by Aleksey Vayner

“A healthy disregard for the impossible…that’s a really good thing” – Larry Page, Founder of Google

Impossible is Nothing

I would encourage you to read the following “truth-or-fiction” account of the viral Impossible is Nothing video as you would read anything on the Internet – with a dose of skepticism. After all, it’s just one person’s (i.e., my) biased interpretation of events, and as always, the accuracy of information you read depends not only on author’s bias, but also that author’s knowledge of and proximity to the event he or she covers.

In 2006, while I was a junior at Yale University, I created a video entitled Impossible is Nothing, which I intended to play for a handful of people. This video was leaked, went viral, and the rest is history.  As the competition for clicks and visitors among website writers had intensified the “outdo-the-other-blogs-with-a-more-outrageous-story” attitude, and this led some (many) bloggers to write stories about me often so exaggerated as to lose touch with reality, thereby creating an online ‘Aleksey Vayner’ persona radically different from the person I am in real life.  Many such articles accused me of exaggerating my athletic abilities, lying, even plagiarizing. These allegations, combined with some absurd statements attributed to me (the ones I never made), make me look like a complete jackass.

The reality is, thankfully, far better, so I feel that some clarification is in order.

On a more serious note, I humbly recognize my myriad flaws, but I strive to be honest, to maintain high moral standards, and to remain personable and transparent. I am grateful to have come from a very modest background of hard-working and well-educated parents, who instilled in me the importance of education and honest labor. I am happily married. I don’t smoke anything, don’t gamble, and do not indulge in alcohol. I do believe there is a power infinitely higher than humans at work in the universe, and as such I’d be remiss not to take responsibility for mistakes I made, take ownership of what I say – and for the thousands of people who have emailed me since 2006 to “say it like it is,” – add the facts, clarification and transparency to what has been written and said about Impossible is Nothing video. Basically, set the record straight.

[Nb: A good friend of mine, who's opinion I highly respect, mentioned that the  preceding paragraph bears a striking resemblance to the sentiments expressed in the Alcoholics Anonymous literature - something I know nothing about, so this resemblance is coincidental and my position on AA and related organizations is strictly neutral.]

Much Overdue

To my friends, colleagues, and everyone who has written to me with words of support during turbulent times, I am grateful beyond what simple words can describe – and I apologize for my delay in making this much overdue statement.

Why the delay?

Initially I thought claims and accusations against me were so outlandish, no one would believe them. I was wrong. Then I turned my attention to retaining and occasionally rebuilding important personal relationships I’ve developed with people over the years. This effort was precious, but had zero overlap with the Internet so negative perception “on the net” endured.

I also chose to focus on my family and providing for that family…and so years flew by and this page remained unwritten…until now.

Failed Tribute to a Great Martial Arts Master

Impossible is Nothing video was first and foremost an unsuccessful attempt to honor the memory of my late martial arts master, world judo champion Radomir Kovacevic, who died of cancer in the June of 2006. He trained me throughout high school and significantly impacted my life – not only in my pursuit of mastering martial arts, but also in other sports and my worldview. Larger than life, he was a man with a huge heart and love for his family, insatiable appetite for learning, profound understanding of the human psyche, tremendous martial skill, absolutely brutal & trying training methods, and skill to mold an athlete in any sport into a champion – if that athlete could embrace and withstand Radomir’s training regimen.

In June of 2006 when Radomir passed away from cancer I was inspired to pay tribute to the man who influenced me so much by creating a video and using the sports I trained in as the backdrop to my script…Anyone growing up without a father can probably relate to the feeling of gratitude toward a person they saw as a father-figure, one who had a strong positive influence in their life… My acting in the video was over-the-top in an attempt to reflect Radomir’s extreme personality and his philosophy on life, so taken out of context, the video made me appear self-centered—a stark contrast to the sentiments of humility and gratitude that inspired me to create it. Content of the video was usual to those who trained regularly with Radomir, but was definitely hard to digest for the unexpected secondary audience.

A good example of one statement I caught hell for was one of Radomir’s favorite – “ignore the losers.” Radomir believed that there are 3 types of people in the world; spectators, participants and winners. Who you are, and whom you choose to associate with, is up to you. This perspective was new to me when I started training with Radomir, but over the years I’ve grown to appreciate the depth and importance of this insight beyond the few short provocative words through which it is expressed.

From Bad to Worse

If my video dedication to Radomir was a failure, I made things worse by including a link to this video at the bottom of the resume I submitted to investment banks during my junior year in school. The idea was stupid, and I only have youth to blame for faulty reasoning. As I explicitly acknowledged earlier, I am a jackass in many respects. I did think (and still believe) that advanced athletes, if they have relevant skills, make for better employees because of their overall higher energy, extensive experience with teamwork, discipline and time management– but to assume that managers would get all that from a completely irrelevant video was a big stretch. When a certain investment bank leaked the video, I became a target of an Ivy League gossip blog that quickly turned the video  into a viral phenomenon.

Avalanche

Needless to say many people close to my family were dismayed at how gossip blogs and similar websites presented information, and several successful attorneys, also friends of the family, suggested I sent out cease-and-desist emails to several websites that were particularly zealous and distorted in their coverage.

Knowing what I know now about social media, this was a big mistake. The cease-and-desist letters only fueled the bloggers. Having been able to provoke and generate direct contact from their target was like pouring kerosene into burning fire. What might have blown over with few nasty stories now was ensured to receive extensive coverage.

Truth or Fiction

While many of attributions were too outlandish to comment on, several require comments:

Lying on the resume

One should probably not write being “CEO” of a company one owns and runs on the resume when one is still a student in college – however that’s exactly what I did. In high school I managed a little bit of money for a client, and for legal and tax purposes, formed a limited liability company of which I was the founder and CEO. Having had limited relevant work besides this experience, and for lack of better guidance, I added this to my resume as experience.

Plagiarism

Numerous bloggers suggested a page in the book I wrote on women in the Holocaust was plagiarized, because they saw a ‘book preview screen’ (never having seen the book itself) on publisher’s web page which displayed a page from some Encyclopedia. Another words, they saw a page from an Encyclopedia on the book preview screen and assumed it was the book. Overlooking the fact that such accusation is quite insulting – every author and editor including yours truly uses TurnItIn.com–type services to make sure there is not a single sentence plagiarized in the written work being produced – let alone a whole page! The print-on-demand publisher I was using had variety of problems, which I found out about quickly thanks to online tabloids, pulled the content down, and never used that publisher again.

Non-Profit

I feel that growing up in a third-world country (Uzbekistan, in my case) has many advantages in terms of worldly perspective. Getting out of those circumstances, completing International Baccalaureate at The Dwight School on a scholarship, and consequently graduating from Yale University nourished a sense of social responsibility to leave this world a little better of a place than when I came into it. For that purpose, early in 2006 I set up a non-profit entity, Empower a Child Inc. to channel my philanthropic endeavors to educate and empower our youth in the best ways possible.  When a volunteer began developing our website someone tried to suggest the non-profit was illegitimate because some banner on the mockup site was not supposed to be there. Of course it was removed immediately as it was brought to my attention, and further website development went without glitches.

I am happy to say that we are working on exciting projects to improve kids’ reading levels across the country, and all costs associated with these programs have, thus far, been covered by me.  To date Empower a Child Inc. never solicited, nor taken a single dollar in donations, and it has been run entirely by volunteers.

Athletic Performance

With the video leak came numerous questions, as well as ridiculous stories and theories surrounding my athletic pursuits. These questions are not particularly difficult to answer in a reasonably objective manner, since no athlete can train in isolation for any period of time. There are doctors, trainers, suppliers, coaches, training partners, friends and relatives involved in every aspect of athlete’s life, and there are always few onlookers hanging around.  A thorough  investigation of my life would reveal roughly the same story as the electronic paper-trail I present below.

Athletics have been a large part of my daily life since I was 5 years old. At that point I trained in tennis, skiing, and martial arts; I picked up powerlifting midway through college. I do not believe to be exceptionally talented in any sport I had been involved with, but I was most fortunate to be taught by instructors who were masters and world champions in their respective arts. The extent of instructor’s success in their chosen sport, at least in my case, highly correlated with how far I advanced in that sport.

That said, my experience has been that, beyond finding the best coach you can, there are no short cuts and no magic pills. Get ready to give it your all, model your training routines after the best athlete you can access in your sport, tweak the training to best suit your physiology, strengths and weaknesses, and carefully push your limits every practice.

Radomir said it best, “To be the best you have to be extreme.”

Skiing

I got lucky with skiing; my father’s close friend was a master-level skier and instructor; by age 6, my mom joked, I skied better than I walked – but it’s not all fun and games; many heavy injuries in this sport, and in high school a poor landing off of a freestyle spin jump ensured I don’t ever jump again.

Powerlifting

In college I set a personal best bench press one rep maximum of 515lbs. To achieve this I closely followed world bench press champion Ryan Kennelly’s training instructions. I also hired the best trainer I could find when I could not break 500lbs with the help of my training partners at Yale. I detailed this experience at  www.benchpresspowerlifting.com.

Martial Arts

Those who know me personally know that this is my best field, period. I’ve amassed notable international awards, instructor of the year, and Hall of Honor scrolls I only wish I had in other pursuits. Over the years I formed a training group in NYC, which grew into Internal Martial Arts Federation www.imaf.us . One of my best students also put together a web page with a summary of my life in martial arts: www.alekseyvayner.net .

Tennis

The fastest recorded serve I hit in a tournament was 143mph in 2008, according to www.fastestserve.com.  Does that mean I can clock a serve like that every day? Of course not. My average first serve is probably in low 120s, kicking to 130s when I am training consistently and everything comes together, and crossing the 140 dash when I am on fire. Having torn rotator cuff in 2008 at mens national championships, and still semi-playing tennis without having done a proper surgery on it, I’ll probably never serve quite that fast again.

The most technically-accurate analysis of how I generate that speed came from a former Bollettieri/IMG Academy tennis coach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g3VGcxMMYc

Before this recap of my early life in sports begins to sound an awful lot like bragging, I want to add that glory in sports lasts but a moment, whereas the damage to the body lasts a lifetime. At least 90% of the work every athlete does happens behind the scenes, and believe me, that 90% is not pretty. I’ve had my share of passing out, exhaustion, headaches, dehydration, vomiting, muscle and joint tears, lengthy rehab process after which you are expected to get up and try again, and tremendous pressure from many sides to perform well. None if it is glorious.

Lessons Learned

Internet and current social media evolution is an interesting phenomenon, unique to our time and generation. I learned a lot from the video gone viral experience, including these three lessons I want to share (as always, take these with the standard jackassery caveat):

Power of communication – A short story to make my point. My hitting partner and I were finishing up with our tennis practice, with a girl watching courtside. He asks me what my next tournament is, and I respond that it is a qualifying of a certain Challenger (an event on a professional tennis tour). My partner knows full-well that this tournament grants the winner (possibly the finalist too) an entry into U.S. Open draw. Immediately after our exchange he walks courtside and exchanges few words with the girl while I finish picking up ball. When I walk over she excitedly exclaims “omg, so when are you playing the US Open?!”

Similarly ludicrous misinterpretations, which I did not contribute to, can be easily noticed in the bad rep I received following this viral video event.   I remember people seeing at my apartment near Yale a red container with a medical biohazard label on it; I used this harmless container to properly dispose of used acupuncture needles – and the next thing I read in the wave of publicity was that I am qualified to handle nuclear waste.

Every week during one semester at Yale several of my close friends and I would have dinner with our favorite professor, former NSA Director, late William Odom, who would weigh-in on typically-vigorous discussion on topics close at hand. Shortly thereafter I’d witnessed numerous people blow smoke by reporting to media that I was nothing short of an agent myself.

Broken telephone and poorly communicated messages are probably responsible for more people getting into trouble, and more time and money wasted in buisiness than anything else. The importance of shaping one’s message to match specific audience, in the language and at the level they can easily relate to, has been a lesson of paramount importance.

Make mistakes – Theodore Roosevelt said that “To make mistakes is to be human.” I believe that taking action and making mistakes is a better way to live than to stay in one’s comfort zone without taking any action at all. Though placing a link with a video at the bottom of a resume was clearly a mistake, I am better off for the lessons I’ve learned.  A life of a scientific ‘fact’ is now less than seven years, and it has been shown that vast majority of decisions we make today will be proven wrong by future time horizon and rapidly changing world. Mistakes are the best way to learn and fastest way to ensure progress and higher performance going forward.

Cultivate quality relationships – during a difficult and uncertain time when my friends, family, Dean of my college, and other Yale University faculty members offered support, I learned probably the most important lesson of all: the quality of one’s relationships determine the quality of one’s life above any other factor. I genuinely treasure and cultivate quality relationships in my life. This lesson was worth the viral video experience.

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