Essay for the “Experts Speak” section, Synergy Global Forum
Roman Viktorovich Vasilenko, Doctor of Economics, President of the International Business Academy (IBA)
Before moving to the main topic of this essay, I consider it necessary to outline the context. Over more than thirty years of professional work, I have accumulated methodological experience that, in my opinion, makes sense to share with an entrepreneurial audience. That is what this essay will discuss.
Where It All Began
My first professional environment was as different as possible from the one in which I work today. In 1986, at the age of seventeen, I entered the Yaroslavl Higher Military Financial School named after General of the Army A. V. Khrulyov — one of the leading specialized institutions in the Soviet Union that trained financial service officers for the Armed Forces. From 1990 to 1998, I served as the head of the financial service of a military unit at the Leningrad Naval Base of the Baltic Fleet.
For eight years, I was responsible for budget planning, military pay, contractor settlements, and reporting to higher authorities. Work in the military financial service is, first and foremost, work under conditions of limited and predetermined resources, with strict documentary discipline and without the right to “creative” deviation from regulations. At first glance, this is the opposite of entrepreneurial freedom. In reality, it was the best school my country could have given me during that period.
Military financial service taught me three things that I have carried throughout my entire subsequent career. First, any business model is ultimately tested by cash flow, not by presentations. Second, reporting is never “unnecessary”: either it exists, or sooner or later it will be demanded, and then its absence will become a problem. Third, personal responsibility for a financial decision cannot be delegated through excuses about circumstances or references to instructions.
The Decision to Leave
In 1998, I retired to the reserve with the rank of Captain 3rd Rank. It was not an easy decision. Military service at that time meant a guaranteed, albeit modest, income, a clear career trajectory, and pension prospects. The civilian sector in Russia at the end of the 1990s looked entirely different: the 1998 crisis, the collapse of the ruble, bank failures, and widespread distrust. Entering that landscape without a network of contacts or capital was risky.
I left not because “an entrepreneur awakened” in me, but because I felt that the knowledge I possessed — financial planning, budget discipline, settlements — was in demand far beyond a single military unit. This is the first methodological lesson I want to share: professional competence accumulated in one environment is usually underestimated by its owner while he remains inside that environment. I emerged from those eight years in the navy with a far more practical set of skills than I myself realized at the moment of resignation.
A Decade of “Different Positions”
From 1998 to 2009, I worked in various commercial organizations — from positions as a financial consultant to company director. I was involved in investments, insurance, and private financial planning. Part of that time I worked in a Swiss consulting company, and this experience — contact with international practices of private wealth management — became a separate school in itself. I learned from people who had worked in this field for decades and treated it as a craft rather than an adventure.
For a long time, I perceived this period — ten years of “different positions” — as an extended transitional stage. Looking back now, I understand that it was the most valuable part of my biography. It was during these years that I saw dozens of different business models from the inside, met entrepreneurs of different calibers, and made mistakes that would have cost me far more in my own business. I observed how some people built long-lasting companies, while others went from their first office to bankruptcy within five years, and I tried to understand what distinguished them. Not the idea, not the industry, not luck — something else.
This is the second methodological conclusion: ten years of observing other people’s decisions is an underestimated resource. Most young entrepreneurs want to immediately “build something of their own” and skip the phase in which they can learn from others’ mistakes without bearing their own risk. That omission later becomes very costly.
Why Education
In 2009, I started what eventually became the International Business Academy (IBA). In 2011, the academy was legally registered as a private educational institution for additional professional education, and in 2016 it received a state educational license. People often ask me: why education? Financial consulting was a more understandable and profitable business.
The answer is simple: after ten years in the financial sector, I realized that people’s main limitation is not access to money, but access to knowledge and models of thinking. You can give a person capital and a good idea — and within five years he may lose everything if he lacks the skill of managing himself, his time, and his expectations. And you can give another person far less — and he will build a sustainable business. The difference lies not in money, but in the fact that the second person has the habit of systematic thinking.
The idea of the academy was born from this observation. Not a “school of entrepreneurship” as a set of courses in marketing and sales — there were already many such schools. But a space where people of different ages and backgrounds could systematically work with the very structure of their thinking: how to set goals, how to build a personal system of habits, how to make financial decisions, how to communicate with other people, and how to sustain a long-term path.
What I Learned While Building the Academy
Over a decade and a half of work with IBA, I learned several things that would have been difficult to predict in advance.
First, there is always demand for an educational product, but only if a person believes that a result is personally possible for them. The strongest motivation is neither an idea nor ambition, but an example. When a student sees that someone similar to them has walked this path, it becomes easier to believe that they can walk it too. That is why, from the very beginning, at IBA we invited not only theorists as speakers, but also practitioners — both Russian and international — including Allan Pease, Andreas Wins, and others.
Second, an educational environment either has discipline or turns into entertainment. Courses “based on mood,” without clear expectations and without obligations on both sides, work poorly. This contradicts the widespread rhetoric about “flexible learning,” but my experience shows that people value not freedom, but structure in which they can see their own trajectory.
Third, scaling an educational product is possible, but it requires a clear understanding of what exactly is being scaled. A lecture for 30,000 people at Gazprom Arena is not the same lecture as one for 30 people in a classroom, and the presentation must be fundamentally structured differently. I learned this over years of speaking at different venues — from the Rossiya Concert Hall to the Synergy Global Forum in 2017.
The Book and the Formula
In 2021, my book The Hunter for Success: How to Achieve Your Goal was published by Piter Publishing House. In it, I attempted to concisely formulate the 12 principles that repeatedly appeared in the stories of successful people — not as a “secret of wealth,” but as observable patterns. A film of the same name was released alongside the book, for which I was able to interview Arnold Schwarzenegger. This was not a PR move — it was genuinely important for me to capture his experience in a form accessible to a Russian-speaking audience.
The book sold in numbers that are rare for post-Soviet business literature. But the most valuable aspect of publishing it for me was not the sales figures, but the fact that, as an exercise, I forced myself to formulate my own methodology in written form. This is a very useful exercise that I recommend to any active entrepreneur: try writing a book — not for publication, but simply for yourself. You will quickly discover that half of what you were certain about does not withstand the attempt to formulate it coherently.
What I Would Like to Convey to the Synergy Audience
Synergy is an audience that does not need obvious truths. Therefore, in conclusion, I will try to formulate four things that would have seemed strange or incomprehensible to me twenty-five years ago, at the moment of leaving the navy, but which I consider fundamental today.
First, accumulated experience is reassessed slowly. Most of what you know right now seems trivial to you because you know it. In the market — especially outside your current environment — that knowledge is worth significantly more than it seems to you now. Learn how to package and present it properly.
Second, personal discipline is not a moral category, but a competitive advantage. Most entrepreneurial failures over the twenty-five years that I personally observed are explained not by lack of knowledge or shortage of capital, but by accumulated small violations of routine — unfulfilled promises to oneself, lack of sleep, absence of a system. Discipline is what distinguishes results after five years from emptiness after five years.
Third, no business model works longer than its ability to explain itself. If you cannot briefly and honestly describe exactly how your product creates value for the client, sooner or later you will have a problem, and the longer you postpone this conversation with yourself, the larger that problem will become.
Fourth — and perhaps this is the least obvious point — publicity always costs more than it seems at the moment it is acquired. If you step onto a large stage, all your decisions, including personal ones, begin to be subjected to external evaluation, and not always a fair one. This is part of the profession. It is not a reason to refuse it — but it is a reason to understand in advance that the price of a public position is paid throughout the rest of your career, not only at the moment you step onto the stage.
Instead of a Conclusion
More than thirty years ago, I began as a lieutenant in the financial service of one of the military units in the Baltic region. Today I am a Doctor of Economics, the author of a book, the founder of an educational academy, and a person whose name is equally known in both business and legal contexts. Would all of this have turned out differently if I had remained in service in 1998? I do not know. But I do know that each of those stages was necessary for what I understand today.
I wish everyone who reads this essay clarity in their own trajectory and the strength to follow it, even when circumstances are against them.