By CEO: Ludmila Baklanova
Practice HORA® is the foundation of my personal evolution and the base of everything I do. It helped me uncover the potential that had always existed within me and gave me the discipline, awareness, and practical principles needed to transform that potential into action. Through Practice HORA, I came to understand that growth requires both internal development and consistent external action.
Practice HORA provides individuals with an opportunity to evolve and discover their true capabilities. For me, it became a guiding principle and helped me recognize my capacity to grow, lead, and become a business owner.
Optimization has always been part of me, even before I had the language to define it. For a long time, it was dormant, until Practice HORA helped bring it forward.
I learned that success does not come from shortcuts or luck. It comes from hard work, discipline, and the consistent application of practical principles. For me, Practice HORA is the base principle for conscious evolution, and optimization is the continuous process of developing, improving, and turning potential into real results.
The Business Nobody Saw Coming
I’ve learned that clarity, focus, attention to detail, and intention produce better results than noise and business ever could.
I did not sit down one day and decide to build a consulting firm. The idea found me before I found it.
A close acquaintance, someone who had watched me work and think for months, was the one who held up the mirror. They saw the pattern before I named it. The way I naturally cut through complexity and would look at a project, a process, a plan, and immediately start asking what was slowing it down and what could move faster. To me, that was just how my brain worked. To them, it was something worth building a business around.
On November 19, 2019, Optimize Tech Consulting became official.
Looking back, I realize that the best businesses rarely start with a grand plan. They start with a truth you have been discovering and living for so long that someone else may have to point it out to you.
What Optimization Actually Means (to Me)
Most people hear the word optimization and think about cutting costs or squeezing more productivity out of already stretched resources. That is not what I mean by it.
To me, optimization is alignment. It is the work of making sure your time, energy, resources, and strategy are all pulling in the same direction. When those things are out of sync, even a talented team with a solid product can feel like it is running in place. When they align, everything accelerates.
Optimization is not about doing more. It is about doing the right things. Busy and productive are not the same, and confusing the two is one of the most common and costly mistakes I see in business.
How Optimization Shows Up in My Daily Life
Optimization is not something I clock in and out of. It runs in the background of everything.
Before my day starts, I already know what matters most. Not a rough sense of it, but a clear, deliberate order of priority. I am naturally wired to multitask, to hold several things at once and move between them without losing the thread. But multitasking without intention is just controlled chaos. The optimization is in knowing which tasks deserve my full attention and which ones can run in parallel.
The key to optimization is eliminating the noise. That sounds simple, but it requires real discipline. Noise is not just a distraction. It is the meeting that could have been an email, a deferred decision because the right question wasn’t asked, or the habit or routine you keep out of familiarity rather than function. I audit these things regularly, both at work and in my personal life.
Here is the question I would ask you to sit with: how much of your day is spent on what actually moves you forward?
Optimization is not just a personal discipline, but, I would argue, a responsibility. The choices you make about where to focus your attention, how you spend your time, and what is required to improve are not neutral. They compound, they influence, and over time, they either contribute to a higher standard or quietly lower it. Refinement is not about changing everything all the time. It is about making sure that what you do every day still serves where you are headed.
How Optimization Translates to Business
Personal discipline is one thing. Scaling that thinking across an organization is another challenge entirely.
When I work with a client, regardless of whether they are a retail brand managing inventory across multiple locations or a legal firm drowning in legacy processes, I start in the same place. I look at the system as it actually exists, not as it was designed to exist on paper. Those two things are almost never the same.
There are three questions I bring to every engagement:
- Where are we overcomplicating things? Complexity accumulates quietly. A process that made sense two years ago now has four extra steps nobody can explain. A tool that was supposed to save time requires three other tools to function properly. Complexity is rarely introduced intentionally, but it has to be removed intentionally.
- Where are we underutilizing what we already have? Most businesses are sitting on more capability than they realize. Underused technology, untapped talent, strategies tried once and abandoned before they had time to work. Before looking outward for solutions, I always look inward first.
- Are we getting the best outcome for the effort we are putting in? This is the honest one. It forces a real conversation about whether the current approach is actually working or whether it is just familiar.
The other thing I tell every client is this: optimization is not a project with a finish line.
Markets shift. Teams change. What worked last year may not fit where you are headed. The businesses that stay sharp are the ones that build a habit of refinement rather than waiting for something to break before they fix it.
Optimization Is for Every Industry
One of the most common things I hear from prospective clients is some version of, “Our industry is different.” And they are right, it is.
But here is what does not change: every organization has processes, decisions, and resources. And in every organization, those three things can either work together or work against each other.
The application of optimization looks different depending on the context. The discipline behind it does not. Whether I’m working with a financial business streamlining client intake or a service provider tightening its customer support operations, the underlying work is the same.
Find the friction. Remove what is not serving the goal. Align what remains.
The Priority List Method: Where to Start
The most common question I get is not about strategy or technology. It is much simpler than that. People want to know where to begin.
Here is what I recommend, and what I personally come back to whenever things feel cluttered or unclear:
- Write down everything competing for your attention. Not a filtered or polished list. Everything. Projects, decisions, tasks, and conversations you have been putting off. Get it out of your head and onto the page.
- Ask honestly: Does this matter today? Anything that does not have a clear and direct impact on your current goals gets moved to the bottom.
- What remains is your actual priority list. That is where your energy goes. Not the full original list, but the ones that genuinely move things forward right now.
- Repeat the process regularly. Priorities shift. What belonged at the top of your list last month may not belong there today. This is a habit, not a one-time exercise.
This is where optimization starts for most people. It feels almost too simple, and that is exactly the point. Clarity does not have to be complicated. The hardest part is having the discipline to honor the list once you’ve made it, and to revisit it when things change.
Find Your Word
Optimization is my word. It is the thread that runs through everything I do, every decision I make, every client I work with. It took someone else pointing it out for me to fully see it, but once I did, everything clicked into place.
I believe everyone has a word like that. A principle or value that, when you look back, has been guiding you all along. The word itself is less important than the clarity it gives you.
When you find it, something shifts. The noise that used to slow you down starts to matter less because you know what you are actually optimizing for.
If personally you’re ready to discover your own path and understand what’s holding you back from achieving your goals, the opportunity is available. It has helped me, and I’m grateful to share it with you — Practice HORA.
Ready to Optimize Your Business?
If anything in this post resonated with you, chances are there is an area in your business that is ready for a closer look. Maybe you already know where the friction is. Maybe you have a sense that something is not working, but haven’t had the time or the outside perspective to address it.
That is exactly what we do at Optimize Tech Consulting.
I work with businesses across industries to identify what is slowing them down, align their resources with their goals, and build the clarity that delivers real, measurable results. Every engagement starts the same way: with an honest conversation.
If you are ready to have that conversation, I would love to hear from you. Request a consultation, and let’s talk about what optimization could look like for your business. Because not knowing where to start is not a reason to wait. It is exactly the right place to begin.