Inside the Mind of a CEO: Zygimantas Surintas on the Fundamentals of Business

My experience comes from aviation, but now I lead a wellness and HealthTech company. Business lessons are universally similar, and continuous success requires adaptation and growth.

In this article, I want to share the most important points — or perhaps you could call them tips, but definitely not tricks — that could help entrepreneurs. Everything revolves around how you work, and there are no easy solutions or fixes.

How to grow and remain a leading player

I believe that growth should be periodic, measured, and planned. Business stability is great, but today, we live in a competitive environment where stability is more of an imagined state. In our business at Kilo Health, we compete globally, making stability truly hard to achieve.

Moreover, you must always invest strategically, which means reinvesting your profits back into the business. This is my key rule of business management: you can’t simply cash out from the business — you must always think about the future and have a long-term strategy. 

Continuously seek new innovations, business solutions, and approaches that can help grow your revenue. 

I firmly believe that when you decide to stop growing and focus solely on profitability or other aspects, you start losing the competitive battle. So, grow and always grow with discipline. Don’t be reckless — invest in the latest solutions as you grow. This ensures that you remain a leading player in your market rather than being overtaken by competitors.

It’s also very important not to fear change. Change management is culturally challenging for any organization, but it is essential. Constant evolution is crucial. Keeping that in mind, avoid being tied to a single standard or dogma, thinking — “This has always been the best solution, the best way to do business.” Strive to maintain a flexible approach.

A leader should know that ‘it takes two’

I really think great leaders aren’t just born that way — they become great over time. Learning from past experiences, mentors, and lessons is super important. Even if you start out as a new leader, having a good team around you is key. 

To me, leadership means showing others how it’s done. Leaders can make mistakes, but they need to have a plan and make people trust them. In my more than ten years of leading, there were times when people trusted me, even though I didn’t have much experience at first. So, while being a leader is important, the team is just as crucial. It’s about showing the way and motivating others. 

Remember, one person alone can’t make a company succeed, it takes a whole team, or at least “two.” Investing in people and their competencies, investing in minds, and investing in young people are essential values of a healthy organization, which should come from the company’s long-term strategy. 

The last thing a good leader should know is that all lessons learned in business are valuable.

Entrepreneurs learn from other entrepreneurs’ mistakes, and we often learn from our own mistakes. Mistakes are endless, and business is a risk, while business development is measuring the risk and making risky decisions.

The delusion of young startups

But speaking of mistakes and risks, young startups often make some wrong decisions that can significantly impact their future success. For instance, they might overlook the crucial step of validating their business idea to make sure it’s actually relevant. 

Additionally, they might invest in developing their primary product without first verifying their business assumptions. Another critical consideration is whether the business genuinely addresses a problem in the market.

And the third thing is financial management. It’s important to be careful with initial investments, making sure they’re used wisely and not wasted on untested ideas. These are common mistakes among new startups, driven by the belief that success is guaranteed. 

However, belief alone isn’t enough, it needs to be backed up. And how can you back up your idea? By investing a bit more in testing and understanding those assumptions.

Often, startups have one hypothesis and promote it heavily, and that hypothesis may not necessarily be correct.

Current HealthTech trends

If we talk about trends, the first thing that comes to mind is — simplicity.

People these days want innovation and new tools to help them live healthier and achieve their goals. They want simplicity, meaning they don’t want complicated functionality — they just want help with the use of technology. Our job is to offer something new, providing solutions that can truly help people live healthier every day and achieve their goals.

Our direct audience is tired of complexity, and we see this clearly in some of our products. More functionality doesn’t necessarily lead to greater success in helping people achieve their goals. 

Besides that, life’s journey is long, and people want to try new things. Hence, we see a growing interest in hypnosis and various psychological approaches to their health. Most tools available, including those from our company, are not sufficient on their own to solve people’s health problems. To make these tools effective, people need discipline, and they are seeking ways to strengthen that discipline.

Trends show that people are seeking more natural and interesting products to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This is a crucial part of our business — we analyze and search for the latest trends daily, proving that people care deeply about living healthily.

Do you care about helping people live healthier lives? Check out our careers page.

Zygimantas Surintas

CEO of Kilo Health

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