Business or Money? The Difference in Approach

AVAlexander Volchek

Who should run your business? You yourself? Or should you hire a team, or people who will take full responsibility for running it? An enormous number of people keep asking themselves this question and remain in a state of endless searching. Searching for people who will do things they themselves don't know how to do. Searching for people who will lead the company to some incredible, major result. Searching for people when you're tired of doing everything and feel very strange: you used to do it, but now you don't want to. Or, on the contrary, wanting to run your own business always because you believe you know it best. Or wanting to keep running it because that's what you want to do. Or wanting to keep running it because you can't find anyone else to do it. An interesting thing: just before starting this video, I looked at two things happening in my life. When I came in and took over a company's management, if I became CEO—for example, at Megaplan, which at one time was the leader in Russia's task management systems market. We grew quite a strong company then. Or when I was an owner of Business Molodost and then began managing it as CEO. Or when I came in to manage GeekBrains, a company that's one of the leaders in technology education and continuing professional education.

And in various other cases, what I always did when I came in, if I began managing as CEO, was to remove absolutely everyone else from management. In other words, I took the company entirely into my own hands and gained total control. Total control was everywhere, always. The more I worked on managing the company, the more I increased my total control. Independence from other directors, independence from shareholders, independence from my partners if I owned the company. I kept increasing my control and my power within it. On the other hand, I see how I've acted in recent years when I enter another business and don't take an operational role. What do I personally want to do? I want to reach a state in that company where I have no control and no power at all. I'm simply in the role of an owner. The dream owner. You lie on the couch, lounge here in a deck chair, and do nothing. There's this feeling that if you're an owner and don't manage, you're in couch mode. An interesting paradox occurs. In my own business, if we don't count attempts to sell phones when I was young, I opened my first company in 2007, seventeen years ago.

Seventeen years ago, I first owned something. It was a software development company. Throughout those seventeen years, I kept observing this pattern: as soon as I gained power and increased my power and control, the other partners, in theory, according to my current logic, should have been relaxed about it and rested. Instead, the other partners felt an intense loss of control and reacted by trying to restore it, which always led to conflicts, problems, arguments, and various difficulties in relationships. There were always relationship difficulties, not hearing one another, pushing through one's own interests. It happened everywhere. In 2007, I opened a software development company with a partner. In 2009, we brought in another partner, a third person. In 2010—at the end of 2009—the two of them came to me and said, “Listen, we think it makes sense to divide the company into three parts, with each person managing their own part and developing as both an owner and a CEO.” I said, “No, I don't agree,” and left the business. In 2014 at Business Molodost, Petya Osipov disliked my total control over the company so much that he made every effort to get me to stop being CEO.

Once I was no longer CEO, I said, “Great, then I'll just be an owner.” He'd suggested I be an owner, after all, but neither Petya nor Misha Dashkiev liked that I was moving into a purely ownership role. “What's this? It feels as though you've disconnected from the company.” I said, “But I'm an owner. You were able to disconnect before.” In 2013, Misha was hardly around. In 2014, Petya was hardly around. That's a perfectly calm, fine thing to do. I had a business, Agro24, with Andrey Rogachev. He's the person who created Pyaterochka, and he's on the Forbes list. I'm emphasizing these details, indicating who's where, so you can understand certain patterns in terms of who these people are. I was CEO and kept everything under control. As soon as we decided to appoint another CEO, I said, “No problem. A different CEO, and things will probably happen a little differently.” That was it: conflict immediately broke out. I managed GeekBrains. Some shareholders liked that I kept the company under total control, didn't bother them at all, didn't come to them, ask them anything, or consult them, and created my own processes, teams, and structures.

Some of their senior managers on the outside were angry about all this. It irritated them; they were practically foaming at the mouth. They couldn't stand watching it, because they wanted that kind of total control themselves. Usually, nothing good comes of this. Other shareholders thought, “No, there's too much total control. This person isn't working by our own rules. The game can't be played like this. What's going on?” Meanwhile, when I enter another business, people often expect me to become very deeply involved. I tell them, “Are you sure I need to get very deeply involved? If I do, I'll have a lot of control and start creating my own processes. It'll be very hard for you to be inside that. It'll be hard for many people to be inside it. Do you really want that?” You start getting a little more deeply involved. They say, “You're pushing too hard. Don't push.” People react differently. Fine, I won't push. You don't push. They tell you, “You don't seem very involved. You're not here all the time.” This immediately reminds me... Perhaps it's my mood today, this kind of evening. And Sasha, who's the camera operator today, is smiling, sitting in his chair and listening to this. In this mood, I immediately remember my mother, back when I was working a great deal.

I like working very early. I've gotten up early all my life. I'd always arrive at the office before everyone else and leave very late. I always worked a lot. My mother would say, “Sasha, you work so much. You need to spend more time with the children.” I'd say, “Mom, listen, I generally don't work on weekends. I get plenty of rest. I'm a good father. I spend a lot of time with everyone.” “No, you still work too much.” I'd say, “It just seems that way to you. I have a great many meetings, a lot of businesses, stakes in businesses, things to do, all of that. I simply have a lot going on, so it seems to you that I work a lot.” “No, you work too much.” Then there was a time—I remember the first time, a very striking moment—when my mother noticed this. It was nine years ago, in 2015. She called me and said, “Sasha, you seem to be resting too much. You can't rest like that.” I said, “Mom, make up your mind. Do I work too much or too little? Rest too much or too little? Is there some middle ground for you at all? Or are you always looking for some sort of catch?” After all, children's happiness isn't about how much time you spend with them. Happiness in business and in a partnership isn't about how much time you spend.

Results in business aren't about how much time you spend. And here's the most important thing. The most important solution. There's this unique way of finding that point: should I manage the business or not? Should this partner manage it or not? Should I be an owner or not? I have a mentorship group called V100. There are a hundred people in it. I launched it three months ago, and recently someone... You can ask me an unlimited number of questions there. I tell people, “Ask me endless questions.” I think I'd absolutely bombard myself with questions. I'd just keep coming and endlessly asking Alexander questions. It's absolutely unlimited, completely free consultation. Use it. Well, paid: there's a monthly subscription, but it isn't expensive. A little over a hundred dollars a month. There has to be a little advertising in my video. But really, the point isn't the advertising; it's the question. Someone asked quite a good question: at what point should you decide to leave day-to-day operations? They said, “As the owner, I grew my business, enjoyed working on it, and it made me money. But for the last few years, I've been working on this business and it hasn't made me money. Should I put a team in place, appoint managers, or keep doing it myself?”

“Appoint managers, or keep doing it myself?” You're going to do what you want anyway. The most important thing to understand is that you managed it and it made you money. You manage it now, and it doesn't make you money. You could keep managing it and it might start making money. You could keep managing it and it might continue not to make money. You put people in place; perhaps they'll work better than you. Perhaps you'll put people in place and they won't work. First, it's important to look at your own state and understand: if you want to work, want to be in this business, want to do it, want to be with this business, then you can be dumber than any director on your team who seems likely to work better than you. That's your right; it's your business. You can be the dumbest employee there. But if you absolutely don't want to be involved in the business at all, it simply makes you sick, and yet you're the best director there, the one producing results, then probably, why do it if it makes you sick? Unless you've decided that you absolutely need this particular area in your life. In other words, you don't care that the business makes you sick.

The most important thing is that it makes you money. Then agree to that, accept it calmly, and work. Let the business make you sick; calmly earn money in it. On the one hand, it makes you sick; on the other, you know you need to do it calmly. There are businesses you do for money, and businesses you do so that you simply have a business, so you simply have something to do. Last week, I was walking here with someone. I live in Silicon Valley, in the United States, a little south of San Francisco. I have four children; three of them go to school here. We were walking here, and he has invested in more than fifty businesses. I remember that six months ago he was in a state of really not wanting to be in the United States. Now I see that he's developed a desire to be in the United States. In this case, that desire isn't connected to the country. It's connected to how he feels within himself. He's looking for himself, not a country. It's very important not to confuse those things. He had an idea for a business, a sense that he could create an interesting business. A feeling appeared, a new idea.

Even though he has many businesses as investments, he doesn't have one where he invests himself, his own self, where he's involved and something interesting is happening. And it isn't difficult for him to find that, because he's very limited in his own perception and opinion, and has a very strongly expressed opinion of his own. Very strongly! There are fences all around him. He has good results and good achievements. This isn't a bad or good quality; it's simply a very pronounced characteristic. Plus, he's fifty-three. The existence and emergence of a desire simply to do something that will bring some result already creates an inner sense of strength. He doesn't want to do it because he's some super businessman and manager and all that. He wants to find an undertaking within himself. Because in this case, the point is no longer entirely a question of money. Although, of course, money has a strong presence for him in terms of fear, various details, illusions, and everything else. So the first thing you need to do, whether you're an owner, in operations, or considering employees and the people around you, is look at why you're doing this business at all. What do you want to get from it? What's your priority? What matters to you? What are you prepared to do, and what aren't you prepared to do?

Are you prepared to be the owner while the CEO gets all the recognition, all the credit, the achievement is entirely theirs, and you can't even tell some business club what a damn amazing entrepreneur you are? Notice that people in business clubs aren't actually looking for damn amazing entrepreneurs. They're looking for businesspeople who have simply made a lot of money. In practice, whether you're really a great manager or not doesn't matter; they'll choose the cash anyway. Maybe I'm being a little categorical today. Perhaps it's my state after filming the previous video, a very spiritual, powerful one. It will probably be posted on this channel before this video. You can watch it and see the difference between the recordings. But alas, people choose money. Simply that result, of course. Not how incredibly well you develop a business, not the combination of circumstances, not how hard you work, not how you make decisions, not how broad your outlook is, not how interesting it is to look at things with you, but simply how much money you've accumulated. Everyone is much more interested in people who, at some point, simply happened to buy a lot of land while its price was rising, and it just went up in value.

They found a mine at a time when something was becoming more expensive. They acquired something when oil was rising, not falling. Acquiring something when oil is falling is a little harder. But that doesn't tell you whether the person is a bad or good manager, whether they do something well. Fundamentally, the question is your important goals. How, and to what, are you prepared to pay attention or not pay attention? I have a real estate business in the United States, and my partner says, “Sasha, I want to be a well-known public figure in this business.” He serves as CEO. I tell him, “Great! I don't want to be a public figure in real estate. Wonderful! Become the best-known person. I want to be known in business development and human development. I'm interested in large scope and scale in people's spiritual development, not in real estate development. Become that person, and I'll observe it and help in every way where I can truly help, where I don't cause destruction as an owner.” An enormous number of owners come in, hire someone, and say, “We've hired a CEO.” They limit that person's authority so much they can't move, can't even turn their neck. They can't even turn their neck.

They keep redirecting that CEO, then say, “The CEO is lousy.” They fire them and say, “We'd be better off managing it ourselves.” But you were already managing it yourselves! Nothing has changed. There was simply a person onto whom you shifted some of your own responsibility, your own illusion. What's more, you hired this person, gave them authority, said you'd matured enough to be an owner rather than a CEO, and how much you wanted to develop. You created some sort of... Why did you do it? You aren't ready to let go of authority. So, at the end of this video, I'm giving you a simple, practical step. Sit down separately as a business owner. Or, if you're the CEO, you need to free yourself up or reach an agreement with the owner or owners, if you have partners. Write down separately, very clearly, the simple areas of authority for the CEO, the authority of the owner or each owner, and those owners' roles. Set their boundaries according to the goal you want to achieve in the business. It's frightening how many people don't do this. And it's wonderful how varied our lives and businesses are. See you next time! Be sure to subscribe to my channel. I'm very grateful for likes and comments. They strongly support the workings of the algorithms on all social networks.

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