How professionals work. Marina Rozhkova, founder and director of the eponymous branding agency

And again, a high-class specialist in the domestic information industry shares working habits under the heading "How professionals work . "

The story of Marina Rozhkova begins in Kazakhstan in 1984 and has been going on in Moscow since 2001.

In 2008, with a partner, Mikhail Fadeev, Marina founded her own agency: “Information and Analytical Agency of Marina Rozhkova”. The main focus of the company is in informational support of second-tier consumer electronics brands.
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Marina is not embarrassed that she is considered the most controversial PR person in modern Russia.

Current Location:
Moscow

Current place of work:
The IAA branding agency of Marina Rozhkova , in which we are engaged in aggressive and effective raising of young brands in the field of IT-Telecom.

One word that best describes how you work:
In a word, I will not do - I like the French term “total Bérézina”. If you simply translate into Russian, it means "complete n *** n."

How many hours a day do you work?
From eight to sixteen hours. In general, I believe that a person closer to 30 years and older can effectively and successfully work with his head only if he has been sleeping for at least eight hours a day. There are situations when you have to sleep for five hours or less for several days in a row. But then the head begins to refuse - it is extremely problematic to think normally and make decisions adequately.

I do not like people who proudly declare in every interview - they say, I move mountains non-stop and can spend a whole three or four hours to sleep for a whole week. This is a complete lie! The subtext of such statements is obvious, to sleep more is the lot of the weak-willed wimps, and I am not like this / that, I am a successful mega-busy expert snapped up. Nobody will check such intimate information, and few people will stand before a chance to caress your loved one in public.

Current mobile device:
I use the iPhone 5S. I am often reproached for promoting Android smartphones, tablets and other second-line gadgets, and I myself go with Apple products. Basically, such reproaches come from some particularly "reputable" representatives of the telecom industry. Unfortunately, such critics are poorly versed in marketing and do not understand that it is one thing to promote a product, and another to use it as a consumer. For successful promotion you need to feel and understand well the goals, needs and possibilities of the target audience. It is not necessary to be a representative of this audience. Judge for yourself - I actively promote smartphones with high-capacity batteries. But I myself will never buy such a model for myself - I simply do not have such a need.

Or another example - remember the director of the legendary children's animated series "Well, wait a minute!", Comrade Kotinochkin. If you look at his photo, you will see the stern smoked man. Who shot brilliant kids cartoons. As I understand it, in life Kotyonchkin spent time mostly at work, in the society of adults, and did not master the profession of a child psychologist and did not nurse children in kindergarten. But you yourself know very well the result.

Current computer:
MacBook Air and iPad Mini. I tried to use Android and Windows. But in my heart I am still a fan of Apple devices and systems, this is really the coolest computer products. And I do not have serious financial restrictions to deny myself the purchase of Apple devices. A completely opposite example is my business partner, co-founder of the agency. We bought him a MacBook, on which he installed Windows and hooked up Microsoft's red mouse. A person is simply allergic to Mac OS. In the end, he gave me a MacBook and bought a regular Dell laptop with Windows, which is immensely pleased.

Without any applications, programs, utilities you can not live?
Since I’m a telecom business, my main tools are Gmail, Microsoft Office, and Mozilla Firefox. On the smartphone, I actively use Viber and WhatsApp. I actively communicate in Facebook, and in general social networks, sometimes I look at Instagram. I read a lot of books on the iPhone through iBooks. From time to time I launch “Find My Friends” to keep track of my relatives and friends. I actively use the program “State services” - it is very convenient to watch fines, pay for utility services and much more. A great tool for people in the modern metropolis. Finally, driving a car across huge Moscow without a navigator is often impossible, it's easy to get lost. My choice is “Yandex.Navigator”.

Which life hack helps you save time?
First, I always keep in mind the ultimate goal of any process that I am engaged in at the moment, be it a phone call or an email. Secondly, it is the ability to bring this goal brought up over the years to the first place, above the momentary emotions and distractions. Although the above can hardly be called life hacking, it’s rather the quality gained by years of experience. And also - the ability to always think about the person on the other end helps me. If I write a letter, I immediately assess what I want to convey, and how the other person can react. I put myself in the place of my interlocutor and predict whether I will get what I need or not. The ability to put yourself in the place of a contractor, counterparty, own employee, with whom you communicate at the moment, a client, an end user is a very valuable, but extremely rare quality in the modern generation.

What kind of to-do manager do you use?
I have three to-do managers, Notepad, Google Calendar, and Gmail. I believe that complex time management systems are from the evil one. All that a small business needs, which I represent as my agency, is Word, Excel and email. Elementary ownership of these programs allows you to replace any to-do and project manager. After all, we do not have global processes in which hundreds of departments and contractors are involved, all these complex systems are simply useless. The cost of introducing them, supporting them and forcing everyone to use them is more than the add value in our business of similar systems.

A small business manager email replaces any to-do sheets. I leave unread all the letters that I need to process, react. If I react, then I transfer the task to the other side and mark the letter as read. As a result, I walk through the list of unread emails several times a day, and then I look through the entire mail about once a month in search of hanging threads. My business partner, who has been working in the portable gadget industry for almost 20 years, still records everything on paper — not even stickers. E-mail and paper - that's all he needs.

As one of our clients said in the early 2000s, all sorts of to-do lists and portable organizers allow an already organized person to become even more organized. If you are a dolt and a dupe in life, then no to-do manager will help you. And I'm sure of that.

What do you listen when you work?
Classical music. When you need to focus on documents or financial matters, I prefer complete silence so as not to be distracted and not disperse attention. And my business partner is a music slag consumer - Leningrad and Enjoykin's creativity is smarting around the group.

What are you reading now?
My daughter is already four years old, so I actively read books on parenting, child psychology. You will not believe it, but it helps in communicating with the staff of our agency. Often, relationships with employees resemble the “mother-child” model; often adults seem to be not shy to behave like children.

Which book from the last read was remembered the most?
"French children do not spit food" and "How to talk, so that children listen, and how to listen, so that children talk." The first book is a very important piece of reading about how to set and defend the boundaries between people. People very often violate information and personal boundaries, which may even affect the work and lead to unpleasant consequences.

From my own example, I can say that in a small company, the personal often interferes with the worker. And I, the manager, are being dragged into solving the personal problems of the employees. And the workers suddenly perceive me not just as a leader with specific goals and objectives, but also as a girlfriend. A person who can complain about the events of his personal life. As a result, such a "mess" in my head can interfere with employees and I work normally. In addition, "French children do not spit food" - a great book for women who do not focus only on family, husband and children, domestic issues. In general, those who realize themselves professionally.

“How to speak, so that the children listen, and how to listen, so that the children speak” - this is a real storehouse of tools in order to very quickly convey to people their own thoughts while saving their time. And talk so that you heard the first time. This is the key moment in the company, where at least 10-20 people work. If you explain the essence of the question in five minutes, and each time you spend at least ten minutes on it - get ready for the fact that every day you will lose up to two or three extra hours on useless conversations.

Again, one should not be skeptical about the fact that this is a children's book. Believe me, what works effectively with children is also great for many seemingly adults.

Do you use e-readers or prefer paper books?
I prefer e-books, because paper versions are trivially inconvenient to carry in a women's bag, where thousands of little things are crammed together, and also an iPhone with an iPad Mini. Additional even a hundred grams - believe me, very strongly felt and add weight to my purse.

How long do you sleep?
I have already answered this question - about eight hours. Sleep is the best means of restoring brain activity for a person who is actively working with this very brain. A person who thinks a lot and does not sleep much is like a loader who eats little. Well, people can not eat a little and still have enough strength for intense hard physical work. So it is with us: the main tool is the brain, which needs to be fed with nutrients, given rest and recovery time.

Are you an owl or a lark?
By nature I am a lark, but because of work I have to be an owl. Many things do not require delay and sometimes urgent tasks end after midnight. For example, I record this interview at 00:15. If I lived as I wanted, I would have been sleeping peacefully in bed for an hour. However, during a busy working day, you do not always have time to do everything you want, and everything that is required. In addition, I like to do a number of things exactly in the evening, when employees disappear from the information space and stop distracting me with routine, routine questions and chores. So the easiest way to focus on thinking about, say, strategic objectives.

How do you have breakfast?
Like my child, in the mornings, I prefer plain oatmeal with milk. However, the husband does not understand such “calm breakfasts” and therefore always gives me strong aromatic coffee so that I “get involved” more quickly. However, I myself sometimes like to indulge myself with something unusual, like thermonuclear coffee with cardamom.

How do you spend your time on the way to work / from work?
As the owner of the company, I chose an office for myself, which is literally two crossings from the house. Even in the toughest traffic jams in the evening, my travel time does not exceed 15-20 minutes. So I twist the wheel, listen to the latest news on Business FM ... I can make a maximum of one or two calls, there is just no time left for anything else.

What advice you have ever been given can you convey to others?
The higher you rise professionally and achieve success, the more people will criticize you and give you “invaluable” advice. A standard, gray man cannot achieve major, visible success. Success is always extraordinary, the ability to stand out from the crowd and do as you see fit, not paying attention to anyone around. It is not even about envious people, sometimes people are simply not able to understand the essence of what you are doing, if you are doing things new, non-standard, revolutionary. Chewing, convincing each counter-cross - life is not enough. Long ago, I voiced the former head of my partner, voiced the thought-advice (somehow), which is very helpful in life and which I can safely convey along the chain. It sounds like this: "Camels are cf. * t, and the caravan moves on."