Blind Spot / June 23, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

The horror of an illusion is that we do not see it as such.

In the unconscious, it lives as a hidden assumption.

But it can also exist in consciousness, sustained by fanatical belief.

What are the consequences?

Your progress hits a glass ceiling. Conflicts with your partner at home and at work. Chronic health problems or symptoms that keep getting worse. The feeling that the whole world has conspired against you personally.

How could it be otherwise if part of reality has fallen into a blind spot?

If someone points it out and says, “This is a lie,” you will either laugh or become offended. The very idea of questioning It will seem absurd.

This will continue until the number of blows from “fate” exceeds your limit of tolerance or begins to threaten your life.

Then an ancient and benevolent instinct will activate aggression: ““Enough! No more!”

You will begin feeling your way through the blind spot, grabbing the illusion by the forelock.

From that moment on, I stop worrying about you.

A crack has appeared in your glass wall.

It is only a matter of time before its shards crunch beneath your feet.

The illusion has already lost its power over you.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Plant Pro Tips / June 22, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

For the first time, I watched a professional repot houseplants.

I came away with a few insights. Obvious to some, perhaps. Not to me.

For example:

If you think a plant has outgrown its pot, don't rush. Some plants like it tight. Too much soil causes moisture to stagnate and roots to rot. Sometimes the soil needs replacing, not the pot.

A plant always reaches toward the light and gradually grows asymmetrical. That's why you need to rotate it periodically. Just like the Chinese emperor who ritually moved through four seasonal chambers of his palace.

The branches had spread so far that the trunk was leaning against the window glass. To restore the vertical, drastic pruning was needed. No matter — the crown will soon grow back fuller, and new trunks will sprout from the cuttings.

Dead branches need to be cut off because pests love them, turning them into nesting grounds. How symbolic. Letting go of an old form is not a matter of aesthetics. It is a matter of protecting the “tree of life.”

The old pot was expensive, beautiful, and sturdy. But the ficus had become hopelessly stuck inside it. The roots had bonded to the walls, filling every inch of space. It had to be smashed open. The less often transformation happens, the more painful it becomes.

Interesting how all of this plays out in business:

Before changing your market or your partner, update your perspective.

In business, tomorrow’s bottleneck is often yesterday’s surplus.

A founder needs to notice when the company's "trunk" starts to lean.

An obsolete part of the business is not neutral. It becomes a source of evil.

You can change yourself and your company through crisis. Or through ritual.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Father's Gaze / June 21, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

Today is a holiday — Father's Day.

I didn't have one. He left for another family when I was five.

He cast me into the void of loneliness. And for that, I am grateful to him.

In that void, I not only survived, I came to love being there. When life gets hard, I know exactly where to go inside myself to recover quickly.

Endless boredom awakened and developed my imagination. And solitude taught me how to become completely absorbed in playing by myself.

The feeling of abandonment drove me to search everywhere. For whom? I did not know. Certainly not for my biological father, who had shown no interest in me over the decades that followed.

When it came to my own children, I had to create fatherhood from whatever was at hand: partly imagined, partly borrowed from others. As a father, I am not satisfied with myself. But I am very happy with how our children turned out.

Only recently did it occur to me that I was never truly alone in that void. Someone was always there beside me, unseen. That may be why I felt so calm.

Once, as a child, I was playing with a construction set alone, as I usually did. Suddenly, with my whole being, I felt the gaze of my true Father. He was watching my play with endless delight, pride, and love.

It turns out that one father abandoned me, but I fell into the arms of Another.

How could I not be grateful for that?

The path has not been easy, but otherwise I would not have become who I am.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Worth It / June 20, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

All kinds of people walk into a grappling gym: men and women, young and old, heavy and lean, short and tall.

During the first few years, a beginner learns the same fundamental techniques as everyone else in the group. Yet no matter how hard he tries, many things simply will not work in live sparring. You seem to know everything, but the technique just does not work.

It is a pity that nobody told me this “secret” for ten years:

You are perfectly built for certain techniques and strategies.

A lot converges here:

anthropometry (sex, height, weight, wingspan, etc.),
temperament (attacking or counterattacking),
endurance profile (explosive or marathon-like),
the balance of strength between the upper and lower body,
thinking style in a match (improvisation or systemization),
natural joint flexibility or stiffness, and much more.

That's why certain techniques intrigue you for no obvious reason. You absorb them almost immediately, and they seem to “fire” on their own during a match. This is how your favorite techniques emerge: your tokui waza.

The typical path: grind through everything for years, until the crystals of your "crown techniques" slowly grow out of a supersaturated solution of skills.

But there is a way to accelerate your progress dramatically. It happens when a mature and experienced grappler tells you after a match: “Listen, pay attention to techniques X. They will suit you perfectly.”

That small thing means fewer frustrations and more joy in training — which matters most in the early years, when it feels like nothing is working and you're taking more hits than anyone.

In ancient tribes, elders handled this one-on-one transmission of experience. What matters isn't just knowledge — it's knowledge adapted specifically to you. That changes everything.

So if you're taking up a new sport, find a gym where experienced athletes train and where a curious question is as welcome as a generous answer.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Built for It / June 19, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

All kinds of people walk into a grappling gym: men and women, young and old, heavy and lean, short and tall.

It is a pity that nobody told me this “secret” for ten years:

You are perfectly built for certain techniques and strategies.

A lot converges here:

anthropometry (sex, height, weight, wingspan, etc.),
temperament (attacking or counterattacking),
endurance profile (explosive or marathon-like),
the balance of strength between the upper and lower body,
thinking style in a match (improvisation or systemization),
natural joint flexibility or stiffness, and much more.

The typical path: grind through everything for years, until the crystals of your "crown techniques" slowly grow out of a supersaturated solution of skills.

That small thing means fewer frustrations and more joy in training — which matters most in the early years, when it feels like nothing is working and you're taking more hits than anyone.

In ancient tribes, elders handled this one-on-one transmission of experience. What matters isn't just knowledge — it's knowledge adapted specifically to you. That changes everything.

So if you're taking up a new sport, find a gym where experienced athletes train and where a curious question is as welcome as a generous answer.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Your Wolfhound / June 18, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

Yesterday, I explained where I do not want to let AI in. To be fair, I want to share where AI turned out to be irreplaceable.

The greatest source of anxiety in life is the unknown. Anything and anyone can create it for you — the cosmos, nature, the market, the government, technology, society, even a single person.

The unknown is unmistakable. In small doses it shows up as discomfort and unease. In large doses, as paralysis and dread.

Neurophysiology eventually comes to the rescue, since over time the body kicks in an orienting response — curiosity and the drive to explore the frightening new phenomenon show up.

Until then, however, all you can do is endure the stress. Sure, there are ways to help yourself — meditation, specific breathing techniques, sleep, exercise, stress inoculation therapy — but not everyone has these tools, and they don't work for everyone.

These days, though, AI is always within reach — endlessly patient, attentive, and responsive. Feeling lost, or worse, frozen?

Just describe the situation to AI exactly as it is

The point is not to get an immediate solution. The mere fact that you can share the burden of uncertainty with someone brings relief. Even more so when AI offers an unexpected perspective on the problem.

What fascinates me is AI’s almost supernatural willingness to act no matter what, without delay, complaint, or hesitation. It's incredible to have someone who keeps pushing forward when everyone, including you, has given up.

Having a “Terminator” on your side is especially valuable when you are being steamrolled by technology, regulation, or bureaucracy. It takes a wolfhound to deal with a wolf. AI is happy to play that role.

Most importantly, describing your confusion to AI costs you nothing. But it's that first micro-step that instantly turns you from a victim into a creator.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

AI? Not Between Us / June 17, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

Another app cheerfully informed me that I can now enable an AI bot to take notes during a session. It listed all the benefits, promising that productivity would soar.

There is just one problem. Quantum physics, anthropology, and sociology suggest otherwise. It is well known that the very act of observation interacts with an object and changes its state and behavior.

The same phenomenon appears when an AI is present and recording a session. Without realizing it, both the client and the therapist will behave differently. Self-censorship will kick in and prevent the conversation from diving deep.

In my experience, breakthrough solutions emerge at the point of authenticity, when a person describes a situation as it truly is. The more sincere and open a person is, the better he is able to help himself.

That means the AI must be trusted just as much as I am. The potential of AI is fascinating, but we still do not fully understand what kind of phenomenon it is. On top of that, AI is governed by people whose moral values are unclear.

What is the point of increasing a meeting’s productivity through automatic notes, summaries, and follow-up emails if it undermines the very reason the two of us came together in the first place?

Of course, this is specific to business therapy. For technical calls, AI is probably a gold mine.

My client once said, you work at the intersection of business and personality.

Here, the only welcome third party is the Cosmos. The Absolute. God.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Waste First / June 16, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

How do you know a problem is genuinely new to you?

None of your usual methods work. It's a lock with a hidden trick — a simple key won't open it.

That does not mean nobody in the world has faced such a problem before. But you have no idea where the answer is hidden. And you need a solution fast.

So what do you do?

You have no choice but to explore options. When the stakes are high, you will have to grab onto anything that offers hope. Try one thing, then another, then a tenth, until something inside the lock finally clicks.

The process is hard, but straightforward. So what can get in your way?

“Mistakes,” “inefficiency,” and the “waste” of time, money, and effort.

The false belief that you can avoid pointless expenses.

The expectation of leaping straight to the finish line.

This is the surest way to tie your own activity up in shibari rope. Right now, you need the opposite. You need to spend resources knowing that almost all of them will be wasted.

Almost is the key word. A sculpture requires wasted clay. A sharp pencil is bought with shavings. Nonsense gives birth to sense.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Again and Again / June 15, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

What is a common mistake in business partnerships?

To assume the relationship will last forever simply because:

we complemented each other perfectly,
we have already been through so much together,
the business is so valuable today that we have too much to lose,
the business still has plenty of room to grow,
I have invested all my energy into it so far,
there is a rock-solid shareholder agreement.

Unfortunately, all of that disappears the moment one of you becomes convinced that the other is no longer creating value for the business.

The reasons are endless:

one partner is tired while the other believes, “We're just getting started,”
a partner becomes absorbed by something else, a personal project,
someone has hit his professional ceiling,
fundamentally different visions for the company's future emerge,
one partner refuses to evolve as the context changes,
a long-nursed resentment over perceived unfairness surfaces,
prioritizing personal interests over the interests of the business, and so on.

The moment one partner decides he has a passenger instead of a partner, it is over. No past achievements, promises, or agreements will help.

The best thing either of you can do is recognize the trend early and part ways gracefully, preserving both the business and the relationship.

Every partner must prove his value again each day.

People rarely say this out loud. They rarely even think it. Yet that is how it works in practice.

After all, the purpose of the partnership isn't the partnership itself. The potential of the business is constantly calling out to you. But it can't realize itself. It needs both of you.

If you remember this regularly, the partnership is far more likely to remain alive.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Break! / June 14, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

What makes a street fight dangerous?

There is no referee.

More precisely, there will be one, but too late and only in a legal sense.

You need a third party who can stop the fight in time. Someone not tied to either side. Someone rational amid the chaos of emotions.

A person in a fight is unlikely to be self-aware, unless he is a professional. Archetypal aggression floods the Ego. He becomes almost possessed.

That is why the internet is full of videos where, even after one person loses consciousness, the other keeps jumping on him or kicking him in the head. A wild beast has awakened within, and there's no trainer around to call it off.

Paradoxically, grapplers suffer more injuries in their home gym than in competition. While the coach is distracted for a moment, an ordinary sparring match suddenly turns into an apocalyptic showdown.

Remember the classic film Highlander? “There can be only one.”

The same logic applies to inner conflict. A human personality contains different aspects whose interests often do not align. Someone higher is needed to shout:

“Enough! Break!”

Only then is there a chance that peace, even temporary, can settle inside.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Keep Going / June 13, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

Today was promotion day at the Jiu-Jitsu academy.

Online, you occasionally come across criticism claiming that belts are a relic, a sham, some pointless formality nobody needs.

Hmm. They should have seen the reaction of those receiving new belts and stripes: joy, shyness, pride, and gratitude. Some people's hands were even shaking, and tears were shining in their eyes.

If you devote yourself to something for a long time, doubts sometimes creep in. Is there any progress at all? Especially when your training partners are growing alongside you. Dark thoughts arise: “What if this is all for nothing? What's the point?”

That is when even a single new stripe becomes feedback from the Universe, delivered through your coach: “You are doing well. I see everything. Keep going.” Even more so when it is the next belt. Especially when you were not expecting it.

Over ten years of training, I've seen it all. I've been promoted when I was convinced it was too early and I wasn't ready. And I've seen everyone get promoted except me, even though I was expecting it. Both situations taught me something.

However you look at it, if you are investing your time and energy in something, feedback matters. The belt hierarchy is a useful tool — same as competing, self-reflection, and the rest.

This time, what struck me most was the reaction of everyone present. People were genuinely happy for another person, as if the achievement were their own. The loudest celebrations were reserved for those whom everyone agreed had earned their promotion long ago.

This is how a community reinforces order rather than chaos. People notice whether persistent effort is rewarded fairly or not. Investor Charlie Munger used to say: “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.”

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Time Is on Your Side / June 12, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

The longer your planning horizon, the less anxiety you feel now.

It sounds strange. After all, so many things can happen and get in the way!

To illustrate, let’s take two extremes:

You feel like you'll die if you don't satisfy an urgent need right now. Versus a desired goal you're willing to reach in five or even ten years.

In the first case, your anxiety will be through the roof. You will suffer. You will abandon your principles. You will lie. You will justify violence.

In the case of a long-term goal, you will calmly study any obstacle that appears in your path. What is there to worry about? Even in its most negative form, you will have time to discover valuable meaning within it. Or it might reveal itself on its own.

But wait, what about economic crises, pandemics, revolutions, wars, AI, and all the other tectonic shifts? It seems Chaos has made it its mission to astonish people with its ability to create the unexpected.

And what is that to you?

You have the most powerful ally imaginable on your side: Time. It relentlessly grinds down, dissolves, and transforms absolutely everything.

The takeaway? Look far, far ahead into your desired future.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Don't Look. Touch. / June 11, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

The house dance class I attended was on the third floor. In the basement of the same building, a friend trained in Krav Maga.

One day, a vague sense of curiosity led me downstairs. When the instructor asked why I was there, I explained: “I just wanted to watch.” He replied: “What's there to watch? Change your clothes and give it a try.”

After that I spent a couple of terrific years training Krav Maga.

The same curiosity led me to a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academy, where I arrived, well, you guessed it, “just to watch.” This time, my future coach smiled and said: “Nothing to watch. Try it.”

Ten and a half years have passed, and I am still stepping onto the mat. Of course, there have been plenty of disappointments and injuries. But I am still curious.

What is the lesson here?

Curiosity is worth trusting, but not because its meaning is immediately clear. Quite the opposite. It is how something new asks to enter your life, something you truly need and something that will change you profoundly.

By the way, my first year of Jiu-Jitsu was brutal. Yet I kept training despite everything, guided by that same mysterious impulse. Much later, I understood what I had been “suffering” for. The mat did what psychoanalysis merely explained.

There is another important lesson. Novelty cannot be understood intellectually. It is tempting to believe that if you sit next to a phenomenon long enough, you will eventually understand it. Unfortunately, that is an illusion. A subtle form of intellectual arrogance.

Genuine understanding comes through direct, lived experience. Motorcyclists have a saying: “You choose a motorcycle with your ass.” As a matter of fact, that is exactly how I once chose my favorite steed.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Wolf or Dog / June 10, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

Encountering the unknown inevitably triggers anxiety. Even in microdoses — a job interview, a article you need to write.

Especially when life is unlikely to remain the same afterward. What if the changes are tectonic, affecting your business, your country, or the world?

The unknown is perceived as a predator, a threat. By default, the response is one of three: attack, freeze, or run.

But looking back on your life, how many times have you later been grateful for something that initially caused fear or shock?

Somehow, that same uncertainty turned out to be beneficial. The dangerous wolf became a loyal dog.

The million-dollar question is: how?

Recently I ran a debrief with participants from my February course, "The Ritual of Transformation." There were plenty of insights, ideas, and results.

What did they all have in common?

Their relationship with uncertainty had changed.

Some can tolerate it much more calmly. Some realized that the seemingly impossible becomes possible if you give it time. Some were surprised by how smoothly a "-" turns into a "+".

In the years ahead, no quality will matter more. Novelty will invade our lives suddenly and everywhere. The parallel to the Flood writes itself, only in psychological form.

Let us be ready.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Follow Curiosity / June 9, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

I stopped fighting my curiosity a long time ago. If it pulls me somewhere, it is worth going there, or at least taking a look.

Why?

Like fear, curiosity never arises out of nowhere and always works in my favor. The catch is that at first I cannot tell where it is leading me, or more importantly, why. The payoff comes later.

Insights emerge along the way. Curiosity has sharply redirected my career more than once. A year ago I got suddenly obsessed with the topic of sacrifice. My worldview collapsed and reassembled itself in a new way.

Right now, I am absorbed in the history of religions. Paleolithic hunters, the Sumerian-Akkadian synthesis, the orgiastic cult of Dionysus, Judaism, Islam... The rabbit hole has no bottom. Why am I interested in all this? I cannot say.

That said, the absence of a clear purpose doesn't stop me from digging deeper

An oak grove grows from an acorn — but the acorn doesn't need to know that.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Master the Storm / June 8, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

I love watching footage of hurricanes. Beauty, terror, and power all at once.

The most hypnotic part is often the beginning, when the hurricane is just forming. It feels as though a giant is waking up, stretching lazily, and deciding whether to unleash total chaos or just mess around a little.

You can observe the same phenomenon in a person, a group, or a society. Out of nowhere, a spiral forms — one capable of sweeping everything and everyone into it.

It can spin downward or upward. In the first case, expect disasters, victims, and destruction. In the second, there will be astonishing breakthroughs and breathtaking successes worthy of myths and ballads.

Is boiling acid dangerous? Not if it is inside a heat-resistant flask. A violent chemical reaction is beneficial when guided by an experienced hand.

Each of us carries the force of a flood, a hurricane, or a volcano. Yet for many people, that force remains inaccessible. For the sake of safety, the mind has built a dam, because it knows there is not yet a strong enough “form” to contain such “content.”

The moment a person weakens from stress, illness, or exhaustion, chaos breaks through, frightening both those around him and the person himself.

The way out? Strengthen the foundation and walls of your personality. Replace the solid barrier with a valve. Learn to regulate your primordial power.

The world needs that power.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

The Pattern Is You / June 7, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

Right now, there are a billion things you could do. Including choosing not to act, which is itself an act.

You will choose X, while someone else would choose Y or Z. What drove you is not all that important: curiosity, experience, upbringing, trauma, genetics, or instinct. What matters is that the choice expresses who you are.

And even more so the long chain of choices made over many years. Eventually, they begin to form a unique pattern. Someone else may not like it. You may not like it yourself. Yet there is not another one exactly like it anywhere in the world.

Inevitably, the question arises: “What for?”

Some people find it easier to convince themselves that everything in their lives, and in the cosmos, happens entirely by chance. That too is a choice.

But how many times have you understood the true meaning of something not immediately, but years later? And how often has that realization surprised you to your core?

At the University of Life, one student learns while another sleeps. The difference lies in how they relate to the material: “This is valuable, even if I do not yet understand it,” versus “You must be kidding me!”

The historian of religions Mircea Eliade described an Indonesian myth:

In the beginning, when the sky hung close to the earth, God lowered his gifts on a rope to the first human couple. One day he sent them a stone — but the bewildered ancestors refused it. A few days later, God lowered the rope again, this time with a banana, which they accepted without hesitation. Then they heard the voice of the Creator: "Since you chose the banana, your life will be like the life of this fruit. Had you chosen the stone, your life would have been like the existence of stone — eternal and immortal."

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Dancing With Fire / June 6, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

Every organization carries a fundamental conflict within it. Nowhere is this more obvious than in an advertising agency. I was fortunate enough to spend the first ten years of my career in one.

On one side are the clients, whose interests inside the agency are represented by the account department. These managers translate from business-speak into human language in the form of a brief — a creative brief.

On the other side are the copywriters, art directors, and designers, in other words, the creators. They invent and bring ideas to life according to the brief.

Well, that's the theory. In practice, however, the process is disrupted by imperfect humans. The client withholds some of the information while demanding speed. The manager is afraid to ask clarifying questions and hopes for a miracle.

Of course, the miracle is expected from the creator. The trick is getting him to accept the brief as flawed as it is. Done? Now it's his responsibility — and the manager reminds, critiques, and demands.

To be fair, some creators are no gift either. Mood swings, procrastination, and contempt for numbers, deadlines, and budgets. After all, gods do not work there either. Only living people.

When the dance between manager and creator worked, a wow-product emerged, followed by recognition, awards, and glory. When the dance turned into a struggle, however, the flames of chaos burned everyone involved.

As a leader, I had to find a way to reconcile them all. The value of each person — and their partnership — was clear to me.

In the end, years of searching everywhere led me to... myself. As the co-founder and CEO of the business, I was the origin. Explicitly or implicitly, it was I who pointed everyone else toward the desired long-term destination.

The entire business took shape according to the function that had been defined:

the choice of clients,
the selection of employees,
the incentive system,
the standard operating procedures,
the rules of what counts as "good" and "bad" here.

I only understood all of this later, after moving through several industries.

As for the illustration — it was drawn 25 years ago by renowned Ukrainian artist Liosha Say. As art director at Bates Ukraine, Liosha captured the moment when the great traffic manager Tanya fell sick, and the account team stormed the defenseless creative department.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

Trust the Unknown / June 5, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

Yesterday, you planted an acorn in the ground, dreaming of one day having an oak tree. Today you can't wait to find out how much it's grown.

Will you dig it up to satisfy your curiosity and quiet your anxiety?

I hope not. Otherwise the whole point is lost.

Nature doesn't do rush jobs. The process underground runs nonstop, even when nothing's happening above the surface.

Someone will roll their eyes: "What's the point? This is all so obvious."

Really? What about your own development and growth?

Do you allow your Process to remain invisible for a long time?

Or do you start digging inside yourself in search of “progress” and “results”?

This is where it gets trickier — an unknown fruit has fallen into your soil. What if it needs not a month, but a year or five to build its root system?

This is the core question of trusting the fertile uncertainty within yourself.

And if you want to worry less, you don't have to bet on a single tree — you can tend an entire garden. The land is all yours.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.

The Caged Beast / June 4, 2026 by Alexander Lyadov

A person grows up with the belief that “X is bad,” where X might be aggression, self-respect, love of the body, intelligence, or the expression of feelings.

The quality itself has not disappeared, but access to it is blocked. In fact, the more of that force a person possesses, the more likely it is to be put in chains.

But as Sigmund Freud discovered: “What is repressed will return.” Only the form will likely be wild, strange, excessive, and unexpected.

The way out?

Consciously explore the area within yourself marked: “Danger! Do Not Enter.”

For that, you need a container: a particular person, a particular place, and a particular time.

In boxing and jiu-jitsu, for example, aggression is not merely permitted. It is actively encouraged. But like a river, it is given banks.

A beginner need not fear letting his “beast” out of its cage, because the coach knows how to handle it. Gradually, a person stops fearing his own strength and learns to regulate it, value it, and even love it.

The same thing happens with a psychotherapist, provided she (or he) earned her “black belt” rather than bought it under the table. You say the “unthinkable,” and the psychotherapist does not fall apart. She is prepared to receive absolutely anything.

You always thought your oil was dirt. Now it is black gold.

Sincerely yours,

-Alexander

As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.

Stuck? Your business grows when you do. I’m your business therapist to guide your shift. See testimonials here. Ready? Book your Catalyst session.