Helen K., Vice President of City National Bank, sat down with Slava Borisov, CEO of DDC Group Inc, to have a candid interview about the inception of his business as well as advice for entrepreneurs! Here is the exclusive interview with Slava Borisov.
Helen K.: When I heard Slava’s story, it just touched me so much like he was brave enough to be very vulnerable and share the complete story. It touched my heart, I definitely had to feature you Slava. If you don’t mind when I asked you, how did you start?
Well, one thing first I really want to see about my story is not necessarily the highlight reel but the highlight reel that no one talks about. I’m lucky enough to have immigrated to the U.S. at the time when the USSR got broken up in Russia. Came with 6 brothers and sisters to New York and later then, my parents moved to Seattle where I lived most of my childhood and early adulthood. When I moved to Los Angeles I lived out of my car for two weeks while looking for work. I applied to over a thousand corporate jobs and this was the worst time as the economy literally crashed. So I had the opportunity to come in at the lowest level and slowly built that up. I saw an opportunity in the commercial retail, marketing and restaurant market for construction, dove headfirst and learned the hard way the challenges, the tribulations, from marketing to sales.
H.K.: What fascinated me about your story is that you still kept at it, you never said I am gonna give up. So, tell me what that looked like, how did it feel and what gave you the drive to keep pushing to get your business to where it’s at today?
When it comes to a certain point, as you can see with the employees and clients as well, it’s not just about unity, it’s more about the micro-economy that you built up.
So, the employees here are depending on you to make the right decision and sometimes, the right decision is failure. Believe it or not, a lot of people think that’s a bad thing but when you’re looking at it, the main thing for me is moving forward with momentum.
Of course, they’ll be days and times where you don’t want to do that, right? You don’t want to move forward. But the little things; the discipline, the habits, that’s where those kick in.
And that’s really what it comes down to. In every business at a certain point, its maturity fades as it moves on. Every business has a bell curve from the inception phase; it starts with hyper-growth, then through its maturity phase, and like any other business it starts to decline. So, how do you avoid that bell curve on the way down? The key is to innovate.
So we’ve done it our business the same way. We’re not in the construction business and unfortunately our clients here, “oh yeah you guys built for us.” Yes, we are, but we’re in the content people business.
That’s the most important thing, we want to connect micro-communities and create those micro-communities, to micro-economies all over the world. That’s our mission statement.
When it comes to a certain point, as you can see with the employees and clients as well, it’s not just about unity, it’s more about the micro-economy that you built up.
So, the employees here are depending on you to make the right decision and sometimes, the right decision is failure. Believe it or not, a lot of people think that’s a bad thing but when you’re looking at it, the main thing for me is moving forward with momentum.
Of course, they’ll be days and times where you don’t want to do that, right? You don’t want to move forward. But the little things; the discipline, the habits, that’s where those kick in.
And that’s really what it comes down to. In every business at a certain point, its maturity fades as it moves on. Every business has a bell curve from the inception phase; it starts with hyper-growth, then through its maturity phase, and like any other business it starts to decline. So, how do you avoid that bell curve on the way down? The key is to innovate.
So we’ve done it our business the same way. We’re not in the construction business and unfortunately our clients here, “oh yeah you guys built for us.” Yes, we are, but we’re in the content people business.
That’s the most important thing, we want to connect micro-communities and create those micro-communities, to micro-economies all over the world. That’s our mission statement.
When it comes to a certain point, as you can see with the employees and clients as well, it’s not just about unity, it’s more about the micro-economy that you built up.
So, the employees here are depending on you to make the right decision and sometimes, the right decision is failure. Believe it or not, a lot of people think that’s a bad thing but when you’re looking at it, the main thing for me is moving forward with momentum.
Of course, they’ll be days and times where you don’t want to do that, right? You don’t want to move forward. But the little things; the discipline, the habits, that’s where those kick in.
And that’s really what it comes down to. In every business at a certain point, its maturity fades as it moves on. Every business has a bell curve from the inception phase; it starts with hyper-growth, then through its maturity phase, and like any other business it starts to decline. So, how do you avoid that bell curve on the way down? The key is to innovate.
So we’ve done it our business the same way. We’re not in the construction business and unfortunately our clients here, “oh yeah you guys built for us.” Yes, we are, but we’re in the content people business.
That’s the most important thing, we want to connect micro-communities and create those micro-communities, to micro-economies all over the world. That’s our mission statement.
H.K.: What I like about his projects is that he actually has a system put in place where everything is monitored real time for his clients, where everything is transparent like having a camera in your own house where you want to make sure all your assets are protected and same goes for his clients. Tell us more about it
Yeah, we’re currently taking the tools and enhancing them. We didn’t create the camera, we didn’t create the live platform, we’re just enhancing it. And that’s what we’re doing with technology. The industry we’re in, the construction industry, is so delayed behind where people don’t want nobody to know what’s going on. Everything is always the same; double the cost and double the schedule, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
We’re providing a full transparent process. We call it the “Inevitable Revolution” because it’s here. It’s like having a baby monitor, because for us your project is your baby. From a half a million upwards to a multi-million dollar projects, why not having that access in your hands, or in your phone or in your iPad?
So, what we’ve done is teaming up with Arlo. All of our sites have live access cameras and we are providing that access to all of our clients with transparency. So, if we’re not doing something, they can see that and it’s accountability.
We provide live schedule updates: if the schedule gets updated, the client gets an alert. They can see that as well. It creates more accountability for us.
We’ve also implemented no change order policy as well as the 202 Approach where if we don’t deliver 2 weeks early on our retail stores and restaurants that are 10 weeks or longer original schedule, we give back 20% of the entire contract.
But yes, contractors hear this and probably they’re like: How are you guys doing this? Why are you doing this for us? I truly believe in transparency. But, the industry is changing and 10 years from now down the road, robots will be hanging dry wall. I truly believe in transparency. Providing full accountability and transparency it allows us to really move the needle and everybody else too.
H.K.: To sum up, what would you advise to business owners or individuals who have a dream, a mission and they get to that point where they fall short?
Well I have a quote I truly live by that is from a Navy Seal, “the tougher the conditions, the more I like my odds.” I think too much of the separation of success, all it is the the habitual things. 99% of the work that people see is the highlight reel.
