Coach & Mentor
I specialise in helping ambitious and successful people go though profound personal transformations and become Life Athletes.
Book a Taster Session
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Why can I help you?
When a journalist asked me a while ago what qualified me to help people build their lives, I said that, for a starter, I’ve built a pretty good life for myself. But it hasn’t always been that way…
I started pretty low - a local small-business owner who didn’t spoke English. But I was a trained athlete - a junior boxing titleholder. And I believed in boundless potential of self-development.
Four years later I got accepted by the most selective business school in the world (Stanford). A year after that, I started a business that would become the Russian Amazon and the fastest growing Internet company in Europe, now a $36b online marketplace.
Over years, I became a Life Athlete. I went through several self-reinventions - each time building a new version of myself, each time learning a ton about the mechanics of personal upgrades. I’ve become an olympic-level pro at making a 2.0 version of myself.
In 2017, I began coaching people. In my pioneer life-athlete approach I trained people to embrace challenges, push limits, and strive for success. Initially they were fellow entrepreneurs, building ventures across the globe. Later - business executives, creators, journalists, even some politicians.
My mission is simple: to empower people around the world to become champions of their own stories.
I started pretty low - a local small-business owner who didn’t spoke English. But I was a trained athlete - a junior boxing titleholder. And I believed in boundless potential of self-development.
Four years later I got accepted by the most selective business school in the world (Stanford). A year after that, I started a business that would become the Russian Amazon and the fastest growing Internet company in Europe, now a $36b online marketplace.
Over years, I became a Life Athlete. I went through several self-reinventions - each time building a new version of myself, each time learning a ton about the mechanics of personal upgrades. I’ve become an olympic-level pro at making a 2.0 version of myself.
In 2017, I began coaching people. In my pioneer life-athlete approach I trained people to embrace challenges, push limits, and strive for success. Initially they were fellow entrepreneurs, building ventures across the globe. Later - business executives, creators, journalists, even some politicians.
My mission is simple: to empower people around the world to become champions of their own stories.
My story
For much of my life, I was an athlete. In sixteen I became an amateur boxing champion in my country. In twenty-three I discovered the sport of business and launched my first venture. Four years later, one of my personal upgrades led me to Stanford. There I surged from a provincial businessman to a global entrepreneur raising hundreds of millions and building a $36b online marketplace.
In 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. I had to sell my ‘Russian Amazon”, and leave the country. In exile, I had to reconstruct my live anew. It was then that I discovered Stoicism that supplemented my life training and provided the foundation of my most recent reinvention.
Eight years ago, I began to coach and mentor founders. The job immediately caught me as the most fulfilling and rewarding as I ever had had. Soon I went beyond business coaching, and began to teach people to become Life Athletes. I have dedicated myself to helping people like you create harmony in their lives and achieve lasting success on their own terms.
My Life Today
After two decades of living in Israel, Spain, Russia, Singapore and California, I found my home here, in Surrey. I live with my wife, the love of my life, three of my five kids and our two dogs.
As you can imagine, my life is busy. But it’s also simple. I like it that way. When I’m not coaching or writing, you’ll find me in one of the Surrey’s gyms or its numerous kids’ playgrounds.
When I travel, I’m passionate about the sea. Sailing, windsurfing, kayaking or simply swimming aren’t just hobbies. Their are a way for me to stay focused and energised, absorbing the borderless freedom of the open sea.
I’m also deep into philosophy. Never religious, I have found a powerful proxy in being a stoic. Long ago I lost count of how many times a stoic wisdom saved my day, safeguarded my perspective and brought happiness and joy into my life.
As you can imagine, my life is busy. But it’s also simple. I like it that way. When I’m not coaching or writing, you’ll find me in one of the Surrey’s gyms or its numerous kids’ playgrounds.
When I travel, I’m passionate about the sea. Sailing, windsurfing, kayaking or simply swimming aren’t just hobbies. Their are a way for me to stay focused and energised, absorbing the borderless freedom of the open sea.
I’m also deep into philosophy. Never religious, I have found a powerful proxy in being a stoic. Long ago I lost count of how many times a stoic wisdom saved my day, safeguarded my perspective and brought happiness and joy into my life.
My Philosophy
Honour you Inner God
Like all animals, we live on evolutionary autopilot, following million-year-old biological programmes hardwired in us. Unlike other animals, we have a reasoning mind capable of elevating us above our animal nature. Markus Aurelius called it Inner God. We live in a constant battle between the Inner God and our animal nature. More often than not, for most people, the nature wins. Our job, our duty to ourselves, is to make sure our Inner God has an upper hand. At least most of the time.
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you will ever dig.
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Markus Aurelius
Freedom is internal. (Epictetus freedom)
Freedom is always internal - something that nobody can give us or take away from us. Freedom is not a human right or a political prerogative but a psychological and ethical achievement, a gift that we alone can bestow on ourselves. We can all be free, but only if we learn to assign paramount value to what we can control (our motivations and reactions), and treat what we cannot control with equanimity. We are profoundly free when we view our circumstances as opportunities to do well and be well, no matter what happens to us through misfortune or the actions of other people.
Nothing truly stops you. Nothing truly holds you back. For your own will is always within your control. Sickness may challenge your body. But are you merely your body? Lameness may impede your legs. But you are not merely your legs. Your will is bigger than your legs.
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Epictetus
Life is long for those who live slowly.
We are all busy. Busy with our jobs, with our families, with our dally errands. But hurrying has never saved a minute, and worrying has never solved a problem. We squander our lives on empty pursuits and fail to focus on what truly matters. Oftentimes we miss the point entirely. Paradoxically, being busy is a form of laziness. We are lazy to think and to appreciate our real lives, often too afraid of living here and now. But a deeply fulfilling live comes from one and one thing only: pursuing what truly matters. And the travel is much better when it’s done slowly.
It is not that we have a short life, but we waist a lot of it.
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Seneca
Nothing is completely unsolvable.
Nothing is completely unsolvable. There are easy problems and hard problems. But every hard problem has a solution, often more than one. To attain the solution, we need to do three things. First, we need to show up. It’s astonishing how many people fail just by failing to show up. Just attending to the problem, giving it ourselves a fighting chance and allowing enough time to craft and work a solution will get us 80% chances of success. Another 80% of the remaining 20% come from doing the job properly. It’s fully within our control to deliver an A+ effort, to excel according to our internal measurement. The final 4% comes from luck. Our job is to ignore it. It’s the hardest part of the three but we should refuse to worry about it. Life is full of chances and the path to happiness is paved with caring about things we can control.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
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Seneca
Deep work beats hard work. Always.
Any significant development in life requires an incubation period. To make a meaningful difference in just about anything, the work you put in needs to persist long enough to break through inevitable barriers and plateaus. When you work on something significant, something significant is working on you.
Deep work accumulates. It’s the only type of work that does. Vision becomes clear, goals move closer when we look deep into our own hearts. Those who look outside, dream; those who seek inside, awaken.
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An anonymous stoic
Let’s Upgrade Your Life.
In 45-minute discovery session, I will look into your current situation in detail and help you outline a roadmap to achieve your goals.
Book a Taster Session