-We had about a hundred business leaders speaking. Dima is not an easy guest and not an easy speaker for several reasons. The number one reason is that he is our general online information partner. Numbers, who doesn’t know, you will find out today, is a project that gives us banner advertising on over 30 websites and Point.md. This is a news portal, you may have read many news from KMB. This is the person who supports young projects and let’s applaud him for that.
I understand that it would be much harder for us to develop and talk about ourselves if you didn’t find out about us in this way. So, Dima, thank you personally. That’s the first thing.
And the second thing is the “Mafia MD” project (00:00:48) that you heard about, Dima is also the person who first brought this game five years ago. It’s an intellectual game. This is a person who supports — thank you again for that.
I wish there were more people like this, people who support the start-up projects, start-ups, and give us aspiring Moldovan entrepreneurs a chance to take the first step. Sometimes it’s hard on your own and you want support, so guys, become successful businessmen and let’s help budding entrepreneurs, which is what we are doing here on this platform.
And now give a big round of applause for Dmitri Voloshin. Dima will tell us more about himself.
-Hello, everybody. My name is Dmitriy Voloshin. I am a person who tries to live a happy life and make as many people around him happy as possible. It just so happens that the universe gave me a wonderful company, wonderful opportunities to do it. And I take advantage of those opportunities, trying to make everybody happy. I do not call myself an entrepreneur, I do not call myself a businessman either, so it is quite rare to come to seminars. I don’t show up because I don’t want to tell people how to optimize production or create a new product.
I’m more about ideas, about motivation, about how to be happy, how to live properly, how to work properly. I am interested in this, and I can talk about it for hours. And everything I’m going to tell you today, I want you to understand that the team that is with me now is a reflection of me. And so any team that gathers around you will be you.
So if you want to change something in your team, if you’re not satisfied with something, please start with yourself. And all advice and recommendations that you’ll hear about people, try to think, are you like that? And if you want to have such a team, change yourself. It’s very important.
So, you’ve probably heard that my company is called Simpals. And what we do, it’s very hard to say. The way I’ve formulated it for myself lately is that we’re part of an ecosystem that absorbs something and allocates something. We redistribute money from some people to others. We don’t hoard, we don’t buy all sorts of obscure things, we don’t send it all overseas. We make money on the three nines, and then that money goes to the people who work on this site. And the money that remains, we again give back to our city, to our country, only in a different capacity.
For example, a big lazy person went to Nines, spent ten lei to sell his car. We got that ten lei and did a marathon for that ten lei so that people would run and not be fat. In this way we are trying to improve life in our country.
And now I would like to tell you some of the main principles that we have in our team, which we consider very important. And because of that, Simpals is the company that it is. So let’s go. One of our main principles is to keep it simple. This is reflected in the philosophy of our company name, Simpals. And that means that the person who works for us tries not to make himself out to be something he’s not. That is if he likes to talk he talks, if he pisses he keeps silent, if he doesn’t like to do some things he declares about it openly. And if he’s assigned to do something and feels it’s not his, he can also declare, “Guys, don’t try to squeeze the apple juice out of an orange. It’s impossible.” So always be who you really are, keep it simple and do what you do, keep it simple, don’t try to make it complicated. That’s very important.
Then all the people who work for us create a fun and amazing atmosphere around them. That’s one of our values, too. If you’re in a team, if you’re in the workplace, try to make that little cloud of interest, curiosity, fun around you, try to decorate your workplace, try not to answer your cell phone when you’re speaking in front of a big audience of people, turn it off and put it in your pocket. And in doing so, you might make some kind of silly joke to get a laugh. That’s absolutely fine. And try to feel at home at work. If your walls are painted red at home. No problem, come to our office, paint in red, so you feel comfortable.
Communicate casually, too. You have your subordinates at work, you have your bosses at work, you have your employees at work. That doesn’t mean that you have to communicate with them in any particular way. We don’t allow you to use the word “you”, we don’t allow jackets. And anyone can tell anyone what they think of them. Just yesterday our manager said to our manager that he… Andrew, can you repeat that? That was really great. Let’s welcome Motkowski Andrei. This is the third person in the company. He’s very smart, he’s done a lot of useful things. And the manager said to him, “What can you do, Andryusha?” Andryusha sprinkled ashes on his head and said: “Yes, really I’m nothing,” and went off crying to his doghouse.
This is perfectly normal, because today he came up to me and said the same thing. “Dima, who are you anyway?”
– We have such a tradition at work. A manager is considered ready in the product as a specialist when he can tell his foreman to fuck off.
-Open text. And the foreman will swallow this and say, “Well, you’re probably right.
– And then the foreman will have to agree, which is the most important thing. I think Dima agreed yesterday.
– Yes, I did. I need to make a little insert about this case. I’m really a lousy manager, it’s really not my thing. I think that the leader in the company, the headliner, the head of the company, the top manager, his task is not to manage, his task is to create fucking products. Good products. His job is not to organize the process correctly, his job is to motivate people, to inspire them. People have to look at that person and say, “I want to be like him. That’s all a leader has to do. The rest can be done by specially trained people, professionals who share the leader’s beliefs and who know how to manage people.
If you try to mix it up, it’s very difficult to do, even though I went that way because of course many of you start from scratch and there is no possibility to have a big team at once. But you have to understand where you are going. In your journey you will have to come to exactly that. So that just people who follow you would like to be like you in everything.
Now back to our office again, I was talking about workplaces. It’s customary for us to keep pets at home. We have about ten different critters, from monkeys to crocodiles. Then we recently had a talking parrot at the front desk, we had a python. We had a chameleon, but may he rest in peace, he left us recently. What else do we have, Vadim, remember?
-Tarantula.
-Yes, Roma has a tarantula, a tarantula, a big spider that scares everybody. Not iguana, and on reception these live, which climb on walls – geckos. In short, all sorts of weird animals. Again, it helps people learn to care for someone. It’s not you being taken care of, it’s you taking care of someone. You think about it, you have to feed it, you have to clean up their poop. Again, this adds to the atmosphere of our office.
It’s a very important principle that everything we do, we want it not only bring money, not even primarily bring money, it’s in the 15th place, whether it brings or doesn’t bring. It has to have a wow effect. Everything we do has to be very cool. And the fastest wow effect is products that don’t bring in money. Those products that make money are usually pretty gray and right and are only meant to do that. But we do a lot of things that people are proud to participate in, from marathons to rocket launches. Monuments, decorating Chisinau, some social actions.
I can’t even begin to list all the things we do. I want to show at the end a small video, a cut of what our team is called. I may comment on the course and then remember everything, because there is a lot going on, but the main thing that it was wow. When you tell somebody what you do, they say, “Man, do they really pay you for that?” – “Well, yeah.”
I love it on our team and it’s very important to show people that life is not an even, smooth streak, but that life is made up of peaks and troughs. These peaks, these challenges, when it seems that your life is going quite smoothly, and nothing happens, there are bound to be peaks. And these peaks you create for yourself. You can do anything: things that seem unreal, things that seem unattainable. You just say, “And I’ll do it,” and you start going up that mountain.
You know, we’ve been getting into sports lately, and everybody’s been blown away. And the average person says, “I’ll run a marathon.” He sees that his friend has done it, his neighbor, someone in his department has done it. “I want to do it, too.” And he trains, he becomes a marathoner. It doesn’t just give him health, it gives him the understanding that nothing in life is impossible. It’s also a very important principle that we broadcast all the time. A man can do anything. He’s not fixated on the fact that he has to move files from one place to another or walk around the office with papers. He understands that he can change his life, change his city, change his country. And these are absolutely not empty words. We constantly prove it with our actions, with our projects. And they participate in it, and it works.
We like to experiment. We buy all kinds of nonsense: 3D printers, now we’ve bought these 3D reality glasses. We buy timing systems, quadcopters. All sorts of nonsense that allows people to keep moving, to keep looking for something new, to set up new experiments. Usually we also get money because of these experiments, usually something breaks, burns, and explodes, but a person feels that he is living with the times, moving, he is not standing still. He doesn’t turn his life into a routine, he’s always playing.
And play is another of the main tenets in our company. We want people who work for us to feel like children. Inside each of us there is a child, a little guy who does not want to grow up. And this quality is very important because children are irrational. And it’s a very important quality for a person, because an irrational person makes a decision not with his mind, but with his heart. And all of the decisions that we’ve made have been made with our hearts. They may not even be entirely successful, sometimes they bring us success and money, and sometimes they take money away and don’t bring success.
But when you analyze how you’ve lived your life, when you have your grandchildren around and they ask: “What did you do, Grandpa?” If grandpa tells them, “I’ve been raising sales and increased my plan by 18% yearly,” they’re not going to be impressed. But if you tell your grandchildren how many beautiful mistakes you made and what beautiful things you did and what you spent money on, what stupid things you did, that’s great. You’ll never regret what you did, because all the decisions were made with your heart. And we talk about that all the time – turn off your brain, turn on your heart, think like a little kid. That’s also very, very important.
And lastly, I would like to say that the main thing is that we have people who think that they are different. Maybe it’s a misconception, maybe we are all the same. But it is important to understand that you are different. You are not better or worse, but there are no others like you, you are unique. You are a unique being, no one is like you. And so you have the right to behave however you want, to act however you want and to live and move in the direction you like best.
Another point now. I’ve now covered the basic fundamentals that we have in our company. Then I want to talk about how to be an executive in order to… How to recruit people and how to keep them in order to keep the team living roughly within that framework. It’s very important not to create a distinction between work and home. A lot of people who work have a clear division: I’m at home, I’m at work. I leave home, I’m out of one world, into another world. From one universe to another. There’s no way you can do that. And you as leaders have to understand that if you’re going to be targeted, you also have to broadcast that everything that happens to you is life. And there’s no separation that there’s work and home. It’s all you. You both at work and at home are all 1 continuous flow. It’s not 2 balls between which you switch and accordingly if you are at work, you are at home. And it’s all one continuous flow, it’s not two balls between which you switch.
And if you progress at work, you progress in life. One of the things that we discussed with Andrei recently was that people who come and immerse themselves in our team, in our atmosphere, in our principles, after a while they start to notice that their life starts to change. And not only in the team, but also outside. Both in the family and among friends they feel that their world begins to modify, to change, because they have different values. And this affects their other life as well, so it’s impossible to separate work from home – it’s one and the same.
So how does one make such a team? First of all, of course, is the selection of personnel-not everyone can get into Simpals, despite the fact that he is a great professional. Roman Fedorovich told me many times that we raised the best professionals by ourselves and spent a lot of time and money on this. And now our main posts and main specialists work internally, they did not come from outside. And all these main people in our company have a high AQ. Do you know what AQ is? It’s not an IQ, it’s an AQ. We have an average IQ below the national average, if you take it and measure it, but we don’t give a lot of importance to that parameter. We don’t measure it, but emotional intelligence, I think, is much more important than intellectual intelligence, because it allows you to communicate properly, to make decisions properly, to work as part of a team and to enjoy life properly.
That’s why at the interview we often screen out people who have a great CV and a terrific low salary requirement, unique just comrades, when they leave the room, we look at each other and understandably say, let’s do the next one. Because everyone has: you feel the person is not yours, you have a hard time communicating with them. Some gray energy comes from him and that’s it. And you realize that you will never work together, no matter how great he is, and no matter how little he is worth.
And sometimes a person comes in, he is not very skillful, he has no experience, and he has too high demands for money. But Roma deals with him quickly on the money. Usually he just walk him along our floors to see where he got to, and then he gets twice the price and says, “Okay, that’s it. If the person is pleasant to talk to, if he’s cool, if you feel attracted to him, positive, a smile, you understand that okay, we take you in, we teach you, we tell you, we show you. And in six months you become a specialist who can work anywhere, on any conditions: even in Antarctica, even in Africa.
It’s important to publicize, guys. It’s important to PR what’s going on in your company. It’s important to PR the team-buildings, it’s important to PR what you all do together. It’s not just important for the company as a marketing tool, it’s important for the people who work. They want to see that they’re a team. They want to see that everybody admires what he does and the company he works for does, so don’t spare any money to advertise on social media, on TV, on the radio. And for that, create interesting infomercials.
Sometimes to attract attention is not necessary to spend a lot of time, you can for 200-300 dollars to buy an old car and smash it with bats, and invite the media. That would be very cool, and then people would put on Facebook, “Here’s how I crashed a car and brag about it. And everyone will be like, “Wow, you guys are so cool. And which one of you guys got locked up already?”
That’s in a nutshell. I could talk a lot, but I want to end the first part of my presentation by saying that our job at Simpals is to make sure that the people who work with us are happy first and foremost. Everything else doesn’t matter. If people are happy, and they go to work with pleasure, that company will prosper 100%, no matter what it does. Because there’s a clever idea, I’ve shared it for a long time and I always say that if you have a cool crew, you can take your ship anywhere, absolutely anywhere. And if you have a shitty crew, you’ll drown at the first marina.
Now let’s watch a little video, I want to show you how we spend our time. This is more of an HR move, because there are harsh weekdays when I have to do little fuck-ups. As in any company, but for you we show the pluses. Here HR already introduced himself – Andryusha, by me you can already approach him.
-There were students here. Guys, if you want, here is Andrei Motkovsky, he deals with HR.
-But do not think that we came here to hunt. We need a couple of people, but that’s not the goal at all. And after the video I’ll be ready to listen to questions and I’ll be happy to answer them.
(Simpals video demo)
-It’s very easy to be a team. Everyone thinks, “What are they showing? Are these guys working or not? Or are they doing so well?” No, there are actually harsh weekdays with nights…as the orange package says : evenings are weekends…
-Before we get to the audience questions, I’ll ask the first one. Dima, was it always like this? At what point did you realize that the team is very important, and it is necessary to invest in it, to motivate it, to create together with it, and not to be alone?
– These are all the principles I was talking about when it hit me, when I woke up, realized, wrote them down right away, and I’m telling you now? I say, guys, what I was telling you is a reflection of me. That’s how I’ve always been. That’s how I was born, that’s how I’ll die. You have to look at yourself and try to match people up with you. It’s going to be your team that you feel comfortable with. I just didn’t realize these principles, Roma won’t let me assemble. The company when it was five or six people, we did the same thing just within the budget that we had. We spent all the money we earned. We don’t have a penny in savings. We try to just live joyfully and cheerfully. It’s always been that way and it always will be that way.
-Your projects are more about people who are creative: the IT people, the creative department that creates different projects. The ones that, as you explain, live a certain idea. Are there other businesses with Roma where you have to do only work and have no time to think about any other projects that you like? How suitable is that kind of creative, that kind of approach with the mats, with the freedom?
-Give me an example.
-People work in a factory, making shirts. Or it’s the same company that makes sweet water, a company that sells bicycles, a company that sells some machinery.
-Well, what’s stopping management from doing a watermelon day today. We have days like that: ice cream day, watermelon day. Just on one day a man comes and hands out ice cream to everybody, as much as you can take away, as much as you can eat. It doesn’t cost the management of the factory anything, but it makes people feel good. What prevents them from taking them out somewhere in the park to piss them off, the same rocket launch? What prevents them? Absolutely nothing, it depends on management. If they think that people are machines to make money from, they use people as machines. And maybe their business is built right and makes a lot of money. I’ll say it again: our business is not made to make the maximum amount of money. Our business is made to get as many people together as possible and make them happy. Do you understand the difference? It’s all up to management.
-Can you give me a reason why most companies don’t do this? Why don’t they pay attention to their employees? It seems to be understandable things: if you create a good mood of your team, it works more effectively, but, as a rule, we have a director yelling, the director penalizes.
-I shout.
-I mean, you’re doing well, and there are carrots at some point, but mostly what we have going on is that gray everyday life, the director doesn’t care about what the employee is doing. What’s the reason why it’s so clear that good spirits, emotions, celebrating together, why doesn’t everyone do that?
-Because everyone is different. I’ll say it again. No two people are the same and no two business models are the same. I wasn’t born a person who teaches others. I tell my situation and I tell you how things work. Somebody can copy that model, somebody can do something similar. We have it this way. Why is it done differently at others? Probably because the people who run the business are different, they have different goals and objectives. Not all companies can be the same.
-Okay, friends, first question. We literally have two questions and we’re on a break.
– I have this question: you say you make people happy. Every person’s notion of happiness is different. How do you make that selection? Is it obvious right away in the interview that you and this person have the same angle of view on happiness, the concept of happiness? Happiness is to have fun, happiness in sports. You find these points of convergence and use these criteria to select people, right? Because happiness is big.
-Thank you for the question. Of course, we cannot make every person happy. In order to make a person happy, as I say, you need to see in him this base on which this happiness can be built. I also understand that a person likes freedom, must understand that a person is not motivated by money in life, that he cannot be bought, he is willing to work for an idea. There are some important principles that we try to get out, feel at the interview. If this is there, we understand that he will feel good and comfortable in our team. And that he will work here not because the salary is high, but because he feels good here, he grows here, he develops here, he feels relaxed and feels good, just like at home. Otherwise, I’ve said before that if a person doesn’t meet some of the criteria that the first question he asks is, “How much does it pay here?” – We’re not going to get anywhere with him, that’s for sure.
-Dima, hello.
-Hello.
– I want to thank you from me, because the “three nines” have had a very strong influence on my destiny…
-And the fate of a lot of people who are here.
-It’s much cooler for me. I got an investor, too. Very, very cool. Thank you so much.
-Tell me how.
-It’s pretty straightforward: an ad, a phone call.
-And Bill Gates? -Yeah.
-Yeah. -I have a question. I have one for people too, but I run into this problem. In the beginning it’s cool, the person likes it, they try. But time passes and the person is like a substitute, he becomes different. How do you do that? Or more relaxed, or something else. You put him in his place, he doesn’t like it, and conflicts arise. How do you avoid such conflicts in the team. Thank you.
-Surely, we don’t all have the same people either, there are some who tear up. And some older people who have a hard time, they are more like a fetish at work. He understands that no one can fire him because he’s so indispensable, he’s so cool, he’s the topic. And his efficiency goes down. Our job is not to squeeze an efficiency out of everyone, not everyone has to work at 80%. We perfectly accept the Pareto principle of 80/20. Of course, we do our educational work, we say that it is necessary, but we know that we can do nothing with this principle. And if a person meets all of our values, but he only works for 20%, we don’t fire him.
We just put him into a certain framework above which he can’t become a top manager of his department or get huge money, but we accept him the way he is. We hired him, we worked with him a lot. And if he’s not able to work the way he used to work … No, we have precedents when a person stops working at all, to come to work, of course, we break up with them. But you’re talking about the average person who just gets fired and does nothing. Is it worth fighting with him? Don’t try to squeeze apple juice out of an orange.
-Dmitry, I have a very simple question. Please tell me, where is the next mass party of happy people? I’d really like to hang out.
-Yes, on April 26, the first Chisinau Dance Marathon, which we are organizing, will take place in the central square of Chisinau. There will be a lot of happy people there, especially at the finish, I guarantee you.
-Great, thank you very much.
-How many kilometers?
– Three, ten, 21, 42. Take your pick.
-As many as you can run.
-Can I ask you one more question?
– Yes.
– Dima, tell me, is there a chain of command? I don’t really understand. Is there such a thing as a chain of command?
-Subordination of some kind exists, but we have a very open and direct relationship without “you” and without “I’m the boss, you’re a subordinate. Really anyone can come to anyone and say everything what he thinks about him. It’s true.
-Dima, please tell me, is there a personal secret or is it your thing? What do you think you’re good at, and is it the reason you’re so good at everything? Is there a rule of yours, a credo, something that you always stick to, and everything always works out.
-Yes, a very simple one, to do what you love. It sounds simple, but it’s actually one of the most important principles in life. Don’t do what you don’t like and don’t do it for the money, but just do what you’re hitting.
-That is, you get high off of what you do.
-Absolutely.
-And can you tell us, if we take ten years into the future, what happens ten years from now with Simpals? Planned, as you see it? Or not ten years from now, five years from now.
-You ask me “six months from now,” I’ll also make eye contact. How do I know where it’s going to take us. It’s one of our main strategies not to make strategies.
-But there are plans, plans and re-plans, strategies for the future, five years from now.
-Roma, what are our plans and strategies? I’m kind of hovering right now. We have short-term ones: finish the Play app, fix the “nines”, fix something else, launch a marathon. But for ten years…
-Something to buy the “M” word.
-A “M”?
-It’s a secret.
-If they say they have plans, it won’t be Simpals.
-Yeah, wherever it takes us.
-I suggest we have a contest: What do we want to buy under the letter “M”?
-And a gift of some kind from Simpals.
-I’m in, too.
– Dima doesn’t know it himself.
-I know!
-What?
-Mir, maybe we want to buy.
– Minions.
-Mignons, I would buy.
– Is that the point? See, guys, we make plans, and then bam, no plans. And everything’s going well, too. How many people do you have in your company, if you take all the projects in their entirety?
– According to an unverified last census, I think 110 or 120 employees.
-And you know everyone by name?
-Of course, I know everyone’s name, surname, a brief biography, interests in life.
– And if there are 120,000 people?
-Of course not, Amir, what are you talking about? I know about 30 per cent of them very well, I know about 70 per cent superficially, and I don’t know about 10 per cent. I just know the names roughly, swimmingly, but Bill Gates doesn’t know everybody either.
-I mean, is there motivation beyond, are there cool projects, are there good pastimes, are there ideology, are there ideas that everybody strives for, and is there intrinsic motivation, maybe financial, bonuses, maybe a trip to Cyprus? Is there any other activation besides patriotism and corporate spirit that’s intrinsic to the company?
-Get a paycheck.
– Do they get paid at all?
-Some do. Some people work for a salary. No, in addition to the salary there are bonuses, there are bonuses. But you just stumped me now. Of course, the main motivation is not a salary or money, or the 13th wage.
-What’s the age percentage on your team? Who is the oldest?
– Andryusha, help me out. Where are you? Ran away? What is our average and maximum and minimum age?
-Who’s the oldest besides you?
-Serdar, he’s 42 or 43. And the youngest is 20.
-We had a 17 year old.
-We don’t have a team… -The oldest is 43, just an old bearded man. And the rest are under 30 or so, the team is young.
-Are you recruiting, looking for young talent since the university, since the first projects?
-Not lately, probably, there are so many people who want to do it that we just meet and talk. And before that, of course, we were looking for it, we were hooked. Like everyone else, of course, gathered the backbone of the main. It also happens so that the people who work for us, they… we have an internal rotation. One person works on one project, and then they hang another project on him. He switches there. And we watch how he behaves. And within projects people rotate in this way, and everyone can show what he can do. Not locked into one project, but several projects at once. If he does well, he moves up. If not, he stays in his project inside. We give him the opportunity to show himself in all of his capacities.
-This overlaps with the Japanese kind of human resource management. The person goes through all the processes.
-Yes, he comes in and says, “I run Point, and I see this stuff on Play here. Let’s do an event and promote it on Play” – “Come on. And then the whole thing spins up. The man tries both there and there.
-Thank you.
-Creative question, Dima. I have a question that probably only applies to designers and artists. I understand that the main trick is generating ideas. In essence, you sell ideas that you then implement. How do you motivate them or what do you do to make them grow in terms of idea generation? And are there learning practices that you maybe put in, maybe send somewhere or something? What are you doing to get creative people to aspire to be more creative?
-I get it. We don’t have a goal of making creative people into more creative people, because the creative people that work for us, we try to dumb them down because they’re too creative, and usually their ideas just aren’t feasible at all. But seriously, we don’t make money on creativity, even though we are a creative team, but we make money on simple ordinary things, and we make creativity at a loss. So the task to make money on creativity is not set for us at all. We do creativity just for the sake of creativity and good mood. And people who work with us and do it directly, first of all, they can draw, they know how to design, of course.
And in order to grow them… We’re literally, I don’t know, I guess you could say that we’re working with Lebedev Studio, if anybody knows it, the Russian big one.
-The most expensive, by the way.
-Yes. Now the crisis, we can afford it. Our designers come out of the meeting room after the meeting with Lebedev and say: “Hhhhhh, they should have paid so much money. If they had given it to me, I would have drawn it better. And this is not just a statement, they really point out the mistakes that are really mistakes. So to send them to study somewhere, I don’t know where they can be taught, or it will cost very, very, very expensive.
-And there’s a creative project related to cartoons that are blowing up the Internet space. A huge number of views, because there’s a chip that on YouTube, if you dial a certain number, you can make money on it. Is this the point where…?
-I get the question. People also ask me: “Dima, you got 5 mln views of your cartoon this weekend. Why not make money from it?” First of all, 5 million were on Facebook, and Facebook is not monetized. And what we have on YouTube, there’s 2 million views. And if we put a banner ad up there, we can make exactly enough money on that 2 million to be enough for a week’s work in the studio. The question is whether it’s worth treating people to the pleasure of watching cartoons for the sake of one week of studio work. Probably not. We’re not talking thousands of millions and billions of views there. There would be a lot of money, we would certainly monetize it, and from a few thousand euros we do not want to spoil the pleasure of watching a cartoon.
– And can you tell us about a project that’s literally coming up very soon and is related to the marathon. How did this idea come about and why? Everyone knows the problem with our state: the state always doesn’t want to do something, because that’s what kind of extra hemorrhoid it is. Why do you need this hemorrhoid?
-We say “dimarroi.”
– This is a marathon, this is the level when foreign guests will come, you have to show your face.
-You can’t even imagine the pitfalls.
-There was even a picture just now, you met with the new Minister of Sports. Is he saying that you’re good or that you’re crazy?
– No, he says both, but he doesn’t give money. “Well done, you’re doing the right thing. You have my blessing,” but no more than that. The mayor’s office says the same thing. And they also say, “Maybe you won’t do it after all, you have to block it after all. And how will people ride the trolleybuses?” It makes no sense to ask for money from the state so far, I hope something will change next year. We will stand in the budget, in line, maybe something will fall over. So far, nothing has changed.
What are we doing it for? The same reason we are painting the city – to turn Chisinau into a normal, full-fledged European city so that people would come here to see what we are like, to see what we are like, to have a sports festival at least once a year, to go out in the street, bring children and say “Look, see that you can not only go to the movies and play Lego, you can also run, that you can grow up and enjoy it. We want a healthy nation after all, I think it’s normal and natural.
-Yes, it certainly is. But the marathon is probably the part of the job that takes up a huge resource, human, of the company. And that goes to the company’s detriment?
-There is no question that this is to our detriment. Just today we fought with Roman Fedorovich over this, because our projects that bring in money are suffering. Not even because we spend a lot of money, but a lot of time, and a lot of top management’s time, because it’s such a complicated organizational process to prepare a marathon that an ordinary manager simply can’t control it. It requires experience and professionalism. And Roma and I connect and spend our time on this very thing. But if we do not do it, the marathon will not take place. Or it will be a big disaster. What to do? We hope, this year we will do our best, and next year it will be easier to do on the beaten track.
-Don’t get up.
– Yeah, sit, what.
-There’s gotta be some exercise.
-I started exercising, but I just started. Hello again. I understand that the Stop Hump project is yours?
-Yes.
-I admire this project. I must have been outraged about 50 times in the city today. “Do you fund Stop-Ham or something?
-Stop-Ham is a Russian project, but we decided to do it in Moldova.
-I would like to propose such a proposal. Maybe there could be a fund where all the normal people would chip in to…
-To make two or three teams to supervise…
-To make it work every day.
-To make a “Stop Hump” tax.
-Pay 1,000 euros to these guys, but make it work every day.
– That’s an interesting idea, we should think about it. To make several groups: the Ryoshkan group, the Bujukan group.
– I agree to pay for it, but to work.
-We can do the math.
-Do you have a car?
-I have a car. I always, when I park, but there is no such thing as to put on the pedestrian. I always reprimand people.
-Now it’s a hot-button issue. There’s going to be pros and cons.
– I wanted to ask, what difficulties you face in the preparation of the marathon and how can a citizen like me help?
-If you turn to people.
-We need volunteers. These are people who will come on Sunday and help us: hand out drinks, hang up medals, pull fences, wipe away snot and pull people who have fallen. On marathon.md there’s a contact form, you can enter your data and they will contact you, and it will be great. We assumed that people would help. Really, people are helping out pro bono. That’s really great. We have to say thank you to them.
-Friends, even we as CMB will be participating in the marathon. Friends, who want to participate, you can on behalf of the company, on your own behalf, if you have no one to participate with, we will announce it on our page, and you can join us and participate with us as a KMB team in the marathon. Friends, who’s first, raise your hand.
-I have inflatable Superman costumes I can help you with.
-Great. Super. We’re looking. If anyone has any great costumes, carnival costumes. We’d love to meet you and talk to you too. We want to do a big sporting event. If anyone can help, to turn it into not just a run, but exactly a wow, an explosion, hello, please – call, on Facebook write, on the website. Thank you so much.
-Really, guys, if we have already touched on the theme of the marathon, who has an idea, a desire and so on, please, you can contact Roman Fedorovich, Dima, us at KMB with a desire to take part. We’ll be happy to let you know and do something about it. If we really want to change this city, let’s do it together, not just looking at it from the outside and thinking, “Cool, I know, the guys are trying. Let’s do it. Let’s applaud the attitude.
-Assisted in organizing the zoo when we did the event. Really enjoyed it, volunteering was very enjoyable. People were just thrilled with your idea. I just raved when you were praised by foreign sites: Russian, Ukrainian. BB are good, and I realized how cool it is from the inside.
-It’s inexpensive and it’s not difficult. It would just be a desire to change something in the lives of their own citizens. And please.
-I agree. As a human resource manager I constantly encounter people’s reluctance to do something. So I try to take part in some of these activities myself. Thank you very much.
-You’re welcome.
-Hello, I heard that you want to do something like Tough Guy only in Moldova. Are there any such plans?
-I have such plans, we are going to try to do a Moldovan mud race, rap and race this summer. There are such plans, but at the moment this is only by the will of the waters, it’s rather difficult to do something like this, but we’re working on it tentatively.
-Dima, such sports projects usually bring a lot of money in European practice. Why not do something, maybe, to change the benchmark, to make sure that people come, souvenirs sold, paid for their place. That way the contributions of money that would go into the project would go into the development of the project. Is it realistic to do, or there are difficulties that we do not know?
-How we do these kinds of events. We’re a bit of a fatalist and believe that since the universe needs the marathon to happen and we can do it, we do it. If the universe sees fit to give us money for it, it will, if it doesn’t, it won’t. Or maybe it will next year, so right now we’re just sniffing around, listening, and moving by feel. Right now the universe is actively taking money away from us, but I’m sure next year we’ll come out at least to zero.
And then, perhaps, we will make money. With that money we can make the holiday even brighter, even cooler and even bigger. Thus we move.
-Friends, everyone understands for themselves that a corporate party for the team should bring some fun. It is to go to a club to have a rest, to go to a bar to have a rest, or somewhere else. So we have this theme – it’s all about the team. We need to motivate the team in this way, not just with alcohol, but there’s even these corporate runs. I know that there’s a new thing, a new project from Simpals, which is corporate runs.
There’s a whole technology, you can find out more about it from Roma, about how you can all get together on behalf of the company and do a run. You will be photographed and the news will be made. That way you position yourself as a company that is good at sports. You can not only relax and exercise…
-Amir, stop selling.
-I just want to let people think differently, that you can take different things and see different things and do different things, so let’s change consciousness and do.
– Question.
-I don’t have a breakthrough really. I have the following question.
-Plus one.
-I go back to personnel. I think the goal of any manager is to get the highest possible efficiency out of an employee…
-No, that’s not true.
– Probably not true, let’s assume that’s true. Are there any internal secrets or management secrets as to how you increase efficiency from an employee. Maybe you fine him, maybe you kick him out, then you bring him back, maybe you give him more money?
-We’ve come a long way. When we started out, it seemed like the easiest thing to do was fine and punish. Over time, we realized that it didn’t work, and we tried to put more pressure on the psyche, talk, communicate, persuade, create conditions. Often this doesn’t work either. And so now our position is that if a person can’t do the job, we offer him a job that he likes and is motivated to do.
For example, we have a chief editor at Point.md. And he does great news, it’s just his thing, he’s a god at it. We need him to develop not only the news section, but also the map, the currency converter, the weather – all the services of Point.md. And we’ve been fighting with him for probably two or three years, but he isn’t interested. He understands that he has to, because he is in charge of the site, but nevertheless he just doesn’t have the heart for it. And we control him, he does it. Just we step aside, and after a month, bam, no one does anything, he went back to the news.
It is useless to fine him, it is useless to talk to him. We understand that sooner or later he will go back to where he says he likes, so we just take some extra people who do those services, and he goes back to doing news, but he is happy. So that’s it.
-Dmitry, I have a question for you. Are you planning to do cartoon G, the next series? If so, when.
-The cartoon is being made, the next series will be about how our wonderful Moldovan on the Moldovan space station went out and slammed the door behind him by accident. And the convention came to him. And what came out of that next.
And as for when it will be ready, we hope by the end of the year. It’s not a quick process, but it’s a work in progress. Thank you to the universe for the opportunity to do cartoons.
-Let’s all give the universe a round of applause. Thank you, thank you universe!
-And who appears to be the brains of the company in terms of all these projects, creative ideas?
-Collective Intelligence.
-And how does that happen, is there a separate room?
-No one knows how it happens.
-What are you smoking?
-Tomorrow is April 1, tomorrow there will be an interesting info-opportunity. I will not say what, but tomorrow near lunchtime you will see something interesting from us in social networks. Where it came out of, I don’t know. It’s hard for me to say right now who gave birth to it. Nastenka. It wasn’t me or Roma. It just popped up from somewhere, and everyone picked up on it: “Yeah, cool, cool. And we do. Thanks to Nastya for that.
-And when an idea doesn’t come from the management, but comes from the mid-staff, somehow they are encouraged: “Cool idea, well done, $100”?
-Certainly. “Nastya, thank you very much for the idea.”
-Let’s give Nastya a round of applause.
-No, not everything is measured in money. It’s a terrible loss for the company to do this idea, there’s no profit here, it’s a non-profit project. She just came in and said, “Do you want to spend 50,000 lei? I said, “No.” – “What if we do 50,000 lei on this?” I say, “That’s it, let’s do it, so thank you again, Nastya, very much.
-I have this question. I work in a company that has a good corporate culture, but not like yours. Question: what, if anything, can you do in the company to improve the culture or how do you find a company that has such principles?
-We can take over your company.
-The company is in Israel.
-Come to us here, open a Moldovan branch. We’ll teach you what and how, she’ll come back, already infecting all those others with the virus. Guys, I told you that the leadership, those people should be like that. If those people see the world and other values differently, you can’t do anything about it, it’s all fiction. Our model is not described in textbooks because it is completely wrong and irrational from a business point of view, because it all leads to more money being spent, the efficiency of employees is reduced, and the concept of happiness does not exist in any business textbook. And goals are never set like that, so it’s unlikely we can change anything in your company.
-I’d like to ask: when you take on a new person, what is the time span in which you can say that this is our person? I’m curious because you have that.
-Format our / not our – yes, there is, but usually at the interview, 80% of the time it becomes clear whether the person is bright, not bright, our, not our. But sometimes it happens that we are mistaken. Really nice person, he is able to sell himself beautifully, he understands what we need, but a week later it is clear that this is not it. Just recently parted ways with a great man, but nothing can be done, there are cases like this.
– So how does the introduction happen? Do you give the person a supervisor?
-No, we just throw him into a cauldron and he’s cooked there: whether he survives or not.
– So he has to go around knocking on all the doors: “Please tell me, show me, teach me”?
-No, business processes, of course, tell and show. I mean communicating with other people. So absolutely.
-Do you, it turns out, develop their initiative on a subconscious, genetic level, so that they go to you on their own, happen, demand attention, “listen to an idea”? Is it initially there, that the newcomer comes, he’s just like that right away, or is it for him too?
-No, he understands that there are no blocks, no clamps. He comes as a normal person. He understands that leadership is inaccessible, that initiative is punishable. And then he sees that wait, here someone kicked someone, here someone did a mean thing to someone, laughed all together, went drinking, broke something, went to the director, yelled at each other. She understands that some things can be done, and she slowly loosens up. And he understands that he can also.
-Dima, a personal question: is there a person you’d like to be like? An idol, a teacher.
-Yes, I would like to be like myself in 20 years.
-Philosophical answer.
-I want to ask a more practical question, about the “three nines”. It’s no secret that “three nines” is at the top right now, and a lot of people use it. Even many who work with such a website … And I was always tormented by the question: how much news, clips, they are always distracting. You want to work, you’ve got yourself scheduled, and you start poking around on all sorts of “nines.”
-The point of the question is?
-Will you change somehow, or is that your thing? Or you know, it’s like the hedgehogs stabbed and cried, but they kept on going.
-Do you mean will there be advertising on the site?
-Yes.
Roman Fedorovich will tell you about the VIP-packages, which we’re going to launch this year, the ad-free ones.
What a lot of sites practice is about accounts where when you turn on pro-accounts, your ads are turned off and don’t show up again. This makes up for exactly your dissatisfaction.
-You pay for the year all at once. You pay 1x for a year and that’s it, you don’t have ads.
– You have to pay for pleasure, for comfort.
– The country needs marathons.
-100 euros?
-No, it’s figurative. No, a lot of other services will be included there: free ads, there will be an HTML-editor option in those ads, there will be a bunch of nice things, of course, not just advertising will disappear. We don’t have that right now; we’re working on it now. It’s going to be. I know people do complain that there are ads, but we survive that way, otherwise there wouldn’t be “nines,” you have to understand that.
-When will it be?
-It is planned for this year, I can’t be more precise.
-Dima, do you have a company code or rules that are inherent and everyone knows what you have to do this way, not that way, and is this somehow handed down? Does anybody have a corporate book, do you have something like that? Or is it word-of-mouth, hazing?
– There’s no corporate bible, it’s a general mood in the team. It’s not formalized in any way. And what I’m saying now, a lot of people on the team are probably hearing it for the first time and saying, “Yeah, really, but why didn’t I know about that. I’m really like that. I’m the same way, but nobody taught me that.” It’s in the air. I don’t know, I guess writing a bible doesn’t suggest that everyone will follow it.
– They’re saving everything.
-I have a question just flowing out. What can’t you do that you absolutely can’t do in a company?
-Great question. Now we have to think about what you can’t do. You can’t wear black. No jackets, no ties.
-Black pants?
-Pants maybe, but when you wear all black, it’s sad. Someone died in your family, what happened, what happened? Why?
-I’m in black.
-Thank you, Amir. You can’t do mean things, you can’t do black things, karmically wrong things. You can make mistakes, you can fuck up deadlines, you can be late for work. But we’re all human beings, we can make mistakes.
But karmically to do wrong things, we break up with such people. Betrayal, lying, deceit, saying bad things about each other. You know what I’m talking about – purely human unpleasant things. And what to punish for mistakes, we all make mistakes, and you have to understand, this is also part of the process.
-And what project or commercial would you never take on? What do you have taboos on? Any taboos? With alcohol… I understand that you’re more inclined towards sports now, you’re promoting a healthy lifestyle.
-That doesn’t mean that we don’t drink or smoke.
– But everything in moderation?
-Certainly.
-The kids who are going to watch the marathon, they shouldn’t watch this clip?
-But we don’t do commercials.
-But are there taboos? What won’t you ever take on?
-What we won’t ever take on, or very soon-we don’t take on products that we don’t like, no matter how much they cost. In all seriousness, as silly and weird as it sounds. We really don’t do things that we don’t get a kick out of, that we don’t enjoy. People came to us and said, “Let’s do this cartoon, let’s do this commercial. Make us a website.” No matter how much it costs, we’re not going to do it. We’re not selling our business; I’ve had a few interesting offers, too. I’m not selling the business because I’m not in it for the money. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the millions that I’m going to get, I don’t need it. Because our business is the ecosystem in which we all live. And to sell your world, no matter what the money is, is a big stupid thing to do.
-Thank you.
– Thank you, friends. I’m running to the little guy to make a robot out of “lego”, he already just s-s-s-s-switched me. I want to thank you, thank you very much, I am very pleased that you are interested in what we do, how we live. I hope we won’t be the last time we’re here, we’ll come again and talk. Thank you very much, and I want to applaud you.
-Dima, last word. I think tomorrow is still a great holiday, so on behalf of everyone, I’d like to wish you many such great, creative projects that will benefit the city, the country, and the world, as well as profit for you.
– Thank you.
