Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alex Golimbievsky. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Alex, thanks for joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I believe “No” is a complete sentence. I think the path towards true success is to intentionally and ruthlessly prioritizing your time to the most important parts of your venture or goals. This means saying “no” to dozens of things that can be “good” that subtly rob you from the time and attention on the truly “great” things.

I failed two back-to-back businesses because I tried to “do it all.” Go to the networking events, run the sales meetings, write the blogs, run the customer support, send out the invoices… the list is endless. I did my best to do as many of these as I could as well as I could. But that led to me to working on the urgent over the important. It led to two business failures.

I went on to start a 3rd venture with that bitter lesson that did $500k in its first 6 months and subsequently acquired by the end of the first year. The wild part was that I did fewer things. But they were far more impactful. I learned that most of us spend most of our time solving “B-” problems. When you’re a business owner, you have to be incredibly disciplined and focus on the “A+” problems that make or break your venture.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a naturalized American citizen from Ukraine. I grew up on welfare, didn’t graduate college, had no rich uncle or strong personal network, yet started my career as a technology entrepreneur. Despite two early failures, I sold two back-to-back companies (7- & 8-figures), became an investor, and am now a business coach focused on venture growth.

I work with entrepreneurs from early-revenue generation to scaling past 8-figure revenues. While most coaches gravitate towards ‘mindset’ and ’empowerment,’ I work help scalable ventures find highly-tuned product-market fit, identify strong, sustainable growth channels, and scale from a product or service to a full-fledged company. This is a mix of deep strategy, challenging conventional thinking, and providing strong direction & accountability for the entrepreneur. I focus on incredibly practical and actionable steps to break past plateaus and grow sustainably.

I’ve coached over 200 different businesses, leading to increases of tens of millions of dollars in revenue. My favorite success story is a veteran-owned business that struggled around the $10k p/mth mark. Our first session, I encouraged him to target a key influencer as a partner, honed the pitch, and pushed him to make contact. That led his first key partnership, which tripled monthly revenue in 60 days, then doubled again in 60 more. Changed his entire world, but also all the other veterans he serves every day.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I invested my life’s savings into our first business ($45k) and over a year and a half, it became clear the venture wasn’t viable. We pivoted using customer feedback, and while that one had many marquee names (Uber, Lift, Walmart, Aflac, and others), that one ultimately failed too. I had raised a friends and family round $130k and taken a mortgage on our home ($30k) and yet we weren’t able to keep our customers. That one failed after 2 years and I was left on welfare and foodstamps for the first time in my adult life. The life I grew up on as a kid and I had lost it all and was back.

Out of sheer determination or stupidity, I started a third company. I took a hard look at my approach and what I was doing wrong for that one. I surrounded myself with mentors, coaches, and community of entrepreneurs and that one defied all odds and grew insanely quickly. It was acquired at the end of the first year.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

You will always just ‘own a job’ if you don’t build teams and scalable systems. After my first company was acquired, I was installed as the CEO of the company that just acquired us. That CEO retired and his business partner brought me in because despite being close to 8 figures in revenue, it was losing money every month.

The opportunity was a turnaround job. The company culture was in shambles. There were no processes or clear direction. They were a sinking ship and everyone was trying to get off the boat. Over the next two years I had to replace 75% of the staff, sell legacy product lines, and build scalable processes. The biggest change and impact was hiring strong leaders and team, then building a culture of high-ownership, excellence, and autonomy.

During that time, I called myself out on major issues like perceived nepotism, politicking, and transparency, which all contributed to a dream team of movers and shakers that turned the company around in 2 years, leading to my second acquisition.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.alexg.consulting/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/golimbievsky/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/businesscoachalex/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgolimbievsky/
• Twitter: https://x.com/AlexGolim
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@businesscoachalex

Image Credits

Images are either my own or Work-for-Hire. I have full license for all images.