Teen entrepreneur influences others to better themselves

Mantas Dziavecka takes a boxing stance. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Mantas Dziavecka is a self-improvement influencer and entrepreneur. He is 15.

The Lithuanian explained how self-improvement improved him physically and mentally.

“Around a year ago, I was really skinny,” he said. “I'm talking basically anorexic. I was just really thinking down on myself and I just didn't know what to do. But then all of a sudden, this surge of red pill self-improvement gurus came up. I just started seeing that and I'm like, well, okay, some of the things that they say might be a little bit questionable. But going to the gym, treating yourself with respect, treating others with respect, being nice, polite, trying to work harder, achieve more — well, I thought, I'm going to try this.”

Mantas started his self-improvement journey with fitness.

“I tried just doing at-home workouts,” he said. “I bought a barbell and then I just kind of got into it and depression just went away. I don't know, it's just weird. One day you feel like you don't want to be here anymore, and then a week later you're like, well, I want to hit chest next day. It's just crazy. I can't pinpoint exactly what made that thing so beneficial, but it just kind of sparked something.”

Mantas said working out relieves stress.

“If you had a bad day, just come in,” he said. “If you're angry, you just let that anger out on more weight, more curling-to-press or just body weight push-ups, for example. That's one of my favorite things to do is push-ups. So if I'm not feeling it, I just bang out like 50 push-ups. Boom.”

Mantas eventually shifted his focus from bodybuilding to boxing.

“Boxing to me seems like the only functional way to use your muscles, because bodybuilding-style training in my eyes seems useless,” he said. “You build all of that muscle for what, looks? Anyone on the street with a little bit of fighting experience would absolutely destroy a bodybuilder, because bodybuilders are stiff, unathletic, slow and have zero stamina. Bodybuilding makes you look intimidating, whilst boxing makes you intimidating.”

Mantas works on his pugilistic skills throughout the week.

“I don't really track how long I train,” he said. “It can vary based on what's the main focus for that day, but normally it ends up being 30 to 60 minutes, five to seven days a week.”

Mantas also is ahead of the game by running his own business.

“I want to build it kind of into an empire,” he said. “I'm not only just a fitness dude. I've got projects in the making. I've got my own kind of brand, MDZ, because M for my first name and DZ for my last name. So it's going to be this one big brand that's going to have a load of other sub brands on it. I want to make my main channel, which is fitness, kind of the main funnel to all those sub brands, because I want to make that channel big to inspire others like me. So let's say, maybe 1 million subs in future. In the future, like, far, far ahead. And just work on my other projects and inspire more people, become successful. That's all I want to do. And also make my parents proud because they don't really believe in some of the things I try, but I want to prove people wrong.”

Mantas stressed putting forth effort pays off.

“If you work hard, you can achieve anything, really,” he said. “You just got to put in the hours. I have this one friend of mine. We're doing the same thing. We're friends basically all our lives. So we've been doing this, ventures online, social media. He's running a theme page on Instagram. He's got 10,000 followers on just a car page, car videos, and he's trying to sell merch. When I went over to his place, we worked all night long. We were just working on some promo videos for his merch, some new ideas, maybe some of the things for me. We were just grinding because that's what we wanted to do. That felt fun for us. We got a lot of work done, and I didn't even feel that tired the next day. You just got to be determined to work however long it takes.”

Mantas said people can strive for something more in life than mediocrity.

“Some people aren't just born to be average,” he said. “Some people just can't do what a normal person does. You can't just settle for something. For example, here in Lithuania, normal wage is like a grand of Euros. So a grand of Euros, someone say, yeah, well, that's fine. I can live with that. And I totally respect it. I mean, if you're happy with that, it's totally okay. But for me, I would say, why am I only making this much? I want more. I can see opportunities. Why am I not taking action? You got to analyze stuff and what you can do and what you can't do, and you got to weigh them out. Then you got to pursue something, something that you like if you want to achieve more.”

Mantas said the sky’s the limit for those who work for it.

“Because me out here saying that I want to be successful, let's say rich, a millionaire 10 years from now with the work that I'm doing,” he said. “People would call me delusional for thinking I'm going to be a millionaire in 10 years, but if I'm doing the work, how is that delusional? If I was just sitting in place and telling everyone, yeah, I'm going to be a millionaire and do nothing about it? Well, then that's delusion. There's a really great example of David Goggins. He's a Navy SEAL, went to Ranger school, runs ultramarathons, crazy human being. When he was 300 pounds, he decided to be a Navy Seal. Now that's delusional. But he put in the work, so you can't call that delusion when people are putting in the work.”

Mantas said people can’t wait for opportunities, they need to seize them.

“That's how life is,” he said. “Just sometimes if you put in the work, luck comes your way. You have to impose a miracle if you want one because a miracle is just not going to happen. You have to do something for it to make sense to happen like this. I posted a video about my fitness journey. I didn't think there was going to be any interview, but here I am. Boom. I imposed the miracle. I posted that video, I put some work into it and now, boom, I'm sitting in an interview. So that's how it works.”

Mantas’ transformation video shows an impressive physique development over a year.

“I did try really hard with the limited stuff that I have,” he said. “I guess my genetics are also pretty good, but it's just not about the exercise. When you're a skinny dude, the exercise is easy. The hardest part is getting the food down you when you don't really want to. So I was basically eating five times a day. Pretty big meals. Probably like 4,000 calories. I was getting through like a gallon of milk a week.”

Mantas was initially inspired by two famous social media influencers.

“I was definitely inspired,” he said. “People think it's all cringe and stuff, but if that person helped me out, how can it be cringe? It was the Tate brothers. I know they're really controversial and their case is still going on for all that supposed trafficking, but I feel like some of the things they say are genuinely positive. Even if people say, oh, why are you listening to these traffickers? I say, well, even if they are traffickers, I am not listening to that part. I'm listening to what they have to tell. Well, what is positive? It was summer 2022. I was just scrolling shorts because I didn't do anything else at that time. And I just see more and more of this one dude, this bald guy with sunglasses talking to me that I'm a weak, low dude, I can't do push-ups. I felt offended, maybe not offended, maybe disappointed with myself. How men change is if another man tells you you're weak because you didn't do that, well, now you're inclined to do that.”

Mantas said there are positive results from having others push you to be better.

“That's like kind of peer pressure, but I think it's good peer pressure,” he said. “There's a difference between bad and good peer pressure. Because if I was to tell my friend, you're being weak, why are you not doing these five pull-ups? I just did 10. Why did you only do five? That's a difference between, hey, I've just hit a vape, hit it with me. That's different, because good peer pressure isn’t always going to be good.”

Mantas’ before photo to show his the degree of his transformation.

Mantas stays busy with his business endeavors.

“I already got multiple brands,” he said. “I've got websites and stuff. I started out basically with MDZ Media. That was my first type of brand. I started out by being a social media marketing agency. I got a little bit of knowledge in doing short-form content, and I got a little bit of knowledge for doing a business venture with my friend in the winter of 2022, free ads with stuff. I thought, you know what, let me try to do this. I reached out to a bunch of companies, but no one really replied. No one really cared. Out here, people, they don't really want anything to do online. They just say physical. We need physical store stuff, so I dropped that idea and then I pursued affiliate marketing. I just started a YouTube channel and started selling one product. I did get some success with that, but then I realized I want to do MDZ media because that's me. If YouTube takes me down, that's it. I have nothing.”

Mantas is using one endeavor to build on another.

“Because that's the entire philosophy that I have here is I just want to build up a following on YouTube and a little bit of a funnel to the main things,” he said. “For example, MDZ Media. Let's say I would have a YouTube channel there that wouldn't be a social media marketing agency, but would be a news outlet. I would get the news and edit it into a video, post it out and maybe grow that channel in that niche and then kind of market my own website. When I have like 100,000 subscribers, let's say, on that channel, then I'll market my own stuff. Then let's say 1,000 people click on it, and then a few are interested. So I just want to funnel people into my main ideas.”

Mantas flexes to show how much he developed his physique since working out.

Mantas attributes seeking constant improvement for having such motivation at a young age.

“I just don't want to be like everybody else because I just look around in school,” he said. “Everyone's on their phone doing nothing or doing stupid things, and I'm just like, that's not me. I don't want to be like that because that's why I go to school with the Bible. I just read the Bible at school while everyone else is just scrolling shorts, watching degenerate content. I'm like, how can they not respect themselves? Why are they not striving to be better in the future? So that's what motivates me is that nobody else is doing this.”

Mantas said being average can be a drab existence.

“That’s one of the things that also motivates me,” he said. “It's just the average life is just so mundane and boring after some period of time. You get one wage, you get one holiday spot that you can only afford. That's the only thing you can afford to do. Watch some football, go to work, repeat. It's just not fun. There's no variety in that. I feel like life is all about experiencing different things and striving for more, so that's what I want to do.”

Mantas wants his followers to join him in self-improvement.

“I want them to get motivated and inspired to do what I'm doing and just improve themselves and strive for greatness and be the best in what they like,” he said. “If there is a guitar player that watches my content, and if he wants to be a better guitarist or be a musician, then I want him to get enough motivation to say, okay, I'm going to be the best in this field. I'm going to show everybody that I can do it. I'm going to put in the hours. I'm just going to play the guitar until I am successful. That's what I want people to get out of my content.”

While Mantas has gotten better talking in front of people, he already was comfortable talking in front of the camera.

“I've been on camera for a long time,” he said. “I've started doing my own little YouTube videos when I was like 7, 8 years old. I have experience with it. I'm a little bit of an introverted person, but I can talk. So if I need to talk, I talk and I talk to the best that I can do. I'm Lithuanian. English is not my first language.”

Mantas cites discipline as what spurs him to achieve more.

“Sometimes, I just really don't feel like doing anything,” he said. “There's no such thing as motivation in those moments. There's only discipline. Once you get disciplined enough, you do the things that you hate like you love it. I don't care how late it is, I don't care how bad I feel, I'll still get a video out and with consistency even if I'm not getting results, even if I feel bad. But if I just keep doing something, something's going to click sooner or later. Like now, I was uploading to one of my channels out here on YouTube and nothing happened for a month. I was uploading every single day for a month. Nothing happens. But then I just keep uploading, keep uploading and then, boom, got a little video with over a few thousand views, uploaded another one with a little over 1,000 views.”

Mantas said one success leads to another.

“I started to feel a little better, started to hit my workouts a little better,” he said. “Everything just kind of falls into place. You just got to not quit. That's the thing. When things get hard, that's where the work is. Because working when you feel like it, that's the easiest thing in the world. But working when you don't feel like it, but you need to do it, that's a whole other beast. You got to be disciplined to do that.”

Mantas’ motivation to be disciplined is seeing how he’s come so far already.

“What motivates me as well is I just look at my past self in those moments,” he said. “I'm like, well, I'm going to get back to that. If I just keep doing this, if I skip that thing, I'm going to go back to what I don't want to be. So then I just put my head down and just do it.”

Mantas advised those wanting to start working out to be patient.

“My advice would be don't expect it to be easy and to see results immediately,” he said. “You might be motivated now but when that day X comes and you're not feeling like it, that motivation is not going to last. You must develop discipline. Do what you hate but do it like you love it.”

Mantas offered advice to those wanting to create their own brand.

“First of all, create your channel,” he said. “Think of a cool name, an interesting name for that channel in your niche and what niche they want to do it in or build their brand in. Just don't do content for a bit, but analyze what the top dogs are doing. That's what really got me success in one of my brands. This is also what I say for business marketing, because let's say you have a business and you want to market it and your ads aren't going well. Then you're like why are my ads not going well? Well, first you got to analyze what is working well for people. What I have done for example, me and my friend that I talked about earlier, when we worked all night, I just thought the merch ads there aren't cool. They're just boring. I thought who does the best advertisements?”

Mantas looked to one of the most successful brands on the planet.

“The first thought I had was Apple,” he said. “Apple ads are amazing. They're fun to watch. So I was like, okay, how can I take this kind of blueprint of an Apple ad and make it into my own kind of Apple ad, but within my niche. So let's say if they showed in really cool editing in CGI that the new iPhone was made from titanium. Well, how can I make that with my friend's merch and say that his merch is made from cotton in the same type of way? Analyzing is really important. Just learn from the top dogs. Start creating your own little content. Maybe search up a video on how to edit with CapCut, preferably.”

Mantas stressed content creators shouldn’t be too quick to quit if views don’t rise quickly.

“Just don't give up because you're not going to get views,” he said. “Once you are going to get views, they're not going to last. And once that wave is over, you got to keep striving. It's really important to not quit after you've gotten views and you've fallen down. You didn't die. That's just part of YouTube. You just got to keep uploading to get that next wave, next wave, next wave. And as you get bigger, the wave just kind of doesn't have enough room to get bigger. It's just going to flatten out. But over time, it's going to flatten out higher and higher.”

“You must develop discipline. Do what you hate but do it like you love it.”

Mantas stressed perseverance is crucial to success.

“I just want people to know that I wasn't motivated all the time,” he said. “It was definitely not easy doing this kind of self-improvement things. Fitness, business, it never was easy and it never is going to be easy. It's going to be a little bit hard at the start, and then you're just going to, boom, blow up. It's going to be hard in the start, hard in the middle and hard at the success point. It's always going to be hard no matter what, so you got to be prepared for that. And you got to be prepared for pressure. You got to put pressure on yourself as well to perform good because you want the best out of yourself.”

Mantas’ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MantasDziavecka

Mantas’ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mr._mantas/

Mantas’ website: https://ncz8c.weblium.site/