How to Eliminate Business Bottlenecks By Becoming Aware of Your Strengths with Alex Uspenskyi | Ep. 142

Entrepreneurship needs a lot of awareness. Being the founder of a company does not mean you can become anything you would want. You can be good at operations but not at product engineering. You can be the founder and choose not to become the CEO so that you can focus on other roles that resonate with your passion for the business.  

 

It means eliminating business bottlenecks by becoming aware of your strengths through a strategic approach to leverage your skills and resources effectively. 

 

Alex Uspenskyi, who joins us in this episode, learned this with his first business when he tried to sell it but could not find a buyer. He decided to scale himself out of the business by hiring a CEO and became just a partner.  

 

Alex went ahead to create a new company, Elai, but based on the lessons from the previous business, he scaled up earlier by recruiting a CEO while he became the CTO. Failing to realize your entrepreneurial strengths and weaknesses will make you a bottleneck in your business and challenging to grow.  

 

Elai.io, a Generative AI startup, grew to 30 employees and reached over 1000 active customers and hundreds of thousands in revenue in a year. Tune in to learn more about avoiding hindering your business growth. 

 

Tune in! 

 

Key Highlights From The Show 

[01:30] Intro and a quick bio of the guest, Alex Uspenskyi 

[03:48] Why Alex chose to be a CTO and not the CEO of his company 

[05:51] The need for entrepreneurial awareness in a business 

[07:34] Alex’s hardest parts in his previous business 

[10:33] What Alex finds thrilling in entrepreneurship 

[12:00] Entrepreneurship as a journey of learning and discovery 

[14:25] How his current company, Elai, has been progressing 

[15:35] Alex’s position and thoughts on the AI technology 

[20:00] Where Alex visualizes to take his company, Elai 

[22:30] What Alex's 47% bottleneck index means to his business

[23:10] Roles Alex would wish to let go of the business 

[27:00] How entrepreneurship has transformed him personally 

[28:55] Alex’s golden recommendation to other founders from his years of experience 

[33:56] Ending the show 

 

Notable Quotes 

·        Entrepreneurship is a journey of things you need to go through to realize yourself and get some experience.   

·        Entrepreneurship is a calling. 

·        Entrepreneurship needs awareness of your strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, you can become the bottleneck to the business growth. 

·        Letting go of some business roles is good but not always easy. You can only let go if you have enough financial resources to hire people who will take over the roles. 

·        You will always learn great things about yourself by running a business.  

·        Your customer’s needs and voice matter more than yours. You cannot succeed in business by selling what you need, neglecting what the customers need.  

 

Connect With Alex Uspenskyi 

Website: https://elai.io/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/uspenskyi/ 

 

 

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