Yana Matviychuk is an Entrepreneur, owner of the event agency ARENA CS, tv-host. She has created a multimillion-dollar company with a starting capital of $ 300. Yana Matviychuk with her team has implemented more than 7000 projects for last 14 years in the event undustry. The mission of helping the Ukrainians to make business in Ukraine Yana realizes through analysis of successful cases of entrepreneurs on her Youtube channel «Business Arena». She has been into business sphere for last 14 years. According to the international magazine «WOMAN», Yana is included in the rating of the most influential women of Ukraine in the nomination “Big business – a big personality” in 2018.
Yana Matviychuk: “Development must be continuous regardless of anything”.
“Each business has one common feature: it does not stay still, the business either grows or falls. In order the owner to avoid becoming slow on his business, he must continuously develop.”, – says Yana Matviychuk in an interview for one of the national media.
The continuous learning process for Yana Matviychuk is one of the components of business success. Yana has read all the famous books about business and the best appropriate practices were put into her company’s work. Despite the significant success, Yana Matviychuk decided not to stop on what she had achieved and went getting degree in the direction of EMBA for the whole 2 years. Another educational challenge was the Business Arena project, before launching in 2013 which Yana Matviychuk had set a goal to interview 100 successful entrepreneurs. How to become successful? How to create your own business? How to expand an existing business in Ukraine in the situation of permanent crisis? Let’s look at the example of the biography of Yana Matviychuk.
Yana Matviychuk and leading event agency in Ukraine ARENA CS: five steps to success that changed everything
Yana Matviychuk has been into business since 2004 and has been the owner of the event agency ARENA CS for 14 years. The annual turnover of the company reaches several million dollars and the quantity of staff exceeds 70 people. Yana managed to build a multimillion-dollar company with a starting capital of $ 300. Yana’s business is the ARENA CS company – an event agency that creates large-scale events and projects for international corporations and non-governmental organizations: business conference, international conferences, corporate events, organization of holidays, conference service. The company held 1,728 events in 2017. Since 2004 ARENA CS has implemented 7,248 projects for international corporations and non-governmental organizations.
1. “Hello, this is Yana Matviychuk …” or a call that changed her life forever
Just one brave action can change your entire life. At the very beginning of Yana’s career such an action for the woman was a call to the central office of the company in the US, which put out a tender for a major international event with the participation of 600 delegates from around the world in Ukraine. Nobody picked up the phone, but Yana recorded a Voicemail massage where she shared her interest in working on the project. The result of the message turned out to be the victory in the tender. ARENA CS was the only company whose representative called the central office. The Americans appreciated the commitment and desire to work.
Yana Matviychuk made an offer and it was difficult to refuse it: she offered fixed prices for the next 2 years of preparation of the event, support in the 24/7 mode and guarantee fulfillment of all obligations. For Americans money plays an important role, so the main emphasis in cooperation was made on the cost and the smallest details: how much, when and for what the customer has to pay.
2. The Business in Event management: the main skill is the ability not to be distracted
Ahead there were 2 years of preparation and the time of exciting waiting for the day “X” for the huge international event. How to survive at this time, how to save energy and perseverance, how to go forward? Yana’s dream that was a goal to escape after hard work and spend a few months in the Seychelles and it helped her to wake up in the morning and move forward. The dream, of course, came true, but it rather helped to survive in the days of hard work.
3. Yana Matviychuk: efficiency as a key factor of success
ARENA CS grew and became the market leader in the list of event agencies in Kiev. How to build an effective service company? Do you really need 10 people in the state or 2-3 of them are enough? Do you really need a large office or while you can rent a workplace? Do you really need advertising or other methods might be effective? What else can you do to systematize and establish business processes for effective work? The goal of all this is efficiency and it means to stop doing inefficient activities and spend time only on actions aimed at achieving your goals. “Because of the lack of starting capital in building a business, it was necessary to be effective, which ultimately led to success!”, says Jana Matviychuk.
Efficiency was achieved through the introduction in the business process automation by means of CRM and ERP system. The result of such efficiency was the company’s double growth in the first year of implementation. Organization of events is one of those business ideas that require minimal investments, but in order to develop such a small business in Ukraine it is necessary to have a large capital and strong management that can innovate in the company for its development.
4. The owner should not hamper the development of his business
Aside from the constant development, the owner of the company must closely monitor the work of his team. A year after the introduction of automation and growth of the business, Yana Matviychuk met the resistance of the team. Employees who worked in the company for 5-6 years just waited for them to earn a lot of money when they do nothing. So, the business was growing, but the employees were not, as a result the company was not able to meet the requirements for work, but the owner always needs to think of how to make money. There was no time for the team to change their mindset. The decision was to fire 19 out of 25 employees. At one moment, there were six people and dozens of signed contract management events. Exactly this decision led the company to growth and brought it to a new level.
5. How the event agency came out of the crisis after the dismissal of the team
Management is one of the most important aspects of working in the event agency ARENA CS. In a service company a good team of strong managers is the main secret how to create a successful business. The job of the manager, first of all, is not to create an authoritarian empire under manual control, but to form an autonomous team according to the linear principle of building communication. In ARENA CS a system of HR processes is built, personnel management and personnel search take place on a well-developed system using the most up-to-date innovations in HR. The ARENA CS team employs guys aged 24-25 years – they are millennials the approach to which should be special. Personnel management consists of 5 important points (the SCARF Model of Motivation), compliance with which is the basis of a happy and motivated team member:
• Status – position in the team;
• Certainty – definiteness of functional duties;
• Autonomy – the ability to make decisions independently and be responsible for them;
• Relatedness – an understandable system of work with other team members;
• Fairness – towards all team members and in the principles of rewarding for successful performance.
A new challenge: launching the Business Arena podcast – to take 100 interviews
The personal mission of Yana Matviychuk is to help Ukrainians create business in their country through the demonstration and analysis of successful cases of entrepreneurs in the Business Arena program with Yana Matviychuk and Business Arena program with Yana Matviychuk.
Yana Matviychuk and Business Arena – two word combinations that have already become a brand in event management and category: how to start your own business.
Podcast of the Business Arena with Yana Matviychuk was launched in late 2013 (1 week before the Maydan in 2013 started). For 4 years Yana has managed to reach her goal and recorded more than 100 podcasts with guests Evgeny Chichvarkin, Andrey Zdesenko, founders of Nova Posta Vladimir Popereushnyuk, Dmitry Potapenko, Mikhail Kukhar, Gennady Balashov, Andrei Palchevsky, Dmitry Borisov, Sasha Dergousova, Alla Klimenko, Andrei Klimenko, Kirill Kunitsky, Elizaveta Yurusheva and many others.
The Business Arena project is focused on the development of SMEs in Ukraine and generally on the creation of such a concept as a small business in Ukraine. The mission of the project is to inspire Ukrainians to start business in their country, to help everyone who is at the start of implementation of their ideas, to tell you what kinds of business are, how to create your business, how to become successful, to share business ideas with minimal investments. The idea is to show that the situation for starting a business in Ukraine is difficult, but not hopeless. There are successful stories of people who were not afraid to challenge their laziness, skepticism of others, the lack of large amounts of money and necessary acquaintances at the initial stage. They created, create and will develop successful businesses in Ukraine. They gladly reveal the secrets of creating a business from scratch, share business ideas, advise business books.
Having achieved and exceeded the goal of interviewing 100 people, in March 2018 on the Business Arena channel there were changes and a new rubric was launched. It is called Breaking News Ukraine and Yana leads it with the Russian businessman and oppositionist Dmitry Potapenko. The rubric is dedicated to business and economic news in Ukraine. Today the channel has more than 70,000 subscribers.
Social responcibility of Yana Matviychuk: helping Ukrainians to open new businesses
Creative agency, event agency, organization of business events, organization of conferences, conference services, organization of corporate events, event services and Yana Matviychuk’s YouTube business tips – this list will be incomplete without mentioning the social contribution of Yana. Since 2015, the Business Arena together with the Ukrainian Women’s Fund have been implementing a grant project the aim of which is to help victims of the military conflict in 7 regions of Ukraine.
The goal of the project is to help conflict-affected people to start or reposition small businesses and to facilitate the employment of internally displaced persons (IDPs), demobilized soldiers and members of host communities, including women and people with disabilities (LIDs).
The history of the project has been around for about 2 years. During this time the grant support for the implementation of 121 business projects for more than 8,3 million hryvnias was provided. Moreover, each participant was given the opportunity to undergo an individual accompaniment program under the guidance of mentors with successful business building experience. Besides, more than 800 people have completed a business course for beginners for free.
Yana Matviychuk’s reputation and Ukrainian business secrets
A successful event: how to build a star team?
It is impossible to build successful business without a successful team. For the year 2018 the event company ARENA CS organizes more than 1500 events in 75 cities of Ukraine. To build business processes for such amount of work, tasks and processes is not an easy task. The secret of creating an industry leader among Ukrainian event agencies is in the structure of team building, values and mission that the company operates.
The process of creating a team begins with a structure. In ARENA CS there are several independent teams – experts on different types of events and activities. Further, great attention is paid to the selection of personnel. Event agency refers very carefully to this aspect through the value-based principle. In ARENA CS the four main values are: freedom, responsibility, result and creativity.
Values. Event Agency ARENA CS
«Be free – act. Be responsible – systematize. Be productive – chill. Be creative – create».
These four values as the three whales that hold the earth in ancient mythology.
“Be free – act” Every employee of any company wishes more freedom – freedom from the boss, freedom to make decisions, freedom of action, freedom of schedule. This especially refers to the new generation, which is becoming increasingly difficult to make interested just in a good salary. What does it mean? All employees of ARENA CS have their clearly defined functional duties and responsibilities, which give them an opportunity to plan their work schedules independently, make decisions, especially in emergency situations, which are common in preparation and holding of events.
“Be responsible – systematize” But freedom starts with responsibility. Therefore, the second value means that you have to pay for freedom with personal responsibility, because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. At stake there are the reputation, success, strategic goals of the customer and there is no chance of correcting mistakes. In the work of an event manager regularity is needed, despite the prevalence of creative personality and chaos in the head, in order to correctly record, present and realize the fruits of his work. Therefore, there are regular control points in the company, employees know their KPIs and are looking for ways to implement them. No doubts that it is hard to do without a leader who will advise, tell and show how it is necessary. Mentoring is introduced in ARENA CS as an alternative to manual management of the head. To each employee from the first day of work, a mentor is attached, which helps to understand the principles of work, tells how to communicate with colleagues and clients, and transfers professional knowledge. The mentoring system helps to manage the corporate culture and share the rules by word of mouth. Responsibility and systematic lead to a successful result that makes every employee of ARENA CS completely satisfied.
“Be productive – chill.” The third value is also the desire of the event agency, so that all participants in the process get a real pleasure from work – “chill”, otherwise the efforts will be in vain. Pleasure should be got by employees from one side and the customer, from the other.
In the end, we are born to create. “Be creative – create.” The fourth value and reliance of the company is creativity, which helps to create and is the basis of a high-quality event. Customers contact the event agency in order to solve their task in business with the help of the event, which means that they cannot do without a creative approach.
Values are the foundation for the creation of a star team and the mission give the direction in which it moves. The mission of ARENA CS: “We are developing the business activity in Ukraine in order to be the spotlight on the global Arena”.
The events organized by ARENA CS are taken part by investors, politicians, business representatives, guests from all over the world, so the event has to be held perfectly – this is the key to success in business and in the country in general. Realizing this, employees of the event agency understand all responsibility for their work and then workflow fills with an important meaning.
Motivation of personnel in the event agency and not only
In the event, ARENA CS values and mission are parts of the corporate culture and an important component of the HR brand of the company, because of the fact that modern job seekers, first of all, are interested in comfort in daily work, the system of interaction with colleagues and management. Therefore, corporate culture directly affects employee satisfaction.
Very young, active and ambitious people work in ARENA CS, this is a new generation with a new worldview and attitude to work. Strict control, rough coordination, the schedule from 9 am to 6 pm is in the past. The company gives employees a lot of freedom in their work, which works as motivation for the team, on the other hand, people can not be accustomed to the company if they do not know how to work independently without boss control, do not know how to be proactive, follow deadlines and achieve results. The team itself finds such people and gradually gets rid of them. But those who stay in the team, are always satisfied and have an opportunity to become real event experts in event industry.
Corporate culture of ARENA CS for millennials or not only?
• All new employees undergo a 2-week adaptation under the supervision of HR. This system is detailed and implements through setting tasks in the CRM-system. At the end of the period of adaptation, the program continues until the end of the trial period.
• Each employee is involved in the life of the company through the constant exchange of information in the corporate online group. There is the latest news from the life of the team, passing events, successes, losses, useful information on working with clients and contractors and so on.
• Continuous process of training exercises. Weekly, the company has a “creative day” when team members can exchange information, experience, warn against possible mistakes and stay always up to date with the business of the event industry.
• Checkpoints for employees. This is a systematic meeting of HR with each employee of the company in tete-a-tete mode. The purpose of checkpoints is always to keep abreast of the actual state of the atmosphere in the company, to show concern and interest to each member of the team, to find out what problems the employee is concerned about, what needs to be corrected, what he likes, what he does not like, whether it is convenient for him to work. And many other issues that show the company’s attention and concern for every employee.
• The intracorporate library. After all, you need to constantly develop and not only in the sphere of events. The company has its own library!
• Mentoring. It is one of the main components of the corporate culture, where there is no the boss. Mentor is more experienced member of the team who will answer all the questions and tell you how to act correctly in this or that situation.
• Visiting training events abroad. Employees of the company go abroad for training events. Thus, the company motivates and forms the loyalty of team members.
To be successful in Ukraine you have to be very effective
Yana Matviychuk is convinced that the corporate culture of the company is created solely by managers who want to achieve the success of the company and its employees. If managers do not work on creation of a corporate culture, then employees of the company take part in its creation without realizing it. They create their own rules relationships in the team and with customers. At the first crisis, such a company crashes or at least falls into a steep peak. Therefore, we can unequivocally say that corporate culture is the result of the work of management. If the manager does not manage the creation of a corporate culture, even the most autonomous organization will eventually lose its course of development. The leader should always be a few steps ahead of his team, and therefore be more efficient and thoughtful.
Yana Matviychuk defines her 9 methods of highly effective use of time:
• the actions connected with achievement of the purpose of your life should be on the first place;
• it would be better to do what you always wanted to do;
• the principle of 20/80 between the time spent and the result achieved;
• if others tell you that this is not possible, immediately get down to business;
• implement what has already been successfully done in another area of business;
• monotonous work is not for the leader, so create;
• delegate work to others with relatively little effort from you;
• do things that need to be done, now or never.
Efficiency = success
For the successful leader like Yana Matviychuk the reputation is of great importance. The reputation of a professional manager is earned over the years through the right decisions, leadership qualities, continuous management training. Yana is convinced that in order to be successful, the leader must be able to suppress his own egoistic tendencies, because the very nature of the manager’s work involves helping other people, besides being provided so that the employees feel successful and significant, so the leader must learn to use the power of persuasion and flattery, to be in constant search for consensus. Be consistent, be a source of values, but not to break values. The leader is an example of communication in the company. Each leader should remember the importance of being ensured that the employees correctly understand you. You must convey the task or goal correctly, because the result depends on the correct formulation of the task.
How to learn to delegate – main question for those who starts their business
In Ukraine, it is a huge problem to find professional mid-level managers. An important quality for a manager is the ability to delegate and the ability to work in a team. In the event agency ARENA CS employees are taught the principles of delegation and the principles of teamwork.
A very important factor in the delegation is mutual understanding: while passing the task to someone, it is necessary to clarify if the receiver understands you? If he makes a mistake, the manager is guilty, who made explanations incorrectly or did not specify whether he was understood. If you delegate tasks and transfer responsibilities correctly, then teamwork becomes much easier and clearer.
Teamwork is the work of a group of professionals aimed at a single goal, where an important factor in achieving the goal is the autonomous fulfillment by each participant of the team within the individual zone of responsibility. So, the whole project and the team’s successful achievement of the goal depend on the work of each team member.
ARENA CS learns such principles of teamwork: after the roles of each member and the areas of responsibility in the project are distributed, let colleagues work on their own site, do not interfere in someone else’s work, be completely responsible for your site of work. In teamwork, the solution of a question can not be chaotic and noisy, it is necessary to create a discussion system in which everyone can express his point of view and be heard by others. In teamwork, it is important to be confident in those people you work with; maximum concentration, individual responsibility, autonomy, support and wise distribution of responsibilities among team members are certainly important factors.
Innovations in the event management: track, implement, be the first
The automation of business processes in Ukrainian event agency ARENA CS
Nowadays paper is no longer being used in work and the tasks are almost never set orally. Any process is fixed thanks to information technologies, in particular, the CRM system helps. The introduction of automation of business processes in ARENA CS led to the growth of the campaign more than three times in the next three years.
The main goal of implementing the CRM system is to make the processes inside the company automatic, entirely regulate the processes, which prevents the possibility of repeating the same little mistakes that may lead to losing significant time. CRM system is implemented to improve the quality and speed of customer service, improve analysis of relationships for regulating tariff policy, provide discounts, set up marketing tools. It helps to take into account all the individual needs of customers. As the information is processed automatically, employees have more time to implement more important tasks aimed at obtaining the result. In short, it is impossible to imagine ARENA CS without a CRM system.
Another innovation that event agency ARENA CS is using for their Clients are mobile applications, which have the basic functions of the organizers:
• informing the participants about current events;
• distribution of programs of activities;
• acquaintance with speakers;
• providing information about the event;
• registration of participants;
• providing navigation to the venue and on site;
• networking;
• appointment of meetings;
• collection of contact information;
• online surveys;
• getting feedback from participants.
Despite all the benefits of those applications, they do not personal approach. The application can not answer the questions of a particular participant. Chatbots become a new trend in the event industry.
Nowadays developers already offer a solution for events and it may be special bots-concierges, which are integrated into messengers, sms messages, social networks and other information channels. Such chatbots conduct a dialogue with participants in their language and slang according to their specific needs and requirements, as they are trained. Often, the user who conducts the conversation does not always understand whether the bot or a real person is talking to him.
What can the concierge bots do:
• provide information on the schedule of events, the venue;
• answer in different languages;
• cover the event in real time;
• talk about speakers and exhibits;
• provide access to Wi-Fi;
• provide parking space and much more.
In addition, bots do not require installation on mobile devices, which has a positive effect on the battery charge; do not require authorization from the user, entering password and other additional actions; the chat room vocabulary adapts to the user, it “speaks” with his usual phrases and the longer it does this, the greater the mutual understanding is and the more accurate the answers are; the organizers get statistics on the number of appeals, questions that made people interested, problems that appeared during the event and this is invaluable information on working on comments and wishes for the organization of the following projects.
ARENA CS helps their Clients who organize business and corporate events to implement and adopt to their business different event industry innovations.
How to track innovation and be a market leader
The world of business never stops; it lives in constant competition where new approaches and technologies constantly appear and we now call them innovations. The leader should be some steps ahead of his company. For this, Yana Matviychuk as the owner and the head of the company, continuously monitors the newest innovations in business in many directions. What innovations should the owner of business track? Yana Matviychuk recommends to monitor innovations in such areas:
•The model of profit in your company;
• Network of contacts or interaction with others to create value;
• The structure of your talents and assets;
• Organization process;
• Excellent features and functionality of the company’s product;
• Creating products complementary to each other;
• Service to maintain and increase the value of your offers;
• Channel for promoting products and services;
• Brand or presentation of your offer and business;
• Involvement of clients and interaction with them;
Event agency of Yana recalls the words from the poem of Constantine Balmont: “God created the world from nothing. So, the artist, you should learn it from him and if your talent is a grain, do miracles with it, grow immense forests … “. At the beginning of the journey there was nothing: no dating, no money, no business experience with parents, no knowledge of business. But there was a strong desire to succeed and 14 years later Yana Matviychuk can confidently answer the question: “How to make $ 10,000,000 out of $ 300?” – “Work hard.”
