We interview Andrzej Załucki, the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team speaker and educator, co-creator of the Billionaire Mind brand (umyslmiliardera.pl), specialising in leadership, management, personal development, and communication improvement. He tirelessly trains entrepreneurs and successfully convinces others that it’s worth being enterprising. He happened to work in managerial positions with Poland’s richest man, dollar billionaire, Michał Sołowow, for more than 25 years. Furthermore, he’s the co-publisher of the Library of Billionaires, educational books based on knowledge or written by the best entrepreneurs from the Forbes magazine list. The jury of our programme has just honoured him with the title of Leader by Vocation.
You’ve trained hundreds of people, telling them how to become a billionaire during your workshops. Have you already become one?
Of course not. I’ve never even tried. Why would I need such a burden? Neither I urge people to instantly become billionaires. I rather persuade them to look for the entrepreneurial spirit within themselves, to develop qualities that help in managing a company, simplify functioning in business, but above all, make people evolve, because they force them to think, to ask themselves the basic questions: What am I like? What should I be like to perform better? This is much more important for everyone than looking for a way to make billions at all costs.
A real billionaire would be far more convincing and credible…
I completely disagree with this. First of all, he would be unlikely to have the time to run training courses or workshops. Secondly, it’s not certain he would be able to clearly explain how things work, or that he would have enough self-reflection and awareness to convey them. You don’t need to be a spaceman to become a professor of astronomy. But to write a book like The Billion Dollar Secret, its author Rafael Badziag spoke directly to 21 dollar billionaires from all continents. He collected their conclusions, found common threads, organised them into separate chapters and wrote in such an accessible manner that no beginner would ever give up on the third page due to the hermetic nature of the message.
But you’re not the author, but the publisher of this valuable book. Do you know the book so well?
I’ve read it several times, even during the publishing process. Of course, I don’t know it by heart, but when I conduct workshops I don’t use it literally. I refer to the book because it’s a bestseller, but the speaker has a different task than quoting the author. He explains what it is all about, talks about assumptions, features, conclusions. He supplements some of the content with exercises. I give a background so that each listener understands what I want to convey and doesn’t leave the class with any misconception. Moreover, the educator draws on his own knowledge and experience, often enriching his lectures with information from other books, in more detail dealing with issues barely hinted at in the book serving as the basis for the training series. It’s the best approach. If people only needed to read a book, because each of my trainees usually owns it, why would they pay extra for the quotations? Meanwhile, the more information from each chapter, the more questions, and it is the answers the participants seek.
Is it necessary to have a degree in this field in order to conduct such training?
In my opinion, there are no such studies. You have to be very familiar with the subject, you have to keep gaining and expanding your knowledge, you always have to be perfectly prepared for lectures, workshops and training sessions, because any other approach would be disrespectful to those involved. For example, I’m an engineer, I also have a post-graduate degree in economics, but I could just as well be a mathematician or a zoologist, although, of course, with my education and experience in leading various teams of people, it’s easier for me to move within the matter related to the ‘The Billion Dollar Secret’ book. What is different, however, is the working method used in such training courses. I believe it’s important, because it enables proper preparation of the speaker and establishes the way in which the knowledge is transmitted. I’m a Maxwell Leadership Certified Team educator and I value this fact very much.
You also talk about leadership experiences….
I’ve been building them for years. I was editor-in-chief of three daily newspaper titles, including ‘Życie Warszawy’, marketing and PR director, I managed teams of more than a hundred people, and for a quarter of a century I’ve worked, holding various positions, for the richest Pole – Michał Sołowow, a leader to the utmost and a visionary. I also implemented editorial IT systems, the latest technology for publishing newspapers. There was a bit of that.
An enviable biography to share with many, and still their experience wouldn’t be doubtful. Is that why you say you’re a leadership expert?
I take a much more modest approach towards it. I think I’m a leadership specialist not because I make myself so, but because I’ve had the opportunity to observe how leaders act. I do say of myself that I can be an effective leader. The real leaders are precisely the dollar billionaires, such as Michal Solowow and the other protagonists of the book ‘The Billion Dollar Secret’, who started from scratch. I got to know their mindset, habits, traits, motivations for action. I must emphasise that none of them, when starting their business, thought about becoming a billionaire. They wanted to do and create great things, and they were also driven by solving everyday problems, facing challenges. And, of course, I can talk about all this leadership stuff in an interesting way. At least, my listeners claim so.
Not everyone becomes a billionaire or a leader. So who are these trainings and lectures for?
For all those who want self-progress supported by the messages and guidance of the best business coaches, who want to achieve success, improve the effectiveness of their businesses, and so on. To those looking for role models I say, after Michał Sołowow, who’s made this saying his motto: “Don’t give up”. I think I’m able to convince my listeners to this lifelong attitude.
Piotr Góralczyk
Beata Sekuła
