Section 1: About me. Dossier.
«Moving from employment to entrepreneurship.»
Savenko Viktoriia Serhiivna
Insights from private meetings and member stories are in our Telegram channel.
Join the clubSection 2. About the business. Dossier.
Section 3: Biography.
My name is Viktoriia Savenko, and today I am a real estate entrepreneur and the owner of People agency in Kyiv. My journey has had several stages: living and working in Donetsk, then Mariupol, and, since 2008, Kyiv, which immediately raised the bar in terms of pace, responsibility and financial expectations. That period became a turning point in my growth: I learned to make decisions in a more dynamic environment, where speed and quality of management matter. I became an entrepreneur not because of a romantic vision of running my own business, but out of a practical desire to have control over my time and life. The birth of my second child was the moment I clearly saw that full-time employment takes away your life, not just your hours. That led to my decision to leave employment and start my own business — a decision that completely changed my mindset and level of personal responsibility.
The idea came from a need to change the way I worked after the birth of my second child: I wanted to set my own schedule rather than live at work. I assessed my background and realized I could apply it in real estate as an independent venture with the potential to deliver good results. I started as a real estate agent, but even then I had a practical plan to make my own company the next step.
The foundation was the skills I had gained in sales and bank management. I brought what I already knew into real estate: working with people and selling; organizing the work of a unit/department; hiring; developing new products; project reporting; and budgeting. I would also highlight the impact of sales training — it was completely unconventional and significantly reshaped my mindset.
Three things stood out most at the start.
First, starting my own business meant growing as a person. I moved from being an employee and manager to a role in which the owner is responsible for results, from people and processes to financial discipline;
Second, people relocating when the war began: everyone scattered, and there was uncertainty about what was happening and what to do, so I effectively had to rebuild the team from scratch.
Third, resuming operations amid destruction and everyday restrictions, which affected customer demand and the team's well-being and working rhythm, alongside new legal restrictions that directly affected the real estate market.
The two main crises were related to external circumstances and business structure. The first was war-related: people scattered, and we needed to restart operations and hire again. I worked through it by rebuilding the team from scratch and returning to prewar volumes, then exceeding them. The second crisis was losing my business partner: there were two of us in the previous company, but my partner left, and I had to rebuild the operation on my own again. It was both a crisis and a challenge — but I managed by taking on the full scope of management and responsibility.
The decision to let go of control when working with people had the greatest impact on growth. In sales, excessive control and pressure quickly lead to team burnout. When I started seeking a balance — less micromanagement, more trust and healthy boundaries — relationships within the company changed, as did people's well-being and, consequently, results.
My most valuable mistake was a partnership I had not structured properly: it was based on gut feelings, without enough discussion or written agreements. This led to a crisis when my partner stepped away from operations and I was left with full responsibility. That experience taught me to approach partnership arrangements thoughtfully and responsibly, and not to substitute emotions for agreements.
Section 4: How can I be useful? Experience I can share.
My practical experience that could benefit other entrepreneurs is rebuilding a business amid instability: when people relocate, conditions change every week, and the owner has to rebuild the team and restore business volumes.
Another area of strength is managing salespeople without excessive control: I have seen firsthand how micromanagement burns people out, and how changing your management style boosts the team's energy and results.
The third is recognizing that a business depends directly on its owner's well-being: I invested in working on my mindset and well-being (including through psychotherapeutic/psychosomatic support), and that influenced how I make decisions and respond to events. And, of course, there is my professional experience with legal and practical issues in real estate.
I see systematization as a set of instructions and approaches from which entrepreneurs choose what suits them: creating structure and making a step-by-step plan. For systematic people, I think this is straightforward. For less systematic people like me, it is more important to find a method that works for you than to try to become completely systematic through generic approaches.
I do not have a separately defined experience of growing X2 in a year, because I see growth as gradual. At the same time, I can see that moving from total control to a business with mature, responsible people on the team produced a significant leap — and the key for me was to keep enjoying my work and looking for ways forward and opportunities rather than problems.
Section 5: Club value
