2019 was a significant year in the lifespan of Lektor. We were faced with a number of big and small things, and most of them for the first time. Learning how to deal with these new things along with running the operations simultaneously presented its challenges, but in the end of the year we were able to keep things on the green.
The main event on Lektor’s journey in 2019 was the relocation from sunny Spain to Finland. The decision was made after careful consideration of how to actually make a limited liability company hop from one country to another. We got great help from Helsinki Business Hub, whose staff gave valuable tips and introduced us to black-belt professionals who were able to answer some tricky questions. Lektor Finland saw the light of a summer day in July and Lektor Spain was dissolved in October.
Image by Wonderland Work.
Getting a new office in a new country and new city means, that you actually need to find an office space for the company. The hunt for an appropriate facility was started immediately and first visits to potential working spaces were done immediately in July. A small business like Lektor needed to balance various things for the decision. Location – distance from city center and from staff’s homes, services – printing, WiFi, coffee, restaurant, reception services, meeting room availability, having an inspirational speaker coming to present something interesting once or twice a month, yoga, after work drinks on Fridays, size and “coolness” of the office, and of course price for all of it. Our choice was Wonderland coworking space in Vallila area. It offered the flexibility, services and the attractive funky atmosphere we were looking for. Let us know if you’d like to come for a visit!
If you’re having an office, there needs to be something to do, right? Right! We made the first official hire from the start and got a business manager, Emil, to set up the shop and to get operations rolling. At the same time we got ourselves a professional accounting partner to crunch the numbers – another action that we had not done before. Balanco in Vantaa stepped up to the task and set us up with all necessary bookkeeping and accounting software and whatnots to keep our record straight and to relieve us from heaps of stress about how the dough gets recorded.
All this costs something, so to pay for it, there needs to be some income as well. Here we relied in our mainline ops, which is ATC instructor provision to customers. We were able to keep a steady flow of instructors providing services throughout the latter half of 2019, which kept the lights on in the office. We also took the first steps toward the future by initiating application process for a training organization certificate from our national regulator. Lektor’s aim is to be able to provide certified training for practical instructors and assessors in 2020, which helps maintain the qualifications of Lektor consultants. As soon as we’ll get it, there will be a post on this site – that is a promise!
We started engines in 2019. We will start taxi for takeoff in 2020.
