Violeta Podhaniuk

Today, my wife and I are entrepreneurs in the door and window services niche and co-founders of the BOVI showroom. We are spouses and partners 24/7, and that shapes our management style in many ways: a lot of responsibility, a lot of hands-on involvement, and, for now, a poor work-life balance. Our main focus is service and personal responsibility for the entire process: from consultation and selection to installation and warranty support. We are committed to building long-term relationships with our customers and work not for a “one-off sale,” but for our reputation and their trust.

For many years before going into business, our lives revolved around music. Violeta is a qualified choral and orchestral conductor, and Bohdan is a saxophonist. At the beginning of the full-scale war, music seemed “not to be a priority,” and we began looking for a way to be useful to people while also creating stability for our family. This mindset—focused on usefulness and the moral and social dimension—became the foundation for choosing our niche and getting through the first challenges.

Business quickly erased the boundaries between work and personal life. We are still learning to find balance, and, to be honest, we are not doing it perfectly yet. Our mornings often start with calls from customers or installers, and our evenings end with work matters. Officially, the workday lasts until 19:00, but we often work until one in the morning—and that has long been part of reality rather than an exception. We understand that this is not something to be proud of in the long term, so we are gradually learning to set aside time for ourselves, at least here and there. It has become clear to us that proper rest needs to be planned in advance: booking hotels, buying tickets, and setting specific dates. Otherwise, business never ends, because there is always something else that needs finishing.

At the same time, working together has a major advantage: we understand each other very well. We know what our partner is thinking, what difficulties they are facing, why they are tired or worried. This greatly reduces the misunderstandings that often arise in couples where one person lives for work and the other does not fully understand that reality. We have learned that if a couple wants to build a business together, they have to accept that the boundaries between work and family life will blur. But with love, respect, and a willingness to work on the relationship, balance can eventually be found.

Although we value clear agreements and accountability in business, between the two of us we have never formalized anything apart from our marriage :). We have neither a partnership agreement nor even a prenuptial agreement—everything rests on trust. We realize that this somewhat contradicts our own principles about the importance of agreements, but for now, this is how our relationship works. Though we do not know what things will look like in five years: perhaps one day we will find a manager for the company and finally allow ourselves to take a proper break.

Today, we are somewhere between self-employment and a fully developed business model, and that is our biggest internal struggle. Our biggest sticking point is staffing. In our niche, training a specialist takes up to half a year. This is not a standardized business where someone can be brought into the process in a few days. There is a lot of technical information to master: understanding measurements, installation specifics, and how doors and windows interact with floors, walls, and different technologies. We can already see how the system should work and understand what we are striving for, but staffing is what holds us back the most.

At the same time, we have already begun building a team that can grow alongside us. We are currently developing a manager whom we consider the best we have had throughout our time in business, and we want him to become head of sales. This is a very important step for us: moving from a model where everything depends exclusively on the two of us to a systematic business that can operate and scale.

We have changed a lot over the years. When we started, we were 22–23. Some people supported us and admired us as young entrepreneurs, while others openly doubted us and asked what we thought we were doing in business. Today, many of the people who once did not believe in us have been left behind. But most importantly, our mindset has changed. Thanks to new people around us, learning, and experience, we began to look at business, its scale, and its possibilities in a completely different way. What seems like basic knowledge today simply did not exist for us back then.

We have also learned to take on significant risks. We have become more serious, sleep less, and sometimes forget to eat properly, but at the same time we have grown tremendously as people. Business changes the scale of a person’s ambitions, forces you to mature, and makes you take responsibility not only for yourself but also for the people around you. And it is our readiness to take risks and move forward that allows us to keep growing—as partners, entrepreneurs, and a family.

How did the business idea come about?

Violeta: The idea came during the first months of the full-scale war, from a very specific experience. In the private residential area where my parents’ house stood, a window was blown out by shrapnel from a mortar shell. The house survived, thank God, but the windows were blown out. Volunteers helped replace them. Around that time, we remembered that before the war, my parents had said, “It would be cool to work with windows.” Bohdan and I were sitting on a swing in the garden, looking around and simply taking in everything that was happening. I asked him, “What could we do to be useful to people?” Music was completely irrelevant at that point. We wanted both to help people and to learn something new.

Bohdan: I went looking for a job. I came across a vacancy at a door and window sales company and started there in May 2022 with absolutely no experience, after 15 years in music. By October 2022, we had already signed a lease and decided to open our own showroom. We did the first orders for people affected by the war at practically cost price—it was a way to learn and a way to help.

What key skills helped you launch the business?

Bohdan (about Violeta): Her sociability and her ability to communicate sincerely and effectively. Customers leave reviews and write not “the BOVI showroom,” but “Violeta.” Communication really is her strong suit.

Violeta (about Bohdan): Bohdan is a fast machine. An incredibly quick mind. He had a very clear understanding of how to run ads and set up targeting on Facebook and Instagram—our first customers came from there.

Both: We have both developed our technical product knowledge to the point where we ourselves can act as technical experts for our customers: the nuances of measurements, joins with walls and floors, humidity, plaster, and millimeters that determine the result. When faced with difficult questions, our competitors contact the factory and wait for a technician’s answer. At this point, we have the knowledge and experience to be technical specialists for our customers.

What were the 3 most difficult challenges you overcame in the early years?

Bohdan: The first was starting out during the war and blackouts. Renovating our first showroom coincided with the first mass attacks. I remember that on January 1, Violeta and I were at work taking doors apart because we had committed to a customer that they would be ready by the 5th, while missiles were flying and the whole shop was shaking from the blast wave. It was terrifying.

Violeta: The second was financial pressure. We invested all our savings and borrowed money on top of that, without extensive experience in the niche. But for a single second, we never considered closing down: we could see customers starting to come in, people were happy, and there was long-term potential.

Bohdan: The third was losing our premises. We fully opened in February, and by March we were told that the premises were being sold. They were sold in April, with no compensation to us. In a single day, we dismantled everything we had spent three months renovating, and moved it all to another location that same day. Imagine that.

What crises has your business faced, and how have you overcome them?

Bohdan: The most acute systemic crisis is staffing. The product is technically complex: both managers and installers have to be accurate down to the millimeter. Good specialists are hard to find, and training someone from scratch takes about half a year. Another dimension is installers being mobilized while they are in the middle of fulfilling commitments. Just three days ago, I could not get through to an installer we have worked with for years—it turned out he had been mobilized in the middle of the street. And we still have a commitment to the customer, who has already paid. That is the biggest crisis.

Violeta: The rest—blackouts, cold in the office, 10 degrees in winter—are part of wartime conditions that almost every business has gone through. We do not consider that a separate crisis; everyone is dealing with these conditions now.

What decisions have been most effective in helping the company grow?

Bohdan: Two decisions. First, to move away from dependence on a single channel (targeted advertising) and focus on social capital and business-to-business partnerships. We started building a website and deliberately reaching out to site foremen, designers, and construction firms. Up to five times a week, customers come to us through recommendations—even though people only renovate once every 15 years.

Violeta: Second, to start moving away from working as just the two of us and to grow the team. For a long time, we handled everything ourselves: taking orders, consultations, and invoices. Growth began when managers joined us and we started investing time in training and service standards.

What mistake do you now consider your most valuable learning experience?

Bohdan: Trusting without verifying when working with contractors and partners. We have been through a lot of pain and came up with a rule for ourselves: trust, but verify. Any relationship should be formalized in a contract—whether the people are acquaintances or not, whether they are from the club or not. Having to move the showroom two months after opening was exactly that kind of lesson.

Violeta: The same. It is something we share. There was a lot of pain and many trials involved—and that applies both to the move and to various situations with contractors afterward.

How did you earn your first $100?

Violeta: My first $100 was when I was 18, at my first job in a Vodafone electronics and telecommunications store. I worked there as a tariff plan specialist. My salary was around 8 000 hryvnias. I remember coming home, laying the banknotes out on the piano, looking at them, and showing off to my parents. It was so cool.

Bohdan: I started back in elementary school: I bought yo-yos at the village shop for 2 hryvnias and sold them to my classmates for 8. But my first real $100 came from music, from performing at events, starting in childhood.

How did you earn your first $1 000?

Violeta: My first thousand was around 2018; I saved it from that same salaried job before the wedding.

Bohdan: My first $1 000 also came from music, from performing at events.

How did you earn your first $10 000?

Bohdan: My first $10 000 came from working as a professional saxophonist, around 2017–2018. That year, I took part in around two hundred different events.

Violeta: My first $10 000 came from our joint business, in the salon's first year of operation.

How did you earn your first $100 000?

Both: Our first $100 000 in business came in 2024, around the time we joined YBC. We were renovating our first apartment and entering the club's trial period at the time. That's what enabled us to apply.

How did you earn your first $1 000 000?

Bohdan: We haven't earned it yet. But we're hoping it will happen this year, God willing.

Violeta: I believe it will. Amen.

I can help with design, renovations, and construction, as I am a co-founder of a family business and the BOVI brand, a company specializing in comprehensive home solutions: doors, windows, and flooring.

I can also help with music-related matters. I have a master’s degree in choral and orchestral conducting and have devoted half my life to music education.

Link to the app

https://ybclub.app.link/QN05dg4M6Wb