Oleksandr Pohodin, 42 years

My name is Oleksandr Pohodin. I am an e-commerce entrepreneur and the owner of «32 Norma». I live in Kyiv, work in Ukraine, and am building my business as an autonomous system that can scale without my constant physical presence. Creating value and making a tangible impact on results matter to me. My path has not been linear.

My student years gave me a wide range of sometimes tough experiences—occasionally provocative, but undoubtedly formative. From the outside, my career looked flawless: a director's role, a benefits package, status. Inside, however, I felt I had hit a ceiling: neither my income nor the pace of my life and work matched what I really wanted. The birth of my children became the key catalyst for change. They are both my motivation and my responsibility. When you have a family counting on you, you make decisions faster, and leaving a «comfortable position» feels less like a gamble and more like a rational step.

I came to a clear realization: if I wanted more, I needed to act rather than spend years «calculating» everything. The decision was both simple and difficult: leave my management position, register as a sole proprietor, and go into business. The doubts and «rational» arguments from people around me were predictable, but I already knew people who had built their own businesses from scratch. That environment strengthened my belief in what I could achieve.

Today, I think in terms of capital and efficiency. For me, freedom is above all financial independence and transparent, «legitimate» money. Meditation and yoga can help with balance, but true freedom comes from liquid capital that works for you. That is why I focus on scaling income, systematizing processes, and building a business that generates cash flow regardless of location. I am frank about mentoring: knowledge has a price. There is plenty of free advice online, but practical tools that take you from «a thousand» to «ten» usually cost money. This is the kind of experience I am ready to share through consultations focused on practical results.

My personal direction for the next five years is intensive work, travel, and building capital that functions autonomously. I want mobility—the ability to earn from anywhere in the world without becoming a «one-person process». I already have capital, but my ambitions call for greater scale. Moving from a corporate role into entrepreneurship changed not only my position but also my perspective: from external markers of success to internal measures of results. That decision brought more responsibility, greater speed, and ultimately a sense of setting my own pace.

I have not yet become the “me” I picture in my mind—the journey is still ongoing—but I am definitely moving toward greater freedom and a more systematic approach.

How did the business idea come about?

The idea for «32 Norma» came from a practical problem I regularly encountered as an employee. At the time, I was the director of a Ukrainian dental company with several in-house brands and a physical showroom. Customers came in asking for specific materials and products we did not carry. We simply could not meet demand and consistently lost sales. I suggested to the CEO that we launch a website and move into e-commerce to overcome the limitations of the «showroom» and offer a wider range. The response was: «Dentistry will never move into e-commerce». That refusal brought a realization: if the company was not ready to take this step, I was ready to do it myself.

What key skills helped you launch the business?

Sales skills and an understanding of e-commerce were the foundation. By the time I launched «32 Norma», online business was nothing new to me—it was my fifth website and, essentially, my fifth business. So I entered the niche with practical knowledge of processes and the logic of scaling, not just theory. I am also naturally action-oriented: I find it easier to launch, get feedback, and adjust course than to spend a long time deliberating. This is not about romanticizing risk, but about making decisions quickly in an environment where the rules constantly change.

What were the 3 toughest challenges you overcame in the early years?

The first challenge was delegation. Moving from «I do everything myself» to managing people was not easy for me. At some point, it becomes obvious that you physically cannot do everything, and a business cannot grow without a team.

The second was recruitment and understanding exactly whom to bring in for which tasks. At the start, I had no systematic approach: interviews often boiled down to a basic «I'm ready to work». Over time, I had to learn from my mistakes—what to delegate, how to assess performance, and whether someone's sense of responsibility and values were a good fit.

The third set of challenges was external: the war and general market turbulence. These are not abstract risks in presentations, but real conditions the business has to adapt to every day while maintaining operational resilience.

When you start feeling that you work for your employee

What crises has your business faced, and how did you overcome them?

I have been through almost every systemic crisis that swept the country and its business environment: 2008, several waves of currency devaluation (I remember 2014 particularly well), Covid, and finally the war. I have never seen a crisis as a pause. To me, it is a phase in which you need to find a way to keep working. The reality is simple: life does not stop. Even in turbulent times, people carry on living, and demand for goods does not disappear—only the conditions and customer behavior change. Among internal crises, staffing issues stand out.

Today, finding suitable candidates is harder, and working with the younger generation requires a different approach: clear boundaries, rules from the outset, and transparent expectations. I have had employees simply disappear and stop responding—and at some point, it felt as though I was working for them rather than the other way around. Those experiences made me rethink instructions, accountability, and management practices in general.

The moment a business stops being «the owner's job»

Which decisions proved most effective for the company's growth?

Two decisions drove the most growth. The first was delegation and the shift from self-employment to management: working with people, assigning tasks, and monitoring execution. That is when a business stops being «the owner's job» and starts becoming a system. The second was marketing decisions. In e-commerce, marketing and its optimization deliver tangible growth once the core processes are running reliably.

I paid for every mistake with money

Which mistake do you now consider your most valuable learning experience?

Every mistake has been valuable to me—I paid for each one with money, then «tightened up» the part that was leaking. One of the most painful examples was tax penalties, particularly those related to operating as a sole proprietor. There were court cases and lawsuits too. I do not romanticize it; I simply see it as part of entrepreneurship, where over time you become more attentive to rules, details, and discipline.