Mom and Dad

The storm was so bad the sand was whipping against our skin. The waves were about two meters high — or maybe I was just small and everything looked huge. My father stripped down to his trunks and walked into the water.

I was left alone on the shore. About twenty minutes went by — I couldn't find him in the waves anymore. Then half an hour. Then an hour. I sat on the sand and pictured myself going home without him. I was sure he'd drowned. Two hours. I didn't cry — I just waited, afraid to look away from the water, like that could somehow change anything.

Then he came out. Calm, brushing himself off, like he'd just been for an ordinary walk.

My father was head of parachute training for his regiment. Master of Sports of the USSR. He had 2,500 jumps under his belt, some of them the kind very few people were willing to try.

One day I saw him jump with my own eyes. First he came to our class to talk about the army, about jumps, about parachutes. I sat there bursting with pride: that's my dad. Then he invited the whole class to a demonstration jump at the airfield in Berdiansk, a town on the Sea of Azov. Right before the jump, he told us: "Watch closely — I'm jumping last. I'll show you something interesting."

We watched him come down on his main parachute — and then he cut away from it. Just released it in midair and dropped into free fall. The seconds stretched out. Then the reserve opened. Even now, telling you this, I get goosebumps.

He packed that reserve parachute himself, with his own hands. Think about that for a second: if it hadn't opened, that would've been it. That's fearlessness. That's faith in yourself.

The second thing I remember about my father is how he talked to people. We'd walk into some ordinary little shop, and within a minute he'd already struck up a conversation with the woman behind the counter, cracking jokes, and she'd be laughing. He was a real charmer — not in a sleazy way. People just instantly relaxed around him. I watched this and couldn't understand how anyone did that. Because back then, I was the exact opposite of my father when it came to people.

At school I sat in the back row and hid behind my classmates' heads so the teacher wouldn't notice me and call me up to the board. If she did call on me anyway, I was scared to death. The teachers could see it and felt sorry for me, so they tried not to call on me much. I didn't talk to girls. I wasn't really close with the boys either. Quiet, shy — that's how people described me, and it was true.

It's genetics, I figured later. My father's fearlessness, the ease he had with people — it must've just passed down to me, the way facial features do. A convenient explanation. Maybe you explain other people's success the same way: "It's in his blood. I'm just not a salesperson, wrong genes." Except that explanation is wrong, and it'll take me a long time to understand why.

Mom is a completely different story, and it comes in two acts.

Act one — Berdiansk. My parents were already divorced by then, and my brother and I depended on her for everything. There was never enough money. No money for jeans. No money for a bike. Mom did whatever it took just to raise us — and what I saw back then wasn't a doctor, just a mom who couldn't afford to buy her son the things he wanted.

Act two — we moved to the outskirts of Leningrad (St. Petersburg today), again for our sake. Mom became head of the therapy ward at a sanatorium run by the Leningrad Metro, a doctor with the highest professional rating, and a captain in the army medical corps. And there I saw a completely different mom. People loved and respected her — colleagues and patients alike. They brought her chocolates. She put together the staff newsletter that hung on the wall. She gave speeches on stage. The woman who'd counted every kopek in Berdiansk became one of the best doctors in the whole Leningrad region.

Then there was something else — something I didn't learn right away, and didn't fully appreciate for even longer after that. Mom's only real asset was her apartment. First she traded it for a place in Leningrad, then swapped that for two: a one-bedroom apartment and a room in a communal apartment. The room went to me. The one-bedroom went to my brother. She kept nothing for herself.

My father had the kind of fearlessness that earns you medals and the Master of Sports title. My mother had the kind that earns you nothing — just giving away everything you have and ending up with no place of your own.

I never chose to jump out of planes, and I never chose to practice medicine. But years later, I chose to jump into the unknown in business, when nobody around me believed in it. I chose to lead people and take responsibility for them. I chose to take care of my team the way my mother took care of her kids.

It wasn't the genes working on their own. My parents put a rough diamond inside me: my father's fearlessness and my mother's ability to give away everything she had. It was sitting inside me long before I ever noticed it. But a rough diamond doesn't sparkle — it just looks like a dull, unremarkable little stone. The shine only comes after the cut. Who does that cutting, and how — that's what this whole book is about.

And the shy kid in the back row who was afraid to go up to the board later walked out on stage in front of hundreds of people, of his own free will. But that's a whole other story, and it starts with one sentence someone said to me in seventh grade.