About Me

My name is Krister Laitinen, or Kris Lai, for short. I’m currently the Managing Director of Kristall Clean Ltd, a successful UK based window cleaning company.

I’m of Finnish-Hungarian heritage but grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden. My childhood was pretty normal, I’d say, for the time period, late 60’s, early 70’s. The relationship between my birth parents didn’t work out and after being single for a while my mum got together with a new partner so that I ended up being raised in a fully Finnish family.

My fondest memories from childhood are of the summer holidays spent in Finland. Fishing, swimming, and sauna bathing! My maternal grand-mother had a little farm with a few cows, a horse, and some pigs. I enjoyed visiting the cows in the field or in the cowshed.

My first three years of compulsory schooling was in Finnish. Then my parents decided that it would be beneficial for me to learn the local language, Swedish, since we were living in Sweden after all. So the rest of my schooling was in Swedish. At school I performed at above average level. I actually received my highest final grade in woodwork / needlework!

I never went to college or a university. At the time, in the 80’s it was easy to find work. You could pretty much walk into any company and ask for a job and be hired on the spot! So over the years I worked delivering newspapers, did industrial painting and sandblasting, did commercial cleaning at the local airport, and worked at a silk screen printing shop. I also did volunteer work for a religious organization.

The volunteer work included training in public speaking and on how to become an effective one-to-one tutor. All in all I have had 40+ years of experience public speaking, personal mentoring and tutoring.

Shortly after getting married in 1993, my wife and I moved to the UK, where our only son was born (who incidentally also runs a successful window cleaning business!)

Here in the UK I continued working in different fields. I’ve done landscaping and gardening, I was a postman, I repaired and installed water mains, I was a land and building surveyor (for 19 years!), before finally running my own business full time.

Over the course of time have first hand seen how different types of businesses are run and what makes for success, or even disaster in some cases.

Meanwhile, ever since the early days of internet I’ve been looking for ways to run an online business. I’ve been writing on several blogs for some 15 years on various topics, like “dangers on the internet”, with over 150k views.

I’ve also learned a lot from various people that have “made it” online, so to speak. People like Derek Gehl, perhaps the foremost internet marketing authority in the world. Others include Andrew Reynolds, a multi-award winning entrepreneur, and Edmund Loh, another successful internet millionaire, and most recently Adam Enfroy, who made a million dollars in less than 2 years of starting a blog. Just to name a few…

I believe that my very diverse experience in so many different types of business, coupled with my years of studying internet marketing has allowed me to acquire a wealth of knowledge, or business acumen, that I wish to share with others who’d like to either further their own career or to make their business grow.

Why not join me in ‘growing together’?!