Mikhail Dashiev: “Business Youth” from Russia will find its place in the USA

Co-founder of BM Mikhail Dashiev. Photo: "Business Youth"

“A jar of cucumbers where businesses are generated” - this is how the company is characterized "Business youth" one of its co-founders is Mikhail Dashkiev. BM is both a large-scale educational project for comprehensive business development and, now, the largest community of entrepreneurs in Russia.

In the very near future, this “bank of cucumbers” will be exported to the USA. Already in July, the BM organizes two business intensive in Philadelphia (16-17 July) and San Francisco (23-24 July). During the two-day training, representatives of the Russian-speaking communities in large cities will receive maximum useful information on effective start-up and business development. Especially for those wishing to join the program from other cities and countries, the business intensity will be available online.

In “Business Youth”, founded in 2010, Dashiev and his partner Peter Osipov, they say that they completely changed the training system in Russia, introducing the latest techniques (almost 20 thousands of businesses created from scratch and more than 1,5 million community members), and now ready to enter the American market. In an interview with ForumDaily, Mikhail Dashiev said that in a large number of categories and competencies, the Russian project is already ahead of many overseas counterparts.

How was “Business Youth” created and did the project turn out exactly the way it was originally presented?

Before BM, I was engaged in other projects. It was a marketing agency that specialized in creating websites, then printing, advertising design, and other marketing services. We absorbed a lot of industry experience, as we did not work with large companies, but on the contrary, with the small and medium business segment, when there was no such culture of working with agencies. And no one then in Russia knew about indicators, neither about conversions, nor about “sales funnels”. We learned everything by experience through trial and error. We worked in the plumbing, colors, windows and other ordinary, mundane niches, not in innovative industries, but on the most popular ones.

People in small businesses are much harder on their feet, because they clearly consider the result. They will not accept a large report with beautifully written buzzwords and data. They see more money or not. If not, then they do not work with you and stop paying. Such simple logic.

In all our projects, we looked for the methods and tools that lead to a specific increase in profits. Having gained experience in different industries, and there were probably more than 15, we realized that all businesses have the same problems, exactly the same tasks and tools that lead to the result.

So you have developed a universal approach to business management?

Of course. He works with us in all cities, on the example of 260 thousands of people. The same problems in Cheboksary and Syktyvkar, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Spain and Portugal, the same problems in America, because the approach is that we represent the business in the form of indicators and numbers, we digitize the business and beyond We begin to influence these figures. We make a slice of the situation that exists now, not in the form of a set of opinions or some secret pieces, but simply count the indicators, represent the business as a set of statistics, and ask, for example, the question “How to make an average check not 3 thousand rubles, but 5 thou. Rubles ”or“ How to make a site’s effectiveness not 3%, but 10% ”. There are a lot of tools and technologies that allow you to influence this, which we have managed to save over the past 6 years. Then we ourselves opened businesses from the same ordinary industries - the flower, which has already been closed, and the LED, which still exists.

And, in fact, we did not start “Business Youth” with billions, we had about 3-4 million rubles of revenues then [100-130 thousand dollars at the rate of 2010 of the year]. However, we did not open the BM as a company or project. We can say that the project began spontaneously, by chance. We were invited to speak at the Higher School of Economics, which turned out to be very resonant.

We said that we can take a group of guys and, in practice, show everything we are talking about. A large enough group gathered, we met every week. Then we were invited to other cities and so the project itself began to grow. At some point we reached the point where employment for this project was so big that it was necessary either to close it in order to concentrate on other businesses, or to treat it as a business and devote our time to it. So we did, because we saw the perspective, the response and the result.

Can you say that “Business Youth” is the main project for you now?

We now have a group of companies - four businesses in total. “Business Youth”, as a large educational project, is the main one in terms of time, yes. It’s not the biggest yet, probably in terms of money, but our group of companies’ total revenue is 2 billion rubles, half of which is from BM. We have grown to 120-130 employees in the Moscow staff of Business Youth, another 50 people are in the Russian regions - local organizers and call center managers.

You mentioned HSE, in Russia there is also a Financial Academy and other large universities, but your project is not a university one, but rather an applied one. What are its main differences from the point of view of the target audience?

People come to us very different ways of life. These are schoolchildren, students, pensioners, people after the army, people after the decree, and presidents of companies, including owners of large businesses, that is, the audience is very disparate. That is, among the 260 thousands of people who we have taught for a fee, there are probably representatives of all ages and social groups. The average age is around 28 years. In addition, there are millions of people who study for free, because the traffic to our site is more than one and a half million people per month. Everyone is united by the desire to develop, the desire to do business and the desire to earn. We have applied education, although, of course, there is a certain philosophy and information of an ideological nature, that is, everything that is needed for development. We do not teach any scheme, we do not have pyramidal schemes or some kind of secret for making money. We simply give the approach and methodology that are absolutely applicable to any business. We, on the contrary, are more suitable for manufacturing, industrial business, shops, trade, logistics and wholesale businesses. Our knowledge is applied to them.

Is Business Youth fully based on the personal experience of the founders and other people you attract to your programs, or did you borrow something from the outside?

We certainly studied a lot and are still learning. We do not have the task to claim that we said something first. If something brings results, we, of course, take it on board. But initially our content was really resonant and we developed rapidly, because people saw and heard from us what they did not see or hear in books or at other trainings and performances. Now this is a big collective mind, we are closely watching a huge number of businesses that are developing in different industries, and we are able to pack experience in a methodology that we then transfer to the community.

Earlier in Russia there was a “silent” business, it was not customary to talk, to reveal some secrets, they kept everything in themselves and suffered from it themselves. We have changed this, and now we have cross-pollination of experience. All the best practice is packed and through our community reaches the rest of its participants. If someone has mastered the new tool, he shares it, it is used by other businesses that are growing and sharing their pieces of experience in the same way. They understand that they will only benefit from this.

Do you specifically track the success of participants in your educational programs?

We not only monitor, but also measure results. We have dashboards that track the specific revenue and specific performance of all of our students. We can show the graph and statistics by surnames. We see how their business has grown, how much they have completed their tasks, that is, we are digitizing what is happening in the courses during the training period. We do not strive to like it, although from the outside it may look like a show (there is a lot of fun and drive), we see everything happening in numbers.

Photo: "Business Youth"

Do you make any changes to your trainings taking into account the current state of the Russian economy? Do you have any crisis management plan and so on?

The word “crisis” sounds very often, and it probably sounds quite ironic here, because our philosophy is that if the problem we are talking about does not have a contact surface with us (in other words, if the dollar has risen and we are not able to reduce it), then what's the point of talking about it at all Of course, those initiatives in the business that the dollar affects (for example, purchases in foreign currency) need to be adjusted to reduce currency risks, and this is obvious, but we are not dealing with a problem that we are not able to solve. In a crisis or not in a crisis, the most powerful lever of influence on the result is internal problems that have not been solved before.

A crisis is simply a kind of “hard” mode - a difficult mode when you definitely have to do something that you haven’t gotten around to doing before. If you didn’t count money before, now you will. If before you could afford to waste money on advertising, now you won’t do it. If earlier you could support ineffective employees, now you won’t do it.

That is, in our understanding of the crisis. It simply destroys the weak, and the strong become, on the contrary, stronger. Those of our students who are now actively working, oddly enough, are growing in defiance of the crisis. Those who whine and complain about the crisis, get a good excuse for why they are at a loss.

Why did you decide to enter the American market and can your programs be applicable not only in Russia, but also in the USA?

We recently specifically traveled to America to test the waters, get to know, see how other people do business, and we were really surprised. It turns out that in 6 years we managed to do what many Americans failed. We lived in the feeling that everything was so cool in America, and we were so far behind that we didn’t even think about it. But when we saw how Americans do business (not all, of course, because there are very advanced Americans), we realized that in many cities and industries there are certain problems, and we have something to teach. In some competencies we transcend them, we made a “bomb”, including the reaction of the Americans themselves to us, at the request of cooperating with us and even investing money in us. We realized that we would definitely find our place with our approach. Our approach is in any case different from the American.

Mikhail Dashiev and Peter Osipov are invited to the business intensive in the United States. Photo: "Business Youth"

Do you attract American speakers for upcoming trainings in the USA or will it be exclusively Russian team?

At the moment, we are focusing on the Russian-speaking audience, but it is only in the coming months in order to better plunge into the market. However, we have a goal this year to make a few products in English. And not only in the USA, but also in other countries. We have defined our competencies for products, in which we are definitely strong, and will release them in English. We attract other speakers, but the word “speaker” is not entirely correct, because it is not so important for us whether a person speaks well whether he is a professional speaker or not. We, both in Russia and here, focus primarily on the carriers of the results, that is, on competent people, experts, business owners who have succeeded in technology, method or channel of sales. We have the opportunity, through observations and conversations, to pull out the most interesting thing from a person and put it into the methodology, so we are fully open and work in close contact with American speakers, experts, entrepreneurs, and do a synthesis of all the best that we can find.

If we talk about the Russian-speaking community of the United States, which is rather fragmented from a sectoral point of view, your programs will be more useful to those who have already started their business, or those who have not yet decided on their plans?

The greatest learning efficiency is achieved by those who already have some kind of material. And the more this business, the better. However, as I said, everyone learns from us. I think the same thing will happen in the States. We do not focus on those who do not know what they want to do, although for those who have not yet decided, we also have a block of information that allows us to better understand what it would cost to do.

Why did you choose San Francisco and Philadelphia for the beginning and do you expect to visit other US cities in the near future?

These cities were chosen by our regional department to sense the mass concentration of the Russian-speaking audience. Perhaps this is correct, perhaps not. In general, I expect to move for several months to the States to get in touch with this market, to live in New York, Chicago, San Francisco or to move between these cities. I think we will definitely be active in various cities. First of all, because we are interested to see how different people live and work, and also to make the best statements about themselves.

Now relations between Russia and the United States are going through hard times, which affects, among other things, the rapid departure of American business from Moscow and other cities. Do you think political and economic relations can somehow influence the implementation of your project in the States?

I hope that the policy will not affect us. First, we did not feel any aggression in dealing with the Americans, but on the contrary - a friendly, good attitude. Secondly, in Russia we have never had any political intentions, we do not stand under anyone's flags, we do not say that we are in opposition or do not stand for someone.

Our position has always been this way - we are doing our job, we don’t ask for money or any kind of lobbyism from anyone, we are simply developing at the expense of our own efficiency. The same will happen here, because we have no goals and ambitions to invade the political space. I do not think that this will cause any difficulties.

Americans can learn more about Russian entrepreneurs, find that something very powerful and promising has grown under their noses. When they saw at what level we count the numbers, at what level we manage marketing, they just had a shock reaction. This is far from the kindergarten level. Many of them do not have such technologies at home, so I think we will have something to share with the Americans. We are very positive.

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