The global achievement of WWBridge in 2020 was the double growth and opening a new direction – GMA, at a time when many companies suffered from the coronavirus crisis and reduced volumes and production.  Read the interview with Ksenia Maksyukova, CEO and founder of WWBridge. In the interview, you will receive answers to the questions:

• key principles of WWBridge
• specifics of working in the certification niche for international companies
• most interesting and challenging projects that the company has worked with
• principles for building a Team
• plans for the company's development in the near future
  
  
  You can watch the video version of the interview by the link on our Youtube channel

- WWBridge has been operating quite successfully in the market for 11 years. What does the company do?

- The company is engaged in certification services, we help foreign clients to make documents, enter the Eurasian market.

- What principles do you use to build relationships with partners and customers, and what is key in these relationships?

- The fact is that we work mainly with international companies, and of course it is very important for them to have a contractor company that thinks at their own level. Therefore, the basic principle is openness, clarity, no tricks, no deception. For me, it is very important that people abroad see us as their own, and we live by this principle, it is clear that this is communication in a foreign language. This is also very important for communicating with customers. But the most important thing is the matching of values. That's why we always work very honestly.

- Do I understand correctly that the services you provide are practically turnkey? Full cycle of certification services.

- The fact is that we are not yet such a large company, and we value very much any request that comes from it. We work through the information very carefully with the client, find out what they need, what their needs are . And we give an answer to their needs – a commercial offer, and then we also provide competent advice in their own language. The service is turnkey, because we take care of all the testing and consulting. Communication with all bodies, laboratories, and the client is simple you don't have to do all this yourself.

- What are the company's principles?

- I wanted to create my own team with similar values, all this is based on the principles of openness, friendship, and respect for each other. Not only among themselves, but also to customers. We are building long-term relationships for the future.

- Can you tell us about your team, who you work with, and your employees?

- Regarding my team, this is one of my main achievements, the team was created over the years, it was not easy. I believe that people who work in the company have been working for quite a long time – these are very loyal people. We all know foreign languages, and I'm proud of it, I talk about it everywhere. It's about people who see the world differently.

- Since the pandemic began, lockdowns related to the coronavirus began, many companies have lost a lot of their turnover, some have gone bankrupt, closed down, and I know that at this time you have not just not closed down, but increased your turnover. What's the secret?

- In the pandemic, the idea came to hire representatives abroad and start to occupy a new niche and work in an international direction, and in fact. This idea started to energize me, I became interested, and I began to devote more time to it
I believe that the pandemic has given us new opportunities – to find cool people who can belong to themselves, but work for results.

- What are the features of the manager's work in this company, which is engaged in such a business?

- The most important features of a manager, I believe, are good communication skills, the ability to communicate, the ability to analyze information, and the most important thing is to be a purposeful person, have goals and achieve them.

- Can you tell us about the most interesting projects, partners, and clients you've worked with?

- I can say that every time I reach a certain ceiling, I sit and think about what else to come up with so that it is not only interesting, but also profitable. Because I believe that any cool idea should have an economic component that proves that your idea is effective and interesting.

The first step was so difficult, because the world of people from the Middle East was very interesting. Then we went there quietly every year, and it didn't seem scary, it was familiar. It's how you come up with an idea, how it feels scary, how interesting it is to meet in fear, and how it becomes familiar. And so – in almost all processes occur at me. Both in life and in business.

- For 11 years, there have probably been similar moments when it was scary, something didn't work out, they gave up,

- Yes, in general, when I feel uncomfortable, I need to build a new development plan, because I can't let everything stand and stagnate. I think that this is the basic principle of an entrepreneur, when you feel great from the fact that there are new tasks, difficulties, new challenges, you need to step into this fear. It seems to me that I came to this intuitively, because it is from my personality.

- Who or what inspires you at such moments?

- First of all, I am a person who likes to communicate with interesting people, and of course I always look for everything through people.
For me, these are my colleagues in my charity work in Rotary,
For me, these are strategic sessions in the company, when a person comes in who starts driving people and pulling out some ideas, the source of inspiration is people.

- How did you come up with the idea to start such a business, because this is such a narrow niche in business – certification?

- It was very important for me to realize myself as a person with international experience, my own languages. But the most important thing that I am always interested in is to participate directly in the process, make decisions and not be limited in anything. And so, having arrived in Moscow, at one time, I got a job in a company that was engaged in the same services. After a while, I realized that I was narrow, bored, stuffy there. So I opened mine own company.

- You have worked your way up from manager to CEO in a certification company.

- That's right, I went through the path, my first steps were calls to catalogs, to foreign companies, I began to succeed. And I realized that communication is interesting for me to work with, that the pool of my clients is unlimited, the industry of their activities is unlimited, and I saw a huge potential.

- How do you see the development of your company, what goals do you set, and where does the company go?

- A year ago, in the fall, we did a facilitation and I voiced my idea that in four years we should reach a billion, and of course from the outside it looks like where the billion comes from, we need to increase 20 times from the current one. I am guided by this principle, why a certain company has achieved such an idea, why someone once came up with such an idea, why they have the courage to move there, but I may not have it. I just realized that this question about business scaling is quite real, and this question is about a billion, having already lived with him for six months, I realized that this is a completely adequate goal for me, and I have a big task – to build a business in such a way that in 4 years I will really come to it.

- You have a company name World Wide Bridge – does this mean that you plan to work all over the world?

- I now realized that this question about scaling the business is quite real, and this question about a billion, having already lived with him for six months, I realized that this is a completely adequate goal for me, and I have a big task – to build a business in such a way that in 4 years I will really come to it. I plan to work with my team all over the world, expand representative offices in different countries, this is not just Europe. This is also Asia. America, Africa. And I really see all these points of development, bridges.

- These are big plans, big regions. What countries do you have partnership relations with today?

Today we work with Spain, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Scandinavia, and we have very good relations with Japan. This was my dream, and indeed from there we have a good order flow. We have orders from the United States, we have orders from South Africa, and an order from Singapore was recently confirmed. And with international destinations, we are generally unlimited, it can be any country, any company that exports, and which has resources, to organize your export.

- Ksenia, thank you so much for your answers, I wish you good luck in your business and prosperity of your company
Thanks!