I’ll still have time to work out when I am a certain age, it is not my option, and I don’t recommend it to you. Unless you’re a genius who plans to create a bicycle or become a scientist in a certain science, you need an endless stream of new and new acquaintances. Wherever you are, be upon the look for new acquaintances and new knowledge. While getting acquainted with useful people brings you closer to success. It's like in boxing or any sport. It is very presumptuous to try to knock out your opponent with one punch or, having received the ball, to hit the goal at once. There is very little chance of success. It is impossible to have one helpful friend, your soulmate, and think you are self sufficient and will become successful. “A single thread from everyone – and there’s a shirt for a naked one”. Project onto your life and assemble the puzzle of success. With such thinking you properly build your social circle. Communicating with a friend or comrade who plays computer games all day long and does not get out of the house, will not be of much use to you. Unless his father or mother is not a businessperson. What do you get out of the fact that his parents are business people? They’re not your parents. Why should they help you in anything if they have someone to help? Help your friend or mate become a better person in the eyes of his parents, so they can see who helped him do it. The first step has been taken and you have gained the trust of your friend’s parents.
Realizing that you are thinking right and positively influencing their son or even daughter, the parents will hold you up as an example for this friend. It’s a small victory. The aggregate of small victories will bring you a big victory. By socializing with a loser, you put yourself in the line of failure and vice versa. Make your mate or friend more successful, and by being side by side with them, you will transfer yourself to the lifeline of victories and good luck.
Success is not a white streak of luck – it is a way of life. As a child, on the streets where I grew up, I was practically the poorest kid. My father was a drug addict and all the neighbors knew it, my mother often drank a lot because of it. The family that many neighbors didn’t allow their children to be friends with. We always want the best for our children. And ever since I was a kid, I tried to gain favor with my elders by hook or by crook. I spent all my childhood with my friend on the sports ground, where there were tourniquets and bars. My neighbor, “Uncle Seryozha”, was a very sturdy man and sneezed at me for obvious reasons. The son of a drug addict. He had one daughter and no wife. My friend Spacker and I were the strongest guys of our age in the neighborhood. We used to tease a lot of the weaker kids. And while walking around the neighborhood, we saw a scrawny guy we didn’t know with pug-like eyes looking in different directions. We used to poke fun at him, too. Puggy, how did you get up here? And jokes like that. And at one moment, I realized that he was the son of the woman who had become the wife of “Uncle Seryozha”. I liked Uncle Seryozha, even though he disliked me. He had his own business, a grocery store, and he was the security head of the biggest market in Europe. I wanted him to be my friend. Why, what’s in it for me? It’s unclear yet, but as my friend says now, “It’s definitely a plus, not a minus.” I stopped messing with the pug and called him to the sports ground with us. The chap turned out to be not a bad guy at all. Uncle Seryozha saw that and was glad that his stepson began to get accustomed to the local social medium. And accordingly, the probability that his new woman, who was not yet his wife at that time, would not go back to the village with her son, as he could not get accustomed to the new place. The pug’s name was Sasha. Sasha and I went to the gym, and he began to engage in sports activities. You understand that Uncle Seryozha really appreciated it after all. Uncle Seryozha is a serious sportsman, and I thought he disliked Sasha himself, as he was a sport-antagonist. But he loved his mother, and there was no help for it. Going with Sasha to his parents’ store once again, his mother thanked me for the fact that her son had finally taken up sports, and Uncle Seryozha asked me to step up the pressure on Sasha and give him no quarter in the gym.
Uncle Seryozha liked me. He saw that I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I did sports. I was the very opposite of my father. I was no longer the son of a drug addict. I was his son’s friend. Uncle Seryozha’s family was one of the wealthiest families in the neighborhood. And his friends were neighbors from similar families. When they saw that Uncle Seryozha’s son was on friendly terms with me, and I often went out of their house, they became not that much against my friendship with their children but started almost asking me to be friends with their children. Do you remember “A single thread from everyone – and there’s a shirt for a naked one”? I developed a reputation and a lot of adult acquaintances. Trying to be the best at everything means gathering people like you around yourself. People who play games discuss games, businessmen discuss business, pessimists discuss who is to blame for their failure, and successful people discuss their victories. By focusing on even the smallest of victories, and not thinking about the negativity or the fact that you might not get something right, you put yourself in the line of success. Absolutely everything is inside your head. Invest time in your self development. The constant flow of new information keeps your brain constantly working. In my case, this is reading business literature, psychology, and spiritual books. At the end of the book, see the list of recommended books.
Learning about body language is a very, very interesting thing. Having read about body language, I began to observe others and see much more than I had seen before. For example: crossed arms on the chest – an attempt to create a protective barrier in front of you, closing you off from excessive attention. Hands behind your back are mostly used by self-confident people or people of authoritative professions. These are just two examples out of a million possible examples of body language. Armed with this knowledge, reading the involuntary automatic body movements of your interlocutor, you will easily realize that he, for example, is not very well or, conversely, perceives the information received from you. You will notice in proper time that you have chosen the right or wrong tactics without bringing the conversation to the point of irreversibility. The best investment is in your own self-development. It is not only necessary to do this I believe, it is insanely fascinating and interesting. By understanding how the average person’s mind works, you will understand how you can influence and control a person without having power over them. People, for the most part, move automatically and unconsciously from early morning till late at night. That’s the way the world wags. Look at a living example that you often meet on the road. You see ahead of you a stop-and-go traffic and switch on a turn signal on the car in front of you, what do you do? You switch on the turn signal and follow that car, thinking that there is no passing in front because of an accident, for example. The driver behind you is doing the same thing you’re doing. And behind him, everything will be the same.
How many times have you seen a parked car that stands at the curbside before a turn without hazard warning lights on and without a driver inside, and behind it there are several cars standing in line waiting for the first car to turn? But they don’t see that there is no driver in the first car, and the driver standing behind it is inattentive and hasn’t noticed it. All other drivers standing in the traffic jam move instinctively using the “people’s proof”. These are generally accepted rules by the people. If there are 1000 people and 990 of them say that the color white is not white, but green, then the remaining 10 people will name that color green too. These 10 people will rely on the knowledge of the majority. A similar situation is on the road where a traffic jam has formed. The driver of the car sees that everybody changes to the right lane, so, he thinks, they know something, but he does not see and does not know, that is why he moves behind the others. This is the herd instinctive behavior guided by folk evidence. Knowing these and other little things, you will realize that the most important thing you can do for your success is to invest in your self development. You need to keep an eye on your appearance. It should be impeccable at all times. Appearance is your business card. When you come to a meeting in a business suit, you indicate that you are here on business, not just a quick chat from the beach. Visiting a meeting in shorts, slippers, and a Panama hat, you are most likely not to make a good impression on the person you are talking to. You should always realize that wherever you are, your appearance will speak for you before you start talking. And in case you look a perfect fright and unkempt, you may not get the opportunity to speak. Work on your reputation, and your reputation will work for you. Like in the case of Uncle Seryozha. I obtained his support and favor, and when people saw that, they instinctively wanted to trust me and communicate with me. Everyone in the world knows the president through four handshakes. Your reputation is the foundation of your success. Don’t allow yourself to have a reputation that is not crystal clear.
You’re right there where you need to be
For a very long time, I thought I was a round peg in a square hole. Until the age of 25, probably, I was haunted by that feeling. When I was 6 years old and I sold sunflower seeds in a drug den, when I was 11 and I worked as a “beach boy”, when I was 12 and I worked as a loader at the “Vodograi” plant for the production of water, when I was 14 and I worked as a construction worker in an underground walkway where students walked without stopping, and even when I was 18, I worked at a car service station as a painter, I also recognized that was definitely not my place.
2007 р.
2007 р.
«This isn’t the place where I should be. It’s just a hopelessness. This is the place where the life has forced me to be.»
More or less the phrase like that went through my head from time to time. In fact, until I was 18, being a painter at the car service station was my best and favorite job. I crazily loved the process itself and that moment of comparison when a damaged car arrives, and a few days or weeks later, depending on the damage on it, a perfectly smooth, shiny candy appears, which makes the owner drool again. I felt like I was creating something new.
I had worked at a service station for 3 years. It was my longest period in one job. Now I understand the reason why it happened. The car service station was within walking distance from my home, and the process itself attracted me, my boss, or rather my mentor, was gone after six months. He didn’t die. He just said that you could already work on your own, you didn’t need me anymore. Since the owner of the car service station was an acquaintance of mine, we went to the same school, I was allowed to come and leave whenever I wanted. If I had worked with the cars of customers of the car service station, it would not have been to advantage for the reputation of the car service station of course. A client could come anytime during the working hours of the shop and see, for example, that his car was not being taken care of. But that was not my case. One day a guy arrived at the car service station with bumpers molded from fiberglass. It was taken to work and painted, and when returning the car, they said not to bring more such cars with handmade tuning. The guy, who brought those cars, was named Andrei. He had his own tuning studio, where he made the tuning himself. Andrei was a young, stylish, and very cheerful guy who had a beautiful girl, obviously had money, a lot of rich friends, and an endless stream of cars for tuning work. I was the only one who agreed to work with him. The thing was that other painters did not want to bother themselves and waste time with tuning from Andrei. The tuning was, to put it mildly, not very well done. And after painting, if something comes out after a while on the parts that the painter painted, who is to blame? The painter, of course. Honestly, that bothered me the least. My tongue was well-oiled, so I definitely wasn’t afraid of those moments. I took on that job and worked exclusively with cars that Andrey brought me. I wanted to befriend him, and working on his cars gave me that opportunity). He was just as an ordinary guy as I was, but about 7 years older and with a huge number of wealthy friends, into whose sesh I dreamed of getting. It was a very fun period of my life, to be honest.
A few jokes about the quality of Andrei’s tuning and we became friends. He took me with him several times to a sesh where his friends were, and naturally, I became friends with almost everyone. Including Kira Leonidovna. At that time and not even guessing that in the foreseeable future, she could become my business partner. I have made a lot of acquaintances at the car service station during the three years I worked there. Although the men, painters, who worked next to me, worked for more than 10 years and told me that the work of painters as a rule, working more than a year, no one left. They were saying the same thing as I was saying that at any moment they would leave that dirty work. And during 16 years of working at a car service station, they had never been able to do it. Neither could you. Where else would you earn 2-3 thousand dollars a month? You didn’t have rich relatives to get you a good job in the office, so get over it. I laughed in their faces. They were like from the movie Bachelor Party in Vegas, “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.” I bought a sports bike and I got in an accident. More specifically, I was just hit by a car while I was riding my motorcycle peacefully. I came to consciousness in the ambulance with a swollen head. At the time I lived with a married young couple in a rented apartment. We had fun every night and we had someone visiting us all the time. While I was on sick leave, a guy dropped by for a visit, whom I had also met at the car service station. He owned a marriage agency. He drove a cool car, wore expensive clothes, shirts with cufflinks, in general, was a prominent guy. In the middle of the evening, he offered to open a branch in his agency and quit my dirty job as a painter. Kostya was sure that I would succeed well and quickly in that business. You were talkative, savvy, and agile. That was something that would be definitely useful in such a business as a marriage agency. Naturally, looking at Kostya and seeing how he looked and what he had, I agreed and left the car service station. Kostya was right, and in less than a year, I achieved a turnover of just over $10,000 a month in my branch. I loved what I was doing. And although the first time the agency did not bring in a penny and the money practically ran out; I looked as if I had just come out of a bandbox. Everyone who worked in the office, thought looking at me, that here it was, another rich daddy’s boy. Meanwhile, I walked from home to and from the office. The short way, through thickets and railway crossings, was only 4-5 km. Imagine this comical scene: a guy in trousers, a shirt, and shoes trudging through fields and passes. The money was running out, I had to move out of the apartment I shared with a friend and his wife. I returned to my mother’s home in the poorest neighborhood, “Sugar Village”, but I kept up appearances and maintained the i of a rich daddy’s boy.
Even though I’ve never once in my entire life said that my parents were rich. The growth dynamics in the agency was there, and I saw that I didn’t have to walk for long. I made the best branch at Kostya’s agency. Having come a long way, I finally found myself in a warm office, with a good income and a managerial position. This job was no longer of a physical nature. There, you had to think with your head. It also had its ups and downs. During my working time at the marriage agency, I discovered a new world for myself: a rented apartment in the city center, nightclubs, restaurants, beautiful girls, and other carefree life. After some time, I sold my branch, thinking that a successful business project had come up. It didn’t work out, and I was back at my mom’s in “Sugar Village”.
There was practically no money, starting an agency from scratch was not easy and not quick, and I didn’t understand what to do. Spending days and nights on social networks, I came across Kira Leonidovna’s profile. You already know how I started a conversation with her.
If I put on the map the places where I worked and with whom I met, you will be shocked at how everything is interconnected. Everyone around us is a part of the mechanism that moves you up or down. Your job is to learn to see which gear in that mechanism is spinning down and which is spinning up. Your life is the result of your choices. You are always right there where you need to be and always at the time you need to be. You need to focus on your goals and see what, or who, could potentially be useful or helpful to you. If I hadn’t worked, for example, at a car service station, I wouldn’t have met Andrei, who had a girlfriend Kira, and the PS club probably wouldn’t have become my own. I wouldn’t have met Kostya and opened the marriage agency either. And many, many other connections with new useful people and events in life. Everything around is interconnected and plays a role in one long and tangled story. But whether that story is happy or not, only you decide. If you see success and positivity in everything happening around you, you move and focus on positive emotions and positive things. If you see only negative moments in everything, you will definitely be tuned to focus and seek out negativity. I’m talking about your mode of thinking.
“But that’s bad. I don’t like that. Where else is it bad, so I don’t go there, where else is it bad, so I don’t look there? I need positivity.” That’s not how it works. You’re focusing on finding things that negatively and adversely affect you. And all the good things are already out of your sight, you don’t see them because you’re looking for puddles to avoid stepping in. But you don’t see the dry paths. Focus on the right things! Allow yourself to see the dry paths and walk along them, and soon you won’t notice the puddles around you.
It’s easier said than done, so you think, yes? But believe me, I know what I’m talking about. It took me over 30 years of my life to do it. At the age of 12, while my mother was at work and my father was somewhere, he only knew, I wanted something to fill my stomach with. But the food I found at the time was so unappetizing that I wanted to wash it down with something to make it easier to swallow. The truth was to satisfy hunger). Water from the bucket, no. Water from the bucket with sugar, was not bad, but no. A nice cup of tea with three teaspoons of sugar would be just the thing. But the problem was that the tea ran out too.
All the groceries could only run out because the mother had been off work for a couple of days. She got sick, for example, or after a loud party. The money ran out and the groceries as well. I was not talking about the father. He was somewhere only he knew. Or he hid in the wardrobe). So, the tea was replaced with torn cherry twigs from the tree that grew in the neighbor’s yard across the street.
I just boiled several twigs in a kettle, added sugar and it was the most delicious cherry tea I had ever tasted. Naturally, I felt very sorry for myself and until I was about 13, I cried all the time. Thinking about how poor and miserable I was. How I had to survive.
I realize now that it toughened me up properly. That gave me experience and some self-confidence. Telling such stories to my current friends, comrades, and wife, I get a huge amount of positive emotions and questions, how did I survive at all and still remain an 34 adequate person? And admiration is a plus, not a minus. Even in the most difficult situations, learn to see the positives. And if you can’t find one, tell yourself:
– It definitely exists, I just don’t see it yet, because I don’t yet understand where and under what conditions I’ll find myself tomorrow. But there’s definitely a plus.
I told myself that when my father died, I told myself that when my mother died, I tell myself that now, when I had to flee my country because a full-scale war started there. Russia attacked my native, beloved country – Ukraine. I had everything set up there. Two rapidly growing businesses, an expensive apartment overlooking the sea, two cool cars, a like-minded partner with wild eyes for everything that could bring a plus and profit, plans for the next 2 years. And sitting at dinner in a restaurant with one of my comrades, we received information that war would most likely start. He was from the office of the President of Ukraine, and there was practically no doubt about the reality of what he said. We calmly finished our evening. Arriving home, that same evening we packed the most valuable things we could load into the car and went on vacation to the south of France. Just to be on the safe side. It was February 20, 2022. Four days later, I woke up to the sound of incoming messages at 5 a.m.
America is awake at this time because of the hour gap. They were the first to start writing to me that war had broken out in Ukraine. It was terrible to realize that in our time a barbaric, very real war could begin.
Everything in Ukraine has stopped, a new era has begun. All plans have collapsed. The whole financial security dissipated in an instant, like the usual cigarette smoke. Of course, it is certainly a huge price for all the Ukrainian people, but I believe even now that everything is for the better, and there are positive aspects to it all. Both for Ukraine and for me. One should remain positive and see the pluses in any situation.
For example: Ukraine was treated by many countries and huge companies as a 3rd world country. Roads, infrastructure, economy – everything is at a very low level. After the end of the war, a new era will begin for Ukraine. European and American investors are already lining up to pour huge investments into Ukraine. Unemployment and low wages will be off there in the coming years. The opportunity to become a European has already opened up for me. I have already opened a European company, which I did not get around to, and got an opportunity to bring a company of Ukrainian origin to the European market, thereby increasing its value many times over. Pluses can always be found, just tune in to this frequency. When the first COVID-19 quarantine hit, we were stuck in France because we came on vacation and stayed for 3 months, unable to return home. After 3 months of staying in Europe, by law, we had to leave. We were looking for a way to stay, but it turned out to be not an easy task at all, and we returned to our homeland. In this terrible situation, when there is a war in Ukraine, and we, as citizens of Ukraine, are allowed to settle in a place where there was previously no opportunity to stay, I perceive it as a chance that needs to be seized and not missed. I firmly believe that we are always in the very place and at the very time where and when we should be. Don’t forget to ask yourself regular questions:
What am I doing here? What useful things can I extract from this?
If you’re wondering why bother so much, fuss, and try to see the plusses and positivity in everything, then you’re most likely a pessimist and a person who waits for the right moment for everything. But the thing is, the right moment doesn’t knock on your door or window. And most likely, it never will. For the seeds to sprout, it’s not enough to wait for the season and plant them in the right place. They need to be found, bought, brought. Preparation of anything must come first of all. And only prepared soil can accept the sprouts of seeds, and in due time “at that time” bears fruit. You create the right time and place yourself!
“Don’t wait for the right time, it may not exist”
Contrast
After reading a lot of business literature, you come to the knowledge that the whole life is a bargain. You always need to buy something or sell something. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a car, a house, an apartment, toilet paper or an idea. If someone told you something and you believed it, they sold it to you. And likewise, in the opposite direction, if you’re trying to convince someone of something, and you succeed, you sell it. Learn to play and win. Sell any of your ideas, use all your knowledge and skills, observe and learn from the best. Don’t adhere to the foolish desire to learn from your own mistakes. Learn from others’ mistakes. There is a lot of information and literature on how to close deals properly. I will tell you about a few examples in this book. My favorite method is the contrast effect of course. You’ve encountered this method many times if you’ve ever rented an apartment. Scientific studies have shown that the contrast effect works almost without fail. When you call a realtor to pick up the apartment you want, you are offered by smart realtors to show several variants of apartments. You are shown a terrible apartment at a huge, unreasonable price, you are outraged. You are shown a slightly better apartment, at the same price more or less. You are outraged, but at the same time, you feel that you are already moving in the right direction. Then they show you the worst apartment, and you think you’re in the wrong place again, or you can’t really rent anything good for that day. Then they show you the worst apartment, and you think you’re in the wrong place again, or that you can’t really rent anything good for that money. You think, “I’ll look at better apartments with another realtor”. But the realtor isn’t a pushover and persuades you to look at one more apartment. This apartment is, of course, the best, and other people are looking at it today, who urgently need to move into an apartment today. They take you to an ordinary apartment with your requested parameters. And it seems unrealistically beautiful and cheap to you, compared to the three previous dilapidated, expensive, tasteless hovels. The contrast effect works flawlessly. You feel that this is a good opportunity from everything seen today, and you’ve almost resigned yourself to it being a little different from what you expected, but still, it’s probably the best that’s on the market. An impatient person has already signed the lease agreement. You still have a small part of doubt and want to think, and possibly look at apartments from another realtor. And here’s the realtor’s trump card. Those very people or a person appear, who have already seen this apartment on the website and are ready to sign a lease agreement today if the apartment matches the photos on the site. The realtor conveys this to you, somewhat hastily showing that he wants to finish today because he needs to show this apartment to other people.