Ezer Nach Vonunu sums up one of the most instructive and complex business collapses seen in the local market, through a clear stance: take full responsibility for the situation, face the challenge head-on, and don't look for shortcuts or easy exits.

For years he built "Bordeaux Israel," a company that commanded a large share of the wine market and employed 1,800 people. At the height of its success, in 2017, it all fell apart. He found himself facing losses of millions of shekels, a deep personal crisis, and a prolonged rift within his family.

In a single day he had to let go of 120 employees. Instead of throwing up his hands or filing for bankruptcy, he took a list of 101 partners and suppliers and met every single one of them in person. He committed to them that every agora would be repaid, earned rare trust from the market, and managed to nurse the business back to health and settle every debt without a single lawsuit.

Out of that wreckage came "Israel CEO Ventures." After years of hands-on work and hundreds of pilots inside organizations, Ezer sat down with our community for an open conversation and shared the core management insights he's built since:

1. Small and mid-sized businesses simply lack management

The most common mistake entrepreneurs make is thinking they can be the CEO, the salesperson, and the worker on the floor all at once. Management is its own craft and its own art, and it has nothing to do with headcount. First you manage your own tasks, and only then do you expand the circles to the whole organization.

2. The energy that launches a venture isn't the energy that runs it

Many entrepreneurs struggle to let go of control and delegate management. For an organization to grow, it's critical to go through the mental shift from seeing yourself as an "operator" to seeing yourself as a "manager." On top of that, ego is the single biggest enemy of that process, wherever ego drives the decision-making, the mistake is already built in.

3. Digitization is just a tool, the soul is the engine

Right now, the venture is in the middle of moving from a manual method to a software product (SaaS). Ezer stresses that the more artificial intelligence rises and develops, the more the need and demand for genuine human connection and real communication skills will grow alongside it. At the end of the day, you can't create real value without real devotion to the customer and the team.

Ezer's story is a reminder that real resilience gets built exactly in the places where everything looks broken. His core message to entrepreneurs starting out is to act with patience and restraint, understanding that slow, thorough work is often the fastest route to stable, lasting success.