Petr Nejedlý began his career as a future leader as a sales representative of Wrigley at a time when it was managed by the successful entrepreneur David Krajný, later founder of the domestic network of real estate agencies Re/Max. “The job was a huge school for him and taught him a basic rule: I come in the door, get kicked out, go back out the window, and when I leave, I look twice more to see if I can’t do better. The drill that David Krajný and his team of people literally wrote into our DNA, combined with what the Wrigley brand itself represented – virtually creating a monopoly when it had ninety-eight percent of the market in the late 1990s – made us a king company. Just the fact that one worked for Wrigley opened doors for one, much like the experience of working for Microsoft or Google opens doors for an I.T. today. Of course, these phenomena are constantly repeating themselves, just at different times and in different areas, and it’s very interesting to observe and sometimes have the opportunity to relive that.
Because I’m also a visionary
After some time I started to sell my experience myself as a service in the area of so-called servicing the modern and traditional market and founded the company Field Force. The name was inspired by the US President’s Air Force One, and since we were not operating in the air but on the ground in the commercial field, Field Force. Within five years, I built a company that outsourced business services, at that time (2004-2015) it was mainly replenishment, point of sale displays, deploying hostesses at events and so on. This opened the door for me to retail players and we managed to get a quality clientele quite quickly, which included brands such as Red Bull, Wrigley, Mattoni, Reckitt Benckiser, Philip Morris and other “1s or 2s” in the market.
Today, I have several people in my company who also started at Wrigley, such as NAUT GROUP managing director Milan Mašek, and many clients who have former Wrigley employees working for them, because we have a similar mindset – we know that one and one is two, that quality, people, technology matter, and if people understand each other and there is trust between them, it is possible to do business in the Czech Republic in the long term and honestly.
That was the beginning
Later we expanded to Slovakia, which has been managed by managing director Igor Biro since the beginning, and five years ago to Hungary. Only recently have we concentrated the whole business into a group called NAUT GROUP with the slogan TRADE UNIVERSE, which comes from the word astronaut and its ability to focus/zoom in on the absolute detail of the whole universe thanks to technology. Logically, this describes our tendency to move further and further in outsourcing services, to copy or even precede the trend, currently the area of online, fulfillment and in services for the retail environment we are going into digital signage, etc.
My whole business is that I have learned to listen and look around me, so I know what needs someone has, which I then try to grasp, arrange and deliver. It is the identification of needs and business empathy that is my added value. I can pick out what’s realistic and what’s not, look at the market to see if it already exists somewhere, if it could work, and if it does, find competent people who can do it and engage them.
When one has empathy for business, one has empathy for people.
In the course of my career, I have met some very interesting personalities, among them Saša Vejnović, who some twenty years ago invented the project of digital panels in shopping centres. We hit it off, I entered the business with my colleague Libor Vánek and the company Dynamix Media was founded, which today is almost a monopoly owner and operator of the digiCLV, digiMAX network in the Czech Republic in TOP shopping centres. The digital surfaces on which the advertisements alternate are in every TOP centre in the Czech Republic, and recently we even managed to put into operation the largest digital panel in Europe in Prague in OC Smíchov, which is fifteen metres high and four metres wide. Our big partner is Samsung, thanks to which we have access to the latest technologies, which we are introducing all over the country. This experience has taken me somewhere completely different, into a new environment.
It’s good to see around the corner
Sometimes we identify interesting business potential or a client approaches us at first sight with an unrealistic need. If it’s outside of NAUT GROUP’s service area but we see potential, we go after it. This is exactly the case with requests from the world of e-commerce and IT integration, which NAUT GROUP is very close to through fulfillment and logistics, but does not have its own competence, no experts, no programmers. That’s why with Michal Kopáček and Jindra Bráza, people who know how to do it and are real capacities, I founded e-Commerce Business, a company specializing only in software integration, programming and development, analytics and inventing processes for the operation of more complex e-comm projects. Again, we outsource all of this to our clients.
The alpha and omega are the people
but they’re also the weakest link. Not so long ago I would have said that everything revolves around the quality of your product and especially the people, today I have to add the product, the people and the technology used, especially AI. I’ve experienced failures in my career – we had great projects, products or ideas, but they didn’t come to fruition because of the people. I’ve also been through the valley of death and all sorts of challenges in my almost twenty-five years in business, probably like most entrepreneurs, the tough period for me was between 2010 -2015. Not everything gets done right the first time. I’m sure “history repeats itself” and so now both people and technology are the key, but also potentially the riskiest link to success, and this needs to be known and prevented.
I take all the brochures, guides and various rules with a grain of salt, for me “work-life balance” is just an empty babble, or an alibi for laziness, “open office” is a temporary fashion of the corporation, just like “shared toilets” is the current cry of some Brussels MPs. I like what Arnold Schwarzenegger says: ‘There’s no magic pill’. There is no magic pill, only hard work. You have to have a vision, you have to focus on long-term goals and you have to go for them headlong. That’s what I’m doing. At the same time, I love proverbs, and the older I get, the more I see how valid they are. A lazy mouth, a bare disaster – is a de facto day2day must. That the best oil is pressed cold and under great pressure is a huge truth, this saying fits me painfully well.
What holds me back is ignorance and the unstable legislative environment.
For example, labour relations are described and not described, they are respected and not respected, the support of the state is zero, trust in the competence of the state is also zero. The state is set up to come to us and punish us, and it succeeds because a small Czech official from, say, the tax office or the labour inspectorate has virtually unlimited powers. The civil servants still live in the 1980s, use paper and pencil, and when you tell them that an “AI agent” is processing the data, they reply that they don’t believe you, that we must have a workshop hidden behind a wall somewhere with foreigners we pay by hand. They don’t understand the subject at all, one official will put you on hold for a year with his visit to the company. I’ve had a lady tell me at the door that she was going for a whistle-blowing check, that it would cost us tens of millions of crowns and that it would ruin us, all before she had seen any data. I wonder if she would allow such an approach to a multinational corporation, I guess hardly. Similar experiences from years long past have led to some services where the state and the legislature have no clear explanation we no longer do. In the end, everything bad is good for something. Also such changes have led us to new services where we apply technology, AI and that is the trend of today and the future, so for me good.
One ass on multiple chairs.
What helps me manage several companies in three countries is something that most leaders today consider standard, but even that is a rather difficult path. At a certain stage in an organization’s growth, things like cash flow, company culture and values, and understanding the vision are essential to the growth of the company. The basic premise that you and your teams will get along and the fact that you will be perceived by your clients. Positive energy is important to us at NAUT GROUP, adopting a resilient mindset enables our employees to overcome obstacles with courage and creativity. Such an atmosphere not only increases efficiency and overall flexibility, but also ensures that everyone feels valued and supported. Perhaps the most relevant topic for me today is personal development, starting with language skills and learning to work with new technologies such as AI and other tools.
I remain optimistic
Even though the Czech-Slovak-Hungarian territories are relatively small markets, with a very awkward political situation and very unstable legislation, I see quite a lot of potential in the areas that NAUT GROU is pursuing, i.e. logistics, e-commerce and now also digital signage. I believe that the service outsourcing area, with its ability to respond quickly to changing market needs, has the potential to grow, while providing the answer for increasingly interconnected collaboration within the EU.
