Aesthetics, ethics, success

Once, Steve Jobs said, "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." It's human nature to strive to be the first, the best, to pursue beauty, youth, and success in business. Aleksandr Kasparov, the founder of the Beauté Concept brand, has managed to combine aesthetics, philosophy, and business in his work by creating a French network of plastic surgery clinics in Dubai.

I don't have a business education; I graduated from a conservatory in Geneva with a degree in music and was supposed to teach until retirement. But life turned out differently — I started working in banks in the IT field. I became acquainted with aesthetic medicine through dermatologist friends. In my personal life, I had mentors — I worked for them and learned a lot from them. These aren't big names like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, who has an entire country behind him. I've always been inspired by people I've directly worked with and met in life. The general philosophy passed on by my teachers is that no business is built in a day. Business is hard daily work, not a couple of hours a week. If it's not a scam or a bluff, it's impossible to do business for an hour a day and expect everything to go well. Without constant progress — daily, weekly, monthly — competitors will quickly overtake you.

About 10-12 years ago, I started a medical device distribution business worldwide and that's how I met my future partner for the clinics in Paris. We have our own French brands, one of which is called Aesthe-cure.

The clinic in Dubai opened in January this year. The process was complicated: we were let down by contractors, and had to change them several times. Finding a suitable premises was also not easy. But the most difficult part was obtaining a medical licence — we had to redo and adjust many things to meet all the requirements.

Beauté Concept  is a network of actively developing clinics. It turned out that our clinic in Dubai is located next to the Dessange salon, and during its creation, we became friends with their team. I invited them to Yerevan for a new project, they fell in love with the idea, and the next morning we were already flying to Paris. We have a preliminary partnership agreement with their beauty salons: our new clinics will open next to their centres, or Dessange will open next to us. This year we plan to open a second clinic in Dubai, unparalleled in the world. If we have time, we'll open clinics in Tbilisi and Yerevan, also in cooperation with Dessange. I have the status of a Dessange master partner.

Dessange is a huge network of salons with an annual turnover of about 2.5 billion euros. It's important for me to develop the concept of beauty clinics, maybe not on the same scale as Dessange with their 1,400 salons, but at least to have 50-60 clinics worldwide. The experience of collaborating with chain salons has proven to be very useful and interesting.

Next year, if circumstances prove favourable, we plan to open clinics in Tokyo, Seoul, and London. The Tokyo project in Ginza, where the rent is very high, is especially ambitious. These three clinics are our maximum programme for the next two years, and it's politically important for us.

Speaking of Dubai, it has its own specifics. On the one hand, high prices are a minus, especially when the business is just starting. But this same principle works in your favour when you start earning, and clients pay you at the same high prices. However, these prices are not always justified. I'll note that a lot of not entirely legal things are happening here, and I'm used to living by the law.

But if you approach business philosophically, my principle formulated by Gaius Julius Caesar  "divide and rule"  works great not only in this business but in other matters as well. In almost all of my businesses, I have partners who own exactly half of the shares, not 51% or 49%. Thanks to this, in many cases, I can calmly trust my partners without controlling the process too much, and everything goes well. There's no room for envy or deception; life is easier. Of course, by dividing the business in half, I give away part of the potential profit. But then the business begins to develop actively because the partner perceives it as their own and puts in maximum effort. I've concluded that the principle of "divide and rule" helps me develop faster and create new things better than if I did everything alone, owning even 80% of the business. Life is one, we can't be in different places at the same time. Therefore, we have to build relationships based on trust and a desire to develop a common cause together, to fight for success.

For business, its uniqueness compared to other clinics is important. "Beauté Concept" is a French clinic, our chief physician is a talented French surgeon, Lior. He's our friend and agreed to move with his family to Dubai and start building this clinic with us. We have a unique technology for Dubai of installing MIA breast implants in just 15 minutes under local anaesthesia through a small incision. Lior underwent special training and received official permission to perform such operations. Lior operated and continues to operate in Paris, but from September, he will be permanently in Dubai. Our dentist is also French. Mostly we have French or French-speaking doctors working for us.

. Our clinic adheres to a unique approach to women's beauty and does not recommend unnecessary procedures to our clients. We only suggest intervention when it's really needed for the patients. Unlike some doctors of dubious origin who can operate on the nose 4-5 times, even though medical protocols prohibit more than three.

We don't install implants that are unsuitable for a particular person. Right now we have a patient who, at her request, had implants that were too large and heavy for her body placed in another Dubai clinic. Now she needs a second surgery. Beauté Concept will never pander to a client's wishes if it could cause them harm.

Having a highly skilled doctor at the helm of the clinic is, of course, not the only achievement. I believe that the collaboration with Dessange is the main event that changes the direction of development. I'm learning a lot and understanding where I'm going. The idea to create a network, develop it, and then leave manual management is taking shape; I can already see the silhouette of what I've been striving for from the very beginning on the horizon.

I'm great at making contacts. It's easy for me to create friendship and trust, which has helped me achieve a lot in life. Despite all the difficulties and problems, I try to remain a soulful and open person. This requires strength and money because an open person is always ready to be useful. To avoid these problems, you need great strength, but I remain true to myself.

This is especially important at turning points. The most serious test happened at one of my first jobs in Geneva. I was working at a bank when the 2008 crisis hit. I went out into the street where there were about a thousand people who had also lost their jobs. We were all walking around, and the atmosphere was terrible. It was a serious fall because before that I had been climbing the career ladder, and yes, it was very difficult.

This was the first time in my life that I faced depression and despair. When you work for someone, and your job ceases to exist for reasons beyond your control, you get lost, not knowing what will happen next. Even when receiving unemployment benefits, a person who loves to act and think purposefully cannot remain idle. When they are left without work against their will, panic begins. I had to work on myself, prepare for new interviews, look for another job, change my profile. This was probably the first serious difficulty in my professional life.

You need to not give up and believe in your dream, that everything will work out. In Dubai, everything will definitely work if you put in the appropriate effort. First of all, there is a huge field for creativity here, for creating beautiful things, places, auras, and energy that attracts people and their opportunities. It's a freedom of thought and ideas; you decide to do something, analyse it, choose it, and start. When you have several projects, you have to live in several dimensions at the same time: choosing colours, furniture, doctors, organising processes. And when everything works out, it's a huge satisfaction.

If I had a time machine, I wouldn't change a single second of my life. I understand that all the difficulties I've experienced in 39 years have shaped me. These moments, even the difficult, ugly, and evil ones, and of course the good, kind ones, with or without love, created me, led me to success, tuned me, and made me move forward. If I changed even one second, it would be like pulling a brick out of the foundation of a large castle and destroying the entire structure. So I come to the conclusion that nothing needs to be changed, and everything that's happening now and will happen in the future is for me.