LAZARSKI UNIVERSITY

Bachelor of Arts in Business Economics

Introduction to business
Research project on the topic
What is entrepreneurship?

Done by group Zamość
Kohutnytska Olha 39094
Anastasiya Shkut 38599
Tetiana Revenko 38771
Patrycja Kornet 38396
Marta Zając 38135

Warsaw 2014
What is entrepreneurship? Our main goal was to find out who can become entrepreneur and how people from varied backgrounds pursue entrepreneurship. Moreover, we had to make some conclusions about key findings from project. We asked five people from different countries about their business, customers and challenges with which they faced. Let us introduce the first entrepreneur.

#1 Monika Karkowska

Our first entrepreneur has her own oculist clinic and a shop in Zamość. We interviewed Monika by the personal meeting on October 16th. Monika has been working as an oculist for 5 years. She studied medicine in Lublin and in 2005 received her diploma. During her studies, she had already known that she wants to start her business, so after studies she found a place and established a little optical clinic, where she checked people’s vision. ‘In the first months of working, I had a wide range of tasks: get a credit, get contacts with new partners and make some advertisements,’ – she said. Moreover, she felt a need in getting more medical certificates, to be more competent in her occupation. When Monika got a credit, she doubted whether it was a good idea, because usually everything develops in small steps and money would return only after a certain period. ‘I was really surprised how fast the business developed. I did not expect that!’ In a year, Monika opened an optical salon where people could buy glasses or contact lenses after a vision check.
Why customers buy from Monika? ‘We have a large selection of glasses, reasonable prices and flexible system of discounts. We can adapt to customer’s needs,’ – she said. She tells that now she has some problems with workers’ job discipline: they offer the cheapest glasses instead of offering all range of products and sometimes leave their working place without permission. ‘I am going to invite somebody qualified to implement training course and I hope it will be better soon.’
In the nearest future, she is going to open one more clinic in Zamość and employ an optician. ‘Despite all problems and hard times, I really enjoy my work and I do not regret anything,’ – said Monika.

#2 Piotr Zielinski

Our second entrepreneur - Piotr Zielinski is a thirty-year-old gym trainer who has a fitness club GymMe in Sochaczew. Our group interviewed Piotr and his wife Natalia on 15 September 2014 and they provided us with all necessary information with a big pleasure. Piotr Zieliński has been studying in Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego Józefa Piłsudskiego in Warsaw till 2006. After that had been working in the biggest fitness clubs in Warsaw, until he met his wife Natalia. She had been studying dietology. We asked them why they had decided to cooperate and had opened their own fitness club. 'We wanted to work on our own and earn own money. The main goal was to connect our knowledge in different spheres and share this with other people' - they told us with a special trust to each other. We were also interested in the fact, why they have returned to Sochaczew. After a small pause we received an answer: ‘Except the reason that in Sochaczew there was no good and well-equipped gym, we also wanted to create a family. We wanted our children to live in a small town rather than in the city which never sleeps.’
In 2012 they opened a GymMe Fitness Club for people who want to change their lifestyle, get fit and healthy. At the beginning, they had nothing only three empty rooms in a new building, which they rented for credit money. 'Beginnings are always difficult...' – Piotr added. Nowadays they have professional equipment, which is one of the factors that assure comfortable process of trainings. 'So, we achieved what we wanted,’ – Mrs. Zielinski told us. Big mirrors, good sound of music and comfortable dressing rooms transform exercising in a pleasure.
Do they have any plans to expend? The happy couple shared with us that they have plans. ‘In the future, we are going to open dancing studio. People can practice classical dances there, as well as modern ones. We are going to create group classes and also individual classes, so that people could learn how to dance without any uneasiness. Moreover, we are going to offer our customers individual dancing classes in order to prepare for wedding!’ – Natalia told us. Piotr added that creation of bodybuilding groups is also in their plans.

#3 Gregory Pogorelov

Our third entrepreneur has a coffee-machines business. Since he lives and works in Ukraine, we were interviewing him in Skype. Gregory talked with us in his house and was very kind during our conversation.
Our first question, as usually, was how a person started the occupation. Gregory told us that he served in Ukrainian army as a lawyer and had a five-year contract. During his work, he found out that he wanted to be independent and to make more money. In the creation of business, he saw more possibilities for development than in the work for state. ‘In Ukraine, there is a complicated procedure of concluding rent treaties with a state. To conclude one treaty you need to wait from six months to a year,’ – the entrepreneur said. Fortunately, Gregory was a lawyer and he had known about this problem, so by the time his contract expired, he had already had five rented places. He found a financial support from his friend’s family and bought several coffee machines. ‘It was really hard to lend money from my friend. I did not know if everything is going to be fine and whether I reach success. I did not want to lend them down.’
How did Gregory Pogorelov identify the opportunity? He had known that this kind if business was not developed in Kiev’s universities. ‘Sometimes, I felt a strong need in coffee in my own university, but I could not find any place where I could taste good coffee!’ – tells Gregory in indignant tone. Nowadays, he has a business which: sells and rents coffee machines for small offices and professional restaurants; sells coffee, sugar, cups, wooden mixers for drinks, syrups, and different free-flowing ingredients like vanilla, chocolate, and dried milk.
Why customers buy from Gregory? ‘I offer a great combination of price and quality. For example, 1 kg of coffee costs 9€ and my competitor sells it for 10.25€. In the same time, I have a special condition: I sell coffee only from 5 kg.’ As a result, he makes more money.
Does he have any plans to expand? ‘We are going to open a big café in the shopping mall. It will be in the style of Star Wars!’ – says Gregory and smile appears in his face. In addition, he told us that owing to his business he had found many useful relations like connections with owner of big insurance company, president of the National University and several deputies. ‘All of them are my clients and I really appreciate the choice they made.’
#4 Andrei Shkut

Andrei had been studying how computers work on the faculty of engineering in Mogilev for 5 years. When we asked him our first question by speaking in Skype he told us the story that in 1994, the first computers appeared in Belarus .Computers were put to account departments, where people should be with the experience of usage of computers. People working there were not so young, and did not know what actually computers were. Therefore, students like Andrei were allowed to learn a lot about computers, and then taught people from accounting departments. Therefore, after graduation from the university, Andrei knew very well what he wanted to do and in 1996, he opened a business. He was buying, selling and repairing computers. To the second question about problems he told that in the beginning, he faced with three main problems: he did not have a lot of money, nobody knew about his company and, it took 16 hours a day to work hard and he sometimes forgot about his family. In 2006, he created his own computer, which helped him to move on the new level.
Now his company is well known, he does not only sell and repair, as he did earlier, he also supply schools, universities and colleges in Belarus with special their own type of computer. He sells his computers to stores, hospitals, shops and other places where they are needed. Customers buy computers from him because they trust him and his company, because they see that his product is good. Andrei likes what he does because every day he learns new things. It is necessary because the world of technology does not stay in the same place it is fast moving. The only problem he is facing today is that now the market is over-saturated. Many people sell computers and therefore the company has to develop and offer something new every day. For example, now he is going to expand by supplying schools with equipment like projectors, interactive whiteboards and language labs.

#5 Dmitry Krotov

Our fifth entrepreneur has a logistics company ‘KD-trans’. As he lives in Belarus, we were interviewing him in Skype. During the conversation, we found out a lot of facts from his life. One of the first questions was how a person started the occupation and what made or inspired them to start. Dmitry Krotov told us that he ended nine classes of school, because he contacted with bad company and spent a lot of parent's money. “After some years, I understood that this was a wrong way of spending my life and I started to study hard at home”-Dmitry said. In 2000, he opened his small transport company, which had only three minibuses. “I carried everything what people asked me about from Lithuania to Belarus and from Russia to Poland”-the entrepreneur said. While establishing, he found out that it was hard to find drivers with good working experience. Moreover, he felt a lack of money, because he had to buy fuel and special supplies for cars. Fortunately, he found a financial support from some good old friends, who lend him money for the startup.
Now he has Transport Company with 12 vans and deals with Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. People believe him, because at the beginning he transported all goods by himself to Poland and Lithuania. The biggest problem he has today is that due to sanctions, which Europe applied against Russia, he cannot transport a certain range of goods because it is not allowed by a state.

Conclusion In our research project we deal with five absolutely different kinds of business located in three different countries of Europe. It was a great experience of communicating with people, because with some of them we spoke personally and with some of them we found connections in the Internet, by sending them emails and talking in Skype. When we were taking interviews of those people, we found out that all of them were very kind and told about their occupation with a big pleasure. None of them told us to go out, on the contrary, they were pleased that people, especially students, are interested with the things they do and the ways they had reached their success. Analyzing the common features of all entrepreneurs, we found out that all of them had the same problems in the beginning and have nowadays. When starting up, all people faced with the lack of money, experience and useful social connections, they had no customers and usual people had no reasons to believe them. Now, the problems are in the over saturation of the market and the very high level of competition. Each of them had different start. They opened their businesses from different reasons e.g. to be more independent, to earn money on his own, to make more and more money and also that their dreams come true. Some of them received help from other people, whilst others had to manage themselves. But despite of these distinctions they became successful entrepreneurs. While brainstorming to understand how we could have helped entrepreneurs to cope with their problems earlier and how to help them now, we created two ideas. To solve the problems with which entrepreneurs were facing in the beginning, special meetings for the people who want to create their own business can be organized. On such meetings entrepreneurs can find people who name themselves as Angel investors. An Angel investor or angel (also known as a business angel) is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity (Entrepreneur n.d.). A small but increasing number of angel investors organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share research and pool their investment capital, as well as to provide advice to their portfolio companies.
The second idea is an organization of special trainings for people who already have business, but do not know what to do next. There, they can be taught how to make interesting presentations of their goods and how to make attractive advertisement. All entrepreneurs have to be flexible and innovative, to offer new things that customers will like.

References 1. Entrepreneur, n.d., Getting Started With Angel Investing, viewed 28 October 2014, < http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/52742>