Entrepreneurship in Russia

Right now being back to Russia for summer holidays I was one more time persuaded that hospitality teaches us to see the world without boarders. Just only for this simple reason hospitality deserves such a great respect. Every country has its own specific character. Some of them are more plesant to one group of people, some are less. Those are the differences. But every single country was formed of people and I believe there is no such a country on Earth where are people with no happiness, creativity and success with its complex meaning. From this statement I came up with the question for myself: If one can be successful in one specific country, would it be the same for him or her in another location, where everything from the first look seems to be so different. I believe that this is the moment where the full meaning of entreprenuership enters the story. Entrepreneur is a person with very diverse talents. It is not only unlimited inspiration, creativity, persistence, passion and potential power to realize those ideas. It also comprises flexibility, positive attitude towards world's diversity, ability to change and adapt rapidly. Probably it sounds too much to combine all those qualities just only for one person. However looking at and closely communicating with successful people you understand that they somehow found all those talents inside of them and grew together with their businesses. To answer the question of being successful independently of the situation and in which country you are you would find by yourself. I would just love to share with you some examples of successful entrepreneurs from different countries in the world and how they achieved it. Probably it will help us to understand that life is always so full of opportunities and we should never give up our dreams.

To begin with, I have interviewed one of the youngest and successful entrepreneurs in my city Ufa: Leysan and Michail Kumpan. Today they are the owners of the chain of coffee houses "Milly" in Ufa, they are the biggest coffee suppliers and recently they even started to grind and roast various kinds of coffee beans on their own small factory. Everything started in 1999 when in Russia, especially in a city that is 1000 km away from the capital there were very few people who did appreciate good coffee. Instead due to our local traditions and muslim influence, people would rather drink black tea with milk with honey along with a substantial snacks typical for our region. How could they become successful and found great appreciation among our people I would leave to explain to Leysan by herself.

1. What was the inspirational factor to start with such unusual business idea for that time?
When we first tried Italian coffee, there was no doubt that we fell in love with it. Bringing to our city something different and so much beloved in Europe has laid as a foundation to our inspirational ideas.

2. Was it that hard to begin with your new career?  
When you are so full of ambitions and so much inspired you believe you can do anything you wish. Hence it wasn't hard to begin with, but it was hard when the business came to its serious stage of growth with certain requirements of a good business plan and of course good knowledge of all needed documentation work.

3. When you realized that your dream can be transformed into something real, what was your next step? Did you have any plan or it was more just a matter of luck?
I was learning in the process itself. All mistakes taught me something as well. And of course without loving what we were doing we wouldn't learn anything... As for me, I love coffee, but I drink only espresso. I love the feeling of simple pause and just few minutes away from constant rush. In addition the taste of espresso never leaves me untouched. This is where my inspiration was coming from. Now I always try to keep myself up to date, I read a lot of books from finance to marketing, we try to go to different trainings in Moscow and of course life experience is always the most important. This is the way we learned to build our business.

4. Can you say that all ideas that were at the very beginning is exactly what you have today?
At the very beginning we wanted just a small cafe where the whole family and friends could have a cup of coffee and some yammy snacks. While we were in the process, the original idea grew into something bigger as well.

5. To keep the business successful you should be always inspired to grow by yourself. Do you still have some further ideas and inspiration to build something more? 
We are planning to build more 2 or 3 coffee houses, we want to accomplish our coffee production factory and our goal is to increase coffee supply from 3 tons a month to 10 tons a month. And of course we also understand that every level has its own lessons to overcome. The bigger you grow, the bigger competition and challenges come.

6. Business in Russia. Very interesting topic for a lot foreigners and unfortunately very hard to understand for most of people who do not live here and speak our language. How would you describe the growth of your business in our country?
I would say as in every country, especially if it is so huge as Russia, the are always differences between regions. As I have already mentioned, it was very hard to bring coffee appreciation to our city. People got used to traditional tea at home and were very careful to new trends from Europe. I can say there was the same situation for our neighbors in Kazan. However, for instance in Ekaterinburg, by the time we just started to gain trust from our public, there was already very high purhasing power with the predominance of big western chains.
I can also say that we have suffered a lot from the Financial crisis in 2008. There was not much governmental support with very high taxes and complicated private sector documentation system. However, today our country is trying to become very open minded and the government understands the importance of strong foreign relationships. We personally would be delighted to work with foreign partners and the whole country is trying to minimize inconviniences for the foreign investors.

7. What do you think, did your business played a vital role to your own personal growth?
I have learned a very important lesson for myself: there is no division between your personal life and your work. It is all our LIFE.