Michelle Holmes: Welcome to Operations Unlocked, where we go beyond surface level strategy and talk what it really takes to build, scale, and not just that, but what it really takes to lead. I'm your host, Michelle Holmes, the founder of Flourish and Thriving Solutions, but today I am joined by Leonid. Don't worry, I am not going to butcher his last name, I will not attempt. He has started from a different place and I think it's so interesting. as I've just spent a short little time with him, understanding the, the physics and, as he has built just over the last 30 years, a global company and scaling just from a small team to a multi-location organization. So you, he definitely understand time zones, and what it takes to deliver a service, that's scalable and not just deliver, but he manages and leads as well. So. Leonid actually brings a scientific, structured approach to areas where most businesses rely on assumptions. We've all seen it. There's assumptions for a lot of things. And one of the things that we heard is that you never assume. And especially when it comes to quality and decision-making and now how AI is really positioning it and it fits into technology. And if we're honest, a lot of the companies that we see, the companies we hear about, the companies are, every company is moving so fast. No matter if you're a startup, if you're in growth stage or even in scale, everyone wants to do things really fast. But I think there is not all, there's a couple of things that we need to understand that it's important that we measure the right things and what you measure matters. And that there's a moment where things begin to break. But with all of that, I think it's important for us to bring Leonid here. because I think you will understand who he is, the expertise that he has and how he and the experience ⁓ that he brings to the table. So Leonid I wanna start here. As we talk about who you are, not just from a experience, what has shaped you into building what you're building and tell the people who you are.
Leonid Glazychev: Okay, great. So first of all, what has shaped me? I think it's dire circumstances. That's what gives you an impetus and you need to do something. So imagine that all the people, okay, including myself, they still remember President Ronald Reagan and his Star Wars, officially called SDI, that is Strategic Defense Initiative. So at that time, mean, honestly, I cannot believe it, but he made the correct assumption that if the United States spends a lot of money on the space program, that would lead to nothing, but it will make the Soviet Union spend a lot of money. And then they'll gone bankrupt. Guess what? It was one of the very few things where he was right. They've gone bankrupt, the communist evil empire dissipated. But there were plenty of scientists involved in all of those space arm races in all areas, including rail guns, lasers, particle beams, whatever. And scientists on both sides of the pool suddenly found themselves more or less unemployed because nobody needed their services and nobody needed to invest so much money when we were looking forward to decades of peace, prosperity, and no evil empires. I mean, it's so ironic. It sounds so ironic nowadays. mean, several decades later, we're facing an even gloomier situation, but still at that time, that was the belief. So people had to move elsewhere. So I was a scientist. I was involved with all those military programs, doing research. I'm a theoretical physicist, nothing. Manual, nothing, I did nothing with my hands, but you needed to reinvent yourself. At that time, I was also married, we had a small daughter, she was kind of one or two years old. So you have really need to bring money home. And that is the best stimulator that you can ever get when you're desperate, when you're poor, when you have absolute loan of money. but you still want to survive, not just doing something, but doing something that's interesting, that's somewhere closer to the front edge of research and that blends traditional areas. And that's where we got. My apologies. I was under the weather earlier this week. So originally I thought, okay, I'm well aware of physics, of computer simulation. And at that time computers were those huge, bulky things. Nothing like today. I mean, the personal computers were just penetrating a mass conscience and internet was mostly dial-up. It was immeasurably slow and annoying. So at that time, it's just when software companies started realizing that their primary market is not just the US, but the whole world, because the US, however, might and big it was, it's just a tiny share of the overall world population. And when penetrating other markets, I mean, it's not a discovery nowadays, it's kind of obvious, but at that time they realized, okay, you cannot sell software or computer games or whatever else as far as it speaks English. And everything was written in English at that time, most of it. So they started so-called localization, which was technically challenging. It was kind of blending language, time zones, locales. cultures and everything with technology because you needed to be well aware of it. Tools were kind of basic and you needed to know how to deal with code, how to sit at your PC and at that time even the graphic interface was very basic. That's what we've got used to now and there were no touch screens at all. So it was all very different and it was so interesting, so involving that I decided to risk it and create a company doing something that was just kind of emerging. Well, it worked, more or less. But as you can see, I can have considerably more gray hair compared to these early times, so you know.
Michelle Holmes: Yeah. That's so good. And I'm just leaning in as I hear you talk about the journey itself, because you've been doing this for a really long time. You don't have enough gray hair to show how long you've been doing this. Just the story in the beginning, and I think so many times when we hear the start of the business, I love that it started out of pure desperation because you knew you had to do something, but you were willing to use what you had and not really go and just recreate from nothing that you knew anything about. Because as you build, of course you need to always bring people along with you, but you took what you had available and said, okay, what can I use? And that was your mind and the experience that you had. And I think that is exactly what shaped you today. And I'm so excited as we dive into this a little more, as you've built this company and kind of seeing from your expertise, where companies are and one of the things that we hear everywhere and we probably will continue to hear is of course about decision making. No matter where you are, what do you see companies kind of leaning too far in one direction and what does that actually cost them from your expertise and how long you've been in the business world?
Leonid Glazychev: Great questions. ⁓ So first of all, I would say it's always very hard to find the right path. And I'll i'll use the ⁓ Homer, mean, Greek analogy. It's just passing in between Scylla and Charybdus all the time. So you need to sacrifice something because if you remember the Odyssey, I mean, you do sacrifice something. Charybdis will swallow the whole ship. Scylla will just have six sailors. You can never sail safely without sacrificing something, but you'll need to find the right trajectory. And the right trajectory means that not putting all your eggs into one basket, because you could be wrong and one never knows what's going to work, what is not. At the same time, if you over diversify, you just lose focus plus you haven't got enough ⁓ funds for that ⁓ and enough brain power to achieve some tangible progress. So it's always just trying to tread water lightly, not concentrated on a single thing, but not spreading yourself all around too thin. And you you learn it on the job and people who do not learn it on the job are either those lucky ones who've guessed it right and they've concentrated on a single thing and built a whole empire or their businesses are long gone because they overspread themselves too thin and they didn't realize that sacrifices are an inevitable path of any, I mean, real life way. There is no such way as eternal happiness and everything just happening as far as you have a magic wand in your hand. Well, I haven't got one.
Michelle Holmes: Are you sure? No, just kidding. No, it's okay if we go a little farther there. love You kind of talked about sacrifice and I think most business owners starting off from a startup perspective, going into a growth and getting to a point of scale, understand that sacrifice is required. But the other part that you said is being able to ensure that you don't put all your eggs in one basket for you and your your journey because you were in a desperate place. How did you make sure that you were still able to focus enough where for you, you put all your eggs in one basket at the very beginning and then say, okay, well, I put enough effort here and now let me start putting effort somewhere else. What did that look like for you?
Leonid Glazychev: well, first of all, let's put it that way. It's not that I'm so smart. Well, that is, I mean, let me brag a little. Okay, I am smart,
Michelle Holmes: You are.
Leonid Glazychev: but I'm definitely not the smartest guy in the universe. First. Second, it means that I was lucky. The 90s was exactly the year when software and game localization was picking up. So it was fertile soil. I mean, it was much easier to toil compared, say, to nowadays when competition is much stronger and when everything has changed with the advent of AI. But at a certain moment in time, you realize if you're just concentrated on a single thing, however good it is, your growth potential or your survivability in case something happens is very limited. And we started looking around. Once again, we were lucky. We've got a hint. And it was a hint from Microsoft. At that time, by the way, they were mistaken. It's an interesting story. In the mid-90s, we were one of Microsoft localization suppliers. And at that time, they had all those great vendor conferences where they were delivering speeches telling you where they are going and where they expect you to go. And obviously they were sharing a lot of knowledge that you absolutely cannot obtain when you're a small business, operating 24 times 7 with no vacations for several years in a row and hardly any holidays. So you do not have time to think strategically and that's really bad. Nowadays, I do realize that you need to take this time just to think. I know it sounds strange instead of looking at your smartphone just to sit there and concentrate, but believe me guys, it really helps. So the thing is at that time there was a Microsoft encyclopedia. It was called Encarta. Everybody has forgotten about it since then, but the whole idea was prior to that, encyclopedias were huge terms that you had to deal with and Encarta Was on a city drive so it was a totally different thing plus you could get some updates online when things changed when new articles were added And they said you know what? Traditional software is going to die. It's not very interesting not very involving Well, they were wrong it's still very much there but they said the future belongs to multimedia because with all those videos and audio and images that we put in in Carter, that's the future. And they were right. They were not right about in Carter, but they were right about multimedia. So we took it very, very seriously and thought, okay, we need to learn how to localize and deal with multimedia. And multimedia means, first of all, it's not just technical content. It's part art. It's part fiction. It's part whatever else. Second, you need to learn how to deal with different media, including how to do voiceovers in different languages, totally different, how to do subtitles. And believe me, at that time, AI didn't transcribe for you automatically. It was done manually. And you needed to learn how to operate in this totally different environment. So it didn't work for Ren Carter. but it worked great for computer games because people, even during the COVID era, they were sitting on their couches, they were unemployed, and they had to do nothing because they couldn't go to their workplace, but they still had to do something. So most of them played computer games or various types of games on their phones, on their tablets, on their PCs, on their dedicated PlayStations, Xboxes, and whatever. So it was right. It was a revolution. And I'm really glad we listened because we were ready when it started to evolve into an international business where companies realized that once again, for people to pay big money for AAA games and to pay for all those updates, they definitely need to localize them. And it means not just the user interface, but they needed perfect soundtracks. They needed subtitles, needed user assistance, and all the support materials in local languages because most people are not fluent in other languages. So that was kind of lesson number one and one small step towards expanding your line of business and your coverage.
Michelle Holmes: Would you like to go a little bit more into that? Because as you move into the coverage and expanding your business and kind of wrapping that back into one of things that you said is at the very beginning, what does it cost if you are not able to diversify you, you close? You may have a great product, but it doesn't expand into what the market continues to need. It doesn't service it in the way that People are needing the product to service them. So for you and what you were seeing in the market, in the industry, because you've been around, I want to just say, you said 1990. I remember the set of encyclopedias that my mom purchased. It was so exciting for her to purchase these encyclopedias. We weren't there quite yet to have the software. I remember when we purchased our first computer, the bulkiest computer, but we were so excited because at that time you weren't excited about buying the little computer, you're excited about if it was big. And so we were really excited. when you...
Leonid Glazychev: thumbs up, the bigger the better because it meant that it was more powerful.
Michelle Holmes: Yes. Although we were still on AOL. So at the time, power did not equate to speed for the internet. I do want, I just wanted to say that took me back to a moment of understanding the progression, right? Of growth in the market. And then the growth that was needed to kind of stay the course for other companies. Cause if you watch larger companies, That's great because they're also moving fast and they're making decisions. They're failing, they're learning. I don't to really say failing, but they're learning. And as you kind of mentioned, being able to move and not just fail, but understand where they missed it. I think you mentioned how you were at a conference and they were telling you where you should go, but you guys saw the opportunity. in that and so I think that's also what it costs you if you can't identify an opportunity. You miss out.
Leonid Glazychev: Absolutely. And at that time, know, I was sitting there and I felt, okay, if we do not jump on this train immediately, we would be gone in a couple of years. Well, that was too dramatic. Obviously it was not so fast, but generally we were lucky. It was the right guess. And guess what? The next step suddenly at a certain moment when first, machine translation pieces of software when they started showing some promise because earlier in the days they were just laughable whatever they produced people used it for telling practical jokes or just for having a good laugh around the coffee maker. But anyway, at that time, we realized and that was also maybe a couple decades ago, that in order to move forward from that, at a certain moment in time, all translation and localization will be a mundane technical task with people much less involved than at the time. And guess what? We were right, because that's what we're evidence in nowadays. And it's changing very rapidly. With some people believing in it, some others just being the climate change deniers or say translation workspace deniers or whatever. And we realized that in order to, on one hand, exploit whatever we've learned, whatever we know, just to stay concentrated. I do not want to go into say geology or financial trading. I hate finance. Yeah. And it's weird to hear from the CFO CEO, but still I just do not like it. It's boring. So we need to expand into something that adds us additional layers of survivability. That is we need to move upstream. And upstream of localization lies content creation, because people will still need to create. And even if they use software and nowadays AI, you still need the creative input and some diversity from ideas brought in by people or some polishing. So we decided that we need to diversify. We need to create designs, we need to create videos ourselves, not just localize somebody else's. We need to create blog posts, we need to create highlight articles and everything and so on. And that's what we set out to do. That was kind of a second step into this direction.
Michelle Holmes: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. That's really good. And I heard you say it's been almost a decade around what was a hype. And I remember being in the contact center space for years, we heard about IBM lots and all the things around technology that technology would take over and do some of the mundane tasks for customer service and some of the operational things that we would bring into the plant operations. for a mundane task. And that's exactly where we are now around the noise around AI. I don't count it as noise because it's been around for a really long time. However, I feel like we have people who have mastered the use of it. But I do feel like there's a tension between AI and real human intelligence kind of showing up in business. And where do you see that tension currently between AI and real human intelligence?
Leonid Glazychev: I would say that there are two major ramifications here. I mean, the whole advent of AI. First of all, it has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with our psyche. It just affects us because some part of myself, and I'm not, say, the least knowledgeable person here, of myself is scared. Okay, it could potentially make me irrelevant. Part of myself is excited. The most stupid mundane tasks or the most annoying conversations with all the stupid chatbots will be replaced by less annoying conversations with smarter chatbots that probably can do something good for me rather than waste my time. Some of it opens new horizons because tasks that used to be very labor-intensive, like say transcriptions, somehow became kind of very affordable and very fast. I'll give you an example. At the start of my career, you know, I was wearing as many hats as I could. And wherever you could make a book, you do it, obviously, especially when you're young and you need to support a family. And at that time, I was offered good pay, well, at least for the time being, to dub several video cassettes so that they can present those lectures on object-oriented programming at an industry event. So at that time to dub a video cassette, you needed to sit there for hours just recording whatever the person on the screen is saying line by line, just rewinding the whole VCR back. And you know, it produces all those clicks. It was very slow and a tedious process. So you wasted several hours on just trying to kind of transcribe it. and then you're dubbing it in a different language at the studio and everything. Nowadays, when I release a podcast and say it's a 10 to 12 minute episode, I've just measured it. Well, AI does the transcription in maybe two to three minutes, and then I spent another 15 minutes on just going through it and editing it. Obviously, it's pretty good already. It's not perfect. One of my favorite examples in my own podcasts, and that's why I remember it so vividly, is that I was talking about phalluses. that is misconceptions and obviously transcribed it as male organs. which was funny, but I still had to notice it and edit it because it sounds similar and probably a phallus was kind of more familiar to this particular AI than a phallus concept of fallacy. Anyway, this is just one example, but I mean, you still need to go through it. You still need to review it and edit it slightly, but 15 minutes. Compared to hours of tedious... and extremely boring work, it's something I really love it so that I concentrate on the more on the creative part. And another thing is just the technical part. Because as usual, you know, when we're going through a time of rapid changes, one thing is it's a weird mix of outrageous hype and misstatements. Obviously people releasing those products, they need to sell them and they oversell them dramatically to be honest.
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: On the other hand, there are very real uses that save us a lot of time or enable us to do things that we couldn't do earlier or that were so labor intensive that nobody cared to pay for them. Finally, one thing we need to realize, at least at the current moment and maybe several years going forward, is that one thing we need to understand very clearly is that at the moment, nothing that AI produces, whatever LLM or model you're talking about, is final material ready for commercial use. I'm repeating myself, but what our head of the creative division, it's called the digital content division at Logosights says, you know, whatever AI creates, we need to apply a rasp to it so that we can hone the details and make sure that it looks and feels smooth, that there are no contradictions, weird details or anything else there and that it's ready for final consumption by the clients. And that's a very important addition. I mean, it doesn't, once again, happen with a magic wand alone, even though we've got something very much resembling it, at least in the virtual space. But first, you apply the magic wand, and then you apply some human work to hone and polish and finalize.
Michelle Holmes: I think the human governance and what I hear you're saying around the tension between AI and the human perspective, they work hand in hand. It's just not one. It's just not, let's just incorporate the AI or the artificial intelligence and it will do all the things and it's going to come out with the right answer. and I don't have to have any human interaction with it and I can just release it as the final product. And I love how you said, this is not the final product. You put them together for that. And I think there is a misunderstanding of that in the business world right now that there is some human governance. I call it the governance piece because someone has to govern what's put out there by the artificial intelligence. that, because if you'd never go back to to adjust and to fix and to understand what showed up like on your episode. If you never, you would have just put that out and someone would have said, this is good content. then someone would have noticed it at some point that, this is just AI. And then it makes it look like there is someone who doesn't care. And I believe the additional human touch also from a business perspective says, hey, we still care. We still care what goes out in the accuracy of the information that we're putting out there.
Leonid Glazychev: Well, but beyond this ethical side of things, there is another one that's kind of grim, but very real. So just ask yourself one simple question. Say you prepare a prompt and you want to create something with AI, whether it's a content, a picture, a video, whatever. So you formulate the prompt, you feed it to AI, it produces some result. Suppose you are using a commercial level license, so it's not immediately shared with the rest of humankind. So my question is as follows. If you are going to use it commercially, what about the copyright? And I'll formulate the question for you. The question is, if someone else in Australia comes up with a very similar thing, formulates the request to AI, this prompt, in a very similar way and gets a very similar result. What about its uniqueness? What about the copyright? We've got two very similar things created independently, but how do we resolve this conundrum? And the only good answer is, I mean the solid answer that works nowadays, not when we reach a certain ideal stage, is as follows. The only way to ensure that whatever you created using AI is unique enough, and let's put it that way, copyrightable, is that you put a sufficient share of human effort, of your own effort, your own ideas into it so that it's different from whatever else is created by someone else. Unless you polish it's because when you add a certain amount of human labor that kind of guarantees that it's unique enough. As far
Michelle Holmes: Mm.
Leonid Glazychev: as you only use the prompt there is no guarantee. Moreover even if it's the same model this LLM will never tell you that somebody else created a very similar thing. You'll never learn about it.
Michelle Holmes: Hmm.
Leonid Glazychev: But suppose you sell it to a client, they use it in their advertising, on their website or wherever else. I mean, it's a commercial project. It's not something that you create to entertain yourself or your friends. Actually, it's a service you delivered and they definitely want the whole copyright thing to be straightened out. Unless you've put some additional effort, there is no guarantee.
Michelle Holmes: Well, and I like how you position that question because it definitely makes you think. And I think it does say we need to have that human interaction or the uniqueness. guess at what point do you say, because I could say, I added some human, humaness, is not a word, but I can say I added that. now from a copyright perspective, it should be okay. But at what I think that becomes a question that you then have to say, at what point is that it's the AI or the artificial intelligence at some point produces 50 % and then you take the final 50 or is it saying that, you take the 80 and do the 20? Not something we could probably figure out today, but I think it does say how much of the human interaction has to be for it to be really the copyright of that company and from a commercial, especially from a commercial use.
Leonid Glazychev: I know. We are wandering into uncharted territories here because there is no predefined percentage. And it's just very hard to measure. How do you measure your effort compared to AI effort? Okay, so I hold this, I change this. What percentage does it constitute of the original image of text? Well, it's hard to tell. But let's put it that way. for the copyright conundrum to be resolved at the basic level, I mean, for commercial purposes, because clients are not stupid. They also understand it, that
Michelle Holmes: Right.
Leonid Glazychev: there is some standing on somewhat shaky grounds, obviously, and there is no way to eliminate it unless you want everything done by humans and it will be costly, it will take longer, not an option. So
Michelle Holmes: Right.
Leonid Glazychev: let's assume that we need to sufficient effort that makes the final product significantly and noticeably different from the raw version created by AI. As far as you can see, very noticeable, considerable differences, you should be fine. I mean, I know it's not quantitative, it's just qualitative, but still you get the idea.
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: It shouldn't be that you change one tiny pixel and suddenly it becomes human work. Definitely not. It should be noticeably different.
Michelle Holmes: I will say 10 years down the road, we're gonna look at this and we're gonna say we had conversations around what this will look like. I will be, I'm gonna remember this conversation to go back and say, well, yeah, we're now, we're no longer in uncharted territories because some, we figured it out. And I think one of the things that you kind of said is about the human aspect that humans can actually do the work. It's not that humans can't do the work, but there is a cost associated with it. there is time associated with it. And I think when I started to look at AI and the intelligence and why we bring in technology, we do that from a scale perspective because we're looking to grow. We're looking to scale. And we were looking to do that from an efficiency and an effective perspective because human labor, is costly. So when you look at companies that scale well, what actually determines that, especially when you factor in structure? you're factoring in quality and you're factoring in decision making because you're sitting around the table. You understand the vision, you understand the strategy of some of these companies and helping them make the right decision. So for you, what determines, yeah, this is a company that will be able to scale well.
Leonid Glazychev: Okay, let me be honest, I don't know. The only thing I can say, because I can only guess here, well, it's an educated guess, just not a random one, but still. One thing, you should have some of your key people, and I mean the ones who are there with you and were with you for some time, they need to dig into that AI thing. and figure it out for themselves. Because if you just try to buy it as a ready solution, or if you do not undertake the effort of understanding how it could help you, and I mean myself, thinking about it, not just accepting something, okay, now we'll buy it from elsewhere, either a shelf product or we'll hire someone to develop something for us. As far as we can understand what we're doing, why are we doing this and what are the limitations, you need to feel it. They're contangible, but you need to understand it yourself. Otherwise, you'll become another victim of this AI hype.
Michelle Holmes: Mm-hmm.
Leonid Glazychev: When you're thinking of this, either as an evil genie or as a godlike creature,
Michelle Holmes: Mmm.
Leonid Glazychev: both obviously are wrong. So if you want to have a realistic view, if you want to move forward, you need to try it out yourself. So you need to have a trailblazer within the company who is ready to experience it, to explore it and figure out how it works at a primitive level. We can bring in professional developers or some other guys later, but you need to outline the goals. You need to understand what's changing. You need to know. Why are you doing this? And whether it's going to help you survive or it's just a stupid undertaking and you'll waste some time and some money and that would result in nothing because somebody else has done it ten times better.
Michelle Holmes: And I would say, hearing that, I would just say that's practically across the board for companies that will scale well. And that's taking in any technology really across the board. If it's AI or if it's a different system, technology system, having a person that's part of the team to understand and what is the goal. Because although AI and other people will sell a tool, a system, And if someone in the company does not truly understand how it helps their organization based on the offerings that they have, they will ultimately, the system will not be used as efficient, as effective. And I think it will slow it down. It will cost them to use more resources from a human perspective, which may ultimately harm them in the ability to be able to scale on long-term. I like that. Thank you for poring.
Leonid Glazychev: Actually, we're backtracking to the original issue of governance
Michelle Holmes: Mmm.
Leonid Glazychev: and decision making
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: because it's the same everywhere. It's not just about AI
Michelle Holmes: Mm-hmm.
Leonid Glazychev: What I was always saying well, maybe it's because I have a technical background and I do not trust those NBA guys a very good and a very smart colleague of mine he had the same he has in my company and he worked as a vice president for a very big company, a multi-billion dollar one. And he said in my job, I am never hiring two categories of people. First of all, anyone graduating from Ivy League institutions, because they think too much of themselves and they're only suitable for a certain number of Wall Street institutions, they absolutely cannot. survive or be or make themselves useful in a more challenging environment where you need to wear multiple hats and where anything is the antipode of ideal. Where you are facing real life problems, where you are facing survivability of the business and everything and you need to think quickly. And second and never hire anyone with a dedicated MBA degree. Because he thought that MBAs take away professional knowledge that's absolutely essential for running any business.
Michelle Holmes: Mm.
Leonid Glazychev: In order to understand what you are doing, you need to be competent in particular areas you are dealing with. And interestingly enough, It's not just words. It's not just an ultimate, say, French world outlook. Look at Boeing. It was an extremely successful pioneering engineering company that released groundbreaking models. The huge Jumbo Jet, the 747, made it made in flight in 1969, believe it or not. It was an incredible engineering achievement, just come to think of it. But at that time, the company was governed by engineers, by people who really understood the business, the challenging, the dangers and everything. Then they merged with a couple of other makers and the MBAs came to power. And look what this resulted in. And it's not a single example. I can name quite a few of very well known kind of household names that either disappeared or stopped playing their leading role or whatever when the helm passed from, say specialists to MBAs. And the reason is there is nothing bad in an MBA degree as such, but it takes away professional knowledge. It concentrates on the financial and bookkeeping and organizational parts alone. But without professional knowledge, you cannot move forward.
Michelle Holmes: I would say that makes this is not where the conversation is going, but it really, you saying that, Leonid, it made me think about some of the mergers and acquisitions that ⁓ I was a part of. And hearing you say this, I can speak from example in going through like change management and the leadership changes, ⁓ the difference between a specialized person who understands the business nature of ⁓ the product. and the offerings of this product. What is the product created to do? How does it work? The creativity around it, but also not to create just the creativity, but the technology, the team that that's needed for it. And then to bring in people who are educated to understand business. It is definitely a different, it's a different ball game and you get different results. Can they grow? Yes. But I will say that sometimes even with that growth, it becomes very, very unstable and I've seen multiple that have not ended well. As you kind of bring that to light, I would say I've seen it, I've experienced it, I've worked through a lot of those changes. So thank you for mentioning that. And I think it kind of leads me to my question of, You kind of talked about these businesses that you've seen, even working with them or just household names that we've experienced that has grown. And they begin to break. And I hear that there are multiple reasons that a company could begin to break as they grow. at the intersection of that, what do you really believe is underneath all of that?
Leonid Glazychev: You mean the path to destruction?
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: Well, hard to tell. there are several, well, at least what comes to mind are several things. It's never one thing, you know.
Michelle Holmes: Mm-hmm.
Leonid Glazychev: Just to bring a disaster, you need the combination of at least three. And when all of them are combined together, that brings the real downfall. Otherwise it's just a minor mishap that can be overcome. So first of all, it's... incompetent leadership that doesn't lead but rather looks at financials, potential mergers, acquisitions, and the mentality. I mean, the big CEO mentality. But I'm here for two to three years. My goal is not to improve products, not to improve companies positioning, but to improve its market value. That is create as much hype as I can. And then I'll try to move on before the whole thing unwinds. So that's the first thing. As soon as you take it away from more technical people who are deeply interested in the products and the services and progress and everything, I'm not saying that's a penicillium. I'm not saying that if you're technically competent, it saves the company, but I think it's necessary. As soon as you move it to kind of pure corporate level bureaucrats, that's... definitely one step towards the disaster. So the second thing is obviously not watching the times goes by. One other example, I mean an incredible one. Everybody knows, even younger people know the name Kadek. And I mean, they were in a great position. Their market share was huge. The name was recognized easily worldwide because Mr. Eastman invented it in the U.S. By the way, it's a very educational journey to his home. It's a museum nowadays and you can go and get a tour, which is fascinating how the first cameras were created. I mean the first ones that really worked because he created the whole thing of developing things quickly and it's a reasonable cost that made photography commonly accessible versus, say, being a professional trade with cumbersome and expensive equipment. So the company was in a great position. So they grasped the whole digital revolution early and they were releasing your mimic cameras and film and everything. They could have been the trailblazers of digital. but they missed the mark. They were very happy resting on their laurels. Business was booming as it was 30 years ago. And suddenly the whole thing started to unwind. And now very young people do not even know what the name Kodak means. So the second thing is, however good your financial or your commercial situation or your company positioning is, It's not completely secure. Times are changing. And nowadays they're changing more rapidly than ever. And the third thing, I mean, that's where I'm deviating from the traditional path. I think it's having a good mixture of being humble enough and possess sufficient self-irony. As soon as you start thinking of yourself as a godlike creature, or as soon as you get too smug, But to glib, that's where danger is right around the corner. Well, at least that's my perception. Do not take yourself too seriously. We're human beings. We're making huge mistakes all the time. And it's fine as far as we're ready to acknowledge them quick enough, accept them and move forward. And the other important thing is emotional. Do not reminisce too much.
Michelle Holmes: Cool.
Leonid Glazychev: Do not concentrate on past failures, but rather just get your lesson. Put a check mark and move forward. At least that's my recipe.
Michelle Holmes: That's some recipe, my goodness. I love that recipe and I think it's very practical. I think it's something not just repeatable, but I think it does help in the business sector because as I, like I said, I think about several companies that I've been in a seat from a leadership perspective and understanding someone that does not understand positioning of a company and they have their own agenda. That goes to the very third piece of believing that we are above creation and we have our own agenda things. I think that's, thank you for pointing that out. One of the things that you said at the very beginning of this call, I hope you didn't think I would forget that you said, look, and I just kind of want to, I sometimes, think I have something, it's not luck. But what does that actually mean to you? You've said it a few times throughout this episode. What does luck actually mean in business, but what does it mean to you?
Leonid Glazychev: I think it's one of the three most important components because some people, especially the ones who've reached fame and the best some fortune, sometimes it's just a coincidence. So obviously you had a good enough idea. But the second component is the right timing. There were social networks before Facebook. but they were little ahead of that time. And there were the ones after Facebook, but at that time it was right there. So that's how it occupies its place. It's not just say a good idea and it's not unique by far. It's also important to hit it at the moment when people, I mean in general, are ready for that. And the third thing, you mentioned it, I really love it. Because I think it's an essential thing and many of these people do not realize it. It's luck. It's the right timing, it's the right concept or idea, and it's a good piece of luck. Because some people, they were just lucky, but they do not understand it. They try to create a recipe based on their experience, but there is no recipe. It's a one-time success that was hugely due not only to your great idea, but also to the fortunate timing. serendipitous timing and luck. And you underestimate luck and attribute all of it to your genius. And that's just wrong. I know I cannot pass this by. We're talking about art of the deal. There is no recipe behind it.
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: It's complete BS.
Michelle Holmes: I think there are moments where we underestimate. said something that is never just the one thing, to create a disaster, takes multiple things. And so I think even in business, even the success of business, it's not just one idea. It's not just one department. It's not just, one offering that. generally does that. It's a combination. No matter how you, where you sit, no matter what you're doing, what you're saying is there's never just one thing. And I'm going to take that away today. But as I sit here thinking about all these pieces, they always go in together. And when we're thinking about building a successful company, there's not one thing. no matter how many conversations we have, can have a conversation tomorrow. We're going to say the same thing. It's not just one thing. There may be seasons and times where there is one thing that stick out. For instance, AI right now in the world is one of the things that stick out, but it's not the only thing that makes a business successful if you have AI in your bag of tools, but can it help? Most definitely. And I think that's also thinking about companies that grow and at the end of it, the day, the understanding is you have to understand your business in order to be able to grow it and to scale it. And if you don't understand where you are and the times that you're in, you would never be able to get past that point.
Leonid Glazychev: Yeah, once again, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that financial guys are useless. They are useful.
Michelle Holmes: Yes.
Leonid Glazychev: You should listen to them. But the right hierarchy is as follows. You're at the helm because you are laying the groundwork. You are defining the direction where you move. You are making decisions. They are there to preclude extremely stupid decisions. or help you make the right decision, including the financials, but they're there not to drive the ship. As far as you entrust it to a bean counter, it's just a recipe for disaster. But another important thing, I'm just emphasizing it, we talked about it earlier, do not take yourself too seriously. Because you
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: know what? All the worst atrocities in the world history, were always committed with an extremely serious facial expression.
Michelle Holmes: Mm-hmm. Wow. Hmm. I've never thought about that. That's good. Alright, so you're telling me I have to laugh more and that's why you're so serious.
Leonid Glazychev: but that's true!
Michelle Holmes: Yeah. Well, has been, Leonid, ⁓ I just want to say this has been such a rich conversation, a very strong conversation, especially around how companies think about structure, ⁓ technology and leadership. You hit on so many ⁓ points about leadership, not just about who you hire, why you're hiring them. And it cannot be just about a degree, understanding that there is a need for skill. And I think that sometimes we forget about that. And if you want to grow, and if you want to scale the business, these are some of the things that you need to be thinking about. I just want to bring this back to a leader for a moment. If someone is in the middle of a transition, I know you always say you're not the smartest man, but you're very smart.
Leonid Glazychev: Okay, thank you. I'm blushing.
Michelle Holmes: And if you could bring this back to a leader who's currently in a transition. And I also want to say, you've seen multiple transitions. You've been in this thing for 30 years. So if they're looking to, like they're growing, they're shifting, maybe even breaking a little. Because if we can be honest, there are some leaders that may be listening today that are in a transition that feel like they're breaking. What will you tell them?
Leonid Glazychev: Well, first of all... Trust your gut feeling. Well, once again, this is my recipe. I do not think it's universal, so I'll be cautious to spread it like an advice from a guru. but trust your gut. Excuse me. When I had a gut feeling, most of the times... the decision was kind of delayed because I thought okay but it changes a lot, it's painful, it's emotionally taxing and everything. In most cases it proved to be the right feeling because the gut feeling is not just something from fantasy or religion or elsewhere, it's your subconscious processing everything that you know, that you've learned, that you're thinking of. So in many cases my own decisions were delayed unnecessarily because I didn't trust this gut feeling enough. Because I was afraid of making this step. Because you do not want to get into this water and figure out whether there is a fault there or it's pretty deep and you're going to drown. But the thing is, just do not delay. If you feel that you're uncomfortable, if you feel that the situation is wrong, if you feel that something needs to be changed, do not wait for too long. With me, it happened several times. And each time after that, say talking to my wife or just thinking about it myself, I realized, no, I delayed it for too long. One of the transitions when we needed to split the business because The management was not united and the approach is to leaders. I was one of them. What taking was so dramatically different and our temperaments and everything were so different, we needed to split earlier. And I delayed this decision for several years. And
Michelle Holmes: Wow.
Leonid Glazychev: these were the most uncomfortable years of my life. After that, we split. My revenue has gone down because obviously after we split there are a lot of things to take care of. But I've become so much happier because I could work with the people with whom we could find common language, whom I could trust and with whom we could charge the new and... brightly lit yellow brick road and I mean to the Emerald set and not somewhere I go into hell and I mean so if you feel that you need this transition if you feel that change is overdue do not procrastinate The second thing is... Talk to the people you value most. And I'm not talking about professional, I'm talking about people with whom you have deep human relationship because these are the only ones truly interested in your success. All the others, they can be partially or fully pragmatic. They'll tell you what they think you want to hear. Just because they're thinking about potential transitions, changes or whatever. So talk to the people with whom you can be 100 % confident that they have your best interests in mind when talking to you. If you just listen to them, even if it's not about business, it's about decision making. they'll bring a lot of very interesting, very deep staff to the table. In my case, my wife, In many cases, she advised me and I mean, despite the fact she's not participating in the business, she knows nothing about it, but her insights were exactly on the spot.
Michelle Holmes: you
Leonid Glazychev: And the reason is she's a smart person and she has our best interests in mind, not anything else. And finally, just to not get scared. If we get scared of too many things, we stay indoors and never risk out and never see the blue sky or the sun or the trees. Never experience the pollen so that
Michelle Holmes: you
Leonid Glazychev: we sneeze for half a day. But that way we deprive ourselves of so... much real life experiences and we shouldn't do it. Okay, I hope it didn't sound too philosophical.
Michelle Holmes: I loved every moment of it. And I'm sure everyone that will be watching will take a piece of it. I know you're not the guru, but most definitely you are. That has been very helpful because I think so many times people are looking for that advice. They're looking for what do I do next? They're stuck in a place because they're not willing to take the advice from someone who truly cares and who can actually share some insight that's not going to. I feel like mentorship is important. feel like having a wise counsel is important, but sometimes that wise counsel, like you said, is a mate and for you as your wife. I think that was so, thank you for sharing that. And I have one more question for you. You you've built something that has been sustainable thus far. And
Leonid Glazychev: knocking on wood
Michelle Holmes: if you... Well, you didn't knock on wood. You knocked on your forehead, unless your forehead is wood. You're not wood.
Leonid Glazychev: Well...
Michelle Holmes: I know what you're saying. I'm just kidding with you.
Leonid Glazychev: Well, that's the innuendo.
Michelle Holmes: I just give you a hard time there. I am joking, but also very serious because what you have built is very impressive. And we didn't even tell the people. You have several different offices. You have a team of people who, as you talked about, that you trust, that you can build with. Out of all of this that you've built, what do you enjoy most about it?
Leonid Glazychev: Well, honestly, I enjoy multiple things. First of all, well, you know, I'm curious by nature. I love getting immersed into different cultures, different languages. I would even dare say different civilizations because you travel to Southeast Asia and even the mindset there is so... different from what we've got used to. And I think that's enriching and moreover in my, well, I would say very specific and I'm just trying to find the right word, niche world outlook. People should not be entrusted with any decision-making positions in a serious way unless they were exposed a lot to various cultures around the world. Because without this experience, without this understanding, their decision-making and their understanding of the motivations behind other people or other companies or other countries will be significantly skewed. So I think that is amazing. Plus, I love to travel and experience it firsthand. And that's also what keeps you alive and keeps you younger because you have so much to learn, so much to see, so much to experience.
Michelle Holmes: Thank you. That was good. You're also telling me I need to travel more so that I won't have any additional gray hairs. I don't think that's... I know that's not what you said, but... I
Leonid Glazychev: I didn't say that.
Michelle Holmes: know, I know. I was just joking. No, I would agree with that. And I thank you for saying that. Just around... I would say for the leader that's leading, if you're never willing to get out, if you're never willing to experience another culture, another place. Do you really care about the experience of the people that could even purchase your products? Possibly be on your team because you don't even have that understanding. so thank you for sharing that. And I would say if you had today, if you had any final thoughts that you want to leave with our guests, this is your moment, Leonette, to share any final thoughts today.
Leonid Glazychev: Well, I'll, I would say I'll conclude with one of my favorite quotation. It's from Thaikididas, who was writing about wars between Sparta and Athens in ancient Greece that happened in the fourth century BC, if I'm not mistaken. So I think I've never read anything deeper than that, however weird it sounds. So ignorance makes us bold while knowledge leads to indecision.
Michelle Holmes: All right, so you left us today with a thought that makes us ponder and even think even more. That's so, okay. This episode has been so great. For me as well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I appreciate your expertise, although you're not an expert and you're not the smartest guy in the world. You're very smart. I
Leonid Glazychev: No, I'm not.
Michelle Holmes: thank you for sharing your time. and what you've experienced thus far. You have so much more to experience as you continue to lead and continue to grow and impact companies. If people want to connect with you, how should they connect?
Leonid Glazychev: Well, they can find me on LinkedIn with this exotic Slavic name. It's not a big deal. It's very easy. Or they go to my company's website, Logrosite.com and contact us through it or just look at what we're doing there.
Michelle Holmes: And I'm sure you'll be able to find them just fine guys. I just want to say, if you're a leader navigating growth or transitions and you're starting to feel that tension between vision and execution, that's exactly where I step into work. And if this episode has helped you, I want you to share it with another leader who needs it because I think it has been impactful even for myself. Now remember this last thing, revenue follows vision, but execution is what sustains it. Execution and also great leadership. So I wanna thank you for joining us today on Operations Unlocked and we look to see you on the next episode.
Leonid Glazychev: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Michelle Holmes: Thank you.
Leonid Glazychev: Okay, great. So first of all, what has shaped me? I think it's dire circumstances. That's what gives you an impetus and you need to do something. So imagine that all the people, okay, including myself, they still remember President Ronald Reagan and his Star Wars, officially called SDI, that is Strategic Defense Initiative. So at that time, mean, honestly, I cannot believe it, but he made the correct assumption that if the United States spends a lot of money on the space program, that would lead to nothing, but it will make the Soviet Union spend a lot of money. And then they'll gone bankrupt. Guess what? It was one of the very few things where he was right. They've gone bankrupt, the communist evil empire dissipated. But there were plenty of scientists involved in all of those space arm races in all areas, including rail guns, lasers, particle beams, whatever. And scientists on both sides of the pool suddenly found themselves more or less unemployed because nobody needed their services and nobody needed to invest so much money when we were looking forward to decades of peace, prosperity, and no evil empires. I mean, it's so ironic. It sounds so ironic nowadays. mean, several decades later, we're facing an even gloomier situation, but still at that time, that was the belief. So people had to move elsewhere. So I was a scientist. I was involved with all those military programs, doing research. I'm a theoretical physicist, nothing. Manual, nothing, I did nothing with my hands, but you needed to reinvent yourself. At that time, I was also married, we had a small daughter, she was kind of one or two years old. So you have really need to bring money home. And that is the best stimulator that you can ever get when you're desperate, when you're poor, when you have absolute loan of money. but you still want to survive, not just doing something, but doing something that's interesting, that's somewhere closer to the front edge of research and that blends traditional areas. And that's where we got. My apologies. I was under the weather earlier this week. So originally I thought, okay, I'm well aware of physics, of computer simulation. And at that time computers were those huge, bulky things. Nothing like today. I mean, the personal computers were just penetrating a mass conscience and internet was mostly dial-up. It was immeasurably slow and annoying. So at that time, it's just when software companies started realizing that their primary market is not just the US, but the whole world, because the US, however, might and big it was, it's just a tiny share of the overall world population. And when penetrating other markets, I mean, it's not a discovery nowadays, it's kind of obvious, but at that time they realized, okay, you cannot sell software or computer games or whatever else as far as it speaks English. And everything was written in English at that time, most of it. So they started so-called localization, which was technically challenging. It was kind of blending language, time zones, locales. cultures and everything with technology because you needed to be well aware of it. Tools were kind of basic and you needed to know how to deal with code, how to sit at your PC and at that time even the graphic interface was very basic. That's what we've got used to now and there were no touch screens at all. So it was all very different and it was so interesting, so involving that I decided to risk it and create a company doing something that was just kind of emerging. Well, it worked, more or less. But as you can see, I can have considerably more gray hair compared to these early times, so you know.
Michelle Holmes: Yeah. That's so good. And I'm just leaning in as I hear you talk about the journey itself, because you've been doing this for a really long time. You don't have enough gray hair to show how long you've been doing this. Just the story in the beginning, and I think so many times when we hear the start of the business, I love that it started out of pure desperation because you knew you had to do something, but you were willing to use what you had and not really go and just recreate from nothing that you knew anything about. Because as you build, of course you need to always bring people along with you, but you took what you had available and said, okay, what can I use? And that was your mind and the experience that you had. And I think that is exactly what shaped you today. And I'm so excited as we dive into this a little more, as you've built this company and kind of seeing from your expertise, where companies are and one of the things that we hear everywhere and we probably will continue to hear is of course about decision making. No matter where you are, what do you see companies kind of leaning too far in one direction and what does that actually cost them from your expertise and how long you've been in the business world?
Leonid Glazychev: Great questions. ⁓ So first of all, I would say it's always very hard to find the right path. And I'll i'll use the ⁓ Homer, mean, Greek analogy. It's just passing in between Scylla and Charybdus all the time. So you need to sacrifice something because if you remember the Odyssey, I mean, you do sacrifice something. Charybdis will swallow the whole ship. Scylla will just have six sailors. You can never sail safely without sacrificing something, but you'll need to find the right trajectory. And the right trajectory means that not putting all your eggs into one basket, because you could be wrong and one never knows what's going to work, what is not. At the same time, if you over diversify, you just lose focus plus you haven't got enough ⁓ funds for that ⁓ and enough brain power to achieve some tangible progress. So it's always just trying to tread water lightly, not concentrated on a single thing, but not spreading yourself all around too thin. And you you learn it on the job and people who do not learn it on the job are either those lucky ones who've guessed it right and they've concentrated on a single thing and built a whole empire or their businesses are long gone because they overspread themselves too thin and they didn't realize that sacrifices are an inevitable path of any, I mean, real life way. There is no such way as eternal happiness and everything just happening as far as you have a magic wand in your hand. Well, I haven't got one.
Michelle Holmes: Are you sure? No, just kidding. No, it's okay if we go a little farther there. love You kind of talked about sacrifice and I think most business owners starting off from a startup perspective, going into a growth and getting to a point of scale, understand that sacrifice is required. But the other part that you said is being able to ensure that you don't put all your eggs in one basket for you and your your journey because you were in a desperate place. How did you make sure that you were still able to focus enough where for you, you put all your eggs in one basket at the very beginning and then say, okay, well, I put enough effort here and now let me start putting effort somewhere else. What did that look like for you?
Leonid Glazychev: well, first of all, let's put it that way. It's not that I'm so smart. Well, that is, I mean, let me brag a little. Okay, I am smart,
Michelle Holmes: You are.
Leonid Glazychev: but I'm definitely not the smartest guy in the universe. First. Second, it means that I was lucky. The 90s was exactly the year when software and game localization was picking up. So it was fertile soil. I mean, it was much easier to toil compared, say, to nowadays when competition is much stronger and when everything has changed with the advent of AI. But at a certain moment in time, you realize if you're just concentrated on a single thing, however good it is, your growth potential or your survivability in case something happens is very limited. And we started looking around. Once again, we were lucky. We've got a hint. And it was a hint from Microsoft. At that time, by the way, they were mistaken. It's an interesting story. In the mid-90s, we were one of Microsoft localization suppliers. And at that time, they had all those great vendor conferences where they were delivering speeches telling you where they are going and where they expect you to go. And obviously they were sharing a lot of knowledge that you absolutely cannot obtain when you're a small business, operating 24 times 7 with no vacations for several years in a row and hardly any holidays. So you do not have time to think strategically and that's really bad. Nowadays, I do realize that you need to take this time just to think. I know it sounds strange instead of looking at your smartphone just to sit there and concentrate, but believe me guys, it really helps. So the thing is at that time there was a Microsoft encyclopedia. It was called Encarta. Everybody has forgotten about it since then, but the whole idea was prior to that, encyclopedias were huge terms that you had to deal with and Encarta Was on a city drive so it was a totally different thing plus you could get some updates online when things changed when new articles were added And they said you know what? Traditional software is going to die. It's not very interesting not very involving Well, they were wrong it's still very much there but they said the future belongs to multimedia because with all those videos and audio and images that we put in in Carter, that's the future. And they were right. They were not right about in Carter, but they were right about multimedia. So we took it very, very seriously and thought, okay, we need to learn how to localize and deal with multimedia. And multimedia means, first of all, it's not just technical content. It's part art. It's part fiction. It's part whatever else. Second, you need to learn how to deal with different media, including how to do voiceovers in different languages, totally different, how to do subtitles. And believe me, at that time, AI didn't transcribe for you automatically. It was done manually. And you needed to learn how to operate in this totally different environment. So it didn't work for Ren Carter. but it worked great for computer games because people, even during the COVID era, they were sitting on their couches, they were unemployed, and they had to do nothing because they couldn't go to their workplace, but they still had to do something. So most of them played computer games or various types of games on their phones, on their tablets, on their PCs, on their dedicated PlayStations, Xboxes, and whatever. So it was right. It was a revolution. And I'm really glad we listened because we were ready when it started to evolve into an international business where companies realized that once again, for people to pay big money for AAA games and to pay for all those updates, they definitely need to localize them. And it means not just the user interface, but they needed perfect soundtracks. They needed subtitles, needed user assistance, and all the support materials in local languages because most people are not fluent in other languages. So that was kind of lesson number one and one small step towards expanding your line of business and your coverage.
Michelle Holmes: Would you like to go a little bit more into that? Because as you move into the coverage and expanding your business and kind of wrapping that back into one of things that you said is at the very beginning, what does it cost if you are not able to diversify you, you close? You may have a great product, but it doesn't expand into what the market continues to need. It doesn't service it in the way that People are needing the product to service them. So for you and what you were seeing in the market, in the industry, because you've been around, I want to just say, you said 1990. I remember the set of encyclopedias that my mom purchased. It was so exciting for her to purchase these encyclopedias. We weren't there quite yet to have the software. I remember when we purchased our first computer, the bulkiest computer, but we were so excited because at that time you weren't excited about buying the little computer, you're excited about if it was big. And so we were really excited. when you...
Leonid Glazychev: thumbs up, the bigger the better because it meant that it was more powerful.
Michelle Holmes: Yes. Although we were still on AOL. So at the time, power did not equate to speed for the internet. I do want, I just wanted to say that took me back to a moment of understanding the progression, right? Of growth in the market. And then the growth that was needed to kind of stay the course for other companies. Cause if you watch larger companies, That's great because they're also moving fast and they're making decisions. They're failing, they're learning. I don't to really say failing, but they're learning. And as you kind of mentioned, being able to move and not just fail, but understand where they missed it. I think you mentioned how you were at a conference and they were telling you where you should go, but you guys saw the opportunity. in that and so I think that's also what it costs you if you can't identify an opportunity. You miss out.
Leonid Glazychev: Absolutely. And at that time, know, I was sitting there and I felt, okay, if we do not jump on this train immediately, we would be gone in a couple of years. Well, that was too dramatic. Obviously it was not so fast, but generally we were lucky. It was the right guess. And guess what? The next step suddenly at a certain moment when first, machine translation pieces of software when they started showing some promise because earlier in the days they were just laughable whatever they produced people used it for telling practical jokes or just for having a good laugh around the coffee maker. But anyway, at that time, we realized and that was also maybe a couple decades ago, that in order to move forward from that, at a certain moment in time, all translation and localization will be a mundane technical task with people much less involved than at the time. And guess what? We were right, because that's what we're evidence in nowadays. And it's changing very rapidly. With some people believing in it, some others just being the climate change deniers or say translation workspace deniers or whatever. And we realized that in order to, on one hand, exploit whatever we've learned, whatever we know, just to stay concentrated. I do not want to go into say geology or financial trading. I hate finance. Yeah. And it's weird to hear from the CFO CEO, but still I just do not like it. It's boring. So we need to expand into something that adds us additional layers of survivability. That is we need to move upstream. And upstream of localization lies content creation, because people will still need to create. And even if they use software and nowadays AI, you still need the creative input and some diversity from ideas brought in by people or some polishing. So we decided that we need to diversify. We need to create designs, we need to create videos ourselves, not just localize somebody else's. We need to create blog posts, we need to create highlight articles and everything and so on. And that's what we set out to do. That was kind of a second step into this direction.
Michelle Holmes: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. That's really good. And I heard you say it's been almost a decade around what was a hype. And I remember being in the contact center space for years, we heard about IBM lots and all the things around technology that technology would take over and do some of the mundane tasks for customer service and some of the operational things that we would bring into the plant operations. for a mundane task. And that's exactly where we are now around the noise around AI. I don't count it as noise because it's been around for a really long time. However, I feel like we have people who have mastered the use of it. But I do feel like there's a tension between AI and real human intelligence kind of showing up in business. And where do you see that tension currently between AI and real human intelligence?
Leonid Glazychev: I would say that there are two major ramifications here. I mean, the whole advent of AI. First of all, it has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with our psyche. It just affects us because some part of myself, and I'm not, say, the least knowledgeable person here, of myself is scared. Okay, it could potentially make me irrelevant. Part of myself is excited. The most stupid mundane tasks or the most annoying conversations with all the stupid chatbots will be replaced by less annoying conversations with smarter chatbots that probably can do something good for me rather than waste my time. Some of it opens new horizons because tasks that used to be very labor-intensive, like say transcriptions, somehow became kind of very affordable and very fast. I'll give you an example. At the start of my career, you know, I was wearing as many hats as I could. And wherever you could make a book, you do it, obviously, especially when you're young and you need to support a family. And at that time, I was offered good pay, well, at least for the time being, to dub several video cassettes so that they can present those lectures on object-oriented programming at an industry event. So at that time to dub a video cassette, you needed to sit there for hours just recording whatever the person on the screen is saying line by line, just rewinding the whole VCR back. And you know, it produces all those clicks. It was very slow and a tedious process. So you wasted several hours on just trying to kind of transcribe it. and then you're dubbing it in a different language at the studio and everything. Nowadays, when I release a podcast and say it's a 10 to 12 minute episode, I've just measured it. Well, AI does the transcription in maybe two to three minutes, and then I spent another 15 minutes on just going through it and editing it. Obviously, it's pretty good already. It's not perfect. One of my favorite examples in my own podcasts, and that's why I remember it so vividly, is that I was talking about phalluses. that is misconceptions and obviously transcribed it as male organs. which was funny, but I still had to notice it and edit it because it sounds similar and probably a phallus was kind of more familiar to this particular AI than a phallus concept of fallacy. Anyway, this is just one example, but I mean, you still need to go through it. You still need to review it and edit it slightly, but 15 minutes. Compared to hours of tedious... and extremely boring work, it's something I really love it so that I concentrate on the more on the creative part. And another thing is just the technical part. Because as usual, you know, when we're going through a time of rapid changes, one thing is it's a weird mix of outrageous hype and misstatements. Obviously people releasing those products, they need to sell them and they oversell them dramatically to be honest.
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: On the other hand, there are very real uses that save us a lot of time or enable us to do things that we couldn't do earlier or that were so labor intensive that nobody cared to pay for them. Finally, one thing we need to realize, at least at the current moment and maybe several years going forward, is that one thing we need to understand very clearly is that at the moment, nothing that AI produces, whatever LLM or model you're talking about, is final material ready for commercial use. I'm repeating myself, but what our head of the creative division, it's called the digital content division at Logosights says, you know, whatever AI creates, we need to apply a rasp to it so that we can hone the details and make sure that it looks and feels smooth, that there are no contradictions, weird details or anything else there and that it's ready for final consumption by the clients. And that's a very important addition. I mean, it doesn't, once again, happen with a magic wand alone, even though we've got something very much resembling it, at least in the virtual space. But first, you apply the magic wand, and then you apply some human work to hone and polish and finalize.
Michelle Holmes: I think the human governance and what I hear you're saying around the tension between AI and the human perspective, they work hand in hand. It's just not one. It's just not, let's just incorporate the AI or the artificial intelligence and it will do all the things and it's going to come out with the right answer. and I don't have to have any human interaction with it and I can just release it as the final product. And I love how you said, this is not the final product. You put them together for that. And I think there is a misunderstanding of that in the business world right now that there is some human governance. I call it the governance piece because someone has to govern what's put out there by the artificial intelligence. that, because if you'd never go back to to adjust and to fix and to understand what showed up like on your episode. If you never, you would have just put that out and someone would have said, this is good content. then someone would have noticed it at some point that, this is just AI. And then it makes it look like there is someone who doesn't care. And I believe the additional human touch also from a business perspective says, hey, we still care. We still care what goes out in the accuracy of the information that we're putting out there.
Leonid Glazychev: Well, but beyond this ethical side of things, there is another one that's kind of grim, but very real. So just ask yourself one simple question. Say you prepare a prompt and you want to create something with AI, whether it's a content, a picture, a video, whatever. So you formulate the prompt, you feed it to AI, it produces some result. Suppose you are using a commercial level license, so it's not immediately shared with the rest of humankind. So my question is as follows. If you are going to use it commercially, what about the copyright? And I'll formulate the question for you. The question is, if someone else in Australia comes up with a very similar thing, formulates the request to AI, this prompt, in a very similar way and gets a very similar result. What about its uniqueness? What about the copyright? We've got two very similar things created independently, but how do we resolve this conundrum? And the only good answer is, I mean the solid answer that works nowadays, not when we reach a certain ideal stage, is as follows. The only way to ensure that whatever you created using AI is unique enough, and let's put it that way, copyrightable, is that you put a sufficient share of human effort, of your own effort, your own ideas into it so that it's different from whatever else is created by someone else. Unless you polish it's because when you add a certain amount of human labor that kind of guarantees that it's unique enough. As far
Michelle Holmes: Mm.
Leonid Glazychev: as you only use the prompt there is no guarantee. Moreover even if it's the same model this LLM will never tell you that somebody else created a very similar thing. You'll never learn about it.
Michelle Holmes: Hmm.
Leonid Glazychev: But suppose you sell it to a client, they use it in their advertising, on their website or wherever else. I mean, it's a commercial project. It's not something that you create to entertain yourself or your friends. Actually, it's a service you delivered and they definitely want the whole copyright thing to be straightened out. Unless you've put some additional effort, there is no guarantee.
Michelle Holmes: Well, and I like how you position that question because it definitely makes you think. And I think it does say we need to have that human interaction or the uniqueness. guess at what point do you say, because I could say, I added some human, humaness, is not a word, but I can say I added that. now from a copyright perspective, it should be okay. But at what I think that becomes a question that you then have to say, at what point is that it's the AI or the artificial intelligence at some point produces 50 % and then you take the final 50 or is it saying that, you take the 80 and do the 20? Not something we could probably figure out today, but I think it does say how much of the human interaction has to be for it to be really the copyright of that company and from a commercial, especially from a commercial use.
Leonid Glazychev: I know. We are wandering into uncharted territories here because there is no predefined percentage. And it's just very hard to measure. How do you measure your effort compared to AI effort? Okay, so I hold this, I change this. What percentage does it constitute of the original image of text? Well, it's hard to tell. But let's put it that way. for the copyright conundrum to be resolved at the basic level, I mean, for commercial purposes, because clients are not stupid. They also understand it, that
Michelle Holmes: Right.
Leonid Glazychev: there is some standing on somewhat shaky grounds, obviously, and there is no way to eliminate it unless you want everything done by humans and it will be costly, it will take longer, not an option. So
Michelle Holmes: Right.
Leonid Glazychev: let's assume that we need to sufficient effort that makes the final product significantly and noticeably different from the raw version created by AI. As far as you can see, very noticeable, considerable differences, you should be fine. I mean, I know it's not quantitative, it's just qualitative, but still you get the idea.
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: It shouldn't be that you change one tiny pixel and suddenly it becomes human work. Definitely not. It should be noticeably different.
Michelle Holmes: I will say 10 years down the road, we're gonna look at this and we're gonna say we had conversations around what this will look like. I will be, I'm gonna remember this conversation to go back and say, well, yeah, we're now, we're no longer in uncharted territories because some, we figured it out. And I think one of the things that you kind of said is about the human aspect that humans can actually do the work. It's not that humans can't do the work, but there is a cost associated with it. there is time associated with it. And I think when I started to look at AI and the intelligence and why we bring in technology, we do that from a scale perspective because we're looking to grow. We're looking to scale. And we were looking to do that from an efficiency and an effective perspective because human labor, is costly. So when you look at companies that scale well, what actually determines that, especially when you factor in structure? you're factoring in quality and you're factoring in decision making because you're sitting around the table. You understand the vision, you understand the strategy of some of these companies and helping them make the right decision. So for you, what determines, yeah, this is a company that will be able to scale well.
Leonid Glazychev: Okay, let me be honest, I don't know. The only thing I can say, because I can only guess here, well, it's an educated guess, just not a random one, but still. One thing, you should have some of your key people, and I mean the ones who are there with you and were with you for some time, they need to dig into that AI thing. and figure it out for themselves. Because if you just try to buy it as a ready solution, or if you do not undertake the effort of understanding how it could help you, and I mean myself, thinking about it, not just accepting something, okay, now we'll buy it from elsewhere, either a shelf product or we'll hire someone to develop something for us. As far as we can understand what we're doing, why are we doing this and what are the limitations, you need to feel it. They're contangible, but you need to understand it yourself. Otherwise, you'll become another victim of this AI hype.
Michelle Holmes: Mm-hmm.
Leonid Glazychev: When you're thinking of this, either as an evil genie or as a godlike creature,
Michelle Holmes: Mmm.
Leonid Glazychev: both obviously are wrong. So if you want to have a realistic view, if you want to move forward, you need to try it out yourself. So you need to have a trailblazer within the company who is ready to experience it, to explore it and figure out how it works at a primitive level. We can bring in professional developers or some other guys later, but you need to outline the goals. You need to understand what's changing. You need to know. Why are you doing this? And whether it's going to help you survive or it's just a stupid undertaking and you'll waste some time and some money and that would result in nothing because somebody else has done it ten times better.
Michelle Holmes: And I would say, hearing that, I would just say that's practically across the board for companies that will scale well. And that's taking in any technology really across the board. If it's AI or if it's a different system, technology system, having a person that's part of the team to understand and what is the goal. Because although AI and other people will sell a tool, a system, And if someone in the company does not truly understand how it helps their organization based on the offerings that they have, they will ultimately, the system will not be used as efficient, as effective. And I think it will slow it down. It will cost them to use more resources from a human perspective, which may ultimately harm them in the ability to be able to scale on long-term. I like that. Thank you for poring.
Leonid Glazychev: Actually, we're backtracking to the original issue of governance
Michelle Holmes: Mmm.
Leonid Glazychev: and decision making
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: because it's the same everywhere. It's not just about AI
Michelle Holmes: Mm-hmm.
Leonid Glazychev: What I was always saying well, maybe it's because I have a technical background and I do not trust those NBA guys a very good and a very smart colleague of mine he had the same he has in my company and he worked as a vice president for a very big company, a multi-billion dollar one. And he said in my job, I am never hiring two categories of people. First of all, anyone graduating from Ivy League institutions, because they think too much of themselves and they're only suitable for a certain number of Wall Street institutions, they absolutely cannot. survive or be or make themselves useful in a more challenging environment where you need to wear multiple hats and where anything is the antipode of ideal. Where you are facing real life problems, where you are facing survivability of the business and everything and you need to think quickly. And second and never hire anyone with a dedicated MBA degree. Because he thought that MBAs take away professional knowledge that's absolutely essential for running any business.
Michelle Holmes: Mm.
Leonid Glazychev: In order to understand what you are doing, you need to be competent in particular areas you are dealing with. And interestingly enough, It's not just words. It's not just an ultimate, say, French world outlook. Look at Boeing. It was an extremely successful pioneering engineering company that released groundbreaking models. The huge Jumbo Jet, the 747, made it made in flight in 1969, believe it or not. It was an incredible engineering achievement, just come to think of it. But at that time, the company was governed by engineers, by people who really understood the business, the challenging, the dangers and everything. Then they merged with a couple of other makers and the MBAs came to power. And look what this resulted in. And it's not a single example. I can name quite a few of very well known kind of household names that either disappeared or stopped playing their leading role or whatever when the helm passed from, say specialists to MBAs. And the reason is there is nothing bad in an MBA degree as such, but it takes away professional knowledge. It concentrates on the financial and bookkeeping and organizational parts alone. But without professional knowledge, you cannot move forward.
Michelle Holmes: I would say that makes this is not where the conversation is going, but it really, you saying that, Leonid, it made me think about some of the mergers and acquisitions that ⁓ I was a part of. And hearing you say this, I can speak from example in going through like change management and the leadership changes, ⁓ the difference between a specialized person who understands the business nature of ⁓ the product. and the offerings of this product. What is the product created to do? How does it work? The creativity around it, but also not to create just the creativity, but the technology, the team that that's needed for it. And then to bring in people who are educated to understand business. It is definitely a different, it's a different ball game and you get different results. Can they grow? Yes. But I will say that sometimes even with that growth, it becomes very, very unstable and I've seen multiple that have not ended well. As you kind of bring that to light, I would say I've seen it, I've experienced it, I've worked through a lot of those changes. So thank you for mentioning that. And I think it kind of leads me to my question of, You kind of talked about these businesses that you've seen, even working with them or just household names that we've experienced that has grown. And they begin to break. And I hear that there are multiple reasons that a company could begin to break as they grow. at the intersection of that, what do you really believe is underneath all of that?
Leonid Glazychev: You mean the path to destruction?
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: Well, hard to tell. there are several, well, at least what comes to mind are several things. It's never one thing, you know.
Michelle Holmes: Mm-hmm.
Leonid Glazychev: Just to bring a disaster, you need the combination of at least three. And when all of them are combined together, that brings the real downfall. Otherwise it's just a minor mishap that can be overcome. So first of all, it's... incompetent leadership that doesn't lead but rather looks at financials, potential mergers, acquisitions, and the mentality. I mean, the big CEO mentality. But I'm here for two to three years. My goal is not to improve products, not to improve companies positioning, but to improve its market value. That is create as much hype as I can. And then I'll try to move on before the whole thing unwinds. So that's the first thing. As soon as you take it away from more technical people who are deeply interested in the products and the services and progress and everything, I'm not saying that's a penicillium. I'm not saying that if you're technically competent, it saves the company, but I think it's necessary. As soon as you move it to kind of pure corporate level bureaucrats, that's... definitely one step towards the disaster. So the second thing is obviously not watching the times goes by. One other example, I mean an incredible one. Everybody knows, even younger people know the name Kadek. And I mean, they were in a great position. Their market share was huge. The name was recognized easily worldwide because Mr. Eastman invented it in the U.S. By the way, it's a very educational journey to his home. It's a museum nowadays and you can go and get a tour, which is fascinating how the first cameras were created. I mean the first ones that really worked because he created the whole thing of developing things quickly and it's a reasonable cost that made photography commonly accessible versus, say, being a professional trade with cumbersome and expensive equipment. So the company was in a great position. So they grasped the whole digital revolution early and they were releasing your mimic cameras and film and everything. They could have been the trailblazers of digital. but they missed the mark. They were very happy resting on their laurels. Business was booming as it was 30 years ago. And suddenly the whole thing started to unwind. And now very young people do not even know what the name Kodak means. So the second thing is, however good your financial or your commercial situation or your company positioning is, It's not completely secure. Times are changing. And nowadays they're changing more rapidly than ever. And the third thing, I mean, that's where I'm deviating from the traditional path. I think it's having a good mixture of being humble enough and possess sufficient self-irony. As soon as you start thinking of yourself as a godlike creature, or as soon as you get too smug, But to glib, that's where danger is right around the corner. Well, at least that's my perception. Do not take yourself too seriously. We're human beings. We're making huge mistakes all the time. And it's fine as far as we're ready to acknowledge them quick enough, accept them and move forward. And the other important thing is emotional. Do not reminisce too much.
Michelle Holmes: Cool.
Leonid Glazychev: Do not concentrate on past failures, but rather just get your lesson. Put a check mark and move forward. At least that's my recipe.
Michelle Holmes: That's some recipe, my goodness. I love that recipe and I think it's very practical. I think it's something not just repeatable, but I think it does help in the business sector because as I, like I said, I think about several companies that I've been in a seat from a leadership perspective and understanding someone that does not understand positioning of a company and they have their own agenda. That goes to the very third piece of believing that we are above creation and we have our own agenda things. I think that's, thank you for pointing that out. One of the things that you said at the very beginning of this call, I hope you didn't think I would forget that you said, look, and I just kind of want to, I sometimes, think I have something, it's not luck. But what does that actually mean to you? You've said it a few times throughout this episode. What does luck actually mean in business, but what does it mean to you?
Leonid Glazychev: I think it's one of the three most important components because some people, especially the ones who've reached fame and the best some fortune, sometimes it's just a coincidence. So obviously you had a good enough idea. But the second component is the right timing. There were social networks before Facebook. but they were little ahead of that time. And there were the ones after Facebook, but at that time it was right there. So that's how it occupies its place. It's not just say a good idea and it's not unique by far. It's also important to hit it at the moment when people, I mean in general, are ready for that. And the third thing, you mentioned it, I really love it. Because I think it's an essential thing and many of these people do not realize it. It's luck. It's the right timing, it's the right concept or idea, and it's a good piece of luck. Because some people, they were just lucky, but they do not understand it. They try to create a recipe based on their experience, but there is no recipe. It's a one-time success that was hugely due not only to your great idea, but also to the fortunate timing. serendipitous timing and luck. And you underestimate luck and attribute all of it to your genius. And that's just wrong. I know I cannot pass this by. We're talking about art of the deal. There is no recipe behind it.
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: It's complete BS.
Michelle Holmes: I think there are moments where we underestimate. said something that is never just the one thing, to create a disaster, takes multiple things. And so I think even in business, even the success of business, it's not just one idea. It's not just one department. It's not just, one offering that. generally does that. It's a combination. No matter how you, where you sit, no matter what you're doing, what you're saying is there's never just one thing. And I'm going to take that away today. But as I sit here thinking about all these pieces, they always go in together. And when we're thinking about building a successful company, there's not one thing. no matter how many conversations we have, can have a conversation tomorrow. We're going to say the same thing. It's not just one thing. There may be seasons and times where there is one thing that stick out. For instance, AI right now in the world is one of the things that stick out, but it's not the only thing that makes a business successful if you have AI in your bag of tools, but can it help? Most definitely. And I think that's also thinking about companies that grow and at the end of it, the day, the understanding is you have to understand your business in order to be able to grow it and to scale it. And if you don't understand where you are and the times that you're in, you would never be able to get past that point.
Leonid Glazychev: Yeah, once again, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that financial guys are useless. They are useful.
Michelle Holmes: Yes.
Leonid Glazychev: You should listen to them. But the right hierarchy is as follows. You're at the helm because you are laying the groundwork. You are defining the direction where you move. You are making decisions. They are there to preclude extremely stupid decisions. or help you make the right decision, including the financials, but they're there not to drive the ship. As far as you entrust it to a bean counter, it's just a recipe for disaster. But another important thing, I'm just emphasizing it, we talked about it earlier, do not take yourself too seriously. Because you
Michelle Holmes: Yeah.
Leonid Glazychev: know what? All the worst atrocities in the world history, were always committed with an extremely serious facial expression.
Michelle Holmes: Mm-hmm. Wow. Hmm. I've never thought about that. That's good. Alright, so you're telling me I have to laugh more and that's why you're so serious.
Leonid Glazychev: but that's true!
Michelle Holmes: Yeah. Well, has been, Leonid, ⁓ I just want to say this has been such a rich conversation, a very strong conversation, especially around how companies think about structure, ⁓ technology and leadership. You hit on so many ⁓ points about leadership, not just about who you hire, why you're hiring them. And it cannot be just about a degree, understanding that there is a need for skill. And I think that sometimes we forget about that. And if you want to grow, and if you want to scale the business, these are some of the things that you need to be thinking about. I just want to bring this back to a leader for a moment. If someone is in the middle of a transition, I know you always say you're not the smartest man, but you're very smart.
Leonid Glazychev: Okay, thank you. I'm blushing.
Michelle Holmes: And if you could bring this back to a leader who's currently in a transition. And I also want to say, you've seen multiple transitions. You've been in this thing for 30 years. So if they're looking to, like they're growing, they're shifting, maybe even breaking a little. Because if we can be honest, there are some leaders that may be listening today that are in a transition that feel like they're breaking. What will you tell them?
Leonid Glazychev: Well, first of all... Trust your gut feeling. Well, once again, this is my recipe. I do not think it's universal, so I'll be cautious to spread it like an advice from a guru. but trust your gut. Excuse me. When I had a gut feeling, most of the times... the decision was kind of delayed because I thought okay but it changes a lot, it's painful, it's emotionally taxing and everything. In most cases it proved to be the right feeling because the gut feeling is not just something from fantasy or religion or elsewhere, it's your subconscious processing everything that you know, that you've learned, that you're thinking of. So in many cases my own decisions were delayed unnecessarily because I didn't trust this gut feeling enough. Because I was afraid of making this step. Because you do not want to get into this water and figure out whether there is a fault there or it's pretty deep and you're going to drown. But the thing is, just do not delay. If you feel that you're uncomfortable, if you feel that the situation is wrong, if you feel that something needs to be changed, do not wait for too long. With me, it happened several times. And each time after that, say talking to my wife or just thinking about it myself, I realized, no, I delayed it for too long. One of the transitions when we needed to split the business because The management was not united and the approach is to leaders. I was one of them. What taking was so dramatically different and our temperaments and everything were so different, we needed to split earlier. And I delayed this decision for several years. And
Michelle Holmes: Wow.
Leonid Glazychev: these were the most uncomfortable years of my life. After that, we split. My revenue has gone down because obviously after we split there are a lot of things to take care of. But I've become so much happier because I could work with the people with whom we could find common language, whom I could trust and with whom we could charge the new and... brightly lit yellow brick road and I mean to the Emerald set and not somewhere I go into hell and I mean so if you feel that you need this transition if you feel that change is overdue do not procrastinate The second thing is... Talk to the people you value most. And I'm not talking about professional, I'm talking about people with whom you have deep human relationship because these are the only ones truly interested in your success. All the others, they can be partially or fully pragmatic. They'll tell you what they think you want to hear. Just because they're thinking about potential transitions, changes or whatever. So talk to the people with whom you can be 100 % confident that they have your best interests in mind when talking to you. If you just listen to them, even if it's not about business, it's about decision making. they'll bring a lot of very interesting, very deep staff to the table. In my case, my wife, In many cases, she advised me and I mean, despite the fact she's not participating in the business, she knows nothing about it, but her insights were exactly on the spot.
Michelle Holmes: you
Leonid Glazychev: And the reason is she's a smart person and she has our best interests in mind, not anything else. And finally, just to not get scared. If we get scared of too many things, we stay indoors and never risk out and never see the blue sky or the sun or the trees. Never experience the pollen so that
Michelle Holmes: you
Leonid Glazychev: we sneeze for half a day. But that way we deprive ourselves of so... much real life experiences and we shouldn't do it. Okay, I hope it didn't sound too philosophical.
Michelle Holmes: I loved every moment of it. And I'm sure everyone that will be watching will take a piece of it. I know you're not the guru, but most definitely you are. That has been very helpful because I think so many times people are looking for that advice. They're looking for what do I do next? They're stuck in a place because they're not willing to take the advice from someone who truly cares and who can actually share some insight that's not going to. I feel like mentorship is important. feel like having a wise counsel is important, but sometimes that wise counsel, like you said, is a mate and for you as your wife. I think that was so, thank you for sharing that. And I have one more question for you. You you've built something that has been sustainable thus far. And
Leonid Glazychev: knocking on wood
Michelle Holmes: if you... Well, you didn't knock on wood. You knocked on your forehead, unless your forehead is wood. You're not wood.
Leonid Glazychev: Well...
Michelle Holmes: I know what you're saying. I'm just kidding with you.
Leonid Glazychev: Well, that's the innuendo.
Michelle Holmes: I just give you a hard time there. I am joking, but also very serious because what you have built is very impressive. And we didn't even tell the people. You have several different offices. You have a team of people who, as you talked about, that you trust, that you can build with. Out of all of this that you've built, what do you enjoy most about it?
Leonid Glazychev: Well, honestly, I enjoy multiple things. First of all, well, you know, I'm curious by nature. I love getting immersed into different cultures, different languages. I would even dare say different civilizations because you travel to Southeast Asia and even the mindset there is so... different from what we've got used to. And I think that's enriching and moreover in my, well, I would say very specific and I'm just trying to find the right word, niche world outlook. People should not be entrusted with any decision-making positions in a serious way unless they were exposed a lot to various cultures around the world. Because without this experience, without this understanding, their decision-making and their understanding of the motivations behind other people or other companies or other countries will be significantly skewed. So I think that is amazing. Plus, I love to travel and experience it firsthand. And that's also what keeps you alive and keeps you younger because you have so much to learn, so much to see, so much to experience.
Michelle Holmes: Thank you. That was good. You're also telling me I need to travel more so that I won't have any additional gray hairs. I don't think that's... I know that's not what you said, but... I
Leonid Glazychev: I didn't say that.
Michelle Holmes: know, I know. I was just joking. No, I would agree with that. And I thank you for saying that. Just around... I would say for the leader that's leading, if you're never willing to get out, if you're never willing to experience another culture, another place. Do you really care about the experience of the people that could even purchase your products? Possibly be on your team because you don't even have that understanding. so thank you for sharing that. And I would say if you had today, if you had any final thoughts that you want to leave with our guests, this is your moment, Leonette, to share any final thoughts today.
Leonid Glazychev: Well, I'll, I would say I'll conclude with one of my favorite quotation. It's from Thaikididas, who was writing about wars between Sparta and Athens in ancient Greece that happened in the fourth century BC, if I'm not mistaken. So I think I've never read anything deeper than that, however weird it sounds. So ignorance makes us bold while knowledge leads to indecision.
Michelle Holmes: All right, so you left us today with a thought that makes us ponder and even think even more. That's so, okay. This episode has been so great. For me as well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I appreciate your expertise, although you're not an expert and you're not the smartest guy in the world. You're very smart. I
Leonid Glazychev: No, I'm not.
Michelle Holmes: thank you for sharing your time. and what you've experienced thus far. You have so much more to experience as you continue to lead and continue to grow and impact companies. If people want to connect with you, how should they connect?
Leonid Glazychev: Well, they can find me on LinkedIn with this exotic Slavic name. It's not a big deal. It's very easy. Or they go to my company's website, Logrosite.com and contact us through it or just look at what we're doing there.
Michelle Holmes: And I'm sure you'll be able to find them just fine guys. I just want to say, if you're a leader navigating growth or transitions and you're starting to feel that tension between vision and execution, that's exactly where I step into work. And if this episode has helped you, I want you to share it with another leader who needs it because I think it has been impactful even for myself. Now remember this last thing, revenue follows vision, but execution is what sustains it. Execution and also great leadership. So I wanna thank you for joining us today on Operations Unlocked and we look to see you on the next episode.
Leonid Glazychev: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Michelle Holmes: Thank you.
