Alexander Orlov: sport helps me to live in a high rhythm

The everyday life of a successful businessman sometimes looks like a continuous series of changing events, difficult tasks and organizational moments. In order not to go mad at such a pace of life, it is important to truly love what you do and to be able to abstract yourself from unnecessary thoughts.

Alexander Orlov, businessman and founder of Black Star Fitness, has enough time and enthusiasm for all the projects he undertakes, be it movie production, opening restaurants abroad, or developing healthy lifestyle trends. We met with Alexander to talk about his attitude to sports, business and his search for motivation.

About sport: modern trends and a love of training

I am a sportsmanby life. Wherever I move or travel, I do it constantly for an hour and a half a day.

Sport helps me to live in a high rhythm and to be enduring. It gives me the opportunity to work hard without getting tired.

During exercise you can abstract yourself, meditate, disconnect from unnecessary thoughts.

Our thinking is tied to sport. If you exercise, you think faster and better. I don’t understand or think about life without sports.

Now sport dance programs and Crossfit, based on martial arts, areat the peak of popularity. It’s coming from America.

Trends are changing in terms of strength training as well. It used to be done with heavier weights and fewer repetitions, now it’s the other way around. They think that if you do a movement 12-15 times in each approach, it works the muscles better.

I box, run, work out in the gym, go to yoga and love extreme hiking. Now I want to try my hand at wrestling.

Sport prolongs life and makes it more qualitative, it is unequivocal.

We tried to focus on Los Angeles sports barsin our menu planning. We have a lot of protein food, like protein cupcakes.

All people think Black Star is something industrial, industrial, dark and so on. We didn’t want to be like everyone else, so we decided to do the opposite, a light-colored decoration. But the pool will be black.

Black Star is a brand, so we originally opened the club under this name. A lot of stars will come here, and not only from the label. We have already given cards to Katya Lel, DJ Smash, Natasha Rudova and all our artists.

Сайтътmost important thing in running a fitness club is a properly selected team: managers and coaches. The second thing is personal experience. I myself go here all the time, communicate with instructors and train with them. And the third is proper PR and marketing.

We have a lot of different innovations instore. For example, a biohacking room, where they will prescribe individual programs for rejuvenation and more successful functioning.

I don’t know if I’ve become more popular by opening a fitness club. But it’s good business for karma. Because you’re selling a healthy lifestyle, not alcohol or cigarettes.

Сайтътmain thing about Bulldozer Group is that the business is represented in different countries. I think there are about 8 or 9 places where we are growing. We are a multi-format business.

There are brands that we develop all over the world. For example, Gaia – it is Greek, but it works in Monaco and Dubai. Next year we will open in London.

I am more of a restaurateur. I have more projects in the restaurant business, and I spend a lot of time on them.

I’m a movie fan and producinghas been more of a hobby than a business. I always wanted to get into the movie world. I did that, worked there and realized I had achieved my goal – enough for now.

Being a director means dropping out of your life for a year and being fully engaged in a project. I can’t afford that yet.

If I had the perfect moviein my head, I would direct it. It would be a drama, of course, or a thriller.

Restaurants and fitness are not exactly polar spheres, they’re about services. In movies, however, different laws work. But producing is, in general, the correct organization of all processes. You could say that when you create a restaurant, you are producing it.

On principles: the qualities of a successful businessman and the pleasure of work

A businessman is a person who knows how to properly organize people and, most importantly, his time. In my opinion, this quality is either born or not. It is difficult to learn it.

Of course, I can call myself a successful businessman, sinceI earn money in business.

I probably hadmanagerial qualities from the beginning, but I developed them additionally.

When you are constantly doing something, you experiment with different formats. And somewhere there are fakapas, of course. If you see that you can’t change anything and the picture is unsuccessful, then you have to record losses, close the project and move on.

How can a successful projecthave grandiose failures? These are two incompatible things.

If I were doing a job I didn’t love, I’d probably go crazy. My work is a hobby, I enjoy it.

I don’t suffer at work, I get high from it. It’s not like I’m stressed out somewhere and then I need an outlet.

I can relax anywhere, anywhereI can find an opportunity to relax.