An essay for the “Experts Speak” section of Synergy Global Forum
Roman Viktorovich Vasilenko, Doctor of Economics, President of the International Business Academy (IBA)
I Had to Start Far from Business
When people look at their careers today, it is easy to see them as a sequence of deliberate, carefully considered decisions. In reality, many important steps look completely different at the moment they are taken.
My professional journey began neither in entrepreneurship nor even in the civilian economy. In 1986, at the age of seventeen, I entered the Yaroslavl Higher Military Financial School named after General of the Army A. V. Khrulyov.
It was a specialized military institution that trained financial service officers for the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union.
After completing my studies, I continued my service with the Baltic Fleet. From 1990 to 1998, I served as head of the financial service of a military unit at the Leningrad Naval Base.
My daily work involved what we would today consider the fundamentals of financial management: budgets, planning, financial calculations, payments, working with contractors, and preparing reports.
The military had strict rules for managing resources. A budget could not simply be increased because a new need had arisen. Financial decisions required documentary justification. A mistake could not simply be explained away by saying, “That’s just how it happened.”
At the time, I did not think of this experience as entrepreneurial.
Today, I do.
Military financial service taught me several things that later proved directly applicable to business.
Above all, economics always matters more than appearances. A project may look impressive, but its true sustainability is demonstrated not by a presentation, but by cash flow.
I also became accustomed to the idea that financial transparency is essential regardless of how a person feels about reporting. As long as everything is going well, documents may seem like a formality. When a problem arises, their purpose becomes very clear.
Finally, military service taught me personal responsibility. If you make a financial decision, you cannot completely absolve yourself of responsibility by pointing to circumstances or instructions.
These lessons stayed with me after I left the military.
1998: A Step into the Unknown
In 1998, I entered the reserve with the rank of Captain 3rd Rank.
It was a moment when I had to exchange the stability of a military career for the uncertainty of the civilian market.
Military service provided a clear structure: there was a guaranteed income, an established career system, and pension benefits to look forward to in the future.
The civilian economy was far less predictable.
Russia was experiencing a financial crisis. The ruble had sharply depreciated, the banking sector was in serious trouble, and confidence in economic institutions was low.
Entering the commercial sector without significant capital or an extensive network of business contacts was not easy.
But I did not leave the military thinking, “Now I am going to become an entrepreneur.”
My motivation was much more straightforward.
I understood that I knew how to work with finances and resources, and that these skills could be useful in other fields.
This transition eventually allowed me to recognize an important pattern: professional experience does not end when a particular position ends.
A person can leave an industry, change careers, and even completely change their way of life, but the skills they have acquired continue to work for them.
The key is learning how to transfer those skills into a new environment.
The Commercial Sector as a Practical School
After leaving the military, I entered a period that lasted until 2009.
Over eleven years, I worked in various commercial organizations, focusing on financial consulting, investments, insurance, and personal financial planning.
Over time, I moved from consulting roles into company management.
My experience at a Swiss consulting company was particularly significant. It gave me the opportunity to learn about international practices in private wealth management and to see a different culture of financial decision-making.
There, I met people who had spent many years consistently working in the same field.
They did not view wealth management as a gamble or a way to get rich quickly. For them, it was a profession in which results were built on knowledge, discipline, analysis, and experience.
But the most important thing this period gave me was the opportunity to observe.
I saw different companies and different owners. Some entrepreneurs built businesses designed to last for years, while others lost what they had created relatively quickly.
I watched how managers behaved during periods of growth, crisis, and resource shortages.
Over time, one question became one of the central professional questions of my life:
Why are some people able to build sustainable companies while others, despite having decent starting opportunities, fail to sustain their results?
I gradually realized that there was no single explanation.
Capital was not always decisive. The person with the best idea did not always win. The market was not always the determining factor.
A great deal depends on the individual: their ability to think systematically, exercise self-control, make unpopular decisions, and stay committed over the long term.
That is why I now consider my years of working in different organizations not a preparatory stage before a “real career,” but a school in their own right.
Why I Chose Education
In 2009, I began creating a project that would eventually become the International Business Academy (IBA).
In 2011, the academy was formally established as a private continuing professional education institution, and in 2016, it received a state educational license.
For many people, my choice may have seemed unexpected.
Why move from financial consulting and commercial activities into education?
The answer developed through my previous experience.
I had seen people who possessed capital but did not know how to manage it. I had seen entrepreneurs who were given excellent opportunities but could not turn them into sustainable results.
At the same time, I met people with far more modest starting conditions who gradually built successful companies.
This made me look at the concept of capital differently.
Money is an important resource, but it is far from the only one.
Knowledge, habits, decision-making ability, attitudes toward time, and the ability to manage oneself can be equally valuable.
You can give a person capital, but you cannot automatically give them the ability to manage it wisely.
That was where the idea for the academy emerged.
I wanted to create an environment in which education was not reduced to a collection of individual business tools.
Marketing, sales, and management are important, but they operate within a broader system.
An entrepreneur needs to understand how they set goals, how they organize their time, what habits they develop, how they respond to mistakes, and whether they can maintain a long-term perspective.
That is why, from the very beginning, I saw IBA as a place not only for acquiring information, but also for changing the way people approach their lives and businesses.
Practice Turned Out to Be More Complicated Than Theory
Fifteen years of working on the academy gave me the opportunity to test many of my initial assumptions.
People Believe in Results When They See a Real Example
The first thing that became clear was that an educational product is in demand when people understand that the promised result is achievable.
You can talk about dozens of successful strategies, but sometimes one real example has a much stronger impact.
People need to see someone who has taken a similar journey.
This creates a sense that the goal is attainable — something that theory alone cannot provide.
That is why we focused on practitioners at the academy. Among the Russian and international speakers invited to work with us were Alan Pease, Andreas Vins, and other specialists.
Learning Freedom Needs Boundaries
Maximum flexibility is a popular idea in modern education.
However, experience has shown me that a lack of structure does not always help people develop.
When learning has no specific tasks, deadlines, or commitments, it can easily turn into consuming information without applying it.
People need to understand where they are now and what the next step should be.
That is why discipline in an educational system is not a restriction on freedom, but a tool that helps people use that freedom effectively.
Large Scale Requires a New Form of Communication
Another conclusion came from public speaking.
You cannot assume that speaking to a large audience differs from giving a small lecture only in the number of listeners.
You can build an entirely different type of communication with an audience of thirty people.
Speaking to 30,000 people at Gazprom Arena requires different tools, pacing, and structure.
Scale changes the very way information is delivered.
I gradually learned this through speaking at different venues, from the Rossiya Concert Hall to Synergy Global Forum in 2017.
Why I Needed to Write a Book
In 2021, my book The Hunter for Success: How to Achieve Your Goal, published by Peter Publishing House, was released.
By the time I wrote it, I had accumulated a large number of observations about people, business, and personal strategies for achieving results.
I tried to organize them into a system of twelve principles.
This was not an attempt to offer readers a simple formula for wealth.
I was interested in the patterns that recur in the stories of different people, regardless of their particular profession or industry.
A film of the same name was also created alongside the book. One of the most notable parts of the project was my interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It was important to me not simply to use a famous name, but to have the opportunity to speak with someone whose experience could be analyzed and shared with others.
The book achieved strong distribution figures, but today I see it primarily as an intellectual project.
Writing a book forces an author to take responsibility for their own ideas.
As long as an idea exists only in your head, it is easy to consider it obvious.
But once you have to explain it to a reader, questions arise: Is it actually logical? What is it based on? Can it be supported by practical examples?
That is why I advise entrepreneurs to periodically write down their own principles for working and making decisions.
You do not have to become an author.
Sometimes it is enough to try to explain to yourself in writing why you make certain decisions.
Four Lessons I Have Learned Over the Years
Experience allows us to reassess many things that seem insignificant at the beginning of a professional journey.
For the Synergy audience, I would like to highlight four such lessons.
First: Familiar Skills Can Become Your Greatest Asset
People rarely assess objectively what they are best at.
A skill that is used constantly can seem too simple to be valuable.
But that very familiarity can sometimes prevent us from seeing its market value.
That is why it is important to regularly ask yourself: What knowledge and expertise have I accumulated over the years, and where else could they be applied?
The answer may reveal an entirely new direction that you had never previously considered.
Second: Discipline Pays Off Over the Long Term
Major failures do not always begin with a major mistake.
Sometimes everything starts with repeatedly breaking small rules.
A person postpones tasks, disrupts their routine, stops keeping promises to themselves, sacrifices sleep, and gradually loses control over their own system.
One such mistake changes nothing.
But thousands of similar decisions made over several years can completely change the outcome.
That is why I view discipline as an economic resource.
It directly affects where a person will be five or ten years from now.
Third: An Entrepreneur Must Be Able to Explain Their Value
Every business eventually faces a test of its strength.
One of the most important questions is extremely simple: What specific value does the customer receive?
If an entrepreneur cannot answer this clearly, it is a warning sign.
Complex explanations and extensive presentation materials cannot replace an understanding of the fundamentals.
A good business model must first and foremost be clear to the person who created it.
Fourth: Visibility Requires a Willingness to Be Constantly Evaluated
Public activity expands a person’s opportunities, but it also increases their responsibility.
When you are seen by a large audience, people evaluate not only your professional results, but also your personal decisions.
And not every outside judgment will be fair.
This is an inevitable part of having a public career.
That is why visibility cannot be viewed solely as an advantage.
It is a long-term commitment, the consequences of which can remain with you far longer than a particular speech or public project.
Putting It All Together
Today, my professional journey looks like a sequence of very different roles.
First came military financial service.
Then came commercial companies, investments, insurance, financial planning, and management.
After that came the creation of an educational academy.
Then a book, a film, and numerous public speaking engagements.
At the time I went through each of these stages, I could not have known what significance it would acquire years later.
But now I can see the connection much more clearly.
Military service gave me financial discipline.
The commercial sector allowed me to study business from the inside.
Observing entrepreneurs helped me understand the importance of the human factor.
Education became a way to systematize the experience I had accumulated and pass it on to others.
Public activity taught me to be more conscious of the responsibility that comes with my own words and decisions.
In 1998, when I left the fleet, I could not have predicted that several decades later I would become a Doctor of Economics, the author of a book, and the founder of a business academy.
Nor would I claim today that any alternative path would necessarily have been better or worse.
But one conclusion is clear to me: experience has value even when, at the moment you acquire it, you do not yet understand why you will need it.
That is why I wish every entrepreneur would avoid undervaluing the stages they have already gone through, pay close attention to their own skills, and not be afraid to change direction when their current environment no longer aligns with their goals.
The most important thing is to see your long-term trajectory and have enough discipline to keep moving along it.