Reverse the Process: Turning an Industry Problem Into a Business

In this episode of Business Owners Tell All: What It Takes, Boris Zhukov, Co-Founder and CEO of LetYouKnow®, shares how his background in economics, statistics, and mathematics helped him build a marketplace designed to reverse the traditional buying process.

Boris explains that his vision goes beyond simply making car buying more convenient. His goal is to shift transactional power toward consumers, allowing them to research the market, determine what they are willing to pay, and instantly discover whether a seller will accept their offer. Convenience and eliminating negotiation are benefits, but Boris repeatedly emphasizes that they are byproducts of the larger objective: empowering consumers to take control of transactions and save money.

The conversation also explores the strategic challenge of getting dealerships to participate in a model that initially appears to compete with their existing sales. Boris explains that LetYouKnow was intentionally structured to provide incremental business rather than replace a dealer's normal sales channels. Dealers establish hidden pricing thresholds that operate automatically, allowing transactions to occur without manually reviewing individual bids. The platform also generates demand data from unsuccessful bids, which businesses can use to evaluate pricing and potential demand.

One of the larger strategic themes of the episode is building for expansion from the beginning. Boris says LetYouKnow intentionally started with automotive because of its complexity. By solving for a difficult industry first, the company could create infrastructure capable of expanding into restaurants, hotels, storage, services, and potentially virtually any other industry without continually rebuilding the underlying system.

Boris also discusses how the company's strategy has evolved since 2019. One significant lesson came from initially expecting dealerships to actively manage their pricing within the system. He eventually concluded that this was neither feasible nor desirable. Feedback from dealership owners, including some who became shareholders, pushed the company toward creating a hands-free, automated system instead.

That feedback also revealed an opportunity Boris had not originally anticipated: the value of unsuccessful bids as demand data. Rather than seeing only completed transactions, businesses could potentially understand transactions they could have had at different price points and use that information to improve pricing decisions.

The discussion ultimately moves from process management into leadership. Boris says one of the skills he had to develop was recognizing individual team members' strengths and weaknesses and positioning people accordingly. He credits much of LetYouKnow's evolution to surrounding himself with experienced business owners, shareholders, and advisors who could challenge assumptions and contribute practical expertise.

When asked what it really takes to be a business owner, Boris identifies optimism, perseverance, hard work, honest evaluation of progress, and the willingness to keep solving difficult problems. Rather than viewing obstacles as evidence that something is going wrong, he argues that genuinely difficult problems can be evidence that a company has reached the frontier where meaningful innovation happens.

Key Episode Notes

Core theme: Process Management / Strategy

Major discussion points:

• Boris's economics, mathematics, and statistics background became foundational to building LetYouKnow's marketplace and matching methodology.
• His motivation is not simply eliminating an unpleasant dealership experience. He wants consumers to control transactions and get better deals instantly.
• LetYouKnow's model is designed so businesses establish hidden thresholds rather than manually accepting or rejecting individual bids.
• Boris views the platform as a source of incremental business, rather than a replacement for a company's existing sales process.
• Missed bids create valuable demand data by showing businesses transactions that potentially could have occurred at other prices.
• The long-term vision extends beyond automotive into restaurants, services, hospitality, storage, nonprofits, and other industries.
• Boris uses opportunity cost as a framework for strategic decision-making and expansion.
• Starting with automotive was intentional because solving for a complicated industry created infrastructure that could later support simpler industries.
• A major operational pivot was moving away from expecting dealerships to continually manage their own pricing toward creating a largely hands-free system.
• Dealer and shareholder feedback became an important source of product and process innovation.
• Boris learned that leadership requires understanding people's individual strengths and putting them in positions where those strengths can produce the best results.
• He believes meaningful progress should be measured over longer intervals rather than expecting visible results every day.
• Difficult problems aren't necessarily warning signs. Boris sees some of the hardest obstacles as evidence that a company is working on something genuinely innovative.

Memorable Quotes

“I want to empower people to take control of these transactions.”

“The focus is actually empower you to take control of those transactions to save money. Everything else comes as a byproduct.”

“Opportunity cost, you do this, well, you cannot do something else.”

“We started with the most difficult industry.”

“I all of a sudden have something else, which is the transactions I could have had.”

“You have to recognize who's really good at what, and then position them in that fashion.”

“You gotta have this sense of optimism that it will work out.”

“You gotta keep that optimism inside of you, and then you gotta persevere.”

“When you look back... you should see big progression.”

“Whenever you hit a wall, that's great.”

“Look at your challenges as almost like a benchmark... you're on the right track.”

Strongest Quote for Episode Promotion

“Whenever you hit a wall, that's great. That's when you should persevere, that's when you should actually have that optimism that things will work out.”

That quote captures the What It Takes theme particularly well because it connects Boris's approach to strategy, innovation, perseverance, and business ownership in one thought.