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Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
I Host 2 Podcasts. Life Is Crazy and The Buckeye Battle Cry Show. The Life Is Crazy podcast is designed to help with suicide prevention. That is the #1 goal! This is also a Podcast of perseverance, self-help, self-Improvement, becoming a better person, making it through struggles and not only surviving, but thriving! In this Podcast the first 25 episodes detail my life's downs and ups. A story that shows you can overcome poverty, abusive environments, drug and alcoholic environments, difficult bosses, being laid-off from work, losing your family, and being on the brink of suicide. Listen and find a place to share life stories and experiences. Allow everyone to learn from each other to reinforce our place in this world. To grow and be better people and help build a better more understanding society.
The early podcast episodes are a story of the journey of my life. The start from poor, drug and alcohol stricken life, to choices that lead to success. Discusses my own suicide ideations and attempt that I struggled with for most of my life. Being raised by essentially only my mother with good intentions, but didn't know how to teach me to be a man. About learning life's lessons and how to become a man on this journey and sharing those lessons and experiences with others whom hopefully can benefit from my successes and failures.
Hosting guests who have overcome suicide attempts/suicide ideations/trauma/hardships/difficult situations to fight through it, rise up, and live their best life. Real life stories to help others that are going through difficult times or stuck without a path forward, understand and learn there is a path forward.
The Buckeye Battle Cry Show is a weekly show about the greatest sport in the world, college football, and specializing in discussing the greatest team in the world, THE Ohio State Buckeyes,
Want to be a guest on Brandon Held - Life is Crazy? Send Brandon Held a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/brandonheld
Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
Episode 56: What Connects Olympic Ski Jumping, Wall Street, and Healing War Veterans with Lyubim Kogan
Lyubim Kogan shares his remarkable journey from Soviet-era Ukraine to becoming an Olympic ski jumper, financial executive, and founder of Wings for Heroes, a non-profit that helps amputee veterans through paragliding experiences. His story reveals how personal challenges—including immigration with just the clothes on his back, homelessness, and career setbacks—shaped his mission to serve veterans.
• Escaped Soviet Union at 17 with only hours to pack, bringing just his ski jumping equipment
• Received a scholarship to National Sports Academy in Lake Placid while learning English
• Balanced NYU education with Olympic training, traveling 600 miles weekly to continue ski jumping
• Witnessed 9/11 firsthand, deeply moved by firefighters running toward danger
• Experienced homelessness while building his financial planning business
• Spoke at Steve Forbes' symposium and contributed to a bestselling book
• Created Wings for Heroes after seeing the struggles of amputee veterans
• Takes veterans paragliding to help them momentarily forget their disabilities
• Operates through wingsforheroes.org with a volunteer-based model
To learn more about Wings for Heroes or to support their mission helping veterans, visit https://wings4heroes.org/
Go to https://www.brandonheld.com and subscribe to my podcast and support the show!
Want to be a guest on Brandon Held - Life is Crazy? Send Brandon Held a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/brandonheld
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Welcome.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Brandon Held. Life is Crazy. I have a very interesting and unique guest today. He has some incredible achievements and accomplishments under his belt and he has a great story to tell us. And he has a great story to tell us. His name is Lubim Kogan, and already I'm just going to say forgive me up front if I mispronounce your name at some point. I'll do my best not to Lubim, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. How are you, Brandon?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well also, thank you. Thank you for being a guest on my show. A little bit about Lubim. He qualified for the Olympic Games in his life and I'll let him tell us about that. He did very well financially so he worked in Ukraine for years without getting paid and he's an immigrant to the US and he got his education from NYU and his story is fascinating. Lubim, just give a couple sentence overview of who you are.
Speaker 2:Who am I? It's a good question.
Speaker 1:It's hard to sum it up in a couple sentences, but do your best.
Speaker 2:Right now I am a guy who is keeping the promise for all of us. What I do is I take care of MPT. I provide public service.
Speaker 2:But if you want to know the origin, the beginning of the story, my childhood was spent in the backdrop of Afghanistan war. I grew up in 1970s and 80s in the former Soviet Union. The Afghanistan war started when I was five and it ended when I was 15. So the first part of my conscious life I saw a lot of guys come back from the war and a lot of things didn't make sense to me, even though I was a kid. For example, I wanted to do sports. I was always athletic and these guys were so helpful. They would spend unlimited amount of time trying to help you get some tricks that you were trying to put together and then at the end of the day, they would all get drunk. And almost on a daily basis we had the show where the police would show up and they would beat up on Afghanistan veterans and it was their source of entertainment. Their source of entertainment. And for 40 years plus I wondered why the system that took the best the future of the country, why they send them to war and when they came back, there was absolutely no structure and no support for them. So my image of the United States growing up was that Ronald Reagan was sitting in his office and he had this red button and at any point in time he could go and we'd be all finished.
Speaker 2:When I was 17, I actually got a chance to immigrate to the United States. Besides my prior knowledge of what I just shared with you, I knew that the Olympic Games in 1980 were in Lake Placid, new York, and that's where I wanted to go. So I'd say that my childhood and my old beliefs were left at 17 years old. When my dad came home one day and he said Lubim, we're leaving, I said when he said in about three or four hours, I said where are we going? And he he said we're going to the united states. And I said for how long? And he said forever all right.
Speaker 1:So you're coming to the us, you have olympic dreams, but you haven't told the audience. Uh, what was your sport?
Speaker 2:I ski jump ski jumped okay, so yeah, it's basically yeah, you go 60 miles an hour down the ramp and then you jump head forward, you split your skis and try to fly as far as you can, and since my time to pack was limited to a few hours, I just took my jumping suit, my boots, my helmet.
Speaker 2:I wore my training suit and I remember that on the plane I didn't have socks. So that's how I went and came to the United States. We just won little bag and I was ready to make my way to Lake Placid.
Speaker 1:That's always wild to me. I understand the dream of wanting to come to the U? S and make a life because, let's be honest, the opportunity is vast here in the U? S. It's just whether or not people take advantage of it. If you put in the work, you can do something here in the US with your life. In a lot of countries that's not possible. You can work your ass off and still barely make ends meet or barely get by in life. Frankly, I think a lot of Americans take that for granted. Frankly, I think a lot of Americans take that for granted. So when someone just packs with basically the clothing on their back in one bag and then they come all the way here, that's a lot of faith in yourself and the future outcome. So were you excited about this? Were you nervous? What was going through your mind?
Speaker 2:I was super nervous. I was really uncertain and one of the biggest things is that I didn't know much. But when I came to the States, I asked my uncle, who lived here for five years already. I asked him to find right to schools who had a ski program and the National Sports Academy in Lake Placid. They invited me. I met the principal, the coaches, we did some physical testing and they offered me a scholarship so I could go to a boarding school. I could live there, I could eat, I could learn English and I could ski as much as I wanted to.
Speaker 2:So my first experience and my following experiences for the next 23 plus years was that Americans are very generous. For the next 23 plus years was that Americans are very generous and on my way of achieving different goals and dreams, people just helped me a lot. Whatever I needed, americans gave it to me. So I am really grateful for the opportunities that I had and I understand that the opportunities that came my way they were not your average opportunities. I know that when something comes your way, you can either jump on it and go after it or you can just stand there and wait, and I think that's one thing that separates really successful people from everybody else, and that's seeing the opportunity and going after it and then later realizing what you got yourself into, later realizing what you got yourself into, what you said.
Speaker 1:There is very kind and gracious about Americans. You had a talent. You had a very special talent in your ski jumping ability, so they probably saw that in you and wanted to help you be successful. So that's amazing. I see that you went to NYU. So how did that come about? How did that enter your life?
Speaker 2:That was pretty crazy how it happened, because I wanted to ski and I wanted to go to a good school and when I got to NYU I was still skiing. And I realized that in order for me to continue skiing, I will have to do a 600-mile trip every weekend so I can continue skiing. I will have to do a 600 mile trip every weekend so I can continue skiing. And basically my life in college looked like I would get up at four o'clock in the morning, I would do my training and then on Thursday my classes would end and I would go to my dorm. I would change, I would grab my bag and I would go to the bus station in New York City and I would take the bus to Albany and in Albany I would pick up my car and I would drive to Lake Placid. Then I would ski Friday, saturday, sunday, and if it was not a competition season I would come back on Sunday late at night.
Speaker 2:But when it was a competition season we mostly competed the Northeast and it was Vermont, new Hampshire, sometimes we even went as far as Maine. And on those days, if you compete Saturday and Sunday and then you have awards ceremony and after that, there is no way you can do anything. You just need to rest. So I would rest and I would catch the first bus and then would go back to New York and for more than two years I did that commute every weekend. I completely skipped on college experience. I don't know what that's like. I went to classes, I trained and then I was gone.
Speaker 1:That's where the part where we're talking about, where it's a land of opportunity if you're willing to put in the work. You basically had no life outside of school and skiing for over two years. Same for me. I was a soldier in the army and I was also getting my MBA full time while I was in the army. So for two years I had no life. I got up, I did my army, physical training, I went to work all day and then after work I was working on my MBA, and that was two years of my life. So it's just about putting in the work and the time and energy, and that means sacrifice. You had to sacrifice that college life. I had to sacrifice some things too with my personal life, but you do it for the big picture and that's why this is the land of opportunity and, in my opinion, the greatest country in the world. All right, so you went through all that. You got through college, you got a counting degree.
Speaker 2:So, basically, I qualified for the Olympics while I was still at NYU.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I took the winter off to. I qualified on the international standard and then I had to make the team. So I went to ski World Cups and European Cups before the Olympics in Europe. So I just skipped one semester and then after the Olympics I came back and I finished my last year of NYU and from there on I was lucky. I was applying for jobs right a year after the Olympics so everybody wanted to hire me and I got a really cool job on the trading desk and our address was at 50 Broad Street in New York City and if you look at the original address for the New York Stock Exchange I think it was 14 Broad Street and then they built around the corner to Wall Street. So now we associate the New York Stock Exchange with Wall Street.
Speaker 2:But my first office was two buildings away from the New York Stock Exchange and actually my dream was to work in the World Trade Center. That was the big one because to me it represented the success of the most accomplished people in the greatest country in the world, the United States. Later on I had a group of traders that broke away and they joined another firm and their office was going to be in the World Trade Center. And they said William, do you want to come with us? And I went to see the building and they said, yeah, I want to work here. And they said you didn't even ask for an offer. You don't know what the terms are. I said I don't care, I you didn't even ask for an offer. You don't know what the terms are. I said I don't care, I want to work here. This means to me more than any terms that you can offer to me.
Speaker 1:That's a great story, not only because you get to follow your dreams in multiple ways through the Olympics and through your career, but this is also something that is rare, I think, and it is your story about the World Trade Towers and what happened when they got hit and they were going down. You don't often get to talk to people I know I personally haven't until I met you who were on the ground there when this happened. Tell everyone about how that went for you, what happened.
Speaker 2:Brandon, for some reason I remember not what just happened. I remember colors, I remember people. I remember what the temperature was the sunny day like it's all clear. But one thing that I will always remember is that when people were running from the buildings really fast, there were firemen who were running in the opposite direction. They were running into the building to save people and we know that New York City Fire Department lost 343 firefighters on that day and the bravery of those guys is just really impressive. When you are standing on the street and the sirens are wailing, you have ambulance fire trucks. Everything was going towards the World Trade Center. I walked away. It was a block away, and a block is one big building in New York.
Speaker 2:There is no separation and when you hear and see how fast they're going and the end is right in front of you and then you see these guys are running with all their gear and everything and it was just such a force. They didn't hesitate, they didn't stop and seeing of what happened I actually was outside downstairs Our building, the North Tower got hit first and the South Tower got hit second. That impact, it shook the whole ground. The whole Manhattan was vibrating from the impact and the amount of people and the noise. And when people are scared and the crowd is running away and you have this little amount of people running against them, it was. They were an unstoppable force and I know they saved a lot of lives that day and unfortunately, a lot of them didn't come home. So one of the things that I always think about is like how brave one needs to be to go against the crowd.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter what we're talking about, but in this case, we're talking about people who are doing their job, and their job is to save others, and really it's a selfless act. There was a huge mind shift and after September 11th, I wanted to go to school in New York and I wanted to work in the World Trade Center, and after World Trade Center was destroyed, there was nothing for me to do in New York, so I decided to pack up and leave, and after that came years of difficult time, really hard time.
Speaker 1:And here is where you came here.
Speaker 2:I first went to California it didn't work for me and then I went to Colorado. I worked for a company in Colorado for a little while and then I got an offer from a place in Austin and what happened was that, since our offices were destroyed and it was an act of terror I was classified as a displaced person and the American Red Cross sent me a check for $15,000 to help me get started and get going. So here was not one place.
Speaker 2:It was actually California, Colorado, Texas, and then in 2003, two years after I was hired by American Express in Denver and Denver became my home for a little more than 10 years after that.
Speaker 1:So thanks for sharing that story with us. I know that's a difficult time, especially for New Yorkers that were there on the ground when it happened and lost loved ones. I think anyone who wasn't a child where you don't really have a great memory of that time knows exactly where they were of that time, knows exactly where they were. I remember I was a bartender at Applebee's and it came on the TV when I was preparing to open the Applebee's. It wasn't open yet, we were preparing it to open and then it came on TV and we saw what was happening in New York City and obviously that was awful. It was an awful time We'll never forget. It's always going to be in our history. Thank you for sharing that story. So you moved on, you try to go into a few places California, Texas and you end up in Denver, Colorado. What's happening in your life when you get to Denver?
Speaker 2:basically working for a huge company, just climbing really fast, climbing the corporate ladder really fast. And then when I got to the top, I was number one guy for the amount of time I spent at American Express. And it was not just Denver, it was a tri-state. And then I found myself just not having any time. I would wake up in the morning really early 4, 4.30. I would go to the office, I would run there, I would shower and I would go to work and at 11 o'clock at night I would stop everything and I would do the paperwork until I needed to finish it and then I would go home for a few hours to do it again.
Speaker 2:And in 2004, I decided to go on my own and start my own company financial planning company and I actually I was homeless for more than one year, Starting your own business and going from shelter to shelter trying to figure out where are you going to be. And actually one of my greatest memories, or the happiest memories of my entire life, is year 2004. We actually had a place. It was a motel by I-25, outside of the Denver Tech Center, and for Christmas we had organic chicken and I don't know why, but that was such a cool thing that you have a roof over your head and you're eating organic chicken. We're sitting on the floor eating that chicken and I tell people that it took me. Then it took me probably three, four years to really get going, and when the business started doing really well, I remember a lot of money coming in, but I was looking around and I couldn't find much happiness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to ask you to tell us a little bit more obviously. When you're excited about organic chicken, that means not a lot of things are exciting you at that time in your life. So when you're bouncing around from shelter to shelter and homeless, like, how are you feeling inside? What is your mentality and your thought process?
Speaker 2:it was always concentrating on the work. I don't know if it came from sports or from where that part where you, just I was just always working extra hard because I didn't have a fallback. I think when you don't have cushion or you don't have a plan B, you have only one plan. And that made me push really hard and I don't know it's the time that I went through and I don't really want to repeat, but I think it was necessary. It was necessary for me to experience a lot of things. One of them I was leaving the Denver tech center and the car it didn't have a reverse gear.
Speaker 2:So when I yeah, when I went out to sell or to meet clients, I remember I drove somewhere in the boonies, in the fields in Northern Colorado and I pull up around the house and they go into their backyard and I remember I did make a sale that day and they're standing on the porch, people are waving to me and I crank the wheel all the way and I'm going slowly, I'm turning, making that turn, trying to turn around that yard so I can exit the same way. I came in and they had those known yard gnomes that people put decorative in it. And I'm waving to the people and they hear boom, boom, boom. I knocked over a few of their gnomes and they fortunately made it. It was enough space for me to exit and they exited. But the next day they called and they canceled whatever they purchased for me. They said we wouldn't change their mind. He was driving a car without the reverse and looking for a place to live until until I made it through.
Speaker 1:I think you said something there that's very key, and I think obviously no one wants to be in these low times that we go through in life and no one wants to feel what it feels like when you're going through those times. But when you get out of them, that drive to never want to be there again is really beneficial. As much as it sucked, it also helped you be better in the future, because you never wanted to get back to that place and you would really do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn't happen. I was going through a divorce, I was laid off, I lost my house all at the same time, and so I had no job, no family. I too, was homeless in the sense that I didn't own a house.
Speaker 1:I found a way through. I met someone who let me live with her, but anyway I was trying to turn my life around again, and, as much as that situation sucked, it helped me learn to just work. I already thought I was a hard worker, but just work a little harder, just make a little bit more of an effort to just be nicer to everyone and get along with everyone, because I never wanted to be back there again either, and so whatever extra effort I had to give, in whatever capacity to make that happen, I was going to do it so that those lessons, as much as they suck, are also helpful.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think once you get through one lesson like that, you get more. I don't think in our life unless we stop and do nothing and we live off whatever we made in our last major attempt. But for me, I never wanted to go back there. I was so aggressive in growing, I wanted to be the biggest guy and I took everything that I made and I reinvested and I reinvested in the business. I never stopped reinvesting into the business. There was not. Savings was not even though I understand, like I teach people that you have to have cash reserves. You have this and this. It's cool when you have a job, right, yeah. But when you have your own business and you have goals and dreams and they're big, then, taking that risk, it actually backfired, even though professionally I did phenomenally well through 2008, 2009 crisis, because none of my clients' accounts lost money. But what I was doing is that I was taking all the cash flow that was coming in and I was reinvesting and basically my marketing strategy was just expanding.
Speaker 2:I started a radio show. I think it was like 2006 or 2007. And it really started growing and doing well and I started opening different stations and at some point I had 11 different radio stations it was the weekend show and I think it was seven different states, so I found myself on the plane. All the time I'm flying between the places, I'm renting cars, I'm staying in hotels and after we get through the crisis, the expenses are still the same, but people just froze. I don't know if you remember that time, but it was like deer in headlights, everything sounds great, but we're not going to do anything.
Speaker 2:That was the majority of people how they felt and they remember that the government the US government did everything to stimulate the spending, to make people to start spending, because people were afraid that they would lose their job. And when you have that fear and you stop spending, that's the worst thing. That's taking the oil out of the engine. So I expanded and grew at the worst possible time and then for the next few years I was picking up the consequences of that and that huge expenses and very little revenues coming in.
Speaker 2:So that's another learning experience.
Speaker 1:I actually did get laid off. During that time I worked at Raytheon and Obama was president and Obama made cuts to defense spending, which went directly to Raytheon, which directly went to the program that I was on, and then I got laid off. Yeah, I was someone that lost my livelihood during that time and it was very depressing for me and I had a wife and two young boys and we had just bought a new house, like a year before, and it was a really difficult time for me and I had to work my way through that Go ahead.
Speaker 2:One of the things, Brandon, we both experienced that sometimes things happen that are outside of our control. And a lot of times people. There were a lot of people who were irresponsible and I said at that time I'm not going to buy a house because I want to grow the business. I don't want my cashflow going anywhere else, but it reinvested into business all of it and I didn't really. I don't think I stand as much as I could, but still it was really hard running the business after the financial meltdown.
Speaker 1:People's psyche? It's not. It's may not have been a choice I branded would have made on my own, but I was with my wife. We were renting a house, yeah, and when we started renting this house, it was just the two of us. And then now we had two small kids and she was like we have grown, so our house needs to grow, and she was really adamant that we needed to buy a house and get our own house.
Speaker 1:So it was me trying to be a good husband, a good father, and doing what was right for my family. But, yeah, it ended up backfiring on me. It was a tough time, but anyway, the point is is you go through these tough times we all go through them and if you just keep fighting and you keep believing and you keep doing the right things, you will still come out the other side and live well and do great in life. So you have been homeless and you turned yourself around a little bit because you're building up your own business. So tell us how that gets, how that becomes really successful for you and how you're doing well in life from there.
Speaker 2:So basically, two years in 2011, I got invited to speak at Steve Forbes' Success in the New Economy Symposium in New York City and I think that somebody heard my radio show and then I got a phone call. And then I got another phone call and then I went to New York and I said how I found that we have a huge issue that nobody's talking about and how I moved all my clients out of the market and they wanted to know what we're doing next. And basically, after that symposium, I got an offer to contribute to Steve Forbes' book that he was writing and the book came out in 2014. It was a bestseller. All the proceeds went to charities, so I didn't monetize that far. And the following year I got invited to present at the United Nations.
Speaker 2:Brian Tracy, who was the first guy who showed me how inadequate I was. Actually it was 2003. I am at American Express. We have a salesperson of Brian Tracy comes in to sell tickets and he does his presentation and I was blown away with the professionalism and how that guy handled and commanded the room. I've never seen anybody speak like that and I actually, when he left, I followed him all the way downstairs asking him questions and he said everything I learned from Brian Tracy and he spent some time outside of the building talking to me and then, when we were done, there's the I think it was a black BMW that pulled up and he had a chauffeur with the cap who came out and opened the door for him. Well, it's okay if that happens in New York, but in Denver, colorado, in 2003, that was not a common thing and I was like wow these people are doing really well.
Speaker 2:So I started buying Brian Tracy's courses and studying and learning and practicing. And then I got to share a stage with him at the United Nations headquarter in New York City and that was the time when I felt that I'm going to monetize 23 years since I came to the United States and I finally felt like I'm on top of the financial world, like it's green light. I'm the only guy who has a car and I can drive down this street. There's nobody else and I was just feeling really good. And then I actually went to Ukraine. First it was to visit, and then I did an internal audit for a big company and, based on what I found, they saw that they're going to have to let their management go and they needed to be some major changes and they asked me if I would stay.
Speaker 2:Basically, if you think about the Ukrainian war, it started in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and started the fighting on the east side, and it was classified as a terrorist operation because they didn't wear any badges, there were no flags, it was just great people or they called them green guys because they were like green camouflage but they nobody took responsibility for who was fighting. So ukraine is the van defending itself and was. It was the company that made me an offer. It was a nationwide company that was. It was the smallest of the majors, but they were all around the country and just a few months that I spent there doing my work before they made me an offer. I said, if we're going to figure this out I know politics here you guys, if you want to argue, just leave.
Speaker 2:So I cleaned up, I stopped that stuff and people saw that things are changing. So I cleaned up, I stopped that stuff and people saw that things are changing and I saw exactly the same thing as they saw in 2008, 2009. It was deer in the headlights, because here we are, working for such a great, successful company, and I think you know how people felt. And then one day they started laying people off the offices are closing and I got that offer and, without really thinking too long, I said yes and then I found out that we are really the country is really at war and the situation was getting worse. And that's part of me not taking a salary, because I knew, as an executive, if I take the salary, that means that we cannot. We were buying product today we were somebody, I needed diesel. We go to a wholesaler. They would give me diesel to sell for today and then two, three days later I had to pay them back. From that I needed to pay more than 2,000 employees and if you think about Ukraine.
Speaker 2:It was the second poorest country in Europe before the war started. Now I went back as an American. I didn't go back as a Ukrainian because I'm not a Ukrainian. I spent my whole adult life and I built my career, went to college, I was married in the States, all my friends were Americans. I am an American and I went back as an American because we can do things that other people cannot do. Back as an American because we can do things that other people cannot do. And, yeah, it was another learning experience that I'm glad that it's over. But that was more. I was talking to my friend who I went to the Olympics with and they said working in Ukraine was more difficult than training for the Olympics and he said it's not possible. It's not possible to have something more difficult. And I say yes, it was. There was absolutely no certainty, brandon.
Speaker 2:And it was something new.
Speaker 1:What was un-American about that story? Was you working as an executive without a salary? So that's not something many Americans would do, so that was pretty big of you. And also, just for others to say a story you're telling. You're relating your own experience. You are a qualifying Olympian and you are someone who's working executive in a Ukraine and you say one thing's harder than the other and people are telling you that's not true. To me, that's just blows my mind. You lived both experiences. It's for you to say what was harder than the other. It always trips me out when people do and say stuff like that Comparison right, yeah, yeah, and they didn't even live it. They didn't live those experiences, so they're just going by whatever they think in their mind when you actually lived it. So yeah, you're the best judge to say one was more difficult than the other. So you got through that and you said that took you. What about 10 years to do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was first five years was just actually teaching people how to do things right, because we have a standard. When I hire somebody for a position in the company, I know that they came with an education, with training, and they understand basic things. And basic things are how to do your job well, how to do it on time and how to come to your boss when you're stuck, and those things were like not existent. So training people, building teams, the first four, four or five years was super difficult and then, after I built the teams and things started to work, then it became easier. I was delegating more work and just actually doing what I was supposed to do, and that's making big decisions and figuring out the direction for the company, where we're going to go in the future and how we're going to grow and come back to the way it was before the war started. But in the meantime we're talking about the war is still going.
Speaker 2:So, if you think about I got to Ukraine it was summer of 2015. And I looked at my statements. My last payment came in, actually after we got to emerge. Major hurdle was getting rid of debt that the company took on when they were expanding and unfortunately, they expanded east and that's where the war was going on. So all the assets on the east side they became worthless, but the debt was still there because it was one responsibility that company took home and getting rid of that debt and writing it off it was a major project and after that happened, I said I'm going to step away and I don't want to be. I will work as a consultant and I just took projects, just basically liquidating the assets. There were more reliability than an asset. It was the chain of gas stations. We had more than 90 gas stations. So getting rid of stuff on the east side is what I spent the last years. But you cannot run a company and do that kind of work. You either do one or the other.
Speaker 2:And 2020, 2022, so we're talking about seven years seven years okay seven years there, and when the war started I was out of there okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:So now we're getting closer to present day and you have founded wings for heroes. Tell us, as I'm an American veteran obviously not a Ukrainian veteran, but I'm an American veteran and so I always support veterans so tell us about your wingsforheroesorg.
Speaker 2:So we go a little bit back to 2016. I was at one of our gas stations by highway and I saw a guy without two legs rolling out from our gas station on a wheelchair and he went towards the highway and I knew that there is no pedestrian, you cannot walk there. It's just really not for walking. There is no pedestrian side and I looked at that guy and I thought, like where is he going? But then I got busy with the things that I was doing and it wasn't. It was less than half hour a huge thunderstorm rolled in. It was just massive downpour and I am thinking that guy, there's no way he could make it anywhere. It takes about 10 minutes plus to drive between the exit. So I got a pickup truck, one of our drivers, and we followed in a direction where that amputee rolled in his wheelchair and we found him on the side of the road. He was all wet and mud and splashed by big trucks. Nobody stopped. That's one of the things that really surprised me that nobody stopped. But I was really happy that my intuition to go and look was correct and we got the guy. We put him in his wheelchair in the back of the truck, we put him inside. And while we were driving, I'm looking at him and I'm seeing that he's in really bad shape. Even if you clean him up, there is not much life left. There was not much life left in that guy. So we drove him wherever he needed to go, we got him some cigarettes, some food, and I really think that it was the last act of kindness that he experienced on this planet. So from then on, that was the first time when I really thought that something needs to be done.
Speaker 2:And in 2022, right after the war started I saw a teenage girl walk out on her new prosthetic leg in front of a packed stadium and she said look, they can come and they can take part of our country. They can even take a part of my body, but they're not going to break me. And that stadium just exploded. And it was the moment when they decided I'm going to do something. I'm not going to think that I should do something. I'm actually going to do something Now. I fly paragliders. That's my passion. I can't ski jump anymore because I'm older and heavier and slower, but paragliding allows you to fly a lot longer than you can do it on skis and you really can go into. The old People fly in their 80s, but in any case, paraglider is a plastic bag above your head that has these little strings right and you're suspended like in the thousands of feet above the air. And I remember my first time when I went flying. Basically I was so scared that I said goodbye to my dad in the air.
Speaker 2:I started saying goodbye to my brother. I really thought I was going to die, because I steed all my life. And then I see, chairlift is like getting this small down below and it was like I don't even know that guy. I just met him. But after I landed I really knew that I want to learn it and I want to learn it so I can scare other people. In other words, I wanted to become, get a professional tandem pilots license, and then, when I actually I did get my license and the experience when you fly people women tell you that it's the best experience they ever had, and that includes having kids. So I thought I wanted to give that experience to an amputee. And my thought was Brandon, if you're standing at the edge of the cliff and it's a thousand feet your subconscious mind knows that if you go off, no matter how brave you are, if you go off, you die. So in that moment of going off, you don't have any problems except one, and that's keeping your life. So I thought, what if we do this? We take the NPTs out of Ukraine, we bring them? I live in Turkey right now. It's ideal for it because we have the beach, we have the mountains, we have awesome culture, great people. What if I take veterans who had amputations and they take them away for one week and they would get submerged into the culture, into this awesome? We are in the Mediterranean Sea. It's really hot, warm, people are great, and then at the end they get this experience when they go paragliding. So it's a combination of being taken care of, that somebody is showing you appreciation and giving you lots of love and then they scare you to death, that you forget that you don't have legs. And that was truly, in a nutshell, the idea.
Speaker 2:And it took me a year and a half to fly the first guy because little side note I didn't do it in the United States because it would have taken me hundreds of thousands of dollars and years to get it done. Compliance, registration, insurance, all that stuff. I've started businesses. I sold businesses, running a financial planning practice. The great advantage is you see a lot of lives, financial lives of people.
Speaker 2:So I was very clear on how much resources and time I need in the United States and I had time here. I had time and I thought I'm going to try to do it and then I found a company that flew people with limited mobility and they did it without a chair. And I went to them and I asked the owner of the company. I said look, this is the idea I have, but we don't have a chair. Do you think we can do this? He's like yes, if we have perfect weather, we need two people to assist. We can take off.
Speaker 2:And then I called my friend who was the governor of our region. Actually, his father worked for me. It was a long-term relationship and he knew, through his father, about me and I told him this is what I need and he said okay, I will find you somebody who will give you a veteran to fly. And then a few months later they found me a guy who was a double amputee but he got scheduled for a surgery. It was like eight days before coming here. And then they sent me another guy who had one leg. And you know, I was actually lucky that we didn't start with a double amputee, because it was super hard. Your first experience with a veteran who came back from combat and he lost a leg, and it's just a lot of things to learn and to go through. On the first run and actually our number one was he was a kid. He is a kid, he's 23 now. He volunteered when he was 20. We flew him. He was our number one. He's on all our logos.
Speaker 1:First of all, what a great thing you're doing for veterans there. Second of all, what a sad story it is that America is so financially driven and the government is so controlling that you can't afford to do something like that here. So that is one of the downsides of America is just how money runs everything, and that's really frustrating.
Speaker 2:Brandon, you know, I um knew that if I do it here, if it exists, then it's really easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't have to start from scratch. So last year I was in San Diego. I went to Torrey Pines glider port, which is the oldest paragliding site in the United States and could be in the world. They're right next to Torrey Pines golf course and in the corner somewhere I found that they have a chair. They have a flying chair, so I talked to them and basically they can fly limited mobility passengers. San Diego has a huge naval base and it has a huge memorial hospital plus six or seven big hospitals. In November I am crossing the ocean back and I'm going to fly American veterans in the United States. Excuse me, I got it off the ground. I got it liberally flying where I could do it and now I can bring it to the United States and it doesn't cost me anything because I already found how to do it otherwise.
Speaker 1:No, that's great. Yeah, your whole story is amazing. You know how you started in troubling times in the Ukraine during the wars, and you to america with literally a bag and the clothes off your back and you make something of yourself by becoming an olympian and going to nyu which is a great school, by the way and and even after all that, you still find yourself homeless at some point and and living, you know, just working to try to get out of your situation, and then eventually you work yourself out of that situation through your hard work, and then now you're giving back to veterans, and so your life story is amazing, and that's what I love about life is crazy and having guests like you, and so we're going to wrap it up here, and I just wanted to ask you what's one thing you would like to leave with the audience. What's your best advice or the best you know anecdote you want to give the audience?
Speaker 2:You know I don't think it would be an anecdote I really what I want to say is that, whoever lives in the United States of America, you have the greatest opportunity. You have amazing opportunity that anybody can make anything out of him or herself in the state, and the only thing that is stopping somebody it may be, it's, um doubt, being uncertain, and I think that if you really feel something inside that you want to do, you have to do it. And my formula for accomplishing big goals is that, first of all, we realize that big goals take time, and even if I live to 100 years old, I don't have much time left before then. So the faster you get going towards your goals, the higher the probability that you will make it there before you die. And if you approach it that way, then the first thing that you need to do is to make a decision. Say something inside me. It really wants to come out. It's not I'm thinking about the business, some kind of business that's going to, you know, make me a lot of money, make me famous, happy, whatever it's that feeling that wants to come out famous, happy, whatever it's that feeling that wants to come out. So if you've been thinking a lot about doing something. Just make that decision, just decide that you're going to do it, go after it.
Speaker 2:And the next thing you just take one step at a time and then you take the next step. And the next step. You just focus on what is the next available step that I can take that will get me closer to that dream. And one thing that I noticed throughout years is that the more of those one steps that you take, you'll see people drop off left and right. It doesn't matter if you're talking about sports, business relationships, it doesn't Traveling.
Speaker 2:The more you take that one step, it's going to keep you focused on the present moment. You're not going to get overwhelmed and you will see so many people who are overwhelmed with trying to get something big done, like now. They will just drop off. And if you keep on tracking and you've gone through a lot of difficult times, you know what I'm talking about. You just have to get through it. And then, once you get through that, the satisfaction of accomplishing something that took years. It's one of the best feelings that you can have, because you cannot buy that and things that you have to earn and you cannot buy and things that are really meaningful to you. Once you get there, then it's a life well lived.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. I've lived my life by going in all or nothing, like I make a decision and I go for it and I just give it my all and it doesn't always work out right. I've been divorced three times, I've been laid off twice always work out right. I've been divorced three times, I've been laid off twice, and sometimes you fail, but you still learn. There are still lessons from those failures.
Speaker 1:There are still things that make you stronger and better for future and your life, and that's, I think, the thing people have a hard time understanding because people are afraid to fail. You can't be afraid to fail, you just have to go for it. You just have to do your best and go for it, and that's a great lesson, lubim. So thank you for that, and also, you know, thank you for helping veterans. I'm sure you've learned just as much as I have, at least, that giving back and making other people feel amazing by something you've done, at least for me, actually means more to me than anything I personally have ever accomplished. The satisfaction and the happiness of bringing someone else that kind of joy is an amazing feeling, and so I really want more people to understand that and recognize that, because in some ways in America we live in a me society where everyone's worried about getting their own and what they can have, and what they don't understand is by helping others you get so much more satisfaction out of that than you do.
Speaker 1:So um great lessons from you today, Lou beam, and um for me. Well, first of all, how does anyone reach you if they want to contribute to your wings for heroes?
Speaker 2:Wingsforheroesorg. I don't know if you put the link. The four is number four.
Speaker 2:I willorg I don't know if you put the link. The four is number four. I will. Yes, w-n-g-s. Number four H-E-O-R-E-Sorg. The story is there. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can watch short videos that I put together. That will show you what the mission is about.
Speaker 2:We're not a charity. I am not a charity. I am working with people who sacrifice so much so you and I can have the conversation, and I really believe that it doesn't matter what flag they wear, because there is war on the East and there is peace on the West, and the war always wants to go from East to West and the only reason it doesn't make it to us is because there are brave people, brave men and women, who place themselves in between and they said I'm going to defend my home. I think it's super important and the things that I've learned from them. I cannot, really you cannot learn it in a textbook. It's a really special feeling to be in a position to give back and actually what I noticed is that I have a lot of volunteers. This is all volunteer-based organization. Every person took a little bit, a little part that was missing in their soul From the guys who came. It seems like the connections that the volunteers make with the veterans. It's special, it's forever. The volunteers make with the veterans it's special, it's forever.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The volunteers cry when the veterans leave and then they call me and they write me and say, look, we miss him because he was here all the time. We had one guy rehab here for a month. He just left on the 25th and everyone got so used to having him here because it's always swimming, cycling, canoeing, doing some things, flying paragliders and they're like when is the next one coming? When are the next ones coming? So I completely agree with you Providing service and giving our most valuable asset, which is our time. We cannot get it back To give it to somebody else and see them do better because of your effort.
Speaker 1:It's the best feeling that you can have yeah, perfect, and on that note, um, I would like you to go to brandonhellcom and subscribe to my podcast. It's only 10 bucks a month and if you subscribe, I put out a couple of episodes every month that are just for subscribers. Only subscribers can hear them and follow me on Instagram, bh underscore life is crazy, and follow me on YouTube brandonheld underscore life is crazy. And Lieblum just said I appreciate you giving us your most valuable asset, which is your time to listen to this podcast and hear what we have to say, and help us spread these valuable messages we are trying to send to the world. So thank you, and for that, this has been Brandon Held Life is Crazy, and I'll talk to you next time.
