He turned his hobby into a successful business – he gets 300 customers a day: he has a clever plan for the future

According to M. Galaburda, the climbing center he founded is visited by both professional athletes who visit it several times a week and prepare for competitions, mountains or other challenges, and those who are looking for interesting entertainment.

“Visitors who come to have fun, to try, to feel, come with their significant other, with their family, with their colleagues. […] We have many different services. These are one-off visits, memberships, training memberships, trainings, personal training, group, team building activities, birthdays – a myriad of different services. […] At the moment we have moved, just recently – we have a new climbing center, which was opened a few months ago, which is located in Naujamiestis, Vilnius, on Panerių Street, in the very center.

The climbing center is equipped with artificial terrain walls and routes are created on them. And the tracks are of varying difficulty – they can be from very easy, very simple to very difficult, almost impossible. The myth we struggle with the most is that everyone says it’s all about strength and requires a lot of preparation. It really isn’t. The climbing center is suitable for everyone, even if you come for the first time, you can definitely find easy routes for yourself. But those who do it regularly, who are involved in this sport, they climb extremely difficult routes that require not only good physical fitness, but also technical understanding of how to do those movements, and flexibility, coordination, many other things,” the reports say. “Proto industrija” interviewer.

The fact that the team moved to twice as large premises and opened a new center also dictates the challenges that await in the future – the desire to maintain the premises and expand the business. For this reason, the entrepreneur decided to participate in the “Business Academy” organized by Swedbank, where businesses gain experience from experienced domestic entrepreneurs and mentors.

“It was such a beautiful coincidence that the academy started right after the opening of our new climbing center. Once we started with a small initiative, just among friends, we grow little by little and everything from a craft little by little turns into a business. Now this move of ours is such a new beginning: now we have twice the size of the premises, we can serve twice as many people. The moment has come when we can no longer just do as we like, as we used to do from the heart. It’s time to think about it like a business – how to keep growing, how to maintain these new premises. I came to the academy with the goal, maybe not so much to find answers, but to find questions, to check my inner order, maybe.

Our goal is to grow and expand. And the problem is that we want to offer our visitors and our sports enthusiasts the highest quality services, for that we need higher buildings, for that we need more expensive walls, more expensive equipment and we need to grow a little bit. It is still too early for Lithuania. We are moving towards it step by step and we came here to learn how to manage finances, create a marketing strategy, set goals and systematically pursue them,” he says.

Currently, Mr. Galaburda’s business employs 5 permanent employees who carry out daily operations and about 7 freelancers who perform certain functions. Last year’s turnover, as he says, was 450 thousand. EUR, after deduction of VAT, and the profit reached a little over 40 thousand. Eur. About 300 visitors come to the climbing center every day.

“Our mentor is Lina from the company Audimas, which everyone probably knows – it is the field of active leisure and sportswear. Lina is a financial expert. Our first meeting was already very useful. And the first letter sent because she just sent a letter and said she needs some data, some reports, that’s where we’ll start. And that happened on the first day. And just after receiving this letter, I understood – well, we will have business, we will have work, because our reports are quite simple and narrow. Most things are only understandable to me, woven together. And so far I’ve been fine – I’ve kind of figured out if we’re doing well or not.

And now, just from a few simple questions, I realized that everything can be much broader, that there are many more numbers, that you need to follow the numbers, be interested, understand very well how much and from which service goals you earn. Because we have many different services. […] And before, we used to monitor everything – we just looked at whether it was a profitable month or an unprofitable one, and we tried to make it more profitable and that’s it, but we never analyzed very precisely and clearly how much what activity brings us what kind of income and what we should pay more or less attention to” , – says the businessman.

According to the interviewee, Lithuania is not yet ready for this sport – many people do not know it yet, and it takes a lot of effort to convince a customer to stop by and try it. However, the businessman is ambitious and hopes that climbing sports can become popular in our country as well.

“Lithuania is not yet ready for such climbing centers as we want to build and as we want to do. This is related to the fact that the sport of climbing in Lithuania is very new and very fresh. Abroad, where there are rocks and mountains, the climbing culture is very old and everyone climbs – everyone understands that and they provide that service in a completely different way: they don’t need to be told what climbing is and how to do it. They just open huge climbing centers for a lot of money that are absolutely full of people and those people just find each other and come.

And we have to put in a lot of work with each new visitor. We have to teach him, explain to him what to do, how to climb. In our climbing center, there are always free instructors who just walk among people and help everyone understand what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong,” says M. Galaburda.

As he says, when growing a business, there is also a risk that competitors may appear in the market. However, as he says, the most important work now is the popularization of climbing sports.

“For now, we are growing this market, but when we strengthen it and grow it here in Lithuania, foreign names will come much bigger, much stronger, this is happening, we see it abroad as well – it is happening in other markets: big companies are waiting for small markets to grow internally and then comes This is also one of the bigger risks we have to contend with.

Our plan is to prepare the market so that it is interesting for foreign players, the big ones, but there is no plan to sell. Because after all, we didn’t start as a business, but we started it out of a great love for our sport and a simple desire to grow this sport here in Lithuania. There are no plans to sell it yet, so we will compete to the last,” he says.

According to M. Galaburda, there are more and more young people who want to get a job after trying this hobby, but here the businessman has a strict policy – a hobby must remain a hobby, and those who resolutely pursue the same goals as the founder of the climbing center can work.

“Here is an interesting thing, because very, especially young people, when they start climbing and if they really like it, they start asking to work with us. Says: I really like it, I want to work, I will be here every day. And what I need to see is whether that person really needs to work. Because very often it happens that if you like climbing, then you’re better off climbing – you’re better off not working in that field, because once you start working in some field, you’re in it every day and it doesn’t give you that much pleasure anymore and it’s not your recreation anymore, it becomes your work .

So I have to choose very carefully people in whom I see something bigger, some desire to bring something to this sport, to do something, and not just just want to work here and want to be here every day. Such people usually burn out and need to be replaced. And some come with the idea that I love this thing and I want to work in it so that I can change something and give something of myself,” the entrepreneur notes.

Here he recalls the lesson learned at the academy, which was shared by Surfshark founder Vytautas Kaziukonis.

“Two things stuck with me. When it comes to leadership, he mentioned a very important idea – the most important thing for a good leader is sincerity, simplicity and openness. I really liked this idea, I believe it too. And as he said, if you simply, openly talk to everyone and trust everyone, work together with everyone, then people appear who want to go with you towards the goal.

And the second thought, which was very interesting to me, is a hobby. He said that it is very important for any good entrepreneur to have hobbies. Here, I think, is a very simple idea, but one can learn a lot from it. Many beginners and advanced entrepreneurs very often immerse themselves in business, in their activities and forget everything that is around them. And then it’s very easy to burn out and lose sight of your goals and your visions. It’s very important not to forget to distance yourself from time to time and have free time, come to us for pampering”, he smiles and reveals that his hobby has become a business, so now is the time to dive into the search for new hobbies.

Continuing the idea of ​​leadership, he emphasizes that during the training of the academy, he learned that a leader in a company is a person whom the team trusts and works towards a common goal together. And in order to achieve it, the team must have a clear plan.

“You cannot do business in any way. It’s important for the team, the manager, and everyone working with that company to know where they’re going and how they’re going to get there. Perhaps I understand leadership in a company and activity in a broader sense – it is a clear and unified movement of the entire company towards some goal and everyone’s understanding of what and how and why they are doing.

At that time, I understand leadership in a person as a person whom the team trusts, believes and with whom they want to go towards the goal together. Part of it must be innate, perhaps. I think there’s a lot to learn, but leadership isn’t just about being technical—it’s about being on the inside: your eyes have to burn so that people want to walk with you toward some goal. That’s what I think you can’t always learn. Maybe for some it is enough to read something, hear something, see something and their eyes light up, but certainly not in all cases. I think that here, as is often said, a good manager is not a good leader. You can learn to be a leader, but not always,” says the founder of the climbing center.