Five LCC alumni, Daumantas Kirkutis, Goda Aženeckaitė-Petravičienė, Liudmila Don, Inga Butkutė, and Agnė Budreckytė share their experience in business, identify challenges they have had, and encourage young people to become entrepreneurs. They all subscribe to the idea Goda Aženeckaitė-Petravičienė, an alumna from 2003 and owner of an international consulting company Grand Partners verbalized, "You can learn to start a business, you can attend courses, and you can hire consultants. But people who are entrepreneurs – they just do it. True entrepreneurs do not hesitate."
What is your business? How did you come up with the idea for it?
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Daumantas Kirkutis
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Daumantas: I am in online business where create an online search engine and advertisement system for small local businesses. It is called versliukai.lt. The website is designed to help these businesses to advertise their services and goods. The website also helps people find service providers that they need very easily. I came up with the idea for that when I was working for one company in the center of Klaipėda. I would go for lunch every day and pass small business offices: lawyers, dentists, hair dressers and so on. I thought that in Lithuania we don’t have any kind of interactive, well-developed website system, which would unite all the businesses with the possibility to advertise and communicate with each other easily. Also, there was no system in Lithuania that would allow customers to find and rate services in one place. I thought it would be a good opportunity for business in Lithuania.
Agnė and Inga: We are the owners of Earth Market which for most part is a life perspective that encompasses a yoga studio, massage and body treatment, and natural cosmetics. The idea of our own business was always in the air. What we wanted to do was to put the world view that we learnt about at LCC in action. We also wanted to share what we know with other people. We wanted to create a cozy space where people would feel free to come and have a good time. Brainstorming process took many and many years, nearly ten.
Goda: I am the owner at Grand Partners, which is a business consulting and training company. Going back to my years at LCC, the funny thing is that I was a straight A student through the years. Then I got my only B in the entrepreneurship class. The main reason for that was our course project for which we chose to do a business-consulting firm, executive coaching to be exact. The professor who evaluated our business project, my current partner, thought that this idea was absolutely unfeasible. He thought that no one would pay money for telling them to do what they already knew they had to do. Now it’s been ten years already that we are doing just that. We left LCC with this huge idea of changing the world and making a difference. And no idea in what area exactly or any money for that. We thought that the idea of business consulting was worth trying since it didn’t require initial investment. We didn’t need to be very exact in our choice. We said we will just do consulting. Now, we are doing leadership consulting, management training, and some pure consulting in several areas of business.
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Liudmila Don
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Liudmila: I run a company that renders language services. That would be language courses and translation and interpretation services. It is called Eurolingvija. English was my dream since I was 10 years old. I was in fifth grade and I knew that I wanted to be an English teacher. I had a wonderful English teacher at school. She inspired me to love the sound of English words. I established my company in 2000, when I was 23 years old. The original idea was to teach English. At that point I was the only person teaching and also I had an administrator. So my company started from two people. But very soon I got more staff in the company, because my friend from LCC joined me and we were two already. Now we have the staff of ten people. We teach English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and we even have a Chinese teacher. And I do a lot of interpretation now. It is a lot of pleasure because I participated in different events that really inspired me to move on.
What were the challenges?
Daumantas: The biggest challenge was creating a team, motivating employees and getting funds. It means persuading investors that it’s a good idea, that it will bring profit, and that all the money they are investing they are going to get back.
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Agnė Budreckytė and Inga Butkutė
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Agnė and Inga: We have been faced with real challenges since we have opened the studio. Bureaucracy and stereotypes have been the main obstacles. It’s just unbelievable how you can get caught up in bureaucratic rat race. Luckily each and every time we do find our way out of it. And hopefully we will continue doing that. But it’s a constant challenge that we have to face. Yet we are sure that other businesses do it as well.
Goda: The main challenges were lack of experience and success stories. We had to be very creative and put a lot of hard work. By hard I mean we worked hard and were losing friends. At that time a lot of friends were partying and having fun and we just worked 24/7 sometimes. But now, when they see the results, a lot of them are doing the same thing, inspired by us. It pays off, sooner or later.
Liudmila: There were two. The first one was patience. You should never expect very quick results. The second was hard work. You simply have to be ready to work very hard and the results will come. When I am talking to people who are establishing their own business, I always say that for me first year was critical. And then the second and third years were years to grow. And now everything is fine.
How should entrepreneurship be promoted?
Daumantas: The biggest encouragement to people is good examples. I think that young business people should be encouraged by examples of good righteous business owners that create value, not just profit. Servant leaders have to be examples to others.
Agnė: Government should create more programs encouraging entrepreneurship, because at the moment they claim that they have a lot of programs but I am are not sure if that’s the reality.
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Goda Aženeckaitė-Petravičienė
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Goda: In my opinion, it is being promoted and encouraged a lot. I personally get invited to entrepreneurship events for young people at least once per month. The point is like with leadership: can leadership be learnt or taught? Of course it can. But people who are born leaders they are always way ahead the ones that learnt to be leaders. It is the exact the same thing with entrepreneurship – you can learn to start a business, you can attend courses, you can hire consultants. But people who are entrepreneurs, they just do it. They don’t seek for information about how to do it. The critical trait of character that every entrepreneur, leader, or just an average worker needs is commitment. I believe that young people in Lithuania or even worldwide, and students at LCC need to learn that. Commitment includes a lot of work and devotion. It means working not to punch in the hours or to collect the money but working because you are committed to it. That is the main thing, and I don’t know how to teach that.
Liudmila: I think media should pay more attention to that. This year in of the major Lithuanian newspapers I read about guys establishing successful businesses. And they were sharing how everything started from the idea. This kind of good practice is inspiring and it shows that it is not that scary.
What would be your advice for young entrepreneurs?
Daumantas: I would advise young entrepreneurs to ask some key questions of themselves: Why do you want to do that? Is it worth sacrificing your time and your energy in order to achieve your goals? Find out if people really need what you have to offer. And if you are in the business just for the money, consider that what you do may be harmful to the society.
Agnė and Inga: We would advise to start it. Also, everyone should have a partner. It does not matter who it is - a friend, mum, dad, anyone, because on your own you will get lost. And there will be a lot of lows, and there will be some highs at the beginning. Mainly it will be lows and you will have to have someone next to you saying, "This is going to end. It will get better eventually." Also, no one is a jack of all trades. For example, you may be good at something and bad at other things while your partner is the other way around. And you do need that, because when you start your business, there will be a lot of bureaucracy, brainstorming, negotiating, and you can’t be good at all of those things.
Goda: If people are hesitant to start a business, it’s going to be tough. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just say that those true entrepreneurs that I was referring to, they just don’t hesitate. They have so many ideas that they have to do it no matter what. That’s the true choice they make. If you cannot keep it to yourself anymore – go and do it. And if you are trying to calculate things, if you are hesitant, if you need more time or information, that might be a problem.
Liudmila: I understood one thing – we should start from a dream. When a person has a dream, many things get implemented by themselves. If you do what you do from your heart, even when difficulties come, you manage to get over them. If you are doing that just for money, it is not the same.
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