3 Secrets to Asking for a Raise Without Shame or Fear

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Here's my question. Suppose I want a raise. How should I approach my manager? How do I get the idea across, taking into account what we've already discussed, without saying I have certain expenses, need to buy a Louis Vuitton suitcase, have sick children, or something like that? What's the right way to do it?

AVAlexander Volchek

Again, that's probably a whole discussion. I can cover part of it quickly. First, you must never use things that count as weaknesses in the social world. That's very important. When you ask for a raise, you shouldn't explain to your manager why you need the extra money in your personal life. This is a major mistake people make: explaining to their manager why they need more money. If you're a strong, senior manager yourself, you might be building a strategy for the next year and a half in that company, looking to reach the best possible arrangement with that person. You start planting a little virus in the system. Say you're a director—this works well with large sums of money. You come in and say, ‘Within a year, I want to buy a house for a million and a half dollars. I absolutely need to find ways of earning that money. Right now I'm earning, say, two hundred thousand dollars, and I need to buy a house for a million and a half. I need to find a way.’ You aren't saying, ‘Okay, one and a half divided by fifteen—’

‘Listen, now I need a hundred thousand a month instead of twenty thousand.’ You're planting the idea in their mind. First, they'll know they can hardly lower your salary. There are managers like that; I encounter it and hear it in strategy discussions all the time. They say, ‘Let's cut everyone's base pay by twenty percent, move from a five-day week to four days, or eliminate the bonus.’ But this idea will be lodged in their mind. If you keep doing it little by little instead of mentioning it once, they'll see you as someone already living at the million-dollar level, as though you already have it and absolutely can't do without it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Mm-hmm.

AVAlexander Volchek

And you know exactly how to do it. If you don't ask them for it, they'll have the impression that you know how. First, they'll treat you very differently and see money in a different light. The main thing is not to ask. This is one of the only strategies where you can show that you need money for something. Saying, ‘Let's earn some money next month because I need to buy a hundred-thousand-dollar car,’ or, ‘I want to go to the Maldives with my wife or children,’ or, ‘I'm getting married and need to prepare for the wedding’—that's a weak position. Just weak. The person on the other side thinks, ‘Okay, the wedding is in three months. Now I'll squeeze them.’ A month later you come in, and they say, ‘Listen, next month's target has gone up. To earn an extra hundred dollars this month, you now need to sell forty instead of ten.’ You say, ‘What? I had a plan. I can't sell forty.’ They say, ‘You need to sell forty.’ And you start doing anything you can, because they know: you came in and told them.

You have a problem, and they say, ‘Great. Thanks for telling me how to talk to you and manipulate you.’ That's how the world works, so you can't use that approach. You can, however, bring up large amounts of money in passing. What's the difficulty with large sums? You need to understand right away: if you can't grasp amounts like a million and a half dollars, a hundred and fifty million, a billion and a half, a hundred and fifty billion, or a trillion and a half—if you can't relate to those amounts calmly, negotiate them, and discuss them calmly—someone will ask, ‘Wait, why do you need that? Five million is enough.’ Some businesspeople say, ‘I've done the math. Twenty million is enough.’ I look at them and think: you've calculated twenty, while a guy in a video says a hundred. Another says a billion. Someone has three hundred billion and says it isn't enough; someone else has a hundred dollars and it's enough. You need to understand that if an amount isn't part of your lived experience, people can really catch you out and stop taking you seriously. Again, that's the one exception in terms of what you can do and how you can negotiate.

You can always negotiate on the basis of two factors. I'll explain the best approach quickly. First, understand your manager's goal and why they work. Why is this manager in this company? That link only works together with another one: what is the company's goal? And that, in turn, connects to the owner's goal. If you don't know this chain, you'll always negotiate from a low position. But the chain works only if you know why you're working here. It's easiest to use business as an example, though this applies very much to ordinary employees, too. ‘I'm building a business to create a company worth five million dollars and sell it in five years.’ ‘I'm building a business to make a steady ten thousand dollars in profit every month.’ ‘I'm building a business where I'll be an employee earning a base salary. Maybe the business will make money, maybe it won't, but the salary matters to me.’ ‘I'm building a business to prove to everyone that I can do it.’ ‘I'm building a business because I want to become the most famous businessperson.’

‘I'm building a business because I want to create the world's best-known plant-growing brand.’ ‘I'm building a business because I want to give twenty thousand people a free chair.’

Why am I building a business? ‘Because my wife told me to, so I'm doing it.’ There's a huge difference. If you're in business because you want to become famous, your strategy will be different. At work, ask yourself: I came here to work, but why? ‘To earn a salary of X, twice X, or ten times X.’ ‘To develop professionally.’ ‘Because I need an entry in my employment record.’ ‘Because I need to keep my diploma valid.’ ‘Because of legal requirements in my country.’ ‘To prove to my friends that I can hold down a job.’ ‘To climb the career ladder.’ ‘To use this position to get the next one.’ Why do I work? People's goals are very different. Some people really do work simply to earn a guaranteed thousand dollars; nothing else comes into it. Others want to grow and earn three thousand. Your strategy will differ depending on those goals.

So when you ask how to make the most money, you need to know your goal. That tells you what money you're talking about. Would I rather earn three thousand dollars instead of one thousand, or keep earning one thousand and become a director in two years? Those are completely different strategies. I've seen so many people who don't understand this at all. The standard line is, ‘But you have to give me authority if I'm going to become a director.’ No: no one has to give you authority for you to become a director. In ordinary small and medium-sized companies, becoming a director requires a great many other actions, not being given authority.

So we've established your own goal as number one. Next, you need to know the goal of the person sitting across from you.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Sometimes it's one they don't voice.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes. No, they don't voice them at all. If you ask me for the best way to negotiate pay with an employee, it's to know the employee's goals. That's the best approach. If I know the most important thing for an employee is to be praised at work, because that gives them standing among their friends, I'll post something about them on social media every two months, saying they're excellent, the best. I remember having articles in Forbes from time to time. I'd do an interview and include comments from my ordinary analysts. It's easy to do. They showed their parents where they worked, and the parents said, ‘Your job is out of this world.’ I was simply getting reinforcement. You've appeared in a magazine. For me, appearing in a magazine is just appearing in a magazine: so what? It depends on the magazine, of course, but generally that's how I see it. For many people, it's a huge life achievement. That newspaper will hang on the wall, and they'll remember you and the company they worked for all their lives. I heard it endlessly from my mother and grandmothers when they talked about where my father worked or what he did.

You get somewhere, and they tell you some little piece of the story. You need to know what drives a person. Some people are driven purely by money and nothing else.

Purely money, nothing else. Others don't need money; they need social motivation. I remember a meeting—no, a group assessment. I've done many of those: a group job interview. Twelve young women were applying to be analysts. I went around the room asking questions, then said, ‘Now ask me questions.’ One said, ‘Alexander, does your company have lots of social activities so we can spend time with colleagues, go to cafés, and do things together?’ I said, ‘If you want to and someone else wants to, go to cafés. Do whatever you like.’ Four people later, another woman said, ‘Alexander, may I ask a question? Is it possible to work here without talking to anyone—just come in, work, and not interact with a single person?’ ‘You'd rather work from home?’ ‘No. Can I just not socialize with anyone?’ I'd just said how great everything was. See what happened? It energized those women and brought this one down. I said, ‘Absolutely, you can.’ But some companies won't allow it. They'll say, ‘No, everyone has to go places together, meditate, stand on their heads or their feet, attend company parties, jump rope, do everything.’

That's what happens when a manager knows about you. Now you need to know about them. What should you find out? Many people think a manager works for the company. The manager comes in and says, ‘We need to meet the target because the director…’ or something else. You need to understand why they're here, why they're working. Is it for a salary, a bonus, shares? Are they just sitting there because someone told them to? Are they putting in their time? This matters a great deal. You come in and ask for a bonus, while they're thinking, ‘What bonus? In two years we'll have a deal, sell part of the company, and I'll make five million dollars.’ You're on completely different wavelengths. You need to say, ‘Listen, there are deals happening in the market. I'm very driven. I've been thinking: I don't know whether our company is for sale, but if it were sold in two years, we'd need to do these four things to increase its valuation.’ You're that person's best friend. You're helping them make money and achieve their own result.

A manager might care about being recognized on the employee honor board. What do many employees do? ‘That asshole took my idea again and presented it at the meeting as their own. It was my idea!’ Yes. Listen, if taking the idea matters to this manager, give it to them. Be the person who brings them ideas. Instead, do you want to compete with them for a place on the board? Then they'll never pay you. If you compete for a place that matters to them but not to you, you're just some little nobody to them. They don't even want to look at you. You're dust. Unfortunately, many people think that way. Next, you need to know the business's goal. Why does the business itself exist, apart from the manager? How is it organized? What's its business model? How does it make money, and where does it lose money? An enormous number of people don't understand how companies make money. They think, ‘Those people are definitely raking it in.’ You say, ‘But they're losing money.’ I meet so many people who think someone is making money when the company is unprofitable.

They think someone is earning money, but they're losing it. Everyone thinks they're earning, yet they aren't; they have no money at all. Here in Silicon Valley, we see people raising billions of dollars or, on a comparable U.S. scale, several million to tens of millions of dollars. Many of them aren't making any money. Seeing funding rounds or figures doesn't mean people are earning money. Fortunately, in America they know how to pay employees. But in Russia, there are plenty of businesspeople with well-known, fashionable, impressive tech businesses who earn a two-thousand-dollar salary and have never raised a round. Then the company goes bankrupt and nothing works out. They weren't earning anything, and they won't. Maybe they bought themselves an apartment, and that's where it all ended. You need to understand how the business makes money. Why know what the owners want? Because owners usually have different goals. Business partners often do. One wants a certain valuation in four years, another wants a steady cash flow, profits coming in, and a third wants interest and recognition. They want to be famous.

Then you can trace the chain and look at your immediate manager: what do they want, what are they trying to achieve, know, or do? What are their circumstances? Which owner are they aligned with? Which faction do they work with? Where do they stand? You can join them in discussing those details. That's the best approach. If an employee comes to work for me, they need to know not to argue with me in a meeting. I can issue a hundred instructions in one meeting. That's how I am: don't argue with me. It doesn't mean I won't calmly accept later that a task can't be done. But when I'm generating an idea, don't argue. They say Elon Musk has a simple rule at Tesla: if you're told something needs to be done and say it's impossible, you're fired on the spot. Again, that doesn't mean it's good or bad. There are certain rules. Many of my directors know that if I suggest something, they should say, ‘All right, Alexander, we'll work on it.’ Do all those people actually do the tasks?

A great many don't. The point is that they don't get into a conflict with me, and that makes it much easier for them to negotiate how to earn money. The best way to reach an agreement about earnings isn't a one-off negotiation. It's working alongside that person and understanding whether you can reach an agreement with them at all. There are managers with whom you'll never get a raise. People think their manager will pay: ‘The time will come, and you'll get everything.’ But don't you live in the countries you live in? There are authorities saying, ‘The time will come, and everything will be fine.’ Look: it goes on for decades, and somehow the time never comes. Likewise, plenty of managers will never pay anyone anything, except perhaps as a lordly favor. Other managers offer an opportunity to earn money, but you need to understand how they operate and what their goals are. Take a boss who tells you, ‘The company has problems. We all need to wait and tighten our belts.’

‘It's just the times we're in. Things will get better.’ That's exactly the other side of what we were just discussing—essentially the same thing. I was born in a country where they said, ‘Everything is bad. We're going to be attacked. We need to tighten our belts now. In five years…’ Then, ‘It's still very difficult. We need to tighten our belts again.’ Five years later, it's still difficult; five years after that, tighten them again. I've worked in businesses where owners or partners tell you every day, ‘This is the situation. We need to pull ourselves together and squeeze out everything we can.’ You come in, and it's the same thing again. You say, ‘Wait, could we grow just as much and do all the same things without using that framing?’ It's manipulation. When you hear it, you know immediately that it's manipulation and a breach of your agreement. I didn't agree to that with anyone in business, when I was born, or when I signed my contract. It didn't say the company could stop paying my salary if it had problems.

In fact, every contract says that if a company has problems and doesn't pay salaries, it should be bankrupt, and I should then be paid the amount I'm owed. What's the problem? People are afraid. When you're told something like that, ask yourself what fears you have and what you feel as you hear it. You need to understand objectively that the situation doesn't justify those people's behavior or your own acceptance of it. It can't be an excuse. This is a matter of perceiving what's happening reasonably and clearly: it's deception, it's manipulation. Then you choose whether you're willing to remain in that manipulation. When you work for someone, you need to decide what limits you're prepared to accept. Am I willing to go unpaid for three months, be shouted at, be deceived—for example, not receive a bonus—or agree to one set of terms and then have them changed? It's up to you to decide what is happening. Unfortunately, some situations are unavoidable.

There are countries or positions where they're unavoidable, and they differ greatly. In the Russian-speaking world, for example, an employer can generally always cheat an employee. Elsewhere it's the other way around. In Poland, for example, it isn't just that an employer can't dismiss or cheat an employee; it's more likely that the employee can cheat the employer. In America, the arrangement is usually simple: a person can quit whenever they want, and they can usually be fired whenever the employer wants. Right?

Whenever they want. As a general rule! Contracts differ, but generally the law doesn't prohibit it. I've always been bothered by situations where I'm not protected as a business owner. There are rules set by the state, and I can't agree on my own rules even if the other person would accept them. I might say, ‘You'll earn a lot of money, but I'll have the right to dismiss you at any time,’ or, ‘Let's agree that either side must give three months' notice to end the arrangement.’ I understand why the law exists. There should be a law. It prevents businesses from putting so much pressure on people that everyone becomes a slave while companies just make money. But there's a reverse side: employees can pressure companies, and you can't do anything about it. Take the enormous number of unions. It's strange. Why can't I sometimes fly from America to France because I'm traveling through Germany and all of Germany has decided to hold a transportation strike?

It's a little strange. People say, ‘We have the right to strike,’ and go on strike, while millions of other people suffer. They gain, and millions suffer. Unfortunately, in our world of lies, deception, and all kinds of circumstances, there won't be a balanced system. The only option is to perceive things reasonably and clearly without deceiving yourself. If you go to work for someone and see that they're a drug addict, don't have illusions. But people do. Someone who is a drug addict owns a billion-dollar company, and everyone says, ‘But they run a billion-dollar company. They're amazing.’ Let's put the addiction aside for now, the fact that someone beats women, or abuses employees. The main thing is the result. But if you don't acknowledge this, you'll lose. The situation you raised is very complex and difficult. Manipulation is everywhere. At home a wife tells her husband, ‘If you don't do this, I'll leave.’ ‘If you don't do this, your child will be stupid.’

‘If you don't go to school, you won't find a job.’ It isn't just at work. It's everywhere, constantly, wherever we look. ‘If you don't walk, you'll die sooner.’ ‘If you walk a lot, you'll die later—or sooner, too.’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Your knees will give out.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, your knees will give out. We're constantly surrounded by surges of information. It's all manipulation. The only things a person can do are, first, recognize manipulation, see it, and really understand cause and effect; and second, not manipulate others themselves. Each of us can ask: where do I stand? Am I manipulating people?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Do you think that's possible? There's a view that any communication is some form of manipulation, just in different doses.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course there's genuine communication with no manipulation under any circumstances. It's everywhere, Tanya.

And this isn't in Birobid—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

I'm just—

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, but it's—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

—putting that popular notion out there, that—

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes, but it's everywhere. Are there coffee shops that manipulate people and others that don't? Of course there are coffee shops that don't. You come in, buy coffee if you want it, and don't if you don't. Others use little manipulations: sign up for something, certain standards, written claims that drinking coffee makes you smarter, and so on. It's always a question of people. There are countries where you can't live without manipulation. There are families where you can't live with manipulation, and there are opposite cases. In our world, it's impossible to live without ever encountering manipulation. You'd have to be in a locked room, Tanya. We'd have to lock ourselves in a room together. I'm not even going down to the level of natural phenomena: that's not manipulation, it's a natural way of living. If a dog sees a bird and creeps quietly instead of running, is it manipulating the bird so the bird won't notice? No, in my view that's a natural process. Moving quietly to catch prey isn't manipulation.

But people have reinterpreted it and started saying that's manipulation, too.

UPUnidentified participant

That's life.

AVAlexander Volchek

That's life, not manipulation. So when I come into a business, I say, ‘Wait a second. A good business…’ The current trend is to say a good business must have a mission and a goal. I say, ‘Wait a second. You're making money.’

Please, let's not mix things up. Are you talking about profit, or about mission and values? Make a profit, and if you're able to do certain things, do them. But that's separate. If you don't make a profit and can still do them, do them. One doesn't contradict the other; they aren't connected. The next question is whether you can behave authentically while earning money. Otherwise, what happens? People say, ‘We're doing good,’ while hammering their employees, who are like chickens in cages—or without cages. Most of the eggs people eat come from chickens standing like this, unable to move. If they're cage-free, there's simply no cage around them. If they're organic, the food is different. If they're free-range, they can move this much. That's how much free range they have. There's a reason some eggs here say each chicken has seventeen square meters to roam. People are very much in cages.

VBVitaly Bogdanov

To turn the question around: on one side, you come in saying you have nothing to eat; on the other, the manager tells you, ‘Bear with us. We don't have anything to eat right now, either.’

AVAlexander Volchek

The problem with employees is that if a manager says there's nothing to eat, none of them believe it, even if the company really is in trouble and there's genuinely nothing. At the same time, if you've started a business, there are rules governing what happens when the business has nothing left, and you can even face legal liability. The point is that there is a law. But people say, ‘No, let's switch things around. We're working according to the law, but you should give up a kidney for us.’ You say, ‘Wait, didn't you know a limited liability company could go bankrupt and not pay your salary?’

VBVitaly Bogdanov

Not at all.

AVAlexander Volchek

At all! And the person says, ‘That's not my problem. I'll complain to the prosecutor's office, the FSB, the KGB, the CIA, Trump, the World Health Organization—everywhere, because I wasn't paid.’ You say, ‘But there are rules.’ The whole system starts falling apart because everyone pursues their own interests, while people never understood how it worked because they simply didn't know. When you know and understand, you act a little differently. If you didn't find out beforehand, you say, ‘No one told me. No one informed me.’ That's right, they didn't. You just—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Ignorance of the law doesn't exempt you—

AVAlexander Volchek

Doesn't exempt you from responsibility.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

You didn't want to learn something, so you didn't study it or look into it. That's the point: you didn't know. It's like not knowing there was a snake there that bit you. You needed to go to the emergency room immediately, but you didn't, and you died. ‘I didn't know.’

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Suppose your manager shouts at you. Usually that primarily hurts your ego, right? But what if you've learned to live with your ego, and it rolls off you like water off a duck's back? Or the manager does something else that you're basically indifferent to. Do you need to leave because it supposedly diminishes your human values, even though it actually doesn't? The person shouting has the problem. Or if they're a drug addict, that's their problem. What's your view on how to deal with that?

AVAlexander Volchek

I think the following rules apply in all these cases. Someone owns a business and decides tomatoes will constantly fall in the office, occasionally landing on someone's head. That's their rule; they've decided it. They decide everyone works in a basement, the windows are shut, the workday is fifteen hours, they pay salaries if they feel like it and don't if they don't, and they swear if they want to. They've made that decision. They have that right. Then there's the question of the law in that country: what's allowed, what isn't, whether ventilation is required, and so on. But in general, they have that right. I don't agree with these things, but it's their business, their apartment, their home. Let the universe, energies, spiritual systems, or the state judge them if there's legal liability. No problem. But arguing and fighting about it—

There's absolutely no point. It's their right. They've made that decision and bear whatever responsibility comes with it. Then you arrive somewhere and find yourself in that setting. See whether there's room to negotiate. You might see that the manager swears, gives you the occasional pat, or does something else. It varies. They might make bad jokes about people or ask all kinds of questions to find things out. I remember asking employees about their family circumstances. ‘Do you live in your own apartment or someone else's?’ During job interviews, I often ask that, and how much the apartment costs. Someone says, ‘Why are you prying into that?’

I say, ‘You don't have to answer, but I have the right to ask.’ I ask for one reason: to see the person's reaction, how they respond and how calmly they take any question, even an absurd one. I often ask what their parents do, what their father does, whether they have brothers or sisters, and what their father did fifteen years ago. You watch how they answer. Do they answer calmly and make an effort because they're at a job interview? Or do they say, ‘What's this? Why would you even ask that?’ And that's it: they've lost. Just like that, they've lost. You came to the interview yourself. If you don't like something… Sometimes people come in and we say, ‘This is a group assessment, fifteen people in the room.’ ‘I'm not sitting in a room with fifteen people.’ Then don't. There'll be fourteen.

VBVitaly Bogdanov

Another interview question people sometimes ask is how you spend your weekends. The reaction is, ‘I'm here to apply for a job. What do my weekends have to do with it?’ It immediately stumps people.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course, but it's a perfectly normal question. You have the right to ask absolutely any question, just as the other person essentially has the right to ask any question. Can someone ask, ‘Alexander, what does your mother do?’ I can say, ‘We won't discuss that now.’ They might say, ‘But I just answered you.’ I say, ‘You answered, and I won't discuss it.’ Can I do that? I can. That's the point. So we return to the situation where a manager shouts: you need to decide calmly what you're willing to accept at this job. You can't foresee every possibility and detail, but you can calmly understand your limits and not fight them. What's the point? My God, I see so many people complaining about their managers. It's my favorite response to YouTube haters. They come in and leave comments like ‘Some nobody.’ I always ask, ‘What are you doing on this channel?’ I'm not kicking them out. Keep watching if you want, but ask yourself: why are you here? Why are you writing that question?

What's the point of the comment? What is it for? I understand why: someone is caught up in their problems and trying to provoke aggression, to get energy. But you won't manage that with me. If you bring in fifty thousand people, maybe you'll somehow get to me. But why do you need to do it? So look at where you are. You mentioned that something might be inhumane and drain your energy. Personally, I wouldn't want to work with a drug addict, someone who kills other people, someone who abuses children, or probably someone who manipulates masses of people. Does it always work out that way? No.

I have dozens of businesses, for example. It doesn't always work out. Certain situations exist. That doesn't mean everything I listed is present.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Especially the children.

AVAlexander Volchek

There are situations where you interact with someone because you happen to be in that sphere. When we buy coffee, we don't know the person's whole life; we simply buy coffee. If we started finding out about everyone's life, studying them in detail—and sometimes a whole range of signs is immediately visible—would I have to stop drinking coffee? Then in some places I'd have to stop going outside.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

From a spiritual perspective, will drinking that coffee still have some effect on you? You understand I'm speaking metaphorically.

AVAlexander Volchek

If the person standing there had killed someone, or what?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Suppose you know—

AVAlexander Volchek

If it's someone who's killed a person—

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

You know the person killed someone, or whatever it might be.

AVAlexander Volchek

I won't drink that coffee.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Or sells weapons.

You're known for being very principled. But if we take some other person—

AVAlexander Volchek

Most people in the world turn a blind eye to it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

But does it have—

AVAlexander Volchek

They even like it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Does it have consequences?

AVAlexander Volchek

Do you know what the problem is, Tanya?

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

From your point of view.

AVAlexander Volchek

Do you know what the problem is, Tanya? They like it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Exactly.

AVAlexander Volchek

People like it.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

That's what I'm saying.

AVAlexander Volchek

It's what people themselves want.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Those are consequences, aren't they?

AVAlexander Volchek

People themselves want power. They want to be involved in manipulation, put their relatives in positions where those relatives steal their money. They want to do it. People want to take bribes. They themselves want to say, ‘You won't get your money.’

VBVitaly Bogdanov

And then they complain.

AVAlexander Volchek

And then they complain. It's what they themselves want.

Again, this is a very complex, extensive subject. Everything has consequences. But if you simply drank coffee, aren't connected with any of it, and it happened that way because of the circumstances, you won't have any problems.

Their energy won't come to you. A drug dealer won't put their energy into your coffee. It won't work? It won't.

TTTatyana Tsvetkova

Yes.

AVAlexander Volchek

It won't work.

VBVitaly Bogdanov

What about cats?