Friends with benefits

We spent this week in Helsinki having an intensive course about presentation skills. We decided to take this course since we wanted to improve our presentations and get rid of the stress we feel sometimes before performing. We all have very strong backgrounds in public speaking and performing but we felt that little practice on the selling side might come as a useful tool in the future. 

We packed our bags headed to Helsinki to live in Nea’s grandparents’ studio.  This naturally scared us a little bit since we are not only close friends, business partners and school mates but we also live in the same building. We see each other every day and we spend most of our free time together too. The only time we are separated is when we sleep in our own apartments. And during this week that own private space was taken away from us. But who would have thought that we were capable of living in total peace and harmony! Surely the entire studio was like one big mattress and dinner was eaten while watching MTV on someone’s bed but we had fun. And that is what reminded us of why we wanted to start our own business; to do what we want, when we want and with whom we want and most importantly to have fun while we are doing the stuff we love. 

Life is too short to spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week on doing something that makes you miserable. It’s not easy to start your own company and it takes a lot of time and effort but when you do it with your friends and you enjoy what you do it is worth it. A lot of people told us in the beginning to reconsider about starting our company because we are such good friends. “Three girls can’t never make it because there will be too much drama!” they said. Of course there will be drama! It is part of life and it is only natural that people have different feelings and sometimes those feelings can cause arguments. But the beauty of friendships is that you can talk about it and others will listen. Good communication is one of the key tools for good business. Good friendships can create beautiful businesses.