Tesla Owners Leadership Master Class with Maxim Behar from Vision to Reality: Building Leadership Qualities

Podcast by Teodore Danchev with Maxim Behar.

Host: Hi, friends. I’m Teo, and I am honored to be conducting this master class. Today, we will focus on Leadership. We are guests in this wonderful M3 Communications, Inc. office, and our speaker is Maxim Behar. Author, journalist, PR leader, business leader I can think of many things to say about you, but I think most people know you. Hello, how are you?

Maxim Behar: Good afternoon, Tesla and non-Tesla fans. I’m very happy to be with you, and I think Theo and I have some interesting things to tell you.

Host: As the first question I’ve always wanted to ask you, you’ve met an extraordinary number of leaders internationally. What do they all have in common? What qualities do they have?

Maxim: The most important quality, I think, is quick decision-making. Especially right now, near the end of 2023, it’s extremely important to make quick decisions and take responsibility for them. Many years ago, I wrote a little book that first came out on Facebook called “111 Rules.” The first rule was that every leader, no matter his title, should be able to make quick decisions, be accountable for them, and stand behind them when needed. Apart from anything else, a leader must have a bit of charisma. A big question mark is what charisma means and how people perceive it. However, ultimately it is the ability to persuade someone. You don’t have to be a big hunk, you don’t have to be flamboyantly dressed, you don’t have to have any super extravagant ideas. But you must convince the people that you are managing, leading, and guiding in your thoughts, which is inherent in leadership. Nowadays, it’s very important to distinguish between management and leadership. Between manager and leader. And it’s a very simple difference. And it’s just in a prefix. While the leader directs, the manager manages. When someone understands this difference, things become much simpler. A leader must look at least 5 to 10 years ahead nowadays. Even looking six months ahead is enough because things are dynamic and change quickly. The manager must manage daily from 9 to 5 or 9 to 6. Nowadays, managers work 20 hours daily. Management and running a company means that the company’s problems are on your mind, whether you’re having a glass of wine in the evening or a shower in the morning. You think about your colleagues, projects, employees, customers, turnover, etc. But that’s what makes our lives super interesting. The fact that there are leaders, the fact that there are managers, the fact that there is freedom, the fact that there is a market whatsoever. In Bulgaria, it may be distorted, grey, not yet polished, or not working well. But we have a market. There is competition, there are free relations, there are media, and there are social media, which is my favorite topic. That’s why I think leaders are the most important people nowadays.

Host: Yeah, I agree. Sometimes, the roles of manager and leader are not so easily separable. For example, I’ve read articles that when Elon Musk opened a factory in Texas, he put his desk in the middle of the hall where all the machines were. However, there is leadership. These nuances are not always 100% clear and separable.

Maxim: You’re getting into my business here. It’s more marketing than it is management. Because Elon Musk sometimes sleeps in his factories and puts his bed there, it is not only him. At the scale of the business, he has it; it is more of a PR strategy he takes on to show that he’s part of that business. But there are hundreds of managers around him making the day-to-day decisions. But it’s nice sometimes to have a guy sleep in the factory. If I ran an industrial business, I would sleep in the factory at least once a month. Getting up early in the morning, seeing the workers come to work. This is very important. In our business in my office here in Sofia, it doesn’t make sense to sleep, but very often, I stay until 12:00 or 1:00. The most important thing is not even staying in the office. Our company is almost 30 years old, and the most important thing is that in all these 30 years when I’ve come to work in the morning and driven my little electric car, I have felt the same desire, excitement, ambition, and pleasure. I know who I’m going to see, I know who our directors and colleagues are, I know what I’m going to say, what I’m going to talk about. How you go to work is much more important than how you come back.

Host: The feeling.

Maxim: Well, it’s the ambition and the thought of always being innovative. Again, nowadays, business is scarily dynamic. Both the communications and industrial businesses are very competitive. I’m convinced that social media has largely contributed to that because it’s given some 4 billion people in the world the opportunity to voice their opinions, to tell their ideas, and to be together with their innovations on social media. But they also allowed people to show what they are capable of. This has changed the market tremendously. To be up-to-date and competitive in this market, you must think 24/7 and always know what to do. Here, I want to tell you about my favorite formula I came up with 20 years ago. The more time passes, the more I see that it works. The formula of the three S’s has governed our entire business all these years. Those three S’s are speed, simplicity, And Self-confidence.

So, Speed is the speed of deciding, the speed of knowing what you want to do, and even the speed of responding to an email. In 1999, I introduced six values in our company, and the fourth value was the 5-minute rule. Since 1999, each worker must respond to an email within 5 minutes of seeing it. It may not be 5, it may be 25, it may be 5 hours, it’s a bit of a metaphor. However, nowadays, the immediate answer to an email, even if it’s “I saw it. I’ll get back to you next week.” is super important.

The speed of decision-making is also very important. Because sometimes managers, especially of big companies, are very worried about their big responsibility and might make a mistake. But so, what? It is better to be wrong than to let a decision languish, as that can be very counterproductive to the business.

Simplicity — the second “S” is also super important. Keep things simple, knowing what you want to accomplish today and what decisions you need to make today. When we get up in the morning, we go on social media and are bombarded with information and news. At the same time, we must do other things during the day — see clients and colleagues and discuss projects. Oftentimes, our heads become such a mess that we often can’t prioritize things. And that’s why when I get up in the morning, I make coffee, and with it, I always read an article written yesterday about the Public Relations business. The day is over when I get up in the morning in America, which is the home of our business. And then I get in the shower, and I put my priorities in order during the shower because when you’re alone in the shower, you feel free, nobody is in your way, there’s no TV, there’s no morning blocks, nobody is writing to you on Messenger. And when you simplify things, and you say today, I have to do one, two, three things, and if I do them, the day has been OK, but then if I can do something else, it will be great.

The third “S” Self Confidence. I don’t know anybody who has succeeded if they don’t have self-confidence. You cannot be sure you will do everything planned for the day. You may fail, and it’s not the end of the world; you learn your lessons. As the Dalai Lama says, “If you lose, don’t lose the lessons”. You may fail, but the fact that you will learn a lesson can also contribute to your self-esteem. Those three S’s sit with me daily, and my colleagues know them. I think it’s a formula that works well in this hyper-dynamic life.

Host: Very dynamic, lots of information everywhere. As you said, we get up, we pick up the phone, and at that point, some of the creativity is over as we consume information and different opinions. I like to stay silent when I first wake up by myself and focus on my goals for the day to match my principal goals of where I want to get to. I only allow phones, computers, emails, and other information. Once upon a time, it was easy — you turn on the TV, and you can collect information. Now, I can do this even on my watch.

Maxim: You know it’s easier for me now. Because you say at the time it was easy. Thirty years ago, by that logic, it was even easier. There was only one TV, there were no cables, no satellites. Now I find it easier because I can choose my information, as there is freedom of information. Fortunately, in Bulgaria, it cannot be silenced. And even in those countries where there is not so much freedom, it cannot be silenced. There is no going back anymore. All the bridges for a country to be a closed system and not allow information from the outside; you don’t know who is doing what, you don’t listen to music or read news have been burned. I don’t think that’s possible in the modern world. The huge flow of information motivates me to be even more innovative and creative, but you must know how to swim in this ocean of information. At the same time, I know how to deal with fake news. Fake news is one of the things that can prevent many people from navigating life well or succeeding, or using information the way it should be used. My friends tell me they don’t want to hear about Facebook or Instagram because all they do there is lie and brag. But that’s the stuff we work with; that’s our life right now. We can’t say we’re not going on social media because someone might lie. You know, 120 years ago, Henry Ford introduced the first automobile, then called the “gasoline buggy.” When he presented it to journalists, he said, “This is the car; I put petrol in it, start the engine, and off it goes.” Then, many journalists wrote that this had no future. How and where will we get this petrol all the time and fill it up? What if a tire blows? What if the engine breaks down? What if you hit this thing? Our future is in the carts and the horses. Yeah, but today, we don’t drive carts and horses; we drive electric cars. It’s the same with social media. When Facebook started gaining momentum almost 20 years ago and became a provider of information and different opinions, some people said there was hate and fake news. You must pick your news and check it, but at the same time, it’s a hugely powerful platform for knowledge. We all learn a lot of interesting things; even in the hate, even from the lies, we still learn and know what not to do. For me personally, in business, management helps me so much that every day, I improve my skills to get better at social media.

Host: As you said, any new technology needs time and adaptation. People say, “Why do I need that?” You must train them with this technology to tell them what it can be used for and how. At some point, we adapt and ask how we live without it. There’s a video of an interview with Bill Gates where he’s asked, “What do we use this computer for?” He explains,” You can watch a football game anytime; listen to it.” Yeah, but don’t we do it on the radio too; there is no future of the internet.” These are very interesting points of view. You also mentioned decision-making and risk. How do you balance the two? Quick decision-making versus the risk of a wrong decision. You said it is better to decide quickly than risk not deciding at all or waiting forever to make the right decision.

Maxim: Decision-making is a function of experience. You must have enough experience; you must have been through a lot to be able to make a decision that is right or close to right. If you make a mistake, you should know immediately that you have made a mistake. I don’t tend to believe what people say about learning from our mistakes. That’s why I tell my colleagues in my company that we should learn from our successes. When we achieve something serious or good, we should analyze how we achieved it, see how to achieve it even better, where we went wrong, or if, in the process of achieving it somewhere, we made a mistake. But not to learn from the mistakes. If one learns from one’s successes, for example, we climb peaks, and that’s a must in business; I don’t want to look at the bottom; I want to see the next peak. And if you have that attitude, that vision, that desire. If you experience even a bit of pleasure on that climb, you should look forward to the next peak.

That’s part of the decision-making process. For example, in my company, I don’t divide people into directors and deputy directors; of course, there are different positions and job titles; however, for me, the people who have experience are the most important. Decision-making is a direct function of the experience that each manager should have.

Host: Something I observe in many companies is that the best experts are being promoted to lead small groups of people. One time it turned out that this was not the best decision because some qualities are missing in these people. Do you have any such observations? How can we find employees who have the potential to be leaders and leaders?

In all these 30 years, I have done thousands of interviews for colleagues who want to work in our company, and I always have only one requirement. First, I never ask two questions — “Where did you graduate from?” and “Where are you from?” Both answers can cause embarrassment to the candidate. Some may be from a small village, worried about not being from Sofia, or a medical graduate applying to work in public relations. I would accept such a person gladly. I have such people. Because I can make a PR expert out of a doctor, but I can’t make a doctor out of a PR expert. I have only one condition for the candidates working in our company, which is very simple. It’s the gleam in the eye. And when I interview a colleague, I don’t read CVs; I usually look the candidates in the eye. I want to see if t I can find the ambition to succeed, to work in this profession, to be good, and to become a professional. And if I do, we immediately accept those candidates with open arms to work for us. After that, we keep a close eye on them, including me and my management team colleagues. There is no condition that someone must work for 15 or 5 years and then grow. Here in this room, there is such a case. Ten years ago, I walked into this room by chance and saw a girl standing alone and waiting. I went in to get something. I asked my colleagues who this girl was, and they said she was applying for an internship. I told them to appoint her immediately. After three years, this girl was the director of one of our important departments. So, it was a mixture of intuition, experience, and seeing ambition in someone’s eyes. When you have colleagues who can develop very quickly, no matter how long they’ve been with the company, I think they should be promoted and given chances. In general, everyone should be given chances in everything. That’s part of the free world, part of good competition. Going back to social media, especially now that the world is public, when you give one person a chance and put themselves out there, the whole world will see it. There’s nothing hidden covered up anymore. This is one of the biggest advantages of the modern world that I’m in love with, and it’s called transparency. This transparency makes the world far more ethical than it used to be. I wrote this country’s first business ethics standard 22 years ago and traveled to all 28 counties to present it. Back then, many people asked me what business ethics was. I had a simple formula that still applies today — Make our profits transparently. We are in business to make profits. We must pay salaries; we have a living wage. We must improve our businesses, invest, and do interesting things. However, if we make those profits transparently, then the guarantee that a business or a company is ethical is very high. Things done under the table are absurd. That’s why I like this world because it’s transparent. That’s the most serious feature of modern society that distinguishes it from societies before social media.

Host: Transparency in communication, briefly addressing communication within companies. I’ve often seen less communication between people. What is your opinion?

Maxim: I’ve personally gone through all sorts of stages. I motivate my colleagues now to work calmly and to communicate with each other as much as possible. We work in open spaces. I have a small two by 2 room, the smallest room in the whole office, and I don’t like standing in it that much; I usually stay with my colleagues. It makes for a good team, especially after those two nightmare COVID years when we all stayed in our houses, saw each other on Zoom, and did our birthdays on Zoom. I’ve had Christmas parties on Zoom. Those years changed us an awful lot. However, it did a great disservice to everyone who loves team business. Different people became slightly alienated and said they were better off staying home in their pajamas working. Which is okay and probably exactly right in many businesses. However, our Public Relations business requires a lot of creativity and innovation. They can’t enter your house by standing between the fridge and the stove. It is a team effort, so I encourage communication between colleagues. I love doing big events. We’ve done an awful lot of events over the years. One time, I decided to gently retire from this business because it requires a huge amount of resources with a not-so-guaranteed profit. However, teamwork is created in these events. Then the whole company worked together. Everybody helps each other. I decided it’s good to have big events and more frequent get-togethers, especially after these Covid years. We have an idea called M3 Power Talks, and every month, we invite interesting people. Before on Zoom, now in person. They tell us how they succeeded or failed and what they did. This way, I try to motivate communication between my colleagues. As well as the communication between my colleagues and our customers we can give birth to much better ideas.

Host: How do you find the perfect balance, since your work is highly creative, between creativity and day-to-day communications, working with clients? When is there time for that creativity that is so important in your industry?

You mentioned perfect balance. There can never be a perfect balance. We decide day to day. I spent a few days working at McDonald’s in the middle of this year’s summer. It’s been a desire of mine for many years. I wanted to see how McDonald’s worked. I happened to have dinner with the country manager of McDonald’s, and I told him that I had that desire, and he said he would love to. I worked a couple of 12-hour shifts and went through all the procedures. This is how I realized the importance of having set such procedures. Knowing who does what, when, and how they do it. After seeing my social media posts from my job at McDonald’s, a lot of my friends were asking me why I was doing this kind of stuff and how I sold sandwiches at McDonald’s. However, that was priceless to me. I then wrote “10 things I learned at McDonald’s,” and this had 10,000 likes on LinkedIn along with the pictures. On the one hand, it’s very important to have procedures in place to know what needs to be done and in what time frame. But on the other hand, it’s even more important that what you do within those deadlines and those procedures has a creative and innovative element. That is why I tell you that there is no perfect balance. Everything is different or done according to the client, the requirements, the day, the project, and the setting.

If we are looking for the perfect balance, we will come to work at 9:00 and leave at 16:00 or 18:00. We’ll have that perfect balance and have done our procedures. Because our business is creative, we must almost have different and interesting ideas.

I’m wary of the formality of having procedures, but on the other hand, I think you must maintain ways of running the business that allow you to skip these formalities and say you have a great idea. For example, we have an Idea Fund in the company. If someone comes to me and says they have an Idea, they get a different amount. That way, my day gets better. It may not be a super idea, but the fact that somebody thinks and wants to improve things goes beyond their job description. In the same way, it often happens in our company that we discuss projects for clients like this. In this sense, there is no perfect situation, no perfect balance, and I would even say there is no balance. There must be creativity, which is the most important. The client is satisfied if you must do something between 2 and 3 p.m. and you have done it. But why have you done it if there’s no value added, no idea, or nothing is interesting?

Host: Artificial intelligence is also entering the market in companies at a rapid pace, I think. Microsoft is launching it. Every new Windows that is sold will have it built in. In Tesla owners Bulgaria, we recently made an AI adviser by giving it all the information from the group. All the questions that have ever been asked, all the answers we’ve said, all the directions of the cars we’ve put in. What value do you think these new technologies can bring to companies? How are we going to differentiate that from our creativity?

Maxim: That’s the big theme of 2023 because artificial intelligence will change the world and our view of media, business, and knowledge. That’s also very good news. Returning to that Henry Ford and the automobile thing where everybody said it wouldn’t happen. Going back to the critical opinions and the caution 20 years ago when there was already social media and mainly Facebook, which came into the market very strongly, there was a need for such software to bring together chat systems, photos, texts, forums, and videos. I wrote a book, “The World PR Revolution,” which came out first in America and many other countries worldwide. I still think the basis of everything is social media. That’s the big revolution. Because it enabled these 3–4 billion people to communicate with each other, if there wasn’t social media, there couldn’t be ChatGPT, or there wouldn’t be this rapid spread of artificial intelligence. It is a logical upgrade that should not be looked upon with suspicion; it should not be dismissed; quite the opposite. It should be studied very carefully because we will be obsessed with artificial intelligence in the next one or two years. However, I still think that natural intelligence is at the heart of everything. Artificial intelligence cannot do anything without natural intelligence. I sent a general email to all my colleagues two months ago saying, “Colleagues, don’t worry about artificial intelligence taking your job. However, the people who can handle AI are the ones who can take your job.”. So, spend 15–20 minutes every day doing different tests. I do that to see how far we can be tricked, which is the biggest risk in artificial intelligence because you can tell it to write you an article, 80% of which will be stolen from somewhere. After all, it can’t compile it that cleverly. And a lot of ideas are under copyright. It can take one idea from one place, another from another, a third or fourth, and combine them into an article. Copyright is the biggest problem with AI, and the second is ethics. How all the information is digested can be truthful, accurate, and authoritative. What I do these days is that when I read something from ChatGPT to verify the information from a minimum of 3 sources, two is no longer enough. I have done a lot of AI sampling, which has brought me a lot of false information. I think this is an evolution. I keep thinking that, for example, television was a revolution compared to the printing press and the newspaper because it allowed many people to see the same thing in real time and learn about it visually. Social media has done the same thing in a very different way. They brought two new elements, and one that is very important is interactivity. The ability to communicate on television and radio, which is not possible in newspapers, is, of course, social media. It has allowed a billion people to talk to each other and interact. Someone writes something, and you tell them it’s not true.

The second is that there is a media that can be measured for the first time in the world. You know how many people have seen that picture, how many people have liked it, how many people have disliked it, how many people have shared it. That’s impossible on television when there are some approximate measurement systems. In newspapers, I would say it’s even impossible. While in social media, this new element is extremely important for our business. Artificial intelligence contributes to the fact that much information can be gathered quickly in a small place in no time. You can compile information from different sources immediately, which is good and has risks. For that, artificial intelligence needs to be known quite well and, if possible, with natural intelligence beforehand.

Host: We all need to start dealing with this subject slightly less. It’s going to infiltrate all spheres quickly. To wrap this up, what advice would you give to young business leaders and entrepreneurs? What should they focus on if they are setting up a company now? What are the key qualities they need to bring? What advice would you give them?

Maxim: Never give up. It’s not that complicated. I rarely advise because every case differs, but some general rules exist. Firstly, one must have some skills, put in enough effort, and focus on what they want to succeed in. But this is a multiplication action. It is skill by effort by concentration. If one of the three multipliers is zero, the result is zero. My big problem has always been with concentration, as someone who does many things. The maximum effort and the maximum concentration still must be exerted. In today’s life, we should not give up. If we want to achieve something, we must throw all our efforts into it. Let us be innovative, but never take a step back. Yes, sometimes you may make a mistake, and sometimes you fail. It doesn’t matter if we keep moving forward. We can change the business, the approach, the people. The most important thing is to be happy. A happy person feels good. This is not someone who has succeeded, has a big house, and has achieved a lot. The happy person is the one who feels good. But when we talk about business, you really must have skills. How come you become a doctor or a lawyer if you don’t have those skills? You must have the skills, put in your best effort, and concentrate on doing your job well. That’s success. Doing your job well. Again, it’s not so important to be in the papers, to be on TV. The important thing is to feel good inside, balance inside, and harmony. Then I am sure 9 out of 10 people will succeed. If 10 don’t make it immediately, you should quit this business immediately.

Host: You need consistency, with small steps always forward, with clear goals.

Maxim: And since we are in Bulgaria, I want to tell you that Bulgaria is a unique country. There are great people: young, intelligent, well-educated, ambitious, successful. People whose brains work on a completely different frequency. I’ve traveled almost all over the world and seen everything. At the same time, Bulgaria is a market that still, since the fall of Communism, continues to have great niches for doing business. Bulgaria still has many niches in which, if you are ambitious and want to succeed, you can do it much easier than in any highly developed market where the niches are filled and you need much more effort to succeed. However, you must hustle and know who those underdogs are.

Host: Thank you so much for this conversation, Maxim.

Maxim: I thank you. I wish all Tesla owners, not only Tesla owners, to manage their cars well and change them with every next model to be successful and happy.

You can watch the whole interview here.

You can also watch the whole interview on youtube.