The First Year of 2FRESHsk in Business

— by Tina Ličková

It was one year ago this October since I returned to Slovakia to start the Slovak branch of 2FRESH.
I mean… time for a SitRep.

How did our past year look?

In March 2014, during my Prague stint, we in the Czech 2FRESH started cooperating with the ZUNO Bank. In the summer of the same year, we took part in several pitches in Slovakia so we decided it would make sense to try the business directly in Slovakia. We already gained our first client, Fleming, in October (and they remain our client to this day). We will always be grateful to them for not giving up on a “company” which started out with one person at its helm. In the following months, we got more small jobs and after, we won a pitch for SPP together with Seesame, and subsequently decided it was time to find a second employee — a designer. And Jozef Benko became our man. He is a great fellow worker, a bit of a punk, and overall a brilliant and smart boy. We continued working hard on existing jobs and along came Katka. She was interested in learning how to do UX and in the meantime became our colleague. Meanwhile Jozko gained another client — the Finnish firm Solved. My best friend, Lubos, a trained psychologist, started helping us with everything and methodically building our researches. Now we are about to hire another designer and have gained more fresh clients…

What do the numbers say?

Since the beginning of January 2015, we’ve started measuring what we do in Costlocker — this is not just a time tracking tool, but it also measures the profit of individual projects, activities or the profitability of staff itself.

Here are some interesting numbers tracked until today:

• we have worked on 34 projects or bids (we consider the latter projects),
• the projects or bids were for 21 clients in total,
• we now have six clients, and we are waiting for the green light with another 3,
• we have spent 174 hours on the so-called “new biz”, or getting new customers (i.e.: over a month of work), which, multiplied by the lowest hourly rate without margin means we have “spent” at least 5k euros,
• communication: we have spent 560 hours on the latter, which equals to 15k euros,
• turnover and profit-wise, December was the strongest month, and March the weakest. We had the least projects and work in February.
• design work has brought us the highest turnover: ranging from consultations, “drawing”, followed immediately by research — testing, customer interviews — which we found quite surprising. These activities are also the most profitable.

In the summer, we decided to set our aim at a yearly turnover of 100 000 €, which was quite high for a company that had just started. If all goes according to plan and we get a bit lucky, (and obtain some signatures), it seems we will exceed the plan by roughly 25 %. I won’t lie — I am very proud of our company.

What do emotions say?

You can read a pile of motivational blogs and books (btw — I gave up on them after about two weeks), go to different seminars, but you need to work hard in the first place; copying someone else’s path does not make it your own. You need to show your clients you are worth every cent, that you appreciate them, and never slack off in the meantime…

“It is all about the people” — this is not an awkward cliche. Sometimes you want to kill everybody around you, and sometimes you spew out intergalactic love to every creature around you. People annoy you every day, and it gets more intense in business where you meet many people every day — you cannot avoid them. However, the same people then come to you, get you a freshly squeezed orange juice before a meeting (I feel ya, bro!), bring you chocolate, remind you of little things that you might have overlooked in the chaos, help you out with a small detail. People take your energy but also give it to you back.

I have always feared to work with friends. A friend stopped me in these thoughts explaining it does not have to be weird at all because friends are not afraid to tell you the truth. After this year, I appreciate honesty even more and see it as proof of love more than ever before.

Then there is self-love. In its purest, most beautiful sense. I gradually started to realise that it is great I’m very driven — however, I will not have it forever. The first phase of burnout is, they say, excitement — and I have tons of it for design and entrepreneurship. However when you run out of enthusiasm, frustration and anger appear. I realised I only have myself. If I want to continue developing this company, it needs me. That is why I stopped saving money and started saving myself in the past three months.

The first year in business is not cool

Running a business is not cool because you have little time for friends, working out, you neglect your family, and you are often irritated and tired. Entrepreneurship is not cool because you’re sometimes presenting a great case study that you often prepared the night before. Business is not cool because you join a logical appeal to the informatisation of society with the motivation to run an honest business. Simply put: running a business is not about being cool, but it is about being of service to people and things around you. Business is not cool, and it is not going to make you cool. Business is not cool because of money — you can easily be the person with the lowest salary in the company until you turn profit, and anyway, for one, a substantial amount of your money goes to taxes and for two, it just takes time.

Why (the hell) do you do it?

There are three relevant answers to this question:
1. no idea,
2. because it is fun,
3. for the people.

No idea…
I have no deep philosophical reason as to why I started running a business and why I do it. I am in business now. I have no idea what will happen in three years.

…because it is fun…
It is about the everyday search for joy. About reminding myself that it has to bring joy. In May, Christoph Niemann reminded me of that at the Bydesign conference and since then, I regularly ask myself whether I’m enjoying myself or if I like getting up from bed in the morning. It sometimes means changing something about myself or cutting ties with somebody (or stopping working for somebody).

For the people
Design is for people and about people. I have never met and made friends with such a diverse amount of people as in the past year. In the past, I would have never really said that it is actually “all about the people”. But there are great folks out there (there are only a few of them, that is for sure) — and they are the reason I do it.