Do you feel the pandemic is messing your plans? You probably haven’t heard of Gour Saraff
By: Francesco Dambrosio
Tags: Resilience, Leadership, Meat, Crisis, Guns

A story of meat and guns.

And resilience

When Mr. Saraff moved to Ukraine the economic crisis was critical. At the time, in 1991, Ukraine became an independent country from the Soviet Union. That meant chaos. And hunger. For many many people.

The Ukrainian Hryvnia was losing value, making essential items extremely expensive. Despite that, Gour stayed in Kiev, not sure of what the future would bring and how he would face uncertainty. One day, walking in the street, he bumped in a long queue. So, he queued too, just to find out what people were in line for. After a while, he got to see through the door a butcher cutting, with a large knife, meat off a hook. Nobody could choose what and how much they wanted.

What it might have looked to all like a lack of choice and, for some of them, just a cut of bad meat, he saw opportunities. He saw the future: a production and distribution line. Demand was clearly high and the market wasn’t taken at all. He called up two friends, and told them about the idea of putting up this business and looked for potential partners to start a collaboration.

At the time there was no free resources on line, no privileged business courses to teach him venture capital, nor free template for cash flow. Nothing! Just vision and talent.

He identified the customers with the highest demand — supermarket and restaurants — and later expanded the product lines into poultry and vegetables, reaching the 60% market share in high product quality, within a time of an eye-blink.

One day, several people broke in the office handing Kalashnikov, pointed them at him and the staff. They were terrorised! The ‘gentlemen’ stole everything, filing cabinets and computers. They even took the chairs and desks, leaving them with barely nothing. Only uncertainty.

Recovering business wasn’t easy and a message from the attack was quite clear to them. Mission impossible to get it all back. So he left Ukraine and went home, precipitating in a middle life crisis.

After few years, while reading a newspaper, an article prompted to his attention: somebody was talking about this business, that someone else in the meanwhile had took over and generated jobs, opportunities. Selling meat products to supermarket and restaurants in Ukraine. How funny!

The first reaction was sadness, as he felt that lost the opportunity to build a future for that country. Perhaps he gave up too early and someone was braver. But later he felt positive. Power of Mindset!

He realised his idea was so successful, that it actually ignited the success business for the country.

He learnt that every individual has the possibility to transform the world, by succeeding or failing. If he could restart, he would consider few things for the success of the business. And this is where you should listen if you are starting a new business too:

Select the ‘right’ country. But how do you do? well, first should be safe for yourself and your business. Consider cost of living. When you start a new business, this is going to be a bootstrapping cash generating business. Nobody is going to fund you (or steal from you) until you have already some income. Business always take longer than what you planned. Nowadays you can easily find a list of countries sorted by safety and costs. Advantage of modern times! Go there!! Only by going to that place, you can make your experience and find out what exactly do they need. Has what you read and researched, got the same taste? Make a clear business plan to take you through the journey to avoid disappointments. Start the Business! Do not overanalyse the data, do not overthink! Data are changing so fast, it could be obsolete tomorrow! The best experience you can make is by making mistakes! If you don’t make money, you are going to build instinct.

What could happen once you tried?

In the best scenario, you do well, you make money and scale up your business, until you move to other countries, and decide that you don’t want to work for anybody else.

In the worst case, you are back with a learning curve that nobody has as much as you! You have instinct of navigating in a world, where nothing is clear. Of course, sometimes only after your business has been expropriated.

In both cases, the country gets transformed, and regardless where you lose or win, the country always win and it will be grateful to you!

Now, what are you waiting for?