I Can: Two Words That Took Me Five Years to Learn

In 2019, PrestaRock turned five and a half years old.

Looking back now, those first five years were a crash course in leadership. Every possible challenge landed on my plate — from tricky client issues to internal team struggles. But 2019 stood out. That year, something shifted.

I had just completed a mountain of training and finally internalized a key insight: If you want your business to grow, you must give it real attention, not just to daily operations, but also to strategy, improvement, and long-term development. At least eight hours a week, focused not on putting out fires but on planting seeds.

And you know what? When we were an 8-person team, we reached our peak efficiency. A flat structure. One point of contact for every client: fast execution, strong quality. Clients were thrilled — maybe even too elated, because we kept saying yes to more work than we should’ve.

But that wasn’t the most important thing. What mattered most was what changed inside of me: In 2019, for the first time, I truly believed that I can. I can be a leader. I can be the best e-commerce expert in Lithuania. All I had to do was keep going.

You see, as I’ve written before, leadership just happened to me. I didn’t have the tools. I didn’t know how big businesses were built. But five years later, after much hard work, I realized something: It is possible — to pursue a dream, to make something big, maybe even to reach a place where you no longer have to work just to survive.

That summer, I lay on my terrace under the stars and dreamed. I set a goal: earn a million in revenue, then turn that into real profit. Not just for the money, but to prove that I could build something that lasts. Something that would remain after me.

I told myself I wouldn’t give up, no matter what happened. Because the most challenging part, I believed, was already behind me.

I even shared this in Slack with the team, on the company’s 5th birthday:

“I understood that with enough effort, iteration, and learning, I can achieve anything I want. There is no environment, no luck, nothing. Just me. Working on myself and the desire.With strong enough desire and goal, I can achieve anything. Anyone truly can. The problem why people stop may be because they don’t believe or simply don’t know that THEY CAN. So, personal falls and experiences helped me understand – I CAN. “

The growth of the company and every “birthday” marks not only its growth but also my development and maturity as a person and a leader. They say the company is often a reflection of its owner. It’s no coincidence that I often call the company my child.

And if last year I wrote that we survived adolescence, then today we are already an active and developing young person. A young person hungry for knowledge and able to apply that knowledge here and now. PrestaRock is no longer a one-man company. I am proud and happy, and I want to share that joy with others.”

Every PrestaRock birthday wasn’t just a company milestone. It marked my growth as a person and as a leader. And honestly, PrestaRock has always felt like my child — a reflection of who I am.

If the year before was our adolescence, 2019 was the start of young adulthood. We were still hungry for knowledge, but we knew how to apply it fast. PrestaRock was no longer a one-man band. I was proud — and I wanted to share that pride with the world.

Of course, five years later, I can now see where I went wrong. A million in revenue sounded great. But chasing that goal led us down the wrong path — underpricing projects to stay busy, or even compromising quality and profitability in the name of growth. That short-term thinking taught me a lot.

I also realized our performance indicators weren’t driving growth. They existed, but they didn’t inspire developers, didn’t help the team see their full potential. At best, they explained pay differences. At worst, they stifled growth.

And then came our first genuine attempt to scale, when I realized that my usual methods no longer worked. That simply “working harder” wasn’t enough. That people’s problems would multiply. I didn’t expect saying goodbye to clients would hurt more than I thought it would. And that I wasn’t yet the leader I needed to be.

But even with all that, those first five years laid a solid foundation. A foundation shaped by the best mentors and lecturers in Lithuania. They were just the beginning.

By 2019, PrestaRock had become a true leader in our field. When it came to PrestaShop in Lithuania, we had no real competition. Clients came to us saying,

“Ričardas, I heard you’re the guy to go to if I want a serious online store.”

We weren’t just PrestaShop pros anymore — we were becoming full-scale e-commerce experts. We learned about new markets. We need to understand better how CEOs think and what they need. And most importantly, our improvements helped our clients earn more money. That made them happy — and that made us grow.

That year, we also established the core team we still have today — some of the best and most experienced PrestaShop specialists in Lithuania.

As for me, the next five years taught me to address my soft skill weaknesses, including sales, negotiation, HR, and team leadership. I didn’t want to work on those. But I had to.

And I won’t lie — I struggled. I felt like I was falling behind, especially when our competitors wrapped themselves in flashy marketing that wasn’t entirely truthful. They looked like they were racing ahead. But I remembered a lesson I learned at sixteen from B. Triacy: Never compare yourself to others. Only to who you were yesterday.

Those first five years took me further than I ever dreamed. They gave me the tools and clarity I needed. They helped me decide not just to remain a craftsman, but to build something bigger.

How did that journey continue? Well — that’s a story for the next post.