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Arkady Steimans

@arkady_steimans

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Co-Founder of CHANGER CLUB. I work with people who’ve already won and now building a dynasty. Dad. Cooking Afficianado. Lives between 🇲🇨🇦🇪🇱🇻

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Imagine that this small country once had around 1,200 manor houses and palaces.

Yesterday I visited Cesvaine Castle. Standing before it, you could almost believe you were in Scotland. But this is Vidzeme, Latvia.

It was built by Adolf von Wulf, whose ancestor came from Prussia and was ennobled by Sweden’s King Charles XII in 1704.

Over generations, the family acquired vast estates and built businesses. Yet what stays with me is not their wealth.

It is the lives behind these walls. Weddings, children, friendships, arguments, reconciliations. Generations who called this place home.

Latvia has always been shaped by many cultures: Latvians, Germans, Swedes, Russians, Jews and Poles. Different languages, faiths, traditions and ambitions. Their relationships were not always equal or peaceful, but each left something behind.

Then the twentieth century changed everything.

Latvia’s land reform of 1920 gave thousands of farming families a chance to own land, while the old aristocratic families lost most of their estates. War, displacement and occupation followed. Many descendants scattered across the world.

The castles remained. Much of the human memory faded.

I find that sad.

We can cherish Latvia’s independence and still honour the people of every background who helped shape this land.

Perhaps one day their descendants will return. Not to reclaim titles or privileges, but to bring their children, restore a family home, start a business, plant a tree.

And perhaps Latvia will flourish again in all its wonderful diversity.

Because a country's wealth is not only what it preserves. It is also the people it welcomes home. taken in Cesvaines Pils by @arkady_steimans

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7 days ago

The hardest part of succession is not transferring shares.
It is changing identity.

A son or daughter can inherit 20% of a company in one day. That does not make them an owner.

Being an owner is a job. You need judgment. You need to understand risk. You need to make decisions when there is no obvious answer. You need to feel responsibility for something bigger than yourself.

And the founder has an equally difficult transition.

For 30 years, success often came from control, speed, conviction and taking responsibility personally.

Then suddenly the same person is expected to step back, listen, allow mistakes and give someone else real authority.

These are almost opposite skills.

This is why succession cannot be solved only with lawyers, tax advisers, trusts and family constitutions. All of that matters, but it deals mostly with structure.

The real work is behavioural.

Young people need to spend time with other young people who are facing the same questions. They need to see peers who are already taking responsibility, investing, joining boards, challenging their parents and building their own judgment.

Founders need the same thing.

They need to see other founders who have managed to stop being the centre of every decision without losing their relevance in the family.

Something interesting happens when both generations are in the same environment.

A father can repeat the same idea to his son for five years and get nowhere.

Then the son sees another person his own age doing exactly that and suddenly the idea becomes normal.

The same happens with founders.

Sometimes another founder can ask one question that changes the way someone thinks about their children.

This is why Changer brings generations together rather than separating them into different programmes.

The next generation needs the experience of the senior generation.

The senior generation needs the energy and perspective of the next. Both need to change.

That is what succession is really about.

Changer Club’s next reception is in Dubai on October 22.

Perhaps it’s time to start building your legacy. taken in The St. Regis Downtown Dubai by @arkady_steimans

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11 days ago

Sometimes I think we have forgotten what an extraordinary land Latvia once was.

Today I visited Dundaga Castle, and it reminded me that the history of this place has always been much bigger than its geography.

In the 13th century, this was a world of military orders, bishops, castles and wealthy trading cities. The Livonian Brothers of the Sword eventually became the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, while Riga grew into one of the key trading centres of the eastern Baltic.

There is even a fascinating legend. After the destruction of the Knights Templar and the execution of their last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, in 1314, some believe that part of the Templars’ missing wealth may have travelled north to the Baltic — into the lands of another powerful military order.

There is no historical proof. But the legend sits intriguingly beside the extraordinary rise of Riga and Livonia that followed.

And then, centuries later, something even more improbable happened here.

The Duchy of Courland.

Under Duke Jacob Kettler, this tiny state built ships and manufactories, developed an international merchant fleet and sent its vessels across the Atlantic. Courland established possessions in Gambia and Tobago.

Think about the audacity of that.

Tiny Courland decided to play on the same global map as Europe’s great maritime powers.

And this is what fascinates me most about Duke Jacob:

He never confused the size of his country with the size of its possibilities.

Dundaga itself is a wonderful symbol of this strange history. The castle dates back to the 13th century, originally belonging to the Riga Cathedral Chapter and later to the Bishop of Courlandinside Courland, it belonged to a complicated political world connected with the autonomous territory of Pilten.

Standing inside those walls today, one thought stayed with me:

Latvia was never simply at the edge of the world. It was at the crossroads of worlds.

The Livonian Order. Hanseatic Riga. Poland-Lithuania. Sweden. Russia. Courland. The Atlantic. Tobago. Gambia.

And somewhere between history and legend — even the lost treasure of the Templars. by @arkady_steimans

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15 days ago

Georgia. A great country I love ❤️ and whose history reminds us that progress is never guaranteed.

Once, Georgia was one of the great Christian civilizations of the East. Under David the Builder and Queen Tamar, it entered its Golden Age. Then came the Mongols, Persia, the Ottoman and Russian Empires, and the Soviet Union.

By the early 2000s, independent Georgia had inherited an almost dysfunctional state: corruption, electricity shortages, poorly paid officials, and weak tax collection.

In 2003, the average salary was around $50 a month. The minimum wage was less than $10.

Then came the Rose Revolution.

Saakashvili, Bendukidze and their team didn't try to repair the old system. They started rebuilding it.

21 taxes were reduced to 7. Thousands of licenses and permits disappeared. State assets were privatized. The old traffic police was dismantled and rebuilt.

And then came the paradox: fewer taxes, lower rates, yet by 2008 tax revenues had risen to around 25% of GDP, roughly twice the pre-reform level.

By 2012, the average salary had reached roughly $430 a month. A pension of around $8 in 2003 had risen to roughly $75

Georgia moved from roughly 112th to 9th in the World Bank's Doing Business rankings.📈

I watched this momentum firsthand.

In 2012, I invited Mikheil Saakashvili to speak at my conference in Riga.

I still remember him on stage: energy, speed, and absolute conviction that Georgia could become the next Singapore.

There were around 200 entrepreneurs in the room. Rolls-Royces and Bentleys outside.

When he finished, the room stood and applauded for several minutes.

But applause costs nothing.

What happened a few hours later was more interesting.

People from that same room were already discussing and signing documents to establish businesses and branches in Georgia.

That was the real KPI of the reforms.

Georgia wasn't selling its past.

It was selling its future.

Returning to Georgia today left me with mixed feelings.

The people are the same: warmth, dignity, hospitality. But I didn't feel the acceleration I remember from 2012.

That's not an economic diagnosis. It's a personal impression. by @arkady_steimans

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a month ago

MY FATHER BECAME A CAPITALIST BEFORE THE SOVIET UNION STOPPED BEING COMMUNIST.

And I watched it happen.

In 1989, my father, Simon Steiman, created PERA, one of the early Soviet-foreign joint ventures.

Then came R.T Mīlgrāvis in Latvia.

Both ventures were built with partners from West Germany. But these facts don't really explain what I remember.I remember our home.

It was constantly full of foreigners.

West Germans coming and going. Conversations I couldn't always understand. New ideas. New opportunities.

I remember my father learning German.

And, most of all, I remember him constantly explaining to me what was happening.

He believed we were living through an extraordinary historical moment.

The Soviet economic model was dying.

The borders were opening. The West was coming closer.

Private enterprise was becoming possible.

And capitalism, which Soviet citizens had been taught for generations to distrust, was going to change our world.

My father didn't just observe that moment. He ran toward it. It's difficult today to understand how radical that was.

Today, becoming an entrepreneur means registering a company, opening a bank account and perhaps risking some capital.

For my father, entrepreneurship meant challenging almost everything the system in which he had grown up had taught him.

Private ownership was suspect.

Profit was almost a dirty word.

Foreign capital came from the ideological enemy.

And the institutions of the old system hadn't disappeared.

At one point, my father was detained by the KGB for ten days.

Yet he continued.

He learned German.

He built relationships with West Germans.

He brought them into our home.

He built businesses with them.

And he kept telling: The world is changing.

That is probably the most important memory I have of him.

Not a particular company. Not a particular deal.
Not money. Momentum.

The feeling that history was moving and that our job was not to hide from it, but to understand where it was going and move faster. Don't fear historical disruption, lead it.

A final note, father always thought to build systems aligned with State. That's why instead of smuggling popular that time, Join Ventures by @arkady_steimans

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2 months ago

Sunday School may be one of the most underrated investments you can make in a child's future.

In this photo, you don't see future billionaires. Future professors. Future prime ministers.

Not yet. What you do see is something far rarer: children growing up in an environment that teaches them life is built not only on competition, but on love, responsibility, service, and community.

Scott Galloway often makes a point supported by decades of research:

The strongest predictor of happiness isn't wealth. It's the quality of your relationships.

The same conclusion comes from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest-running study on human happiness, spanning more than 85 years.

Its conclusion is remarkably simple:

The happiest and healthiest people are those who build deep, meaningful relationships.

Not IQ. Not prestigious degrees. Not inherited wealth.
Relationships. That is exactly what Sunday School cultivates.

Not simply faith. It teaches children to:

wait their turn;

respect their elders;

care for those younger than themselves;

help without expecting anything in return;

apologise sincerely;

practise gratitude;

become part of something greater than their own ego.

These are skills that no amount of money can buy later in life.

We constantly tell our children:

"Study hard so you can earn a good living."

Far less often do we tell them:

"Learn to become someone others are grateful to have in their lives."

Yet those are precisely the people everyone wants beside them:

a spouse;

a trusted friend;

a business partner
There is another paradox.

Today's children spend thousands of hours in front of screens.

Algorithms teach them to consume attention.

Sunday School teaches them to give it.

Algorithms whisper:

"You are the centre of the universe."

Sunday School gently reminds them:

"You matter - but so do the people around you."

The older I get, the more convinced I become:
We can leave our children money.
We can leave them businesses.
We can leave them property.

But if we fail to leave them character, none of those assets are likely to endure. Sunday School is best to build character by @arkady_steimans

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3 months ago

The biggest misconception about Cyprus?

People think it's an island. It isn't.

It's a business model.

For more than 3,000 years, every major empire wanted this small piece of land. Egyptians. Persians. Romans. Byzantines. Venetians. Ottomans. The British.

Not because Cyprus was the richest.
Because it sat at the intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa.

History rewards crossroads.

Three thousand years ago, Cyprus exported copper. Today, it exports something far more intangible: legal certainty, shipping, financial services, tourism, technology, real estate, and access to the European Union.

For a country of just over a million people, that's an extraordinary reinvention.

But every business model has side effects.

Cyprus has healthy public finances, one of the lowest debt levels in Southern Europe, and one of the fastest-growing economies in the eurozone over the last few years. +3.8%

The unofficial operating system?

Σιγά σιγά "Siga siga."

Slowly. No rush.

If it happens today, wonderful.

If it happens tomorrow... well, tomorrow is also a beautiful day.

To an entrepreneur raised on quarterly targets, it can feel maddening.

To a civilization that has survived Assyrians, Romans, Ottomans, the British Empire, financial crises and the division of the island...

...urgency simply doesn't look as important.

Perhaps that's why Cyprus fascinates me.

It lives with two opposing truths.

It is globally connected but locally unhurried.

Financially sophisticated but socially traditional.

A gateway to the future that still enjoys a three-hour lunch.

There is wisdom in that.

A society can become so comfortable monetizing its position that it forgets to reinvent itself.

The greatest lesson Cyprus offers isn't about taxes or sunshine.

It's this:

Your greatest asset isn't what you produce.

It's the position you occupy in the minds, networks and lives of other people.

The crossroads have always been more valuable than the destination. by @arkady_steimans

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3 months ago

I used to think happiness was something you arrive at.

Build enough. Earn enough. Win enough.
And one day it would be there waiting.

I was wrong.

Happiness is not an event.

It’s a structure. And like wealth, health, or family, it compounds through principles.

The older I get, the more I see that life is less about chasing highs and more about protecting what keeps you whole. for me, these are the 10 principles:

1. Gratitude
If you cannot value what is already in your hands, nothing new will ever feel enough.

2. Learning
A mind that stops growing starts shrinking.

3. Mental flexibility
Life respects adaptation, not rigidity.

4. Giving compliments
To genuinely see beauty or strength in others is a sign of abundance, not weakness.

5. Awareness
Most suffering comes from living everywhere except the present.

6. Kindness
Not softness. Strength under control.

7. Meaning and values
Without them, success becomes noise.

8. Wins and beliefs
Small victories shape identity.
And identity shapes destiny.

9. Plans
A future that excites you creates life force.

10. Energy
Everything depends on it.
Without energy, even blessings feel heavy.

The strange truth:

Many people spend decades building financial capital.

Far fewer build emotional capital.

And in the end, one without the other feels incomplete.

That may be the most expensive mistake of all.

System coming from honourable
@isaacpintosevich by @arkady_steimans

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4 months ago

Monaco is often perceived as a symbol of wealth, casinos, Formula One, and tax advantages. Yet the history of the Grimaldi dynasty tells a very different story: one of survival, family struggles, and the remarkable ability of a tiny nation to remain independent while surrounded by far greater powers.

The founding myth of Monaco centers on Francesco Grimaldi, known as “Il Malizia” (“The Cunning One”). In 1297, according to tradition, he disguised himself as a Franciscan monk and requested shelter at the fortress of Monaco. Once inside, he drew his sword, opened the gates to his men, and seized the stronghold.

The Grimaldis still mark this event as the beginning of their rule. Today, it is immortalized on Monaco’s coat of arms, which features two monks holding swords.

Over the following seven centuries, the Grimaldi family transformed a rocky outcrop of barely two square kilometers into one of the most recognizable centers of wealth and influence in the world. They survived wars, invasions, revolutions, financial crises, succession disputes, and the collapse of entire European powers.

Yet the deeper lesson of Monaco is not about creating wealth. Many families have accumulated fortunes greater than those of the Grimaldis. Most eventually disappeared.

The true achievement of the Grimaldi dynasty has been preserving relevance and identity across more than 700 years. Their story reminds us that the greatest challenge is rarely building capital. The far harder task is preserving a family across generations. 🇲🇨👨‍🍳 But TOP recipe you can use for own dynasty: if you have a daughter, but want your family name to continue - push her husband to take her family name (values) or no 💰 it should be a family-by law. It works in Monte Carlo since 1454 🍹 taken in Monte-Carlo, Monaco by @arkady_steimans

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5 months ago

Soulful friends are humans who are given by God. They always love you and motivated not by your capabilities but by true you, as a human being. They pump ⛽ you with kindness and care. That's why even 5 minutes with true friend gives immense relief. Where to get such friend ? Love and care about people, and you will definitely be awarded with own soulful friend. A true friend is always pushing you up in growth trajectory. That's why you will never have a true friend alcohol or drug addict. But the caliber of your friends define the community you are in. Thus : elevate your community and take care about people. Your true-power-friend is around the corner. With @leonidlozner taken in Riga, Latvia by @arkady_steimans

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6 months ago

Many ask, how does the Changer Evolution Program work - see Brooks Newmark’s story, @brooksnewmark, who came in as an investment banker and UK politician, and after 4 years at Changer built and listed his own UNICORN 🦄. Changer method that adds intellectual pressure helps to find this inner fire to solve meaningful world problems. And ultimately build ultra wealth as a reward. Join us in Monaco and Dubai. by @arkady_steimans

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6 months ago

While preparing for a trip to Monaco, I have discussed today a 1B$ deal with members of Changer Club. Something profound struck me: what a jump in caliber of discussions in comparison to last two years ?!

I started noticing a pattern. Every real jump in my life didn’t come from a new strategy, a book, or working harder. It came from entering a different community.

A room where conversations were on a different level. Where people were solving problems I wasn’t even thinking about yet. Where what felt “big” to me was just normal for them.

And the interesting part, nobody was teaching anything directly. But after a few hours there, you start asking yourself different questions.

Not “how do I improve this?”
But “why am I even doing this at this scale?” THIS MY FAVOURITE QUESTION, since then. I ask it to all Changer club candidates.

That shift is subtle, but it changes everything.

Because most people don’t have a strategy problem. They have an environment problem.

You can be disciplined, smart, hardworking and still stuck. Simply because the people around you operate within the same assumptions.
Same pace. Same ambitions. Same limits.

And you don’t even notice it, because it feels normal.

Until you step into a different environment.

Then suddenly your “normal” feels small.

Not wrong. Just small.

And from that moment, it’s very hard to go back.

That’s why growth, in my experience, is less about adding something… and more about changing where you stand.

Because the right environment doesn’t push you. It pulls you into a different version of yourself.

If it's been quite sometime you have not heard a question ,,Why on earth you do what you do ? You definitely can operate on a different level,, - time reconsider people you spend time with and call me 😁 by @arkady_steimans

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7 months ago