Kristiyan Popov - Co-founder of Digital Marketing Associates

A risk taker, Kristiyan Popov, has combined ambition with what he has learned from the challenges risk involves and believes he can use that to help others.

What’s your story?

I have always loved to take risks and live day by day. This gave a strong boost to my entrepreneurial spirit and helped me start many successful businesses. Working behind a desk has never been for me and entirely my fear of this job has helped me become the entrepreneur I am now.

I believe that I can help people to achieve more and follow their dreams, because over time I managed to overcome the biggest challenges for any entrepreneur and this is our comfort zone.

What excites you most about your industry?

I am now building a digital agency that helps small and medium-sized businesses to develop their digital presence and take advantage of the opportunities that the digital world offers.

What excites me most about my industry is that it is very dynamic and changes every day. This means that I have to change with it so that I do not lag behind. It’s exciting how every day I can learn something new and apply it in my work.

What drives you in business to push beyond what other people consider normal?

Of course, this is my ambition. I’ve never been a small thinker and I’ve always wanted to achieve great things. This can sometimes be an obstacle for the people around me, because sometimes my vision scares them. In order to be able to achieve great things, we need to think differently and completely change our perspective on what is possible and what is normal.

Ambition is the thing that helped me understand that I can lead a normal life with the minimum monthly salary, but it will definitely never bring me the excitement I am looking for in life.

What have been the most useful skills you have learnt and applied in your journey?

Definitely, the most important skill I was able to acquire and apply during my adventure was being able to make decisions quickly and think outside the box. This is an extremely important skill when trying to build a stable business because sometimes the decisions you will have to make are not very easy and it takes balls to make sacrifices.

If we want to achieve great things, sometimes we have to make great sacrifices.

What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?

The most valuable advice I have ever received is to never give up on my dreams. Interestingly, I received this advice not from anyone else, but from myself.

I had to go through many difficulties and learn many things in order to build the necessary will to move forward, even when there seemed to be no hope.

The most important thing is patience because there is no specific deal or action that will make us rich. What will make us rich is a set of actions and decisions that we have taken in the most difficult moments.

Who inspires you?

It may sound ridiculous, but the person who has always inspired me is myself. I have a lot of respect for my achievements because I know what I went through to do all this. I know the difficulties I have overcome and the difficult decisions I have made. I remember every difficult moment and moment of despair I had. I remember every refusal and every loss.

My hero is my version in 10 years. Everything I will have achieved and everything I will have gone through. The difficulties I overcome are my biggest inspiration.

What have you learnt recently that blew you away?

Every day I learn the same lesson and every day I feel like I’m hearing this for the first time: “You build your own future!”

I often think about where I will be in 10 years and I am sure that many of you are also thinking about this. Right after that, I remember that it’s entirely up to me. If I want to be in a better situation – I will take the necessary action. Every day I get up thinking that the decisions I make today will decide my future tomorrow.

If you had your time again, what would you do differently?

The truth is, if I had that opportunity, I would change a lot of things. This is due to the fact that I have already experienced these things and I know what the end result will be. More importantly, I have already learned these lessons.

If I could, I would change a lot of things, but then I risk losing the knowledge and experience I have at the moment. This is something that scares me a lot, because I am happy with the situation I am in now.

How do you unwind?

Honestly, my main focus right now is to have fun. I want to travel the world and see all the things I’ve never seen before. I want to do all these things that I haven’t done before. This is the purpose of life – to have fun and live it the way we want. Interestingly, the meaning of life is determined by death.

If we lived forever, then nothing would make sense, because in the given moment of your life you will have done everything possible. Then there will be no excitement to achieve our goals.

What is a major mindset change, belief shift or ‘ah ha’ moment that you’ve experienced in relation to your business?

Stop chasing money and it will come to you. This is extremely true because many people focus entirely on money alone. How to make more money? How to charge more money to your customers?

When people are focused on money, they forget about the quality of the product or service and how satisfied the customer actually is. When we focus on offering a unique experience and quality product/service, then customers and money will only come to us.

Everyone in business should read this book:

Millionaire Success Habits – Dean Graziosi