Summary

@0:02 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Hello everyone and welcome to the Shades of Entrepreneurship. This is your host, Mr.

Gabriel Flores. Today, I'm here with Bartos Farcek. Bartos, how are we doing buddy?

@0:21 - Bartosz Skwarczek

Yes, see we've been working on the name earlier. I'm really excited. good. That was good. Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me, Gabriel. I really enjoyed being here.

@0:32 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Good to see you. I'm excited because this is a very interesting entrepreneur, obviously, he has an accent, so he's not here from the States, but what he does actually affects everyone across the country, because myself, I love entertainment.

love gaming, but before we get into G2A, Bartos, introduce yourself. Give us a little background.

@0:54 - Bartosz Skwarczek

Thank you very much. I was born in Poland in... In late 80s, can say, it's a very post-communism-solving country, and from New Saint, you cannot mistake it with New York, a rather small city than educational path in Poland.

Then my first company in very different industry where I am right now, so now it's a commerce, but before it was still construction, so very heavy business.

And then I was living for a couple of years, for seven or eight, to be exact, in Amsterdam, in Boston, in Berlin, Marbella, in Spain, and now back to Poland again, so I feel being very cosmopolitan, I can say, and that can be for the very good start.

@1:48 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

A true global citizen, just kind of cruising around the entire world. Now, now, as I mentioned, you are the founder of G2A.

@1:57 - Bartosz Skwarczek

So first, explain what G2A is. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this. G2A.com is the world's largest, actually, and most trusted, they say, marketplace for digital entertainment.

So we have two-sided business model, like eBay for digital items being, being brief. 30 million people, 180 countries where we operate over 100 million items sold.

So that's scale of the business. The United States is the largest market for us. And you have the selection of 75,000 different titles.

So literally, if you would like to play the game, probably, we have it. If that is on console, on PC, etc.

And also, G2A leads in online security. We've been awarded several times for being on the top of the game when it comes to cybersecurity.

A couple of times also named the marketplace of the year or the best B2C marketplace. In one of the countries in Europe very soon, in 20 days, we will receive the award for the best marketplace.

But it's unofficial yet, so we have to wait two weeks.

@3:22 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I love it. So that's something you'll probably see on the newsletter, sort of quick plug, visit the shades of e.com to go ahead and subscribe to that newsletter.

Now go ahead and give us a little background. Why did you start? How did you start this?

@3:34 - Bartosz Skwarczek

It's basically an online marketplace, right, for digital and entertainment. It's games, and is there also movies on there? Is there just primarily games?

Primarily games, but you can buy a gift card or subscription for Netflix or Amazon or Prime or probably whatever gift card you can think of.

So partially yes. So what do we do? You can think of it like G2A states for gate to adventure.

So we basically open the gate to digital adventure for our clients. And we base on two, as we call it, in marketing on two archetypes.

One is adventurer. So it needs to be interesting, exciting, needs to be new, and it is. And on the other side, caregiver.

So basically what we are saying is, hey, we've been here for almost 15 years. We really know the industry, the digital space.

So let us guide you through this, to choose the best item or product or the way you would like to spend your time.

And we will take care about you, about your payments, your customer experience, et cetera.

@4:58 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So this is what we stand for. Now, let's take a step back. Is this your first entrepreneurial endeavor or have you kind of jumped into this pool of entrepreneurship before?

@5:11 - Bartosz Skwarczek

No, it's not the first one. It's not my first rodeo. I started very early, you know, in my high school.

Even earlier, in my primary school, I was cleaning cars for money. In my high school, was a tennis trainer and I was drinking the tennis rackets and et cetera.

And then at the university, the second year of my university, I started my entrepreneurial path. So, I started working in insurance company.

And I was knocking the door, the live insurance and building the sales structure. So that was the very beginning.

And then at the last year of my university, I set up my first company. It was still construction. And within five years, we brought the company from zero to being top 20 industry leaders in Poland.

And when it comes to steel industry, including steel mills, also the biggest one, like Laksmi Mito from India, etc.

So that was a big success. Then there was a failure, because I lost my business, I think I can say I wasn't smart enough to protect it.

And I was misled, I was basically somebody had stolen from me a lot of money and materials, never got back, went bankrupt.

And that went in parallel with financial crisis. And I was forced to give away my business, to sold it.

And I landed on the very bottom. And then I started another business that was logistics. And, from this moment, I also was doing consulting, so mentoring, coaching, etc.

And one day, I got an email, an email was, hello, Mr. Bartos, my name is David, I am 18 years old, could you be my mentor?

And I didn't answer. So that was the first moment when G2A could not happen, but the second day I got a very long explanation why I should become a mentor of my future business partner.

And this is how it all started. They I mentored David for six months. And then we shake hands, and then we started something called go to arena.

That was the first name of the business, because we didn't have money for the three letter domain, which is very , G2A, it's easy to remember, etc.

But at that time, it was too expensive for us. We started small. We started very humble. Six people, one room, low cost.

That was the beginnings.

@8:09 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Man, and it's kind of interesting because, you know, one of the things you mentioned was mentorships. You were hesitant to take on it, but then you did.

You brought on a new mentor. How did that help you grow as a professional business into the entrepreneurial world, becoming a mentor?

@8:26 - Bartosz Skwarczek

In my opinion, mentoring, being mentor and mentee is fundamental when you think about entrepreneurship, because when you are a mentor, that is probably the best way to learn things, because when you are teaching other people, sharing, then you are also learning.

being mentee never ends. Today, I finished two universities. I started started at MIT at Harvard, some programs, et cetera.

I read over 1,000 books, and I still have this feeling that I am so small when it comes to the knowledge that I could get.

And also, today, I have my mentors. So today, I am both mentor and mentee. And in my opinion, if you want to be successful entrepreneur, you have to be humble when it comes to your ego, when it comes to your appetite and the way you think about yourself.

So it's good to have big appetite, but it is also important to remember that there is always a bigger guy than you.

There is always a bigger company than you, and that your ego should be under control. Even though you are very successful, you should really take care about being down to Earth.

@10:01 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, having, you know, being humble, mentioned, you know, being humble and being down to earth. And you also mentioned with your steel company during the financial crisis, around 2008, right?

How did you remain, you know, humble during such a testing time in your life and how did you kind of have the willpower to continue to move on with your entrepreneurial journey?

@10:22 - Bartosz Skwarczek

It was definitely one of the most difficult periods of my life, because when the company is successful, the life is maybe not easy, because it is always pushing and pushing and wanting more and harder.

Of course, it depends on your, on your leadership style, from many different leadership styles. My was mine was always leading by example.

Mine was always very hardworking. Nobody never gave me anything. And every penny I earned. every dollar, every euro, I had to earn it.

And I believe in hard work, basically. And going back to the financial crisis, this humbleness, I can give you an example.

When your company is in trouble, and you are in debt, a lot of people want to talk to you and ask, hey, where would I get my money?

And then you have the choice. You can answer the phone, or you can not answer it. And of course, sometimes it seems to be easier not answering them.

But in my opinion, it's not a good way. It's not a good approach. It's not the long term approach.

So what I was doing always when my company was down, because as a businessman, you will always have ups and downs.

And with every business, you have to remember that they will be ups and downs. there is never going like skyrocketing all the time.

And I was basically answering every phone in the most difficult time period. It was imagine having I did the statistics 156 phones per day people asking, Hey, what's going on?

Where is my money? How can I get it? Where will you pay me et cetera? And I was answering every phone and I was addressing every case the way I could.

I was saying, Hey, not tomorrow day after, or I was saying, Okay, I cannot give you the money, but I have some material.

So you can buy it from me in a good price. And then we will be settled or or or but always I was trying in these difficult moments to be there because the worst thing you can do is stop answering your phone and just, you know, disappear.

Because market is small. Even though the world is big, at the end of the day, it's not so big.

People know people. And I can say today very openly, you can go to anybody I was working in my life for the last over 20 years and ask about me.

And you will hear a good testimonial. And some people don't see that. In those difficult moments, some people think that they can hide or disappear and it never works well.

@13:37 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You know, from that moment, you decided, okay, this failed, still failed, but you took a lot of those lessons and then you started a logistics business.

How did how did that transition occur?

@13:55 - Bartosz Skwarczek

I went from, you know, when I when I I finished this time of my business endeavor. I took a lot of hits, and it was very difficult momentum.

I was on the very bottom, and there is something which is, I think, human nature, and human nature is being built much earlier.

Of course, we've been developing ourselves the whole life, but the way you are constructed during your kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, university, it's super important, because then you are learned about work ethic, about your values, about you rather prefer to be honest person, or maybe trying to cheat somebody.

it always is reflected during your later stages. So sometimes when I see the parents that are not taking care about their children, when it comes to values, when it comes to the discipline, when it comes to the behavior, I know that those children would have a lot of problems in their adult life, because they will not be on the good path with the with the DNA they have imprinted.

And in my case, when I finished my first business, my entrepreneurial nature was like, okay, what can I do now?

And I was, I was, I did the license for logistics, and I started again, very small. And at the same time, even bigger part of my

my activities was coaching. So I had my web page, I had people that were asking me for advice, and I started my recommendation.

So people were saying to another people, hey, guy, he knows what he talks about. And within the next three years, I had a really good life when it comes to the level of business, of I could maintain myself really well.

@16:34 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So from that, you know, it's I think there's a few things I want to kind of pull out there, folks.

One, I completely agree in creating structure when you're, you know, have two young girls, I have a four year old and a one year old.

And for me, creating structure, even around their nap times is extremely important. We're very structured in our day. Believe it or not, I wake up about 4 35 a.m.

day. Every day. day. And then my kids are about seven in the morning every day. They get up, they eat breakfast first thing in the morning.

And then every day, their nap is like 1230 to 230 every day. They go to bed at 730 at night every day.

know, this is, it's very structured. And the reason for that, it kind of creates, you know, I talked about this earlier, know, of things I do is I wake up every day and make my bed.

And it's because it just, it creates structure in your life to help you kind of succeed. Every time I make my bed the day, I think of like, okay, that's one thing I've accomplished already.

I'm off to a good start, you know, and then I'll take a couple of, you know, 30 minutes to do some dual lingual, another 30 minutes to get on the exercise, use some core exercise, get on the peloton, right?

And then eight hours or nine hours of straight work, you know, and then I got a couple hours left to still spend time with the family.

But it's structuring your day to be as efficient as possible is, is, you know, what about doses really kind of get into is just kind of creating structure.

around your day and all your kids day because it's going to make them successful. Well, and I completely agree, you know, um, having that structure is so important.

Now you went, I still logistics, I can see the, the, the similarities, right? And then you get a call from a mentee saying, Hey, I'm, I got a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,