He is at the helm of Microinvest for nearly six years. His leadership skills have contributed to the company’s significant growth – today it has reached a portfolio of more than MDL 2.4 billion invested in the development of entrepreneurship and creation of a better life for Moldovan families, it has 14 secondary offices and about 230 employees. Even the global pandemic did not make him give up development projects. He only changed the tactics with which he correctly unlocked his potential.
The dream of becoming an economist came after reading Theodore Dreiser’s novel The Financier. Oddly enough, my most vivid childhood memories are related to books. I perfectly remember my vacation by the sea. I remember sitting on the beach, the sun was shining brightly, waves could be heard in the background, and I was reading a James Hadley Chase detective novel and enjoying that quiet, carefree state. Childhood is like spring, with so many beautiful moments ahead of us that we don’t even know about. Ever since then, I have liked teleporting into every real or imagined story I read about in books. I guess that quality still helps me today, especially when it comes to immersing myself in our clients’ stories, understanding them, and helping them move forward.
The most important lesson for me was realizing that life, actually, is that what is going here and now. I used to live for the future, planning every step and carefully analyzing all the risks. Without realizing that life is what happens to us today. We need to live in the present, not in memories, and enjoy every day. Once I realized this, I radically changed my way of life and began to interpret things differently.
2020 was an extraordinary year. First, I took my son to first grade. It was a totally different event, without a school assembly, flowers, and motivational speeches, but I experienced some special emotions… Professionally, together with my team, we managed to fully rediscover our potential and test our ability to adapt to unexpected situations. It taught us a lot and allowed us to reallocate resources to move forward. As Tony Robbins said, energy flows where attention goes. These words perfectly convey how we operated at Microinvest. We have been able to meet all the challenges and remain loyal to our customers. It was the year with many restructurings, changes, and decisions that we had to make quickly but responsibly. In such a difficult global situation, we managed to focus on our strengths and retain our clients, employees, and portfolio and even grew it by more than 24%, supporting businesses and individuals across the country.
When a company manages to get through tough times, it’s proof that its success didn’t happen by accident but due to the right organization. As a leader, I’ve often found that I have a team of special people around me. Together we managed to create a Microinvest culture based on transparency and support. Dr. Yitzhak Adizes provided an interesting example: if we break the leg of a chair, in a rigid system it will fall down, and in a flexible system we can swap the other three legs and fix it firmly. The pandemic allowed us to test this theory. We ended 2020 with balanced results and we are confident that 2021 will be better.
The hard decision I had to make once, early in my career as CEO, was to bring in to the team someone with more experience than I had at that time, and even stronger in some areas. As a rule, we people, without realizing it ourselves, avoid situations of direct competition. However, as a leader, I was aware that the professionalism of that new team member would have a positive impact on the company’s development and would give me an incentive to develop professionally and personally. We should not be afraid to accept in the team people stronger than us. On the contrary, they can bring extra performance and professionalism, helping us to develop.
Microinvest plays an important role in the Moldovan financial market, primarily because we attract foreign investment, support local business and offer customized solutions for entrepreneurs, contributing to economic development. This is demonstrated by our portfolio, which ranks us 6th in the banking and non-banking system. As a non-bank lending institution, the interest rates on our loans are higher than those of commercial banks, but we try to compensate for this with other important advantages – operability, responsibility, and accessibility. We are the only NCO with international SMART certification, and we are proud to help hardworking people achieve their goals.
Source: VIP Magazin