Short bio

As a trainer, I have helped a few thousand entrepreneurs to think clearly about their business plan. In my activities as an educator and as a person, I try to follow the credo: serving humanity is the best job in life. I am the manager of the Viljandimaa Development Center. On my initiative, the Central Estonian business incubator was launched in Viljandi in 2022. This year, I was chosen as the laureate of Viljandi County Educator of the Year.

My story

I made my first training attempts in the mid-1990s while working in a bank, where I had to invent new things and sell those ideas to others. I developed myself more systematically in the Estonian Chamber of Entrepreneurial Youth.

First, there was a favorable environment - mistakes were allowed, and the patience of my colleagues was great because, by experimenting, polishing things, and trying again, it was possible to create something interesting and useful for others.

There was also a training program of different levels of trainers, and an international one at that, with a system of very high-level lecturers and mentors. From there, in the early 2000s, my first management and self-management trainings were born, which I dared to offer outside the organization, under my own name. In 2002, I started conquering Estonia and the world with my company. The main training topics were strategic planning and team development. The main topics are still the same, but management, self-development of the manager, and entrepreneurship have been added.

It develops me fully and every day; I wouldn't do it otherwise.

1. First, you need to be familiar with all your training topics: what is the historical development and new trends of one or another topic, good literature, etc.
2. Second, you can wander and travel, see new awesome places and sometimes new ugly places. I have been to almost every place in Estonia during my training.
3. Third, language skills improve: in foreign countries, I teach in English or Russian. Materials must also be prepared, and foreign literature must be read. In the last ten years, trainings in Estonia have become considerably more multilingual - trainings in English have been added to the usual ones in Estonian language (which are about 80 percent of trainings) and Russian, and once I have also trained in Finnish. In my opinion, this last one went quite wrong.

I have such a great job!

My favorites are entrepreneurship and self-management training. In their case, the greatest praise and recognition are when one of the participants announces they started a company or made the next leap in development, whether on a personal level or in business. Then there is the feeling like it was your own child. Sometimes, especially in larger group trainings, when I pull the ends together at the end of the day, people don't intend to leave because the topics covered and the stories told have started a new level of communication or stimulated the birth of an interesting new project. Then, I feel like I was helpful! It's extremely great, and this feeling can carry me for days. As a rather arrogant person, recognition is quite an important factor in keeping me motivated. However, out of vanity, I have set the yardstick on whether I can improve something.

Probably with age and the courage to act as a person, I have reached a point where I have turned down offers of training if I see I cannot help a potential client.