Beginning -- from Warsaw to Sweden

1. Beginning – from Warsaw to Sweden

My parents decided to from Warsaw to Sweden in 1985. We went there to visit my aunt, who had moved a few years earlier with now-husband Dick and dragged us there. There weren’t likely to be many prospects in Poland, and my parents decided that Sweden would be a better start for us – for me and my older brother Karol. It was also a chance for a good start and a better life than the one we had in Poland at the time. My parents packed me and my four years older brother into a toddler full of diapers, and we left for Sweden. What we took with us by car was our entire possessions. Such were the beginnings. I remember that my parents tried very hard to arrange our life in Sweden as well as possible. I realize that it was not easy for them (especially if you have nothing, are not an entrepreneur, do not know the language and on top of that are looking for a job in a profession). So, the barriers to enter and make a life for themselves there were very high. I admire my parents for what they did, but I am also very grateful to them for it. All these elements made it take a long time to arrange our life in Sweden. As a result, we didn’t have much money and various opportunities for a long time. This sense of lack was part of my growing up. When I wanted to buy something for myself as a child – a toy or candy – I had to earn it myself in some way. Probably all of this caused me to learn from a young age to look around me for opportunities to make money, whether in the form of a job or an idea for my business.

2. My First Business

myself that I would collect some flowers and walk around the block from door to door, asking people if they would like to buy a bouquet. It turned out to be very easy to collect a few modest bouquets. I collected the most lilacs, intensely fragrant, lilacs. They were quite large, so a small amount was enough to make a nice bouquet. Walking up and down stairwells and knocking on doors didn’t require much effort either. Despite appearances, the first bouquets ran out very quickly. As a result, I had to go back again to the place where I picked the flowers and prepared the next bouquets. I went to the next block. I sold the bouquets there, too. It was very satisfying, because with a relatively low effort I suddenly had money with which I could buy candy just like my colleagues. This was my first business. I realized that I couldn’t pick all the flowers by the block, so I tried to change my harvesting locations. However, I very quickly exhausted the nearby resources and had to go out farther and farther from my house. I wondered how to do it, because carrying flowers was inconvenient. When I reached a neighborhood of single-family houses, I was delighted because I found more places with flowers. The added benefit was that I didn’t have to carry them far, because they grew close to the houses where I intended to offer them. I picked there flowers, went to the door of the house and rang the bell. A lady opened it for me, whom I asked if she would like to buy the flowers. She looked at me, looked at her garden, again glanced at me suspiciously and replied that she would buy a bouquet, but I had to answer her one question: are these any chance flowers from her garden? I, of course, being a little boy, didn’t think I could be doing anything wrong, so I freely admitted that I had picked them in her garden. The lady pulled out her wallet, paid me 5 swedish kronor (0,50 euros) and told me not to do it again. That’s how my first business ended. Although I’m a little ashamed of what my first idea looked like, the experience gave me a taste of I could get what I wanted with my own work.

When I was growing up in Sweden, my parents combined in various ways to make meet somehow, because, as I mentioned earlier, things were always tough financially in our country. As a result, my mother went to the north of Norway for a while to work there to earn more and for our family to get back on its feet financially. Only now do I see how this has affected me. As a child, I somehow never particularly experienced the fact that we didn’t have everything we wanted. The fact that I didn’t always have the coolest toys like my classmates, or that I didn’t get money for candy like other kids got pocket money once a week. I didn’t worry about that, and at the same time, I also wanted to have it all.

At some point I realized that my parents are obviously trying to make our lives better and better, but if I don’t do something myself, I won’t get what I want in life. I don’t remember how it happened that I came up with the idea to collect flowers and sell them. This idea seemed great to me - it was quite accessible and easy to implement due to the fact that there were plenty of them growing around our block. I also saw people around our apartment buying bouquets on their way home from work, so I thought

3. Bingolotto

was that for each ticket sold you received a few crowns, and the rest of the money went to the club. At the tennis club you could sell as many tickets as you wanted, but you had to anticipate how many you would sell and that was how many tickets the club would give out. At the beginning, however, you had to prove that you could sell them. If all the tickets were sold in the first or second week, the pool of tickets issued was increased tickets to the person in question. I remember that in the beginning I took few lots. They were bought by my parents, distant family, friends of my parents and I managed to sell them all. However, I heard that there are people in the club who sell a lot more. When I calculated how many tickets these people take, and how much money they get for them as their profit, I realized how much money could be made from this. And it worked on my imagination. Back then, being a kid, I had no plans to build a company. All my activities were very mundane and childish. It was all about buying some toy or candy. At that time I was only about 12-14 years old. There was a company called Hobbex in Sweden at the time. It had a catalog reminiscent in thickness and material of today’s Ikea catalog, and inside was everything you could think of to buy. Of course, there was also a toy section. From the plain and simple ones to remote-controlled gasoline cars. I remember sitting with this catalog and marking what I would like to buy. Then I would sit down and convert it to the number of tickets I need to sell to raise a certain amount of money.

My second business became Bingolotto. Maybe it would be hard to call it a business, but it was certainly an amazing sales lesson for me. So what happened that made me take up Bingolotto? Let’s start with the fact that I was never the athletic type. I remember that my first soccer lesson consisted of standing in line at the goal to take a shot. When you got to the first spot, you had to kick the ball located there into the goal where the goalkeeper was standing. After you took the shot, you had to return to the row, go to the end of the line and wait your turn again. As a well-bred boy, I stood in line and respected the established rules of the game. However, I had two friends who were right behind me, constantly teasing each other, pushing one another and bumping into me in the process. I was so irritated by this situation that I came to the conclusion that soccer was not for me. I was rather interested in music. I played various instruments, mainly the piano. It was my brother who was very talented in sports: he played field hockey, was at the top in his age group in tennis competitions, had a sponsor and even won prize money. In Sweden, when I was a child, a bingo game was broadcast on television every Saturday or Sunday. People would buy tickets, and then during the two-hour program broadcast on TV, they would participate in the game by calling and winning various prizes. It was a very popular game with a distinctive host – Leif ‘Loket’ Olsson. The lottery tickets were sold by sports clubs, which partly made money from it, funding a great time for people. The tennis club where my brother played also sold Bingolotto, and you could help sell tickets for the club. The rule

Without even thinking about it, I was setting a very specific goal and breaking it down into smaller goals. I knew that if I wanted to buy a remote-controlled car for 2,000 kroner, I had to sell 1,000 tickets. If I sold, say, 50 tickets a week, I already knew how long it would take me to raise such a pot of money.

I could either choose another car, sell more tickets, or wait. That’s how I built myself a goal and had the motivation to sell. In the beginning I sold few tickets, so I asked those who sold more of them how they were doing it. The first clue I got was that these sellers have a lot of regular customers who buy tickets from them regularly every week.

looking for a place where I could sell lottery tickets faster, i.e. sell where a large number of people pass through. It turned out that there were several such places in the area, such as a grocery store, shopping malls. By standing there in one place and asking every passerby if they wanted to buy, I could ask more people in an hour than if I went around all the apartments in the nearby blocks.

In this way, I learned and was exposed to the phenomenon that is so great in business, that is, the magic and value of a returning customer who regularly makes a purchase.

So, another business lesson for me was that where there is a greater flow of people, you can reach more people faster with your offering and sell more.

In the case of Bingolotto, a specific number of people bought a specific pool of tickets, and this gave a lot of predictability. Therefore, increasing the number of people who bought from me regularly every week became one of my targets. Walking around the apartments in the surrounding blocks, I started asking: ‘Do you play Bingolotto every week, because if you do, then I can come to you every week with fates?’. In this way, going from person to person and door to door, I built myself a base of regular customers who always bought tickets from me, even indicating the days of the week convenient for them to buy. I had two days a week when I would go to specific places in the evening and make sales. I began to build a base of regular customers, as well as a higher volume of sales, which was much easier. However, I started to think about some kind of streamlining, as walking around the blocks and ringing every doorbell was timeconsuming. However, I knew it was important because it was my way of identifying regular customers. When I thought I already had a whole base of regular customers in close proximity to our apartment, I started

OOf course, the effectiveness of this sale is not great, because people are in a hurry, they do not have time, nevertheless, it was effective enough at the time to make it worthwhile to stand there. I remember that my favorite place to sell was near the Swedish stores. Alcohol stores in Sweden are run by the state. They are called Systembolaget, and drinks that have more than 3.5% alcohol can only be purchased at these stores. A great many people show up there on Fridays and Saturdays, as they prepare for weekend events. I noticed that Friday was the best day: as people bought alcohol in preparation for an evening with Leif ‘Locket’ Olsson and Bingolotto, they naturally also bought tickets. However, this was not the last sales lesson associated with Bingolotto. When I had a lot of tickets, people would come up and pick 1, 2, 3, and even sometimes 4 tickets. Usually, however, they took 1 or 2 tickets. On the other hand, I observed that when I had few tickets left, people probably had the feeling that these were probably the last tickets, that it was a shame to lose the opportunity if it was any of them that were going to be the winners, and they bought them all. Some people may have

bought with the idea that I could go home, but for me their motivation was not important, because I found a method to sell my tickets even faster. I would hide the whole stack in my jacket, holding 4-6 tickets in my hand, and this way I increased the size of a single sale. When someone asked if I had more, I said honestly that of course I did, and pulled the whole stack of tickets out from under my jacket – but that wasn’t an obstacle, because usually then they just wanted to buy more.

I also tried different techniques of speaking and approach to people, and one thing usually worked best: a broad smile. When I recall the whole situation related to my involvement with Bingolotto, I see that during that time I learned a lot of direct sales techniques, not in name and theory, but I learned them in practice. These were very important lessons. Now I don’t even remember what exactly I bought with the money I earned then. Certainly it was candy, which I liked very much, and some toys. I probably didn’t spend it on anything important, but I learned from it lessons that I have used in my life for years, applying them in a very natural way, and now I pass them on in this book. There was another interesting story associated with Bingolotto and a related business lesson. Our apartment was located in a block of apartments where a lot of elderly people lived. I remember one regular customer who always bought Bingolotto tickets from me and thought I was a girl (maybe because of my longer hair or her poor eyesight). At first I tried to explain to her that I’m not a girl, but a boy, but I figured that as long as she keeps buying tickets from me, she can think as she wants. She is simply right. The customer is always right.

Remember!

1. Build a network of regular customers.
2. Ask more experienced for guidance.
3. Show up with your product where there is a large flow of people and increase outreach.
4. A broad smile works.
5. The customer is always right.

4. Fire Alarms Together with Installation

I was already doing a few different things where I earned my own money and used it for whatever purpose I chose. This brought me a lot of satisfaction and motivated me to keep doing things. At that time I didn’t think about creating my own company. I didn’t look at it in terms of business, because I don’t come from a family of entrepreneurs. My thinking was based on earning whatever I dreamed of at time, and with that I set various additional goals. I knew that I would always have something to spend the money I earned on and there would never be enough. I remember when I was about 14 years old, during the Christmas season, I sat with my parents as they watched TV. On the news was flying a report about people who died in a house fire. Presumably, the cause was an overturned candle from which a house devoid of a fire alarm caught fire. In the reportage’s conclusion, I heard that every house should be equipped with this type of device. It’s a cheap way to protect against such a situation. At the time, I was firmly set on looking for different income opportunities, so this reportage appealed to me a lot. After watching it, I walked around our apartment, checking to see if we had such an alarm. It turned out that we didn’t have one in our house either. I decided that we needed to buy one and install it. At the time, we lived in an estate consisting of three connected blocks of flats with each other. The absolute majority of people who lived there already. I began to think: Did the tenants of our block have alarms installed? And then the first business idea began to form in my head – selling alarms. Immediately, however, I thought to myself that anyone can go to the store and buy a detector, it’s no added value. However, the elderly people who lived there were not able to install an alarm themselves. So came up with the idea of selling them alarms (just like Bingolotto), but together with installation as a package. I knew that this time, if I wanted to do a decent business, I had to register a company. I didn’t want to make a mistake like I did with the flowers. I wondered how I could do it and who to turn to for advice. I was used to the fact that parents are the people one usually goes to for help. I had some doubts about whether or not I should ask them. After all, it is well known that parents make sure that the child exemplifies the lessons and does not skip school, and the business would involve new additional activities. However, in the end I decided that I would talk to them. That was the turning point. I approached my father and told him that I had an idea for my own business. I talked about how I looked at the people in the report I was watching and saw that a tragedy had occurred. I also made him realize that we too did not have such an alarm, as did elderly people living in our neighborhood, and this is where my business plan came from.

At the end of our conversation I just asked him: how do I get started? I was very surprised then, because I expected a negative answer. My father surprised me and said: ‘Lesiu, I don’t know, but try’. That was a moment that changed a lot in me. In fact, it changed my life.

First, I surprised that as a parent, who should be the smartest person in the world, he tells me he doesn’t know. Second, I was surprised that I got permission from him to act and try. That moment and my dad’s words stayed with me for life and shaped my later actions. They were a turning point for me. I thought with great enthusiasm about where to go with my idea: I want to start a business; I have a concept; I know what customers I want to go to; I have marketing ideas. I thought I would leave promotional flyers on staircases and think how else to encourage my future customers. Then it occurred to me that entrepreneurs pay taxes, so I decided that I would go to the tax office first. There I will register and ask what to do next. So, one day after school I went to the big building, approached the clerk and said that I had a business idea, I wanted to start a company, but I didn’t know where to start. The ladies at the window, seeing a little boy, disregarded me and asked if I should be at home doing. I decided that I would go back there when I had my business and customers. With this attitude (not knowing that this is not what I should do) I began to act. With the experience of how I was received in the office behind me, I felt that I needed to look more serious when negotiating with a fire alarm supplier. I found an oversized jacket and a tool case at home. I imagined that, like in the movies, real businessmen should carry a briefcase with important documents and, of course, wear a suit. I didn’t have real contracts and papers, so I had to fabricate them. I found at home various pieces of paper, I took them and put them in a folder. I also found keys that didn’t match anything, but to me they meant access to a room that someone else couldn’t enter. It seemed to me that this made me a serious businessman, ready for my first interview in a fire alarm store. So I went there in that oversized jacket, with a tool folder

full of papers and keys to nowhere. I walked in and told the salesman that I would like to purchase a large number of fire alarms, but that I needed to test at least one of them first. With the money I had earned earlier, I could purchase several alarms. I decided that I would buy one and install it at home to learn how it was done and what I would sell to others. At the time, in the store, I thought I was really negotiating, but looking from today’s perspective, I guess I didn’t look too serious after all, because I didn’t get a big discount (about 5%). I opened the folder so that the seller could hear something in it is, but did not see the documents. I put in the alarm and walked proudly home with my first product to test. At home, I got down to business: I brought a drill and a chair and began assembly. I tried to drill holes in the ceiling, but I must have hit rebar, because I found it quite problematic. Finally, after several attempts, I succeeded and installed the alarm. This made me feel all the more that the idea of selling alarms with installation for older people was a good one, because even I, a young man, had a hard time with it. For a long time this alarm reminded me that I had my business to do, but in no way could I behind it. I had to go to school, I had classes and other things that distracted me and dissuaded me from taking care of this business.

I learned several lessons from this situation:

1. An important lesson for me then – my parents don’t have the answer to every question either.
2. Test your ideas, because you never know what effects they will have (THIS was a life-changing lesson for me!).
3. Remember that the attempt may or may not be successful. On the other hand, if you don’t try, the answer is ‘no’ anyway.
4. People notice when you try to pretend to be someone else that you are not. If a person tries to look different from who they are and if they are not authentic, they will not take you seriously. You lose credibility. If you’re a teenager with a business idea, don’t try to be someone else. Be yourself, try out your idea. Over the past few years, the image of an entrepreneur has changed a lot, so a suit and tie is more the attributes of a clerk or bank employee than a businessman, so you can be yourself and do business. The most important thing is to believe in your idea and try it out. This is how you will best infect others with your enthusiasm.

5. Mustafa’s Store

My appetite, as they say, grew with food, my ability, time and progress. I remember that working at Bingolotto was a nice source of income. Thanks to it, people noticed that I was quite industrious, that I was working, earning money, so later they themselves offered me all sorts of opportunities to make money. Another story related to my earning was about working in a store. My mother found out that Mustafa, who had set up a grocery store, was looking for someone to help out on weekends. So, she thought to herself, if I’m trying to earn money in different ways, maybe I’ll take a job at his store. I was about 13-14 years old at the time. Interestingly, the fact that I got hired there caused my fire alarm business to completely fail. I had a job, an income and felt so comfortable that I didn’t need to start my own company. I also didn’t know how to run it further. So, I was employed by someone. So, I worked in a grocery store that was run by two men of Arab descent. I don’t know what the issue was: whether they didn’t want to run the business, or whether they didn’t want to have contact with people, but they behaved strangely. My role was simple – I sold products, placed them on shelves and served customers. On the other hand, there was always one of them present in the back office, but they sat and did nothing all day. It must have been terribly boring. In the store I learned various things. There were Arabic products that were unfamiliar to Swedes, which nobody bought because of this. When I asked the owners about a particular item, they usually gave me a taste of it. That was the first time I tried challah. I felt sorry for the Swedes. They come to the store, buy various sweets, and this challah no one is interested, although it is so good. They have it at their, and they don’t take advantage of it. Just as the owner of the store gave me a treat, I started to cut off small pieces and treat the customers. I worked there for a very short time, so I don’t know if this sales increased permanently or not, but some people started to like the challah, so at least from me they bought it. One day I came to work and saw that there a girl behind the counter. I asked her what she was doing there, and she replied that she was working and didn’t know anything else. I didn’t have the courage to go into the back room and talk to the owner. The next weekend I also found the same girl in the store, and then I realized that I must have been fired from my job. Maybe it was because I frequented people with challah, or maybe it was because one day I wanted to be faster on the cash register. When there was a queue in the store, you had to checkout the merchandise quickly, so one day I was practicing on the cash register, not realizing that it was all registered. Hmmm… maybe that’s what got me fired from my job.

My lessons:

1. When people see that you are not afraid of work and are committed, you never know where a new proposal will come from.
2. Do sampling (it came naturally to me). You can have a great product, but until people know it, they probably won’t buy it.
3. Giving samples builds a good relationship and sometimes a customer will buy just from you because of it.

6. Laundry Room

I didn’t wait long, however, because, as I mentioned, after my activity with Bingolotto I had a lot of job offers. An acquaintance of my father, Mr. Zbyszek, who played tennis with my father, ran a dry cleaner. He also wanted me to work for him and help him wash carpets. To enter the laundry, you had to go down to the basement, there was a room where you unrolled the carpet and with a machine similar to a vacuum cleaner washed it. It was a terribly monotonous activity, and I was alone in that basement, with no music and, on top of that, a huffing carpet washer. This was the moment when I began to value my time and felt that I had all sorts of other opportunities before me. Carpet washing took me many hours, and Mr. Zbyszek did not pay much. When I worked longer hours, we ate a kebab at the end of the day’s work as a bonus, which was paid for by the boss. This was my first job, which I remember fondly, and where for the first time it was I who said thank you, because I felt that its conditions were not good enough for me. And so I parted business with Mr. Zbyszek and carpet washing. PS: To date, I do not have any carpets at home. Maybe it’s a kind of carpet trauma.

But this story taught me clearly that:

1. It is worth looking for an activity that fits my abilities and capabilities.
2. Depending on what I do, my time will have different values.
3. If you are proactive, a lot of opportunities arise, so you don’t have to stick to what you have, and if something is incompatible with you, there is nothing to be afraid of, but it is better to move forward. So, if you’re in a job you don’t like, finish it, and don’t wait until something new comes along, because as soon as you let go of the old job, new opportunities will present themselves. What are you really afraid of? What will others say? That I won’t have anything to eat? Think about whether your concerns are justified? Maybe your fear is unfounded or exaggerated and is unnecessarily holding you back from making the decision to change. In this context, I also remember a conversation when I was considering whether to stay for another two years at Delivery Hero in
4. I met with Lukasz Wejchert to discuss how I felt about staying or leaving the company. There were a lot of parallels in our personal stories. There were many conclusions, but the key one was: you have to think about the opportunity cost. Sometimes not making the decision to leave will cost me more, because in the meantime I could realize much more interesting things.

7. Release a CD

I don’t remember what artist it was and what album it was about, but one day I heard in the media that someone had released an album and sold a million copies. It inspired me to think about releasing an album, too. I quickly went from a spark of inspiration to thinking and actually had an idea ready right away. I had been playing the piano for some time and liked it very much. I had already asked at school for the keys to the hall and music room where the pianos stood. I needed this to play them during breaks when no one was using them. Later I was permanently given keys to the auditorium, so I could come at any hour and play – which I did very often. I would dress in a tailcoat that my mother bought in some second hand store, go to the school, sit down, light the lamps on the stage and play, pretending that there was a big concert going on, to which a mass of people had come. However, I realized that neither I was an outstanding pianist, nor did anyone want to release my album. I knew that I would have to do it myself. I was encouraged by the fact that if I did it on my own, I would be able to sell it well and maybe make money from it. In fact, I was driven not by the mere desire to make money, but by the need to have my own album. However, I knew that if I were to self-publish it, I would have to pay for it. So I started thinking about where I could earn the money I needed. One day we ordered a large pizza from one of the best pizzeria in the area, not far from us. I was usually the one who ordered it and picked it up. So I went to the pizzeria as usual, placed the order, and while waiting for it to be ready, I thought that the vacations were, I would have a lot of free time, so it would be useful to somehow make some money for myself. I spontaneously asked the owners of the premises if I could work for them. They, and I was very happy, because it to me that this would result in the creation of my album. I didn’t realize how much money I would have to raise, or how it would be done, but I knew that money was the basis for me to be able to continue with my plan. I agreed with the owners of the pizzeria that I would come in on the weekend for 5-6 hours. My duties involved working in the back, such as cleaning something, serving, folding cartons. It seems to me that the owners saw that despite doing simple tasks, I was satisfied with my work. They decided that I could come the following weekend and stay with them all day. And that is indeed what happened. This caused me to work Monday through Sunday during the vacations just like the owners, that is, from morning until the pizzeria closed. It also that sometimes they let me out a while early. After a full day, I would get the money in my hand, and this gave me a lot of motivation, because I could see that every day I had more and more cash to record my album. At the pizzeria I tried to develop myself somehow. The pinnacle of this development was making pizzas for customers. At first I was completely ignorant of how to about it, but I practiced by rolling out pies for lunch for myself. I was shown how to make them, and I tried adding different ingredients. By the end of the vacation, I was already forming pretty nice pies, and I was able to partially help the owners prepare the pizzas. Then they applied something I hadn’t seen in Poland, which the customers really liked. That is, they set up a large bag of candy and added a handful of sweets to each pizza order along with the salad. When they ran out one day, people were very disappointed. It was as if they had come to buy not pizza, but candy. This showed that a small gesture can make a big difference. But there were also things that made me uncomfortable. After kneading the dough it was sticky balls and set aside to mature for a while. One owner, when doing this, explained to me that I should

handle these balls as if they were women’s breasts. You can imagine how much as a 14-year-old I was embarrassed by such behavior. Many of the activities in the pizzeria required no training or ability, but I admired the owners for taking hours to do the job. I watched them with curiosity as they prepared to serve guests, although for me the most important thing was that I was getting closer to my goal. As an interesting fact, I’ll tell you that after two months of working there I gained some 12 kg! Once I had the money, I wanted to take further steps to release my dream album (after all, that’s what I went to this job for from the beginning). So, I chose a few songs that I had prepared with my piano teacher. I had to about what to do next. The teacher hinted to me that maybe someone from a music school could do it. Of course, I went there to find out more and was referred to a sound technician who had all the equipment. I asked if he could perform such a service for me. It turned out that we would be able to do the recordings at the music school, but after lessons, otherwise the sounds from other rooms would also be recorded. I turned 15 in the winter and it was, in my opinion, high time to record my album. Late at night we would meet at the music school and make recordings. I remember one day I was walking and my shoes got wet, so I played while sitting in just my socks. There were lamps on the ceiling that buzzed and couldn’t be muted, so we turned off the lights. I could only see the piano keys thanks to the light from the street lamps from outside the window. I was very determined and nothing could stop me. As a result of my work, I got my entire recording on one CD. It just needed to be printed in larger quantities and sold. At that time CD copiers were already available for computers, but I thought I would go to a professional so that the recording would not look amateurish. I also needed a cover and packaging for the CD. I took inspiration from various CDs, and I had plenty of them at the time, especially with

classical music and the music of Chopin, of whom I am very fond. At that time, most of the CDs had a cover with the pianist at the piano, which in the open air. I thought that I also wanted such a record, so I had to take a suitable photo. Fortunately, my dad was already passionate about photography, so it wasn’t hard to persuade him. For the backdrop we chose the auditorium at my school, to which I still had the keys. I dressed in my tailcoat, bow tie and shirt and went with my father to the auditorium. I remember that I was so preoccupied and engaged that I wanted to set the lights differently, and I didn’t notice that while turning them on and off, my fly detached and fell behind the stage. I only noticed it in the photo that was on the cover of my CD. Once I had a recording and a cover, I had to start making packaging and copies of the records. I went to a print shop, which took care of the cover design. My role was to create the appropriate texts. We designed the cover and printed 500 copies. With such a small volume, you don’t make a record other than by copying with a CD printer. In this way I had my own CD recorded, ready for sale. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t do it for money, but because I was inspired by the fact that someone had a CD and did well with it, and I felt the need to have my own. Now was finally the time to think about what to do with those 500 copies. Of course, I hoped to sell them and maybe earn something from it. However, it wasn’t that easy, as I couldn’t estimate the value of what I had made, and thus didn’t know how to evaluate it. I wasn’t sure of the quality of my music to value it highly. I realized that it was not a professionally released album, and as a result I felt that I could not impose a price. I decided that I would adopt a pricing strategy such that everyone would pay what they felt was worthwhile. At the time, my main concern was that if someone didn’t feel that the record had the right quality, they would pay less. That way, every customer was supposed to be satisfied. Interestingly, the price range was huge. I sold the cheapest disc for 20 swedish kronor, that is 2 euros. The most expensive CD I sold for 500 Swedish kronor, or about 50 euros. It was

bought by Aunt, so I think she thought the value of the plate was lower, but she paid the higher price, for which I thank her very much. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with such a sale, but in the end I set such rules myself. As for work, I was making money during this period at a drive-in bingo (again, worked because people knew I wasn’t afraid of work and was committed when I did something). Once a week the club held live bingo and that’s what they made money on. The job was to serve the guests who came there. Mostly they were older people who showed up for about two hours to play. We would draw numbers and announce them over the microphone. When any player collected a bingo, he would inform us and receive a prize. During the game, the club organized a food break. During this time, guests could purchase a hot dog, sandwich, coffee or tea. Most of them up there regularly, we established a nice relationship with them, the atmosphere was friendly, so I thought it was a good opportunity to sell my CD. I just didn’t know how to do it. I couldn’t just tell them to buy my CD, since they came to play bingo and didn’t even know I had released it. This was the period when drive-in bingo was organized at City Hall. I noticed that there was a piano in the room at the back. I knew that concerts were sometimes held in it. I decided that during the sandwich break, between the first and second part of the game, I would play one song from my CD on the piano. At the end of the piece, I noticed that everyone was delighted, and I happily announced that the music was from my album. I also informed people that I had a limited number of CDs, and that the price was up to them. And that’s how I sold most of the print run. However, by calculating the average revenue per record and the cost of making it, then I came out at zero. It’s hard to call it a real profit, but at least I was happy that I was able to recover the costs of the sound technician, printing and covers. Well, and I fulfilled my dream.

This experience of making a record and selling it has taught me a lot.

1. I wanted to make a record, and I did it. If you think of something and take it upon yourself to realize it, you are capable of it. If you don’t try at all, you immediately doom yourself to failure.
2. No one has the answer to the end, in what order to do something. If you just start with the thought, what am I missing, then every next step brings you closer to what you want. Don’t think about the end, just one more step to take.
3. We have notions that our dreams are difficult to realize whenever we think about them. And when we do realize them, we find that it’s not as difficult as we thought.
4. The satisfaction of realizing the dream is so great that it makes up for all the effort and hardship.
5. In retrospect, I can also see that if I had focused that this project was going to make me a profit, I probably wouldn’t have done it at all or would have tried to do it very professionally. The fact that I didn’t focus on making a profit helped me realize it to the best of my ability at the time. And it made me satisfied with the project itself,

regardless of the earnings, the fact of realizing my dream. And this very much built my confidence that I was capable of accomplishing anything I set my mind to in life. 6. If you have a product, let people know about it. If they don’t know about it, and if you don’t tell them about it, you’re not even giving them a chance to buy it. 7. Many of us have a problem with self-esteem, let alone valuing our work. If I had priced this album myself, it would have been undervalued compared to what people paid me. I would also like to emphasize that despite the fact that I now do much larger projects, for much larger amounts of money in an international environment, I am still sometimes accompanied by a lack of confidence. Even if I’ve managed something, more challenges come along in which I don’t always feel confident. Many of mistakes I made were due to my low self-esteem and looking with admiration at other people because I thought they were better than me.

If I could give myself advice from the past, would advise: Believe in yourself and do greater things.

I’m not saying that everyone has to want to have an international company, but if you want something, try exactly that and give yourself permission.

8. Work at the Church

I started my piano playing with lessons from an elderly lady who was probably more interested in treating me to juice and cookies than in teaching me. She could see and hear me play poorly, and this was frustrating for me, as I really cared about playing well. On my way home from this lady’s lesson, I would pick up Kim – the daughter of aunt Agniesia, a friend of my mother’s. She had an after-school class at church, and aunt Agniesia was getting off work late, so I would bail her out. It a music class where I met the organist. He was very nice and smiling, so I finally decided to ask him if he would be willing to teach me piano instead of the lady I went to. He said he didn’t give lessons, but would think about it. After a month he agreed and everything changed. I liked it very much, there was a nice atmosphere, good acoustics, the church had a piano at the very front. During the lessons we would put it in the middle of the church to get a feel for the atmosphere of the concert. That’s how I started going to the church more often and taking lessons. Thanks to this, other people also got to know me, and that’s how I got the offer to replace the churchman once a month on the weekend. That’s how I started working on weekends, which meant that when the vacations came, I spent them all in church! On top of that, in a Protestant church. It was an interesting experience. Despite the fact that I, my parents and the Polish community were Catholics, the church had no problem with this. It was open not only to me, but also to every person. This work caused me to have a fairly predictable income and set various goals. In retrospect, they grew all the time. For example, I decided that I would get a motorcycle license. I knew that I had to finance it myself, because my mother (who worked in a hospital and often saw people after accidents) said that she would absolutely not help me with this idea. Her perception of motorcyclists was a bit skewed. Anyway, I had a new goal, to get my license and buy a motorcycle. At the time it was class A1, for 16-year-olds severely limited, but I decided to do it, although I realized that it was almost unattainable for me for financial reasons. And yet it worked out. Thanks to my work at the church, I realized another dream: I bought myself my first motorcycle. Thanks to my work at the church, I also met many interesting people. Various concerts were held there, but of course, in addition to masses, weddings, christenings and… funerals. Vänersborg is a small town and there was one funeral office that mostly handled such ceremonies. I made good contact with them and took up cooperation. Once again, my activity led to a new job offer. At first I was washing cars. I was 17 at the time and didn’t yet have a driver’s license, so I came to the office by bicycle or came on foot. Once I 18, I started getting other jobs, such as going to the morgue by car and to different places to pick up the bodies of the dead. When I recall this job, it and the other things I did taught me a lot of humility about work. That every activity has its own value and can teach me a lot. Driving around the bodies, sometimes it seemed to me that no one was looking, so it doesn’t matter what I do or how I behave. My boss, on the other hand, taught me that no matter what the circumstances, no matter how many people are around, whether I’m driving an empty car or transporting a coffin, I’m supposed to behave with respect. This is

just one of the things I learned there, and he was the person who taught me professionalism.

My most important lesson from this period: It doesn’t matter if someone is watching or not – always act professionally.

9. Work at the Steel Mill

While I was working at the church, my friend Magnus was working at a nearby steel mill. Although I was satisfied with my work at the church and funeral service, I realized that I wasn’t earning very much, and in fact the point was that at the steel mill my friend earned much more for less working hours. Therefore, for my next summer break, I decided to get hired at the Vargön Alloys steel mill. Overall, I really liked this work. This industrial atmosphere with large and extreme rooms, tools, and machines. When the material was ready and taken out of the furnace, it was very hot, several hundred degrees. That’s why our clothes were flame resistant, and our helmets had visors, with large panes of glass that covered our faces. The panes were covered with gold to repel the heat. Work was quite slow at the steel mill. Most of the time we waited for the furnace to melt all the metal. Every now and then one operator, with the help of special joysticks dropped materials into the furnace and monitored how the melting process was going. This all took about two hours or so. When there was enough material, I and one of the regular employees of the steel mill would go down to the second or third floor below (the furnace was probably five or six stories high) and stand on a platform that had a drill. In a special place, on the side of the furnace, we would drill a hole through which the material flowed into large containers (the kind with a capacity of 20-30 tons of material!). The hot molten metal flowed out into the container, and when it filled the first one, it cascaded over into the next container. When the furnace was closed so that no more material would pour out, a clay cannon was used. Clay was shot into the hole in the side of the container, so that it would plug it. The next step was to move the container to a place where one could reach it with a special scraper. One would pull off the material, or rather only the waste from the top, which had to be removed so that only the molten metal remained. Then you would put this container into a wagon attached to a locomotive taking all the containers outside. Here was my role – I was the one driving the locomotive. Outside, the molten metal was poured into specially made pits. There the material cooled and was processed. In the process of closing the furnace, there was still a lot of hot, molten metal, which flowed out and mixed with the clay sealing the furnace. This mixture sealed the hole, but it also caused that the next time a drill attempt was made, it was impossible to drill a hole in that spot. It was then necessary to open the furnace in another way, i.e. by ‘gassing’. This could be compared to welding – you welded until a hole was made in the metal. This could only be done by two people together. We assembled and connected steel pipes, for about 3-4 meters. At the end of the pipe, a rubber hose was mounted, which was connected to the gas. This consisted of the worker setting the fire and starting the combustion process in the hole, and I stood at the connector allowing the gas to enter or shut off the flow. The rubber hose was long enough to touch the ground, and at one point with a platform contaminated with furnace waste. Therefore, it often happened that the hose burst right under the feet of the person who was standing there. It would simply make a hole in it, and gas would escape through it… This was very dangerous. We had one rule: when a regular worker managed to make a hole in the furnace, he would shout to me to close the gas valve as soon as possible, because when drilling, the hole is rather even and the metal pours out gently. In contrast, with the gas process, the hole is rough and uneven. Therefore, by the time everything had smoothed out, the furnace was spewing metal, and the splatter fell on the workers and the platform. This waste thrown from the furnace onto the platform, the broken hose from which the gas leaked, and the open gas valve – taken together, could have been an easy cause for starting a fire or even an explosion, thus posing a great danger to us workers. I don’t know whether those in charge of health and safety ignored this or not saw another solution. At times when, by gasping, we opened a hole in the stove, we immediately had to close the knob-shaped valve. This always stressed me out. I tried to close the gas supply as quickly as possible so that the whole thing wouldn’t up. I asked other people: ‘why do we have to do it this way?’ and they answered: ‘it has always been like this’. I couldn’t understand why they were so indifferent and didn’t want to change it. You may be wondering why I’m describing this whole process and the risks involved in such detail. Because it was this work, situation and insight into the process that guided me to my first innovative idea. I decided that I didn’t want to die in this place, I wouldn’t accept the risks of this job, and I would do something to change it. At every break I thought about what could be done. I knew what the error of the whole smoking process was: the hose always broke in the same place, which then had to be cut off and the whole thing reinstalled. A costly activity that generated additional work and expense. Since there were four furnaces, and the smelter operated every day throughout the year, there were a lot of operations of this type happening around the clock. Hose ruptures were, and the main reason was that the hose was being whizzed around the rough floor full of waste during the process. I thought it was necessary to protect the area somehow. The structure of the hose could not be rigid, it had to be flexible so that the worker could maneuver it freely. I came up with the idea of creating a connector between the rubber hose and the metal pipes with a one and a half meter spring. That way, at that length from the pipe, the hose would be inside the spring. The spring would protect it from contact with the floor, but still give it freedom of use. I drew a concept of my idea and went to the employees to tell them about my idea. I wanted to make a prototype and try out the tool I had invented. The employees liked my idea, so we went down to the workshop, made a prototype and put it on while gassing up. It turned out that this time the hose did not break. We had a little success, but we had to wait and see what would happen on the next attempt. The next time we opened the furnace, we again used the equipment I had invented, which again passed the test. The prototype we built worked not only until the end of the shift, but until the next vacation (when I also worked at the smelter). The creation of this protection entailed a huge saving for the company and with increased worker safety. They wanted to set this up in all such places. Consequently, we went back to the discussions and eventually they paid me a not inconsiderable amount of money for the idea. The amount itself was less important to me at the time, and the most important thing was for the me that I managed to solve an important problem for which I found a solution, and it was appreciated. I think the management wanted other employees to also be creative in order to develop the company, for which they would be financially rewarded. It seems to me that this is a good system to motivate people to invent new things and improve processes in a company. I was highly motivated, because first: I did not accept the existing situation, second: it involved my safety and the safety of, and third: my efforts brought me great satisfaction with what I created. And finally, I was paid for it all.

Thus, I created my first invention and commercialized the innovation. Thanks to the earnings at the steel mill and the profit from the sale of my idea, I bought myself a new motorcycle – the best one that was on the market.

I learned then that:

1. It is not worth accepting the passive attitude of people like: this is the way it has always been. If we don’t like something, we can change it.
2. If we identify the problem, this is the basis for creating innovation.
3. It gives me great satisfaction when my ideas are implemented and appreciated.