Entrepreneur’s Day in Ukraine

Entrepreneur’s Day in Ukraine is celebrated on the first Sunday of September, in 2022 it is September 4th.

I consider ethical entrepreneurship and business to be the most honest, sustainable and progressive type of activity.

Unlike any others, everything is immediately clear here: if you bring a benefit, you are paid for it (and not only in money). Conversely, when you do something wrong, it immediately affects relationships and income.

Moreover, if you are not only a founder and owner, but also a leader, all your psychological features, conscious and especially not conscious, like under a magnifying glass, appear and grow sooner or later in your brainchild – in a business model, management methods, the composition of employees, the scale and structure of the organization, and in almost everything.

So, Happy Holiday fellow entrepreneurs.

Wish you have profitable business models,

professional staff,

reliable partners,

unlimited scaling!

And, of course, health, entrepreneurial energy, Victory and peace…

Below – there is a longread about my path in entrepreneurship…

Obviously, still quite unconsciously, but I already took up entrepreneurship in the turbulent 90s, when there weren’t enough scholarships for anything, and it was difficult to earn money in employment: no matter how tried, this had little effect on the amount of salary…

Therefore I have started to:

– do the language translations by myself (written, oral consecutive and simultaneous) – and developed this business into a medical translation agency with dozens of working languages ​​and outsourced “on order” specialists,

– find the best medical publications in the world – both in the original and in the translated version, to distribute on CD and online via the Internet around the world,

– teach English for doctors,

– prepare students to pass the medical licensing exam in the United States (United States Medical Licensing Examination, USMLE),

– and much more on occasion (assembled computers, peripherals for them, selected and installed software; typed and scanned texts; transcribed medical examination protocols dictated by foreign doctors, conclusions in digital text; trained children and adults in general physical and combat training, etc.).

It even then brought a good income, and could still live and develop not as self-employment, but as a full-fledged business.

But I was always “high” not so much to earn money as to create projects, bring them to profitability that was interesting at that time – and then the interest fell sharply …

Now I already understand that this is just a “gold mine” when I found a working business model, saddle it and exploit it unlimitedly, optimizing and scaling, increasing income from one topic more and more – and not jumping anywhere until I exhausted the maximum of opportunities or automated and delegated to a reliable manager.

And even then you need to keep a “hand on the pulse” …

But that times I didn’t think about it, the energy was overflowing (although it continues now, but then it was generally uncontrollable). He gave up classes completely or shifted them to unverified partners, unprepared leaders, etc.

So passed my student years (in 5 universities, of which 3 graduated). Then there was a period of work for hire (19 entries in the work book alone, and many more places of work without official registration).

I became a little more conscious about business in the early 2000s, when I first worked in hiring hand in hand with powerful entrepreneurs:

– first at the clinic “Women’s Health” (with Vladimir Alekseevich),

– then in the group of companies “Pharmfirma “Apteka 95”, “Medtekhnika …” (special thanks to Alexander Vasilyevich and all partners – we are still in contact).

True, this did not last long – I was very languishing because I had retired from medical and pedagogical practice and therefore gladly accepted the invitation of my Teacher in the scientific field from the student years, Inna Fedorovna Kostyuk “to return to the family.”

And so happened that since 2005 and until now I have been continuously working at the Department of Internal and Occupational Diseases of the Kharkov National Medical University – first as an assistant, then as an assistant professor, now as a professor.

And I also managed to work a little as a professor at the Department of General Practice and Family Medicine of Karazin Kharkiv National University (I thank Evgeny Yakovlevich Nikolenko for the invitation).

Academic practice in a large state university is an interesting business, there is where to realize many things (especially since the management has always supported), but from time to time it became dreary from some of its features – and I again began to create commercial entrepreneurial projects:

– from 2009 to the present – support of scientific research (dissertations, collective works, clinical studies of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and medical equipment), including on a turnkey basis and with the training of scientific personnel in a specially created Medical Scientific and Methodological Center, now joined the Research Institute of Evidence-Based Medicine;

– privately engaged in education since 2010, wrote the first book in mono-authorship – “Kamasutra for a dissertation student (methodology for writing a dissertation): how to devote yourself to science without pain and master a degree with pleasure”, opened the Medical Science Club, later it became, along with training and employment of physicians, an essential component of the services of the still existing research and production company “Medinfoservice”.

By the time I finished working on my doctoral dissertation, I was so tired of some of the nuances of scientific and educational activities that I wanted something completely different – and after several trials (online trading in family goods in FamilyShop.top and several other similar projects created by me or bought ready-made as business) decided to build his own business on my own hobby – tourism.

So in 2015, the travel company “Tourinfoservice” was born and it is still alive in a temporarily “frozen” state, in which I, to one degree or another, developed all the directions that I could imagine:

– production and trade of goods for tourism of own production and leading brands,

– repair and modification of tourist products;

– travel agency;

– tour operator;

– studio of author’s travels;

– Travelers’ club.

In all this, I tried to make a bias on health and medical tourism, system integration of all directions.

All the same, “the soul languished” – and therefore, since 2017, I opened 9 primary care offices (with therapists, pediatricians, family doctors), and since 2019 – “swung” to open a multidisciplinary clinic for specialized medical care (for 26 specialties).

Subsequent economic crises of 2020-2021 (pandemic COVID-19), 2022 (war) completely discouraged to engage in large-scale offline business in the coming years.

Now, together with a partner (Heorhii Kapnist), since 2021 we have been building a medical holding, which currently includes two businesses:

– Center for Medical Business Development,

– Medical remote assistance service MedGuide (medical troubleshooting, medical support, coaching and mentoring (mentoring) of health).

In the fall of 2021, I planned more than 30 more projects for the next 20 years – all medical and interconnected. For example:

1. MedEdu — medical educational cluster
2. MedPlaza — medical online aggregator & marketplace
3. MedRate — medical rating agency
4. MedMedia — medical media
5. MedPub — medical publishing house
6. MedCowork — medical coworkings (network)
7. MedHR — medical HR agency
8. MedPR — medical PR agency
9. MedCreate — medical creative, photo- & video production agency
10. MedMarketing — medical marketing agency
11. MedTour — medical touristic operator
12. MedIT — medical IT company (integrator, developer etc.)
13. MedPrim — medical offices of primary healthcare (network)
14. MedSpec — medical centers of specialized healthcare (network)
15. MedLab, MedInstr — medical diagnostic centers (laboratory & instrumental) – network
16. MedHiSpec — medical centers of highly-specialized healthcare (network)
17. MedRehab — medical rehabilitation centers (network)
18. MedMob — medical divisions of mobilized healthcare (network)
19. MedTel — telemedicine center
20. MedSport — sport medicine bureau
21. MedSpace — space medicine bureau
22. MedPens — medical pensions (network)
23. MedNurse — medical nursing homes (network)
24. MedHospice — medical hospices (network)
25. MedPharm — medical drugstores (network) & online store
26. MedStore — medical stores (network) & online store
27. MedEngine — medical engineering
28. MedProd — medical manufacture (production)
29. MedAtelie — tailor-made ateliers for medical workers (network)
30. MedRest — medical leisure & pleasure (MedGirls & MedBoys)
31. MedAssure — insurance company
32. MedInvest — investment fund
33. MedSoc — social medical projects
34. etc. (∞)

Now, during the war, I rethought a lot in life – and decided not to “produce entities” for the time being, but still focus on what we have, make it the most efficient and sustainable business, and then return to discussing what else to do.