Business across two continents: how the entrepreneur and the company evolve
No Bullsh!t, April 23, 2025, 63 min, 140 views. Andrey Novikov, co-founder and chief executive of an agency with offices in two countries and founder of a financial product for management accounting in project businesses, tells Sergey Kuznetsov about three turning points in his career: a conflict over bonuses, after which his partner offered him a share in the company; a hard separation from a third co-founder; and the move to California, where he had to rebuild both business and life from scratch.
| Published | |
|---|---|
| Length | 63 min |
| Views on YouTube | 140 |
| Language of the episode | Russian |
| Where to watch and listen | YouTube, Spotify, Telegram |
Date, length and view count according to data from the episode page on YouTube, as of the page update date shown in the footer.
In short
Andrey describes how more than eight years of Buddhist practice changed his management style, from hard control and conflict to calm leadership without raised voices, which helped the company survive the pandemic and later shocks without losing the team. There is also a block on partnership, including working alongside his wife.
Key ideas
- Any problem is a gift: the serious crises, lost bonuses, a split with a partner, the move abroad, felt like catastrophes at the time and each became a turning point.
- A business cannot evolve without the owner evolving: if the founder's thinking changes, the company changes inevitably, even if the management does not want it to.
- Moving from hard control and blame to calm questions without raising your voice shifts an employee's motivation from proving they were right to genuinely solving the problem.
- A long partnership rests on complementary roles and respect rather than on similar characters: partners respect each other precisely for what they cannot do themselves.
- Working with your spouse requires an explicit split of roles and saying out loud which role you are speaking from, otherwise work feedback turns into a personal conflict.
- When entering the United States market, multiply your assumptions: budget, payback period and level of difficulty should all be multiplied by at least three.
The full transcript
The episode is recorded in Russian, and the full transcript of the conversation is on the Russian page of this episode. English and Spanish subtitles for the strongest episodes are rolling out on YouTube in waves.
Open the transcript