Top blogger in Kazan about success and bankruptcy, betrayal and a free implant for half a million

On the eve of Oleg Barmin, businessman, blogger, author of the bestseller “I remember everyone who once did not call me back”, the head of the Beeline communications service arrived in Kazan and talked about how he became a brand person. He also shared his story, analyzed successful cases and told how he wrote and published his book. A correspondent of Realnoe Vremya visited the Headquarters residence for creative industries.

The path to creating a bestseller

An active audience of predominantly young age gathered at the Headquarters, and the guest began his speech with the words:

Why did you come and why is the topic called so? Probably, over the past six months there have been twenty requests: “Oleg, please tell us how you created your brands, let the brands of your company pass through you, and when you became a mercenary, did you treat the company as if it were your own, did you invest yourself?” .

According to Barmin, he has been engaged in various businesses since the age of 15: first he had a car wash, then a tire shop, a smokehouse (fish).

Then I sold all this business, started to work automotive business and built a $100 million company from age 20 to 28; in the Arkhangelsk region, every second foreign car was bought from me, - he explains. - This period was such that when I open my notebook now, I find: “transfer 70 million rubles here, taxes - 10 million rubles, salary - 20 million rubles”, and I’m 26 years old, this is something incredible. And then - bankruptcy, but, thank God, I got out of this situation, and none of my clients were injured.

But in the end, the blogger ended up owing $3.5 million to the banks: “I moved to Moscow, got a job as a mercenary and started blogging to tell my story that I am not a monster. Then opened flower business, then - honey, became the marketing director of Live Journal (worked there for 3.5 years). Then Barmin was invited to the launch of Beeline 4G in Kaliningrad, where he met the company's CEO and later became the head of the company's communications and social media service.

And it was in the blog that Barmin captured, as he put it, "the history of all this trash." After that, he decided to create a book by collecting blog entries, but the work was not easy: the blogger worked on the finished material every day for several hours for 4 months. The title of the book is also noteworthy - "I remember everyone who once did not call me back", it was this inscription that used to be on Barmin's business cards.

An active audience of predominantly young age gathered in the "Headquarters"

“The book was published in May, and already in June it became a bestseller,” says the author, noting that the book was published twice: the first time Barmin collected about 1 million rubles for publication, the second - 250 thousand rubles. By the way, the books were published in Kazan. “I’m probably such an example: you can be a good mercenary and open your own business in this country, even if things are bad and you have several criminal cases, everything can be resolved,” he explains.

The fact is that men usually do not talk about their failures, and I wrote all this with an open mind, and therefore Forbes became interested, which subsequently gave me a column, says the blogger.

"Chips" Barmina

Barmin could not help telling about the time he worked in the automotive industry in his native Severodvinsk.

When I started, I had an amount of 5-7 thousand dollars, and this is not much. Then I had competitors-collective farmers, but already with savings, and I decided to distinguish myself from them (and now I understand that I did a lot of things right, although I was not a marketer). You have to stand out in order to be recognized,” he explains.

So Barmin covered his car with yellow and black film and began to create custom ads so that everyone would recognize him, placing an image of his face on the picture of each billboard, but in an unexpected context: with the slogan "Sell in 60 minutes". Barmin did the same with the film with Leonardo DiCaprio "The Aviator".

When I watched this film, and it had a slogan: “When others dreamed of the future, he built it,” I thought that it was just about me and created an advertisement for “Olegator” (Oleg Barmin), a film by Sergei Ershov, - says speaker. - This ad started working 5-10 times better than a standard car ad.

Barmin also explained the use of Sergey Ershov's name in advertising: “When I started selling a lot of cars, I thought that either cops or bandits would come to me now. And I brought the Cadillac to the main gangster of our region, we became friends with him. And I wrote his name when I did the ad - that's exactly what he is. And no one touched me, everyone understood that I was with him.

Then the businessman began to develop advertising for others and soon began to write - he was given a column in a local publication. “Then I still didn’t know how to write, I took a journalist, told him my thoughts, and we sat together and corrected the texts; this glossy magazine I was in all cafes, restaurants, and most importantly, on airplanes, and during all flights from Arkhangelsk to Moscow, business people could read my column.

Despite the experience of bankruptcy, Barmin is quite optimistic and believes that he got off lightly.

Implement gloss in LiveJournal

Barmin also spoke about his magazine "ZhZh" ("Live Journal").

The idea was to create my own fashion magazine, I forced my directors to buy ads in it, and, accordingly, it began to exist at the expense of the money that we spent on it, inside, and earn on third-party companies (but we didn’t let competitors in) , - Barmin ingenuously shares his system.

According to him, it is a mistake to create a magazine where it is written only about the car that you are selling: the magazine should be just fashionable and interesting, designed for a large audience: the number of readers who want to learn about Toyota is small, but read a magazine about everything and in addition, learning about a particular car is interesting.

Barmin demonstrated teasers for the LJ magazine.

recovery path

Despite the experience of bankruptcy, Barmin is quite optimistic and believes that he got off lightly and early enough: “At 28, you can still live in your store - there is still a certain amount of romance in this.” Barmin moved to Moscow in 2007 and opened the FunFun flower business, later the honey business - Sticky-sweet. And, of course, his advertising and concepts are extraordinary this time around.

During the lecture, Barmin admitted that he had been recovering for 5 years, and only in the last couple of years he began to earn money.

The most amazing thing is that you never know who will betray you, - the speaker noted, presenting to the public a slide on the dependence of the number of friends attending his birthday on the company's turnover.

I had a friend whom I had known since I was 7 years old. I bought him an apartment and a car, and he was the first to go to the cops to take me, - he shared, noting also that many of his former subordinates have grown a lot and earn more than he does now.

Recently I was in Arkhangelsk, came to a car dealership. The owner comes out to me and says: "Dad has arrived." It was so nice, and he just took a locksmith to work in his salon.

Team relationships are very important. And my employees know that I will always go on shift if I need to replace, or just always help, - says Barmin.

There are people who run the company like gray mice, and when you are bright, then you spend less on drawing attention to sales, Barmin emphasizes. - When you are a brand, life is much easier. This is a plus, but a minus - as soon as a problem arises, a sea of ​​\u200b\u200bnegativity rains down on you.

When you are a brand, life is much easier. This is a plus, but a minus - as soon as a problem arises, a sea of ​​\u200b\u200bnegativity rains down on you

The guest also showed examples of how important resourcefulness is in business: somehow he was lucky enough to decorate a hotel room for a celebrity, after which he added the corresponding photos to his portfolio and received a contract for 2.5 years for window dressing Chanel. In addition, he designed floral dresses for Playboy models, which was also immediately added to the portfolio.

As for the honey business, Barmin called it a "gold mine": "If, due to changes in the exchange rate, the purchase price for flowers has almost doubled, then the bees no longer ask."

Nevertheless, the businessman considers the publication of his own book to be the most “blood-stirring” project.

Tooth-implant, dad - heart, mom - Botox

Barmin found an amazing application of his brand and blogging activities in Everyday life. Just a few examples.

Once I decided to lose weight and came to one salon, where they promised me that it could be done in 21 days, he says. - And indeed, I went to all the procedures and lost weight.

Of course, Barmin went through all the procedures for free, but at the same time he posted photos and descriptions of the procedures on his blog, everyone saw the results. “I had the procedures in April, and in the next three months, all the procedures that I had there were packed with visitors,” he emphasizes.

A similar story happened when a blogger broke his tooth and needed to insert an implant, which cost about 500 thousand rubles. Barmin got it for free, devoting his subscribers to all the mysteries of the process. He showed those present photographs, and moreover, a video of how this implant was inserted into him. Not everyone survived, some girls left the "Headquarters".

Oleg also helped his father for free when he had to undergo heart surgery. “Three days after the operation, my dad ran into me,” he said.

Then, after one of these lectures, a girl came up to me and offered to pump my mother with Botox, - the resourceful businessman continues, - I gave my mother for Botox, showed the results before and after.

What's important is that the company got good content for its website, and traffic, too, he notes. And by the way, the speaker said that the opportunity to earn money is now very much younger thanks to the implementation opportunities that the Internet provides: “There are young video bloggers who are only 16-18 years old, and they receive 1 million rubles a month.”

And I was there, drinking coffee, I was glad to see everyone and in general ;-)

P.S. Tartarus! Oh. Not sure, that sergeydolya confesses under torture, but I really want to know where he got that beef.

Original taken from freedom in Where did Barmin go?

Hi all! It's time to tell you where I've gone. For the past three years, with enviable consistency, bloggers have been writing posts about the fact that I was fired, about to be fired, they have insider, superinside, megainside. Some especially smart ones even organized pickets near the office with the slogan "Fire Barmin!". I watched this picture with pleasure, every time I thanked them for the PR and continued to work, work and work again.

Last summer, walking along the promenade in Anapa, I met slobodin . He invited me to breakfast, where we discussed the development of social networks, social media, the penetration of the Internet, increasing its speed, gadgets and, of course, how ships ply the open spaces of a large theater. Mikhail invited me to work as his advisor so that I could immerse myself in the work of the company and see if I can use my brain. I had a great opportunity to attend meetings, communicate with any employees from the cleaning lady to the vice presidents. Three months later I wrote him a "cart" with all the conclusions. And we agreed to create a new division in the company - SOCIAL MEDIA, which your obedient servant actually headed. So now I am Chief Social Media Officer.

I got so attached to LiveJournal that I didn’t want to give up everything, so I agreed with the new leader and the “old” one that I would oversee new projects at Rambler&Co. So now I'm here and there, and there, and here. In general, this post is not about me, but about interesting people, so I propose to move on to the most interesting and start getting to know each other.

April 21, 2015 - My colleagues and I invited our friends to DolkaBar in order to present the department not as usual - with presentations and a bunch of tediousness, but in 2-3 minutes one-one-one-op-op! So as not to distract everyone from communication. They say it worked out well. Let's go look!

1. As usual, I decided to stand out. Someone saw a watermelon in me, someone said that it was a bee's ass :-)

1. radonis - Alexander from the glorious city of Cheboksary. In our team, he does customer service in in social networks and blogs. Prior to joining us, he worked at Enter.

2. wasin and trunov_dmitry - everyone has known for a long time. The first from Saratov, the second from Kaliningrad. Both bloggers with experience! Valentin - Corporate Social Media Manager, and if in Russian, he is engaged in a corporate social network and training employees to maintain accounts in social networks. Dmitry - from Kaliningrad was transferred to St. Petersburg and is now the head of the North-West for social networks and blogs. The third one you already know.

3. Mikhail jumped into our fire and presented the fruit of our imagination with him. 2 minutes of his, 1 minute of mine = met!

4. radonis - Sasha, wasin - Valentine, mark_y - Mark, trunov_dmitry - Dima, Ekaterina Rukavishnikova , freedom Me and slobodin Michal. Somewhere lost Stanislav dva_loskutka so she will be in the next photo.

5. And here is Stanislav dva_loskutka , we stole it from Lamoda . Stasya - Senior Influencer Marketing Social Media Manager - works with influencers (bloggers, instagrammers, youtubers, etc.) in the field of PR and marketing. So with all your blogging projects, ideas, go... to Stas :)

6. mark_y - Senior Social Media Manager, setting up business processes and interacting with other departments and our partners. Usually I can’t explain in any way what he is called, so in Russian you can simply say: he is my deputy.

7. And this is Katyusha - Social Media Marketing Manager, we didn’t steal her from anyone, she has been with Beeline for a year and a half and our department began with her. Katya is our custodian of the company's official publics and brand image in social networks, so if you want to stir up something joint partnership between the official pages, this is for her :)

10. dolboeb - Anton Borisovich. It may not be represented.

11. Our friends YouTube bloggers - Lizz TV (Konstantin Pavlov and Max Brandt). For everything about everything they have 1 948 635 subscribers. Yes, imagine

12. sergeydolya - Uncle Share with his wife Larisa and her sister Victoria Barabash, who lives in Italy.

13. Curly Nastya agusentsova - marketing director of Big Funny with Petya lovigin - this person cannot be called a photographer and just a travel blogger. This is a brilliant photographer.

14. Chief expert-local historian in Moscow Sasha - usolt sat quietly on the sidelines.

15. Our good friend Lesha ammo1 Nadezhin. Top blogger and perhaps the best versed in gadgets.

16. Stas Vasiliev with his miniature Olympus - publisher of Russian thg.ru

17. annaloca - creator of the Brusnika agency. AT recent times We cooperate very, very much and see each other almost every day :-)

18. Martin Martin and Max Wernick.

17. Himself mi3ch - blogger (TOP-10), super-mega-new-star-lj in the background zelenyikot

18. A couple of hours after we started "noisy", Sergey made a short announcement and talked about his new project - a culinary school and gastronomic trips around Italy, which he has been organizing since last May. After that, he invited everyone to treat themselves to a forbidden food, which the Italians brought with them in their suitcases.

19. And Italian chefs have prepared for us dishes of overseas delicacies!

20. Chef Filippo Moretti, whom Sergei brought to Dolcabar on a gastronomic tour, has amazing energy. Immediately after Moscow, he flew to Milan for EXPO 2015, where he represents the cuisine of Emilia-Romagna

21. Syrrrrrr :)

24. Vladimir Kravtsov - chief PR manager of Coca-Cola.

25. katysha - Luxury blogger, new star LJ

26. Our curly Nastya agusentsova Gusentsova with Anton dolboeb spout

27. Bye slobodin distracts Sonya, Mark steals food from her :)

28. Dolcabar was crowded. Yes, the one over there in the T-shirt with the number is Denis Ryabokonov from S7 Airlines.

29. nasedkin - a blogger. The man is a doctor. Narcologist. Always invite him to parties. If something helps everyone, he will pump everyone out ;-)

30. mark_y - Mark Ilansky, our Senior Manager at the Social Media Team

31. Ruslan Usachev. The total number of his subscribers today - 1 105 113 human! Here it is!!!

32. Beauty YouTube bloggers. Darius Thekrasavishna. 63 566 - the total number of its subscribers.

32-1. Veronica Nikkoko8- Total number of her followers - 229 354 . For a minute!

32-2. Catherine KateLion - 150 902 subscriber

33. Good old friend Vadim Shiryaev also visited us.

Has it ever surprised you that your boss is a fool? But hasn’t it been such that not you, beautiful and smart, are being promoted, but someone completely absurd, about whom you never think that he can be worth something?

No, more often than not most nonentities remain nonentities. This is the justice of life: to each according to his deserts. But sometimes there are exceptions, one of which I want to tell you today.

Oleg Barmin is the king of pancakes. This is probably the only pancake that I hate with all my heart. This man has done so many nasty things that he deserves to be burned in a slow, slow fire.

Meet him, here he is:

This bastard is somehow miraculously got into the leadership of LiveJournal and began to spoil the only good man here for me. He created a team of wankers who methodically and systematically shit on LiveJournal around the clock.

Where he came from on our head is unknown. How was Barmin able to climb up career ladder? How, against all the laws of nature, does he earn and hold high positions?!

For me it was a mystery.

Barmin approached me a week ago. Shouted: help me, Lena! I wrote a book about how from nothingness I became a man!

To be honest, I immediately wanted to read it. I understand perfectly well that a writer from Barmin is like a bullet from shit, but I don’t give a damn about the artistic delights of the book.

But how did this bastard float to the surface?!

Clenching my jaw so that “let me read it” didn’t escape my lips, I told Oleg to go with a drill step in the ass. I will not help him for any gingerbread. I don't help enemies in principle. Let your manual bloggers advertise your book, and I don't give a shit about you.

Barmin hung his head and almost cried. Watching how he became depressed, I realized - I took revenge on the bastard!

But then I was disturbed by the thought that this book is a manual.

How many pancakes eke out a miserable share, earning a penny? How many of them dream of defeating karma, buying a car, making a career, finally breaking out of dullness and insignificance?!

Would I be able to let him go after that?!

Hey motherfucker! - I shouted after Barmin into the drooping shoulders trembling in sobs: - Stop! Let me get acquainted with the subject of your graphomania.
- I am ready to pay for an advertising post as much as you want! - Barmin squealed through tears like a joyful pig.
“I don’t want your money, pig. I read a book, and if it's about what I think, you become a slave to me for one day, and I write a post.

Oladukh Barmin, not understanding what was waiting for him, happily nodded his head or whatever he had instead of her, like a dummy.

The book was really about that. Written in bad language, with a bunch of mistakes, but - about that! I found the answer to how an asshole can become a person, and I boldly recommend Barmin's work to you.

The next day I happily went to humiliate Oleg. By evening, I even felt sorry for him.

He ran for coffee, brought me food:

I took Tolstoy's twenty-volume edition to a friend whom I had promised for a long time. I put him behind the wheel, specially drove him through traffic jams and forced Barmin to sing loudly instead of the radio, and for false notes I hit the turnip with a slipper:

In general, the day of humiliation passed with a bang. I avenged all those offended by him, you can now sleep peacefully!

Everyone else should boldly read Oleg's work. It -- own experience, which is known to be worth any theories. How to survive in the office, how to become the chief boss, how to earn a million, screw it up and earn it again - all this and not only in Oleg's book.

However, the main part of the text under the working title "More than a business" has long been available for reading on the blog of the retired marketing director LJ.
I read the accessible part with pleasure.
Gladly, not because it looks like Lee Iacocca's mountain-moving inspirational super-bestseller "The Manager's Career." The reasons are different. Despite the outward genre similarity, Oleg's book is essentially different.
If Iacocca wrote that if you really want to, you can save a Chrysler diving into nowhere from bankruptcy, or invent and make a Ford Mustang, or make the world fall in love with front-wheel drive small cars, then Barmin writes about the lyrical hero Oleg, who creates holidays, no matter what he does . And in this Oleg is a real pro. He can create them from almost nothing, on a bare budget, charisma, enthusiasm and core.

The hero of Barmin's book is an amazingly charming, energetic, generous and kind guy. Many people like his bright smile, openness and creativity. He unforgettably decorates offices and even toilets, takes his employees by plane on an excursion to Kaliningrad, gives and sells beautiful bouquets, makes friends with picky people of this world, eats carrots naked and neighs with a horse - as the main surprise of the show for employees.
And now - back side medals. The hero of the book, as a leader, evaluates employees according to an unusual criterion: whether one is suitable for loyal participation in the holidays or not. If an employee is ready to drop everything and fly to BOS by plane to ride snowmobiles with him, this is a great team member. If someone refuses, they risk falling under harsh sanctions.

Oleg's business is also unusual, often bright and sometimes big. But in the end, it's sad. As, for example, with the LEO company, when at the end of the story only debts remained from a company with a multi-billion dollar turnover. And all because the partners of the hero were bad, and the laws in the country are crooked. Or when, at the end of another story, only piles and promises remained from the money collected by Oleg from equity holders for the construction of an underground parking lot, and therefore the hero is forced to give up everything and fly away from sin. Because Oleg got a bad chef and ... and indeed.

Oleg constantly surprises with bold stories about his non-standard actions. Either he gets drunk to unconsciousness and sleep in a ferry pipe, then instead of a salary he will offer his subordinates a performance with eating red berries in a green meadow, then he doesn’t pay them anything at all and wonders why not everyone is like him, why they are not ready to work very hard, but to receive a salary only in a bright future.

It is not difficult to guess what the book will be criticized for. With a very strong desire, one can find in it nozdrevschina, excessive narcissism, superficiality and a desire to whitewash oneself in stories with well-known business conflicts. But such nit-picking is hardly constructive.
IMHO, there is still something to criticize on the merits of the book. First of all, for the presentation of the material. After all, sparkling and sweeping are inherent not only in the actions of the protagonist, but also in the presentation of a fascinating story. The book is easy to read, but the repetitions and the loss of the rhythm of the story are somewhat annoying. Note that I am talking about the working version of the text. For sure finished book will be edited. For example, she has already changed the name to the ironically vindictive "I remember everyone who once did not call me back."

There will also be final chapters in the printed version. After all, the last years of the hero are not described in Barmin's journal. I can assume that there the hero's alter ego and the hero himself will successfully merge again and will develop LJ itself. After all, the author of the book has been working on the development of our blogging platform since mid-2012. And, of course, during this period in LJ there were many holidays, performances and high-profile events organized by the charming director of marketing and development. There were also regional blogging schools, and large-scale "Non-Forums of Bloggers", and "Ryndy of the Year" and countless business trips of Barmin himself - in order to shake up the regions.

But what, besides the movement, was happening in LiveJournal and with LiveJournal at that time? Judging by the statistics and the facts, something is very, very wrong. I will evaluate an objective thing, the dynamics of search queries. Google Trends data on demand livejournal, region Russia.

Google Trends data on demand facebook, region Russia.

Quantitative data, I think, can get vmenshov . The hotlog provides them only for Runet sites, where LJ belongs to the category products and service and is located on ... 153 place. Shit, I don't believe it.

So, after Barmin left Afisha-Rambler-SUP at the beginning of this year, LiveJournal was left with a drop in attendance, the absence of a normal mobile application, the lack of encouragement for attracting external readers, a fundamentally opaque system for calculating the local rating, non-updated magazines of authors who created high-quality content.
But the top service was thoroughly occupied by butts, gossip and lytdybr.
Despite the fact that competitors at the same time grew rapidly. In general, the service from 2012 to 2015, to put it mildly, did not develop.

But the trick is that Oleg Barmin is not Pushkin to be blamed for everything, even though he likes to cause excessive fire on himself. According to his blog, it is clear that in the situation with LiveJournal, he certainly sincerely saved the blog platform. And he created a youth holiday party not to turn LJ into a club for his own people. He, giving all his best, sincerely and with soul, did what he does best. But why the leadership of LJ and Afisha-Rambler-SUP did not simultaneously engage in the real development of the platform - the question is not for Oleg. And in the company LEO, as it turned out closer to the final chapters, according to the documents main character was ... on the sidelines. But why the real owners of the company lost control of the situation is also not a question for Barmin.
And that makes the book instructive.

I will formulate the most obvious. You can work very hard, you can be fantastically active, you can be very creative. But you must be responsible not only for the process, but also for the result. And not for someone else, but for his own. And if it doesn’t work out, then do those things where the process is needed. For example, organize corporate parties or trade in holiday bouquets. Oleg is now just doing the last one. And if you want something else, then find someone who will help you with this. For example, find an employer who will give you a framework of responsibility and, at the same time, will not actively limit your self-expression. And with this, Oleg is now completely in order.

So I wish him good luck with the publication of the book. Adventurous, captivating, fun, exhibitionistic, in yellow-orange tones, and certainly unforgettable.
And for those of my friends who love the memoir-adventure genre, I boldly recommend it for reading. You definitely won't waste time.

PS. The main nightmare of the lyrical hero of the book "long-term investor Gorbunov" is definitely not me. I checked:)