An Ode to Entrepreneurship puts a human face on Finnish entrepreneurship

Sami Benamed, 38, Helsinki, limited company entrepreneur

Hustler

I grew up in an entrepreneurial family: my father used to run several restaurants. If nothing else, that gave me influences even if not always inspiration.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 20 years now, mostly in the restaurant business. I’ve helped found and open a number of different restaurant concepts, including Son of a Punch, Liberty or Death, Bob’s Laundry, Pizzeria Via Tribunali, and Burger Company.

I’ve never done anything alone. That’s always been really important to me: when I get an idea, the first thing I do is build a good team around it. The goal is to surround myself with people who know more about things than I do.

The best part of being an entrepreneur is getting to make things happen in concrete terms — seeing an idea sketched out on a flip chart become reality. When you gather like-minded people around you, the work doesn’t even feel like work. To me, entrepreneurship means acting boldly without being afraid to fail. Failures are huge learning experiences.

I also don’t think entrepreneurship should be romanticized. It comes with rough days, hard moments, and tight spots too — but that’s exactly where entrepreneurship gets tested. I like to think there are no problems, only challenges, and there’s usually a solution to those.

I always say you don’t have to go it alone: pick up the phone and don’t be afraid to ask friends, acquaintances, even strangers. Entrepreneurs really do look out for each other.

Veli-Pekka Franssila, 36, Tampere, limited company entrepreneur

Stubborn

My path into entrepreneurship started out of sheer frustration — as an employee, I felt I never got to show my full potential. I started in construction at 16 and founded my first company at 22. I didn’t have the age or the experience back then, but I had a strong work ethic and a drive to do things a little better than everyone else.

My company, Franssila, is a contracting business for bathrooms and saunas. In short, we operate pretty much end-to-end around wet rooms. On any given day I might be a tiler and an HR manager, a warehouse worker and a logistics manager, a product development engineer and visual designer for a new sauna heater, a marketing specialist, a welder, and the person organizing tile imports. Then at night I’m the CEO.

The past three years have been tough. Constant financial pressure and a difficult market have at times had me thinking about the worst-case scenario.

Even so, I don’t accept compromises. If I have a vision, I go after it stubbornly. That’s not always the smart move from a business standpoint, but if you believe in your own vision, it’s worth fighting for. You can’t let fear take the wheel. Luckily, this year is already looking a lot better financially.

Last year my employees nominated me for the Employer of the Year competition. As an entrepreneur you rarely get thanked for your work, so it felt like proof I’m doing something right.

(Entrepreneurship isn’t a sprint, it’s an ultramarathon. Along the way you have to be patient, realistic, and still optimistic. Keep those in mind, and everything turns out for the best.)

Heidi Hetemäki, 33, Espoo, private trader

Problem-solver

I never really thought of myself as someone who’d become an entrepreneur — but that’s how it turned out, since in my field almost the entire profession runs on entrepreneurship. Wages are low and competition is fierce, so many people, especially those just starting out, would rather find salaried work first. There’s just very little of it to be found.

I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2013, nearly 14 years now. For almost that whole time I’ve worked as a hairdresser. Right now I work at Atmos Atelier salon in Helsinki.

I have three young children. With each parental leave, I’ve lost 80 percent of my clients, since I can’t hire someone to cover for me. After every child, I’ve had to start my business over from scratch, and every time I’ve managed to pull it off. That’s something I’m proud of.

I know plenty of people, though, who haven’t been able to return to hairdressing after their first child, because rebuilding a client base essentially means starting from zero.

I started out in the golden years, when there was more work than you could ever get through. But 13 years has held all kinds of crises and situations you just had to push through. I’m at my best when I can roll up my sleeves and get to work. What I hope for from the future is financial stability. As someone with a family, you hope for that more than you used to.

I’m grateful to have such an inspiring network of women entrepreneurs around me. It doesn’t even matter if we’re in the same field — the way entrepreneurs stand by each other, encourage each other, and help however they can, that’s an enormous source of strength.

Kristiina Kemppainen, 52, Raahe, limited company entrepreneur

Happy

I became an entrepreneur out of love: first I fell in love with the work, and then with the owner of the company. Along the way, I became an entrepreneur myself too.

My company, Raahen Monisiivous Oy, has provided cleaning services to industrial companies since 1983, and I’ve been part of it for 17 years now. The time has flown by, but that’s what happens when you’re working around the clock.

I’m a mother of five. When I had my youngest at 47, I went back to work practically straight from the maternity ward. That’s when I decided I didn’t want to be available all the time, and I cut back a little. As a result, I got some pretty angry messages from a few customers. That was hard, and honestly a bit surprising — they knew perfectly well I’d just had a baby.

People seem to think an entrepreneur has to be available around the clock. I see it differently: life is happening right now, and that time doesn’t come back. I’m proud that I managed to handle all my responsibilities as CEO with a small child at home. I kept thinking I wouldn’t be able to do it, and yet I did. I’ve felt enormous pride in that. Despite everything, it was the happiest time of my life.

To me, the most important thing as an entrepreneur is daring to trust yourself and trust that things work out. Everything works out in the end, if not on your own, then by asking for help. The key is not to panic when new challenges keep coming one after another. It’s rewarding to look back later and realize you got through that one too.

Petri Peltoniemi, 52, and Jani Ryhänen, 46, Pornainen, sole trader

Problem-solver (Petri) and Vision (Jani)

Through our company, Kiinteistökarhut, we do renovations and all sorts of projects in residential properties. We also help our customers plan and carry out home renovations on a turnkey basis.

We’ve been entrepreneurs for about three years now. At first we did various renovation projects for friends and family, purely for fun. Little by little, word got around, and we started getting inquiries from outside our circle of acquaintances too. We came to the conclusion that we might as well take it seriously.

The hardest part of being an entrepreneur is that it’s hard to predict the future — you have to put up with a bit of uncertainty. That said, we’re in a fortunate position in that, usually, by the time one project wraps up, we already have the next one lined up. It’s an amazing feeling every time, seeing a customer look at their home for the first time after a renovation and being happy with the result.

Running a business together as a couple has taught us that we complement each other. We each have our own strengths, and we can combine them in this work too. Jani is a precise measurer, Petri is the problem-solver. There’s nothing we can’t handle together.

As an entrepreneur, you have to follow your heart. Being an entrepreneur is good for as long as it feels meaningful. If it stops feeling that way, you need to find something else. That applies to quite a few things in life.

Lee Su Ling (Supi), 29, Helsinki, limited company entrepreneur and private trader

Passionate

By training I’m an energy and environmental engineer, and I worked in that field for about a year. At some point, though, I started feeling like I wanted to do good for people. I wanted to meet people, face to face.

I’d been doing tattoos for a long time, but I never thought I could actually become an entrepreneur. I assumed it would be really hard, and that I wouldn’t know how or understand it. Maybe that’s because entrepreneurship always gets talked about in such a negative light. Now I understand it’s nothing like that at all. Luckily, my dear husband encouraged me.

These days I have two companies: Supitattoo, through which I do tattoos, and Tatskatytöt, through which my business partner Salla and I put on cultural events. Every day is full of wonderful encounters.

The hardest part of entrepreneurship, I think, is getting a handle on your own use of time: working generally brings in results, meaning money, so it’s sometimes hard to slow down. Luckily I’m gradually learning when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes.

I remember how Salla and I taped our logo onto the window of our first storefront ourselves, DIY-style, to save a bit on costs. We fussed over that tape for so long that by the time we finished, the setting sun was casting pink light onto the window. It gave us this feeling of: we can do this. We can do anything.

Ville Vaurio, 36, Vantaa, limited company entrepreneur

Tenacity

Horses have always been part of my life: my mother has had a lot of horses and ponies, so they became a way of life for me from a young age. I never actually decided to start riding. I’ve simply never lived in a world without horses in it.

I’m a dressage rider and riding coach, and my work also includes competing and training horses. Sometimes I help horses find a new home.

Every day I feel the pressure of balancing my time between my own riding career, my students, and my family. My kids don’t necessarily understand why dad’s workday can’t just end at four like other dads’.

Through entrepreneurship I’ve come to realize I’m actually pretty tenacious. Sometimes I get tired, and that’s okay too. At the same time, I know you have to strike while the iron’s hot, whichever iron happens to be hot at the time.

Entrepreneurship usually starts from some kind of fire inside you. I don’t remember the first time I rode, but I do remember, at 14, realizing I wanted to go far in competitive riding. Right now I’m preparing for the World Championships in competitive riding. If I went back in time, I’d think, God, what a long road ahead. And yet, over the years, that road has never once felt long.

Henrik Wennerstrand, 47, Lohja, private trader

Energetic

I run what you might call a one-man “full-destruction” company — my own little twist on “full-service.” In plain terms, through my company PuuHenkka I fell trees in people’s yards and do forestry work.

People are surprised when I tell them I spent 14 years as a digital payment solutions specialist and now I fell trees for a living. It’s probably not the most typical career path, but it’s felt completely right to me.

I’ve loved forestry work and nature my whole life. At some point I realized I could actually make a living out in nature. I started felling trees part-time at first, until my employer at the time wanted me to come back full-time. I found myself wanting more time as an entrepreneur instead, so I decided to quit. If jumping straight into full-time entrepreneurship feels scary, I’d recommend trying it part-time first, alongside your day job.

When I got my business ID a good 4 years ago, I celebrated by popping a bottle of sparkling wine. It’s become a yearly tradition. I’m celebrating not just the entrepreneurship, but the freedom it’s brought: in this line of work I don’t have to sit through meetings or squint at spreadsheets. I genuinely feel good.

Right now I’m training to become an arborist — a tree specialist — to better understand trees’ flaws and characteristics. There’s always something new to learn in this work.