In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews George Guttmann, a board member of the MileUnity Foundation, a public‑benefit organization that educates governments and corporations on using blockchain for cross‑border commodity trade, investments, and remittances. The conversation begins with a childhood anecdote about Guttmann’s first business—selling pants on the streets of Moscow at age nine—illustrating his early entrepreneurial spirit. Guttmann then explains the foundation’s mission: leveraging blockchain to overcome the rigidity, regulation, and sanctions of traditional banking in global commodity transactions such as rubber, oil, gas, and corn. He offers straightforward business advice—work hard, be persistent, and build a reputation over time. Reflecting on his own career, he advises his younger self to seek international exposure early, noting that domestic reputation alone limits global credibility. Shifting to personal philosophy, Guttmann describes his nonprofit “Happiness University,” which studies how daily creativity and the act of making something new sustain happiness. He cites the Bhagavad Gita as his favorite book, emphasizing its teaching to flow with life without attachment to outcomes. When asked for a favorite quote, he references the same Gita principle of detachment and sharing happiness. The episode closes with Guttmann directing listeners to the MileUnity website (mile.global) for more information.
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Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have George Guttmann with us. He is a board member of the MileUnity Foundation, which is a public benefit organization aimed to educate governments and private companies on how to use blockchain for the cross-border commodity trade, investments, and money remittance. So welcome to the show.
Yeah, thank you, Tyler Wagner Wagner.
Of course, grateful to have you on. So George, the first one I got for you is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Oh, if it comes about me, the most interesting is that my first business I have established when I was 9 years old.
Nice. Okay, what was that?
What was that business? I was selling pants on the street in Moscow.
Selling pants or pens?
Pants. You write with the pens.
Ah, got it, got it. Okay, pants. And was it successful or how did it go?
Oh yeah, that was very profitable. And you know, when you're 9 years old and you're coming back to your mom and dad and you're like, look, Mom, Dad, I have a profit. They were Oh, that's awesome. That was truly celebration of entrepreneurship in my childhood.
Absolutely, man. That's awesome. Yeah, so you knew young that you were an entrepreneur. That's, that's awesome. Very cool. So the next one I got for you is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So basically I help corporations and government on how to integrate blockchain technologies in their cross-border commodity trade investments and money remittance. So, you know, the old banking system is very rigid now and it's getting harder and harder to use it for the cross-border deals and transactions. There are more regulations and sanctions and trade wars, and our nonprofit foundation helps a lot of people to manage the trading, I mean the legal trading of real commodities like rubber tires, oil, gas, corn, whatever. So we help people to drive trade on the global level.
And then what is your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
My business advice is very simple and boring actually. The more successful businessmen I met and the more I talked to them, the key and the secret is very simple. Just work hard and be insistent and that's it. So there's nothing like the Holy Grail or something like that. So you just got to work hard every day, wake up early and work hard and then After the decades of constantly working and managing your reputation, you will be, most probably you will have a success.
And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
My advice will be to be more international oriented than I was because I was mostly focused on the internal inside country market for a long time and that was my biggest mistake. And if I— because if you have some reputation inside the country but not outside and it's not public, it's very hard to tell the people in the world that you are the reputable guy and you are trustworthy. So you should make very public and international global experience and projects as as early as possible. You should start and jump in as soon as possible.
And then, so kind of going a little bit down a different path here, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Oh, actually, one of my nonprofit projects is the Happiness University. So we do research about what is happiness and how to reach it and how to keep the integral level of happiness as high as possible on a daily basis constantly. So, as for me, the whole, the key source of happiness is making something new every day. It is about being creative, it's about sharing something, it's about creating something new and to appear in a new situation and to just to be consciousness, just to have consciousness and that's it.
And then what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
I think the best book I've read was the Bhagavad Gita. It's a kind of religious book from Asia, from India, and one of the core ideas was like, you just gotta live in a stream of life and you don't have to stick to your work, to your results, or whatever. You just gotta swim in this huge ocean and have some fun and share your happiness with your neighbors, and you will be having a great time here.
And then, what is your favorite quote and why?
Oh, my favorite quote's actually mostly in Russian, so it will be very hard to translate all the context. I'll try to remember. Something in English and more international. Yeah, I think I've already mentioned that the quote from Bhagavad Gita is about don't stick to your work and what you're producing and on money. Just be happy and share your happiness with all the people around you.
Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on. The last one I got for you before we let you go is where can our audience best find you online?
The best way to find me online is mile.global. It's the website of the Mile Unity Foundation, and you can find a lot of information about what we're doing.
