Андрей Алексеев - The Way to myself

You become what you do. I am where my attention is. Later on, this truth confirmed itself in many other things I did. Working in public catering, I gained some weight that I just couldn’t lose.

After establishing a shopping mall for building and construction supplies, a building boom started in my life. That was the time when I got the desire to build a house for my family. The time of major renovations of apartments, offices, and businesses started.

Vice versa it works as well: if your lifestyle and sphere of interests has changed – you’d better look for a new type of activity, which can help you achieve the next level of self-development. Otherwise, your old business will pull you back towards your past to the habits and values you’ve already decided to get rid of.

However, I understood that much later. Those days there was only one question which occupied my mind: “Why? Why did that all happen? Why did that happen to us? What should we do next? Do I actually want to do anything at all now?” I lived in that state of mind for almost a year. I didn’t work – and did nothing. I tried to recover and understand how I should live and what I should do.

One day I met a famous Siberian businessman Igor, who was a major banker and an investor. I had an idea of setting up “Grill-Master” – the first fast-food restaurant in Siberia. And he had a suitable place. We bought a franchise and started a brand-new project. And again, people started staying in line to visit us just a few days after opening.

That was an extremely successful project, the first of its kind, outcompeting all other Novosibirsk restaurants at that time, in terms of popularity.

It looks as if everybody in the city visited us: wealthy and not, intellectuals and workers, young and old. Just imagine: people brought their families to our café for a common lunch!

Working on that project was a pleasure. We had a great staff, the place was in a great location. So, our expenses were soon paid off. I understood that I found a good and interesting business. We opened new places of different types, and they immediately became popular and profitable.

Those were the days I felt I was a creator: I always wanted to imagine something new, design business solutions, experiment with different formats. Business became not only a source of income for me, but also a source of art, interesting ideas, communication, and a means to create new, bright, and widescale projects…

That’s how “Vilka-Lozhka”, “Zhili-Byli” (“Pechki-Lavochki” now), “Etno”, “Boulevard”, “Macaroni” and a dozen of other food service establishments were born. There were more and more restaurants in the city, our ideas were being developed, replicated, and prosperous. I liked this kind of life: an interesting and creative business, high income, and an ability to live the familiar free life of a successful young man. Entertainment, pleasure, clubs, trips… I started travelling abroad and visited different countries. Our business went really well.

Simultaneously, I decided that it was high time to develop a management system, and went to Moscow – to study for an MBA degree and learn the modern craft of management. I had an idea to stop being an entrepreneur, and become a professional manager, who would be able to lead any business in the “right” way, however large it was.

Of course, the first thing that happened to our business was an expansion of our staff. While, de facto, we had almost no managers beforehand, and everything swam with the flow, now there was a huge interlayer between me and the business: marketing and management, many specialists in “this” and experts in “that”…

My personal time and attention span were too little to manage everything established yet. The administrative pie grew wider and higher, bringing nothing new to our business. On one hand, there was a feeling that a company with management is “right”, and everything was going as it should go. On the other hand, I understood that the company was dying down in front of my eyes. I was losing my influence. I was losing the feeling of the company – and drowning in the flow of bureaucracy! There was a fog of paperwork, separating me from real people and my own feelings of a developing business.

I continued supporting the “system” as a habit, but I didn’t understand why we need these plans, coordination chains, multilayer departments, and tons of reports. I didn’t even look through them!

Multiple instructions, internal orders and regulations, made a group of adherents turn into a bunch of obedient doers. Releasing the staff from their responsibilities regarding “what” and “how” they should do their jobs, I fully put all of them on myself.

At the same time, the flywheel of bureaucracy was moving faster, and the net expanded. 30, 40, and later 60 companies in 10 regions of the country. I stopped visiting the restaurants’ openings and started living my own life, while the business lived its own. I didn’t see our clients and guests, but only my managers’ reports. I became a little part of a huge managerial machine, and I didn’t own the business any more – it owned me. Moreover, the service quality and profitability were decreasing.

Once I went into one of our restaurants as a common visitor and sat at a table counting on a waiter to come. By the way, he was close by, but he didn’t hurry at all. Then I came to him asking: “Why don’t you serve me?” The answer was brief: “That’s not my table”.

At that very moment I understood, what my business had turned into. Our employees, who used to be part of a close-knit highly qualified team before, didn’t care anymore about whether or not our clients were served well. That young man didn’t see me as a guest, but just as a part of the interior, which he categorized as “my table – not my table”.

THAT WAS THE MOMENT WHEN I FIRST THOUGHT THAT AFTER BECOMING A SLAVE OF THE MACHINE I HAD MADE MYSELF, I STOPPED LOVING – PEOPLE, BUSINESS, AND THE WORLD.

That’s when I felt that I was losing myself. Just like a hamster, which eternally spins its wheel and can never get off. If at one time I saw the business as a source of joy, inspiration and energy, now it was just making me desolate.

The huge effort put into the business, brought nothing but exhaustion. Everything I did lost its liveliness, leaving pure mechanics.

Year by year, my life looked wealthier, and I had more opportunities to enjoy it. However, I felt worse and worse emotionally. Meeting friends and experiencing some lighter emotions, which can be bought for money, helped me avoid depression.

However, the tiredness was accumulated, while joy and love gradually went away. One day I understood that I’d lost the easygoing spirit which was natural to me. The deal I had didn’t cheer me up. The weariness of life reached the peak, and I wanted nothing: no business, no money, no love, no new ideas or projects…

Nothing I possessed encouraged me to feel the passion and the taste for life. I had to always seek for – and come up with some new sources of joy, inspiration, and reasons to live.

I STARTED ASKING MYSELF: WHO AM I AT ALL? WHY DOES THE WORLD NEED ME? DOES IT ACTUALLY NEED ME, AND DO I NEED IT? WHY WAS I BORN AND WHAT SHOULD I DO? I DIDN’T HAVE ANY ANSWERS, BUT I HAD A FEELING THAT I COULDN’T LIVE THE WAY I DID ANYMORE.

So, I found a way to change everything. “I guess, I should get married! I’ll get married and everything will improve. A family will fill my life with new meaning, and change its quality. I will settle down, calm down, and I will feel better”.

By the way, I noticed that as soon as I set an inner goal for myself, everything seems to happen without much effort. For example, that’s the way important people come into my life: we meet and get to know each other by chance, I don’t go out of my way to make this happen. And the opposite is true: usually, nothing goes well with the people I look for.

And in the same way, by chance, I met my future wife Marina. We became friends, and we had a wonderful relationship which developed easily and naturally. I liked giving my attention to her, flirting, taking care of her. So, I was absolutely sure that: first, I must get married; second, it must be with Marina.

After half a year since our meeting, I made a proposal. And three months later we got married. I got a new role: I became a husband. We found some new activities to do together, some mutual rights and duties. Our leisure time became totally different.

Once I was travelling by bus, when my phone rang. Marina told me we were going to have a baby. My first child! It’s really difficult to describe my feelings at that time: joy, surprise, perplexity, responsibility, tenderness… Something new was about to come into my life.

By the way, that was the moment when I decided to quit smoking. And I’ve never smoked since then. Because I was going to have a baby. What would she think of her father? What example would I be giving her?

As soon as Marina appeared in my life, we built a family and gave birth to our baby, a new period in my life had started. A new kind of energy came into it. Many things changed in my mind as well: I started living not only concerned with myself, but others as well. I became responsible for my family. Gradually, my interests changed too.

Many things were changing. But not my habit of having a free, independent life style, or taste for bachelor parties with friends and entertainment. I couldn’t leave that behind, neither did I want to do so.

That way a year passed and another one did… I was an adult married man. I worked on my family and my business, which was growing rapidly and required a lot of my attention. I thought of my business as my child, which I fed and helped grow for many years. And everything that happened to it affected me a lot.

More frequently the same dreadful thoughts came to my mind. “I devoted myself to my business till the very end. I established lots of successful projects. And where is my joy, calmness, satisfaction for everything I’ve done? When will this rat race finish? Why don’t I control my business, instead of it controlling me?”

There were no answers so far. I still didn’t understand, who I was and what I was here for. I felt as if I was driving staring at the gauges, without seeing the road, moving almost as a blind man.

Meanwhile the number of restaurants increased. One moment, I felt bored with replicating my restaurants, and working in public catering business altogether. And the competition became too tough, because I prefer working on the underserved markets, creating my own new niches.

That way, step by step, I was coming closer to the next important twist in my life. I was done working in the business I had built up from nothing. The business I put so much effort, attention, and energy into.

Together with my partner, we reached an agreement about the conditions for me leaving the company pretty fast. I thanked him for the cooperation and, as soon as we accomplished our mutual commitments, we parted.

As an entrepreneur, I find some pleasure in imagining and creating something that has never been thought of before. After finishing one project, I started thinking about a new one immediately. I started trying to find a fresh idea, a new sphere where I can establish something original.

In those days there was nothing like a shopping mall, gathering many manufacturers and sellers of a narrow niche together in Novosibirsk, – and in Siberia at all. For example, if you decided to do some home repairs, you would have to wander around the city. You’d buy some wallpaper in one place, electrics – in another one, furniture and interior decor – in the third, and plumbing – somewhere else… That was extremely inconvenient for both: buyers and manufacturers. I understood: there it was – a wonderful brand-new field for business!