A week or two before his eighteenth birthday, Normunds Vitols received some remarkable news. A business plan he had been working on with his sister had been approved through a financing programme at a Latvian bank. They had secured approximately €20,000 in low-interest loan funding to turn an unusual idea into a business: buying an old, full-sized Mercedes-Benz bus and converting it into a mobile catering operation.

Neither of them had a formal business education, and Normunds was still studying at maritime school. The loan had to be taken out in his sister's name because he wasn't yet eighteen. Nevertheless, they had managed to convince the bank to support their plan, and they were ready to get started.

They bought an old Mercedes-Benz bus for around €4,000. It was barely running, but Normunds came from a family of people who knew how to repair machinery, build things and find practical solutions. Together, they restored the vehicle and transformed it into a business that could serve customers at festivals and events.

It was an ambitious undertaking for someone so young, particularly because the siblings had little understanding of how to attract customers or operate a profitable company. Their enthusiasm and determination would carry them through the first stages of the venture, but the experience would also expose how much they still had to learn.

To understand why Normunds was so determined to become an entrepreneur before he had even finished school, however, it helps to go back to his childhood in the Latvian countryside.

Growing Up with Ambition, Limited Resources and a Need to Create

Normunds grew up in a small village in Latvia, surrounded by four brothers and a sister. His father was an entrepreneur who also knew how to build and fix almost anything, and practical work was an ordinary part of family life.

Together with his father and brothers, Normunds helped construct a house, working on everything from its foundations to the roof. He also spent four years learning carpentry at school, where woodworking classes were part of the curriculum.

Even outside those structured activities, he was naturally drawn to experimenting with tools and mechanisms. As a child, he could spend days taking things apart and trying to turn them into something else.

On one occasion, he remembers using parts from a screwdriver and some batteries to create a small boat. The invention worked for a couple of hours before eventually sinking. The result hardly mattered compared with the opportunity to figure out whether he could make the idea work in the first place.

His family provided a loving home and the essentials they needed, but there wasn't always money available for the things he wanted. With one parent providing the family's income and several children to support, resources had to be divided carefully.

His father prioritized the home and spending time with his children, while new clothes, gadgets and other extras were less readily available. Normunds sometimes earned money through small jobs his father arranged, but he also remembers feeling the difference between what his family could afford and what some of his classmates had.

One experience from around his twelfth or thirteenth birthday stayed with him particularly strongly.

At his school, children traditionally brought sweets or small treats to share with classmates on their birthdays. Normunds asked his father to get something for him to bring, but instead of the sweets he had hoped for, his father gave him a packet of waffles.

He remembers feeling deeply embarrassed by the idea of handing them out. When nobody at school remembered it was his birthday, he felt disappointed, but also relieved that he wouldn't have to share the waffles after all.

Normunds doesn't describe his childhood as one of poverty. His family had food, shelter and the things they needed. Nevertheless, experiences like these contributed to a growing determination to become financially independent. He wanted to reach a point where money would no longer prevent him from having the opportunities and experiences he desired.

That determination found a direction when, at fifteen or sixteen, he read Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad.

The book introduced him to the idea that building a business, rather than relying entirely on employment, could offer a path toward greater wealth and freedom. For a teenager looking for a way to change his circumstances, entrepreneurship suddenly appeared to provide an answer.

He embraced the idea so strongly that he began looking down on conventional employment. At the time, he recalls thinking that "everyone who works is a loser." In his mind, ambitious people built businesses, while those who chose regular jobs were accepting a lesser path.

It was a conviction he would hold for years before experience gradually changed his perspective.

His father's experiences provided another, more complicated view of entrepreneurship.

Normunds had witnessed his father's businesses doing well before the financial crisis of 2007–2008 brought serious difficulties. He had seen how quickly business success could disappear and how deeply the consequences could affect a family.

Although his father didn't always have the business knowledge or mentorship to guide his children toward the right opportunities, he consistently encouraged them to try things for themselves.

By his late teens, Normunds had developed two motivations that would continue to influence his decisions.

He wanted the financial opportunities that entrepreneurship might provide, but he was also someone who enjoyed the process of building, experimenting and creating.

At that stage, the pursuit of financial success was the more conscious ambition. His attachment to making things was already there, although he wouldn't fully recognize its significance until much later.

The Bus Business and the Education That Followed

The idea for the catering bus emerged from visits to festivals, where Normunds and his sister noticed that food vendors typically operated from trailers and smaller stands.

They wondered whether a full-sized bus could offer something different. It was an unusual concept, and they believed there might be a business opportunity in bringing it to life.

While many of his classmates were enjoying the social side of their teenage years, Normunds spent considerable time developing the business plan.

He and his sister had no experience with business models, marketing strategies or customer research. They worked from their own assumptions about what might succeed, supported by consultants connected to the bank's financing programme who helped them improve their application.

After several rounds of revisions, the funding was approved, and the siblings were able to begin transforming their idea into reality.

The physical work suited Normunds. Restoring the old bus drew on the practical skills he had grown up with, and converting it into a functioning catering business provided the kind of challenge he enjoyed.

But creating something that looked and worked as intended was only one part of running a company. The other part involved understanding customers, generating demand, managing costs and making sure the business could sustain itself financially.

Those were areas in which the siblings had considerably less experience.

The venture was seasonal, operating for approximately six months before activity paused during the quieter part of the year. After two seasons, the business had to declare bankruptcy.

Looking back, Normunds recognizes that their approach had been built around the product they wanted to create rather than the needs of the people who would buy from them.

They had thought about what the business might earn without properly understanding its customers, its value proposition or the marketing required to generate sufficient sales.

It was an expensive introduction to entrepreneurship, but it gave him practical experience that he couldn't have gained simply by reading another book about business.

During these years, Normunds was also pursuing a very different professional path.

He attended a maritime vocational school in Latvia, where he trained for a career in commercial shipping and qualified to captain smaller vessels of up to 500 gross tons. His maritime background subsequently led to a year of military service in the navy, an experience he remembers positively.

Yet a career at sea wasn't ultimately what he wanted. During four months of practical experience aboard ships in his final year of training, he discovered that the reality of the profession didn't appeal to him.

His education, military service and early entrepreneurial experiments took him through different environments without producing a single, clearly defined career direction.

What remained consistent was his willingness to enter unfamiliar territory and discover what it involved through experience.

That openness would eventually take him much further from Latvia.

An Entrepreneurial Adventure in Nigeria

After spending approximately a year working with an international company involved in different projects, Normunds was offered an opportunity to help establish a water purification business in Nigeria.

The company already had a business partner with local knowledge but wanted someone who could work alongside him and help develop the venture.

Normunds accepted the opportunity and travelled to Nigeria, arriving roughly three weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic began disrupting normal life and business operations.

The timing made an already ambitious undertaking considerably more complicated.

Normunds saw substantial opportunities in Nigeria's large and growing market, but he also encountered difficulties operating in an unfamiliar business environment.

Building the right relationships and understanding how business worked locally proved challenging. He came to appreciate how important established networks, local knowledge and the right connections could be when entering a new market.

As the months passed, the venture struggled to establish itself. His business partner eventually decided he could no longer continue and left approximately two months before Normunds. The company that had supported the project also withdrew its financial backing.

Normunds was reluctant to abandon the business. He continued trying to make it work, financing parts of the operation himself and borrowing money along the way.

After almost a year, however, he had to confront the reality that the venture was not developing as he had hoped.

He remembers making the decision to stop on 11 February, after approximately eleven months and three weeks in Nigeria.

The experience left him with financial obligations to resolve and another unsuccessful business venture behind him. Yet one of the conversations he had during his time in Nigeria would continue to influence how he viewed his circumstances.

A Nigerian friend, who was around the same age as Normunds at the time, told him that if he had access to the opportunities that came with Normunds' European passport, he would be willing to pursue almost anything.

"If I would just have your passport, I would climb any mountain in the world," Normunds recalls him saying.

For Normunds, the conversation offered a different perspective on his situation.

He had been concentrating on a business opportunity that hadn't worked out, while his friend saw possibilities that Normunds could still pursue simply because of the circumstances into which he had been born.

He returned to Europe with a renewed appreciation for those opportunities, although the practical consequences of his experience in Nigeria still needed to be addressed.

He had borrowed money to keep the operation going and now needed to deal with those obligations. For approximately six months, his focus was on getting himself back on his feet financially.

Once he began considering his next step, he recognized that continuing to pursue business ideas without developing his knowledge and surrounding himself with experienced people might lead him through the same difficulties again.

He wanted to put himself in a different environment, one where he could learn alongside ambitious people and build businesses through practical experience.

That search brought him to Team Academy in Amsterdam, a higher education programme focused on entrepreneurship through learning by doing.

It would prove to be an important change of direction, although not necessarily in the way he had originally expected.

Finding His Way into Furniture Making

At Team Academy, students are encouraged to generate income through their own entrepreneurial activities rather than learning about business exclusively through classroom exercises.

They are expected to find customers, create value and experience the practical realities of working for themselves.

Normunds initially took on different freelance assignments. During his final year, while also working on his thesis, he began giving more serious attention to developing a business of his own.

His first approach was straightforward. Rather than developing an elaborate concept and then searching for people who might buy it, he looked for work that customers already needed to have done.

He started offering handyman services, taking on repairs and practical jobs in people's homes. Some assignments were small, while others involved making or repairing pieces of furniture.

Over time, he noticed that custom furniture offered an opportunity to develop a more focused business.

There was a practical reason for specializing. As a handyman, earning a reasonable income could require several separate jobs each day, with the time spent organizing appointments, travelling and managing customers that came with them.

Larger furniture projects allowed him to work on fewer assignments while devoting more of his attention to the actual work.

Just as importantly, furniture making appealed to his interest in creating things.

His background gave him a useful starting point. The carpentry classes he had attended in Latvia, the construction work he had done with his father and brothers, and his childhood habit of experimenting with tools had all developed skills he could draw on.

Nevertheless, making furniture professionally required knowledge he hadn't yet acquired.

He began teaching himself, learning online, speaking with people who had greater experience in the industry and improving his skills through the projects he undertook.

What started with general handyman work gradually developed into a custom furniture business specializing in fitted cabinets and made-to-measure furniture.

Today, Normunds operates with one other person from a workshop of approximately seventy square metres in Amsterdam.

The business currently serves a relatively price-conscious part of the market. Much of his work involves materials such as MDF and painted surfaces, where clients are primarily looking for functional, well-made furniture at an accessible price.

That provides a viable commercial focus, but it doesn't always offer the creative possibilities that interest him most.

Normunds has much more ambitious ideas about what he would eventually like to make.

He talks about becoming something of a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci, combining craftsmanship with mechanical engineering and imaginative design.

He's particularly interested in hidden doors, concealed mechanisms and furniture that incorporates unexpected technical features. The challenge of designing something, understanding how it works and finding a way to bring it into existence is what attracts him.

His current business gives him the opportunity to practise his craft and develop his skills, even if the market he serves doesn't yet allow him to pursue every idea he has in mind.

It also brought him into direct contact with another problem, one that would eventually inspire his latest entrepreneurial venture.

Building Beyond the Workshop

Furniture making increasingly relies on specialized software for three-dimensional design and manufacturing.

Through his own work, Normunds became familiar with some of the tools used in the industry and found that many were complicated, difficult to learn and, in his view, outdated.

Rather than accepting those limitations as an unavoidable part of the trade, he started exploring whether the software could be made more accessible.

Together with three other entrepreneurs, he is now developing a technology platform intended to make the tools used by furniture makers easier to learn and operate.

The team is also exploring the concept of a workshop that wouldn't have to depend on a single physical location, opening possibilities for different ways of organizing furniture design and production.

At the time of the interview, the startup had been underway for approximately three months. It remains an early-stage venture, with many questions still to answer.

Nevertheless, Normunds is enthusiastic about the opportunity, particularly because the problem emerged from an industry he now understands through direct experience.

His approach to entrepreneurship has also changed considerably since the days when he believed that founding a company was inherently more ambitious than having a job.

Today, he actively encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to spend time working inside successful companies, preferably in industries they might eventually want to enter themselves.

He believes that the experience can provide a much better understanding of how businesses operate, how customer relationships develop and which problems are genuinely worth solving.

It also gives people the chance to develop a network. Someone who discovers a recurring operational problem while working inside an established company may already understand the needs of potential customers before attempting to build a solution.

In some cases, their employer could even become their first client.

These are lessons Normunds wishes he had understood earlier. Much of what he learned through unsuccessful ventures and difficult experiments might have been easier to discover by working alongside people who already understood the industries he was entering.

He also places greater importance on the people involved in building a business.

His experiences have convinced him that the right team can make a substantial difference, especially during the difficult early stages when an entrepreneur is trying to bring an idea into reality.

But perhaps the biggest change has been in how Normunds understands his own motivation.

For years, financial success had been the clearest expression of what he wanted to achieve.

As a teenager, he associated entrepreneurship with the possibility of escaping financial limitations and obtaining the things he couldn't previously afford.

That ambition hasn't disappeared, and he openly acknowledges that part of him still wants to demonstrate that he can achieve the success he once spoke so confidently about.

He recalls leaving Latvia with ambitious expectations about what he would accomplish abroad. There is also an element of rivalry with one of his younger brothers, who has challenged him about those ambitions.

Normunds recognizes the desire to prove himself, even though he doesn't expect that doing so would bring lasting fulfilment.

His understanding of what he actually enjoys has become clearer through the work itself.

During the interview, when asked what drives him today, Normunds offers a surprisingly simple answer:

"My drive is to get more toys."

By toys, he means the tools, equipment, materials and opportunities that would allow him to continue creating.

His ideal freedom doesn't involve spending his days relaxing on a beach. He imagines having the time and resources to work in a garage, experiment with cars, build furniture, learn about mechanical systems and develop ideas that currently exist only in his imagination.

He has come to recognize that his interest in creating isn't limited to physical objects. Building teams, developing businesses and turning an idea into something real can be just as satisfying.

Some of the projects he would like to pursue are still beyond his present capabilities. He may lack the capital, knowledge, experience or connections required to bring them to life.

Part of his ambition is therefore to continue developing himself until those ideas become achievable.

And while his current focus remains on entrepreneurship, his plans for the future extend considerably beyond business.

Normunds and his fiancée share a dream of eventually buying an old manor in Latvia and restoring it over many years.

He imagines creating a home for their family, building a workshop on the property and continuing to run entrepreneurial ventures internationally.

The restoration itself would become a long-term project, something they could develop gradually over a decade or perhaps even longer.

He would also like the property to have a place in the surrounding community. One possibility he has considered is organizing summer camps for children, combining his interest in practical learning with his concern for children's wellbeing and safety.

For now, those ambitions remain plans rather than established projects.

Normunds' furniture business is tied to the workshop and customers he serves in Amsterdam, and returning to Latvia would require a business model that allows him greater flexibility.

He has considered combining production in Latvia with work in the Netherlands, although he is currently placing more hope in the potential of the technology startup.

The coming years will determine how those possibilities develop.

In the meantime, his daily work remains divided between running the furniture business and building the technology venture with his partners. Both are still demanding his attention, and neither offers a guaranteed route to the future he imagines.

What he wants that future to contain, however, has become increasingly clear: a home in Latvia, a workshop where he can continue creating, time for family and community, and the freedom to keep developing new ideas.

Watch the Full Conversation

Discover more about Normunds Vitols' entrepreneurial journey, the businesses he has built, the challenges he has faced and his plans for the future in his conversation on the Already Made Podcast.

Watch the full interview: [YouTube link pending]

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