My name is Slava Hreski, and I was born in Belarus, one of the former Soviet Union countries. My father died when I was five-years-old, so I was brought up by my mother who was barely able to see me since she was working all the time. Even though she was working six to seven days a week as a teacher, she made very little income, and we could barely get by. She lived paycheck to paycheck, and often she didn’t have any money left by the end of the month to buy us food to eat. I remember times when we had tea and bread for breakfast, buckwheat for lunch and dinner…for weeks. I grew up in poverty, but I lived a happy life. I had lots of friends and spent every day with them. Since my mother was always at work, I became independent at a very early age. I cooked my own meals starting at age six, I did my own homework from an early age, and I learned to manage my time between playing and doing my homework. As a child, I walked to school and back alone, which took 30-40 minutes each way.

My First Job

At age of twelve, I decided to get a job to help support my mother financially. After several days going from business to business, I finally found a job as a helper at a local supermarket. The owner agreed to pay me “cash under the table” because I was not old enough to legally be hired by them, but he wanted to help me and my family. Other businesses declined speaking with me, and those that spoke with me often told me that they could not legally hire me, so I had no choice but ask to be “hired without paperwork”. The good news is that because of my persistence, and despite hundreds of failed attempts, I got a job. The bad news is that, as soon as I told my mother about me getting a job (I didn’t tell her I was looking for job until I actually got hired), she furiously gave me a lecture and ordered me to decline the job because I was too young and my job was to go to school. I obeyed.

My First Business

When I was a 13-year-old boy, during summer vacation, my best friend, Max, and I started our first business. One day, we were riding our bicycles and went several hours away from the city we lived in. We rode through several fields and forests and accidentally found a corn farm that was totally hidden inside of the forest. To our surprise, the corn was ready to be harvested, but it wasn’t season yet. All other corn farms had corn that was just starting to grow, but that corn field that we found was ripe and ready to be harvested. We wanted to take some corn with us and asked the farmers if we could take a few cobs. They gave us some corn, we happily brought them home, cooked them and ate them. They were delicious. The next day, Max and I decided to see if we could buy some corn to bring back to the city, cook, and sell on the local market. We took some money and two empty bags, and rode our bikes for a few hours to the farm. We approached the farmers and offered to buy the corn. They agreed. We negotiated the price per cob of corn and bought two bags of corn. We secured the bags onto our bicycles and rode back home. The next morning, we woke up around 4 AM, cooked the corn, placed it into bags, tightly closed them to keep the corn hot and fresh, and headed over to the market. It was important to get to the market early enough to secure the best spot. We rented a spot for the day and started selling the corn. Since there was no corn on the market yet, we were the only “merchant” that sold the corn, and we sold it all out in just a few hours. After a successful first day, we jumped on our bikes and rode to the corn farm again but this time with a total of six bags. We paid the farmers and started to harvest corn on our own. We peeled them before placing them into the bags so that we could fit as many of them as possible. Collectively, six bags of corn and our bikes were about twice as heavy as us, so the ride home back was much longer, and it took us about three hours to get back. The next day, we once again woke up at 4 AM, cooked our corns, packed it all, and by 7 AM we were at the market. By 1 or 2 PM, we sold it all, jumped on our bikes and rode to the farm again. We usually would be back home right before it got dark. This type of day repeated for us for about a month. While all the kids were playing, Max and I were working very hard and made more money than our parents could make in six months. It was a great success for us. I gave most of the money to my mother, and I spent the rest. I consider my “corn business” to be my first business. We were determined to do it again that next year, but for some reason, those farmers didn’t grow the corn anymore.

My High School Years

I continued going to school. I tried my best to be a good student but was an average student at best. I was going to school because that was a requirement and because I enjoyed hanging out with my friends and classmates. After school, I always did sports such as soccer or athletics (running, climbing, jumping, etc.). In high school, I went into wrestling, and I was at the gym wrestling five days a week every week for at least 4-5 hours a day. I became really good at wrestling and was able to win my first city wrestling championship.

I Am At University

At the age of 17, I miraculously was accepted into one of the most prestigious universities in Belarus. I believe there were 50-60 applicants per 1 seat, and the chances to get in were slim to none. However, I did super well on the exam and, to everyone’s surprise, I got accepted. Because I was a mediocre student at my school, everyone could not believe it when I broke the news. Most of the students from our high school didn’t even consider trying to apply there because everyone knew that the chances of getting in were almost non-existent. I got in. Life was amazing, the future looked bright except the tuition there was very, very expensive (I didn’t think of that part). For almost one year, everyone was trying to support me financially, my mother, my mom’s friends, my grandparents, and my neighbors, but it was so expensive that the money ran out by year one. My mother regretfully suggested that I should quit the university because there was simply no money left. I contemplated with the idea, however, it was killing me inside and I just could not accept the sense of defeat. I could not face the failure. It was just way too embarrassing for me. I was looking for ways to make it work and decided to look for a job. While everyone was enjoying their summer vacation, I worked several jobs. I saved enough money to pay for a portion of my second-year education but I still didn’t have enough, and therefore, I decided to continue working during my studies when the new semester started. From 9 AM to 2 PM, I was attending lectures at the university, then I had to do my homework and additional studies, so from 2 PM until 7 or 8 PM, I was in the library writing paper/studying and then I worked from 9 PM until 1 AM at a restaurant trying to make some money to pay for my education. While at the university, since all my money went to pay for education, I often had no money to buy food and therefore I tried my best to budget my expenses tightly so that I could survive.

More Hustling Continues

In addition to my studying and a job at the restaurant I also picked up another side job as a night club promoter on commission only basis. My job was to promote the club and bring people in. Basically, I was selling tickets to the club. I was selling them on the street, at our dorm and at the university. I only got paid a percentage of tickets sold, so if I sold none, – I got paid none. Because I needed the money badly, I was hustling and sold good amount of tickets every month but it was still not enough money to support my expensive education.

I Had To Come Up With A Back-Up Plan

By the end of my second year at university, I knew I had to find a way to make more money because I knew that I’d not be able to make it through year three. I had a friend, Alexei, with whom I shared a dorm. We decided to go to the USA for the summer and make as much money as we could so we can come back, focus on our education, and get off our parents’ shoulders since they were still trying to help us financially and I knew that my mother had not bought anything for herself for two years. I knew that she was starving herself trying to scrape as much money as she could to help me pay for my education. I couldn’t accept more money from her, and I couldn’t tolerate it knowing that my mother suffered because I persistently continued to pursue my education, but we all had a hope that I will finish and we knew that if I did finish, I would have an amazing career. All the companies would want to give me a job and often, starting jobs for university alumni would be at supervisor, assistant of director or even director level. It would be a big deal. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and I had to find a way to reach my goal.

So, You Saying You Want To Visit USA? Good Luck!

The solution was to go to the US, work during summer, make money and use it to pay for education. Getting a visa to the US was another challenge. It was nearly impossible for a Belorussian citizen to get a US visa. Luckily for us, we were students of the most prestigious university, and it would be considered insane for anyone with a degree from our University to go live anywhere else, so the US Embassy was more flexible in allowing students from our university to travel to the US. Typically, graduates of our university would have elite and very high paying careers waiting for them even before graduation. Because of that, I believe it was fairly easy for us to get our visas.

Here I Am! Hello USA!

There we were, on a plane to the USA. Alexei and I each had $400 in cash with us. We arrived in the US and checked into a motel that we prepaid for in advance. My first welcoming lesson was when I opened my bag to get my $400 only to realize it was no longer there. Before departure to the US, I put my $400 in the luggage that I turned in at the checkout. I picked up my luggage when I arrived in the US but the money was not there anymore.

OK. No Money. No English. Now What?

There I was, a 20-year-old boy that didn’t speak a word of English, with exactly $0 on day one of my USA journey. Luckily for me, I came with my friend, Alex, who was less naive and had his money in his pocket the whole time. We then had $400 to split between us. Fairly quickly, we were able to find a job at the amusement park where our job was to press the green button to start the ride and the red button to stop the ride. Talk about insane! In our country, we were two well-spoken, highly intelligent and respected individuals, and here we were pressing two buttons all day long for a minimum pay of $4.50 per hour.

Working Hard And Keep Smiling

Barely getting by on such a low pay, we still were happy and extremely grateful to have an opportunity to work in a foreign country even though for first two weeks we ate nothing but hot dogs with ketchup. We quickly realized that we needed a second job, otherwise, we would never save any money to pay for our education. So, we found a second job, and even a third job. We both worked at McDonald’s and Burger King. The entire summer, we worked 100 hours a week on average, 40 hours at McDonald’s since they didn’t want to pay overtime and ~60 hours at Burger King. We were cooking fries, making burgers, cleaning restaurants, picking up trash, scrubbing cooking equipment until it sparkled, washing dishes, and anything else we were asked to do. Fast forward three months, we were able to save $10,000 each, which was an insane amount of money for us at that time. Up to that point, the most money I ever had in my life was at the age of 13 when I was a corn entrepreneur. That summer I made ~$600-$700 and now I had $10,000 cash that we literally hid under the mattress of the motel room we were staying at.

Time to Explore The USA

Alex and I decided to stay a little longer in the US, travel across the US and learn English. Knowing English would open up bigger and better opportunities for us in our country, so we decided to go to college here in the US after we finished traveling so we could learn the English language. We bought a cheap car, an old Ford Thunderbird, put gas in it, and—with pockets full of cash—started driving with no particular destination in mind. We just bought a map and started to drive. We visited many cities and state parks and drove all over the US for almost a month. We had crossed 33 states by the time we arrived at our final destination. It happened to be San Francisco. We would have traveled more, but we ran out of money. We had enough money to pay for a few nights rent at the hostel, so we checked in at the hostel and immediately went to look for jobs. Once again, barely getting by, we continued our journey. We were able to get various low level, low paying jobs, and we also enrolled in the ESL program at the City College of San Francisco (ESL stands for English as a Second Language). As we learned the language, we were able to get better jobs: liquor store cashier in dangerous San Francisco neighborhoods, diner hosts, diner waiters, and then busy restaurant waiters where I was one of the top sales person and won most of the contests. I started to work at the bar as a barback, learned to mix drinks, and later started to work as a bartender.

And Then I Met My Future Wife

I met the girl of my dreams and fell deeply in love with her. There is nothing that could separate me from her, and I pursued finding ways to become a citizen of this wonderful country, the USA, to stay with the love my life. Today we are happily married, and we have an amazing son. Being born, meeting my wife, and having our son are the best things that ever have happened to me. Today, I am a US citizen, and I am incredibly grateful and honored to be a US citizen even though it took me 14 long years to become one.

My First House. Burned To The Ground. I Am Now Homeless

In early 2000, the house we rented burned down in a fire. We had just moved in, spent all our money on furniture and it burned to the ground with all of our belongings. Everything we had was gone, and once again I had no money and nowhere to sleep at night. In the blink of a moment, I became, by no choice, a homeless man. Luckily, I had a job, and through lots of troubles and challenges, I slowly was able to get back on my feet.

My First “Real Sales Job”

My first real sales job was actually door-to-door sales. That was one of the hardest jobs I ever had and love the fact that I did it. It was very difficult job. I was knocking on doors all day every days, going into people’s residencies, risking my life of being shot by one angry homeowner or being bitten by dogs while getting doors slammed in front of my face, hearing rejections after rejections including unwelcoming shouts such as “get out of my porch, you dick”. After all that I still put a smile on my face and go knock on the door of the next house. That’s insane, I know… but this might be an example of “what doesn’t break you,- makes you stronger” for me. I believe that this experience helped me in my sales career in the way that I know that persistence helps sales people get ahead and that rejections are just part of the process and need not to be taken close to our hearts. I was selling door to door for about 6 months and then I found my first real job at which I propelled up and forward as a super fast Stealth Aircraft

My First “Real Job”

We were still in the US in 2004 as we legally extended our stay. That’s when I got my first “real job”. I got hired at Bank of America as a personal banker. I quickly learned the ropes of being a banker, learned how the banks operate, learned personal and commercial/business lending, started to sell mortgages and quickly became a Top 5% banker in the Greater San Francisco area. A year and a half later, I felt that I reached my peak and there was nothing more to learn. The next step would be to become a branch manager, the opportunity that was open for me to pursue but during that time I was already exploring the insurance industry, a field that was very foreign to me. Because I was hungry for more knowledge, had a strong desire to broaden my skills and experiences, I was very drawn to the industry that appeared foreign and mysterious to me.

First Taste Of Being An Entrepreneur

In 2005, I started working part time with a small insurance broker, and as I learned more and more about insurance, I started to realize how broad and humongous this industry really is and that it is not only foreign to me but most people have very little knowledge and understanding of various insurance products. I saw a need, I saw how people make mistakes when buying their insurance policies, I saw how under-insured most people are, and I decided to go all-in to pursue my career in insurance. I was self-employed insurance broker that had no guaranteed paycheck, worked on commission only and paying 100% of expenses for my new insurance practice. My first year and a half was brutal. My income was very little, but my expenses were high, and I quickly burned through all my savings tapping into credit card debt. Several times I was questioning if I made the right decision going into insurance on commission only structure renting my own office and paying all the expenses myself. I always had entrepreneurs genes in me, but that was a first taste of what entrepreneurship is all about. It wasn’t that glamorous as I thought it would be. It was brutal. I once again was working 80-100 hours a week, but this time I wasn’t getting a paycheck with overtime. I actually was negative every month. I was losing money. Imagine you take a job where you are required to work 80-100 hours a week with no pay, and in addition, you had to pay $5,000 – $10,000 per month. Because I was a dreamer and always wanted to own my own business, I did exactly that, – working 80-100 hours a week while losing $5,000 – $10,000 per month every month. I wasn’t financially smart at all at that time and learned tons of life lessons. How ironic is that? I was just a banker managing other people money and I know all banks’ products very well but today I realize that just because I am a knowledgeable banker and understand bank’s products very well, it didn’t necessarily make me a financially smart person.

From Being Broke To A Millionaire. Over Night

I remember waking up in the morning, powerless with a bloody nose asking myself if I want to get dressed and go hassle another 12-15 hour day while actually losing money. Several times I quit, I turned off my phone and decided that it doesn’t make sense to work for a negative paycheck, but a few hours later the feeling of being defeated was killing me. I could not accept it. Failure was not an option. So, I kept getting up and kept working more and working harder. I made more calls, and I met more people, I shook more hands and kept increasing my sales. A year later, I finally started to get some traction, my gross income started to finally be equal or slightly higher than my expenses. At that time I was in serious debt, all my credit cards were maxed out, I was against the wall with no one to help me, and I just didn’t have a choice—I had to make it. Sometime in 2006 when I proved to the owner of the insurance brokerage I worked for as commissioned self-employed insurance agent that I can do this, and when my sales started to exceed entire firm’s production, the owner of the firm and I came to the agreement for me to acquire 50% of the company and become his equal partner. From 2006 until 2008 I helped to grow our brokerage from small two man operation that had only 300-400 clients into 4,000+ clients firm. We grew so fast that competition started to notice our growth and we even were approached by much larger insurance firm with a $2,000,000 offer for them to buy our insurance brokerage. There I was, a 26-year-old millionaire that was insanely broke just a few years ago. And now, life is great, I am making tons of sales, offices keep expanding, I have lots of people working for me and money keeps rolling in. I was driving a 650 horsepower Porsche Turbo that had $100K+ in additional updates and customization, bought my own home in San Francisco and living large. Little that I knew, recession is just beginning to unfold, real estate market is crashing down, stock market plummeting, people losing jobs left and right, businesses are shutting down one after another…and I am totally not prepared for such a turn, not knowing what to expect, how to handle rapid decline in sales and revenue when clients are dropping off every day, and I am not really financially educated, not recession-proof and not experienced in running a business when it is collapsing in front of my eyes.

Hello Recession. What The Hell Is Going On And How Do I Deal With It?

It was painful to watch our company’s revenues shrinking rapidly while expenses were staying the same. We didn’t fire anyone, and we simply continued doing our best with the hope to survive. I once again had to make a choice: to let everyone in my company go to save my personal income or to tap into my savings and ride the storm. I decided to keep all my people employed hoping that it was just a quick economic fluke (it wasn’t a quick economic decline. It was the time of major, long-lasting recession). The good news is that we were able to go through a recession and we survived it but I suffered the consequences: I lost all my savings and my house. It was a tremendous lesson to me. It made me a better businessman and a better person. It made me learn how to be prepared for future recessions and economic downturns. It forced me to get as much financial education as possible, so I can make better financial decisions in the future, It helped me learn to build recession-proof businesses, stronger financial foundations for my companies and my personal finances. It made me learn and find financial instruments that can make me better prepared for any storms ahead of me. Today, I still own that company that has been running without me since 2010 and generating passive income to me and my family. Today, my goal is to help other people, help them make right decisions and help them live happy, healthy and fulfilling lives.

What Do I Do Today?

I am 37-years-old now, and I no longer work for money. I build businesses around my passions. I enjoy helping people, and I will continue developing companies that will deliver high-quality products and services at affordable prices. I am not perfect, but I’ll keep trying to do my best, and my intentions are to always do the right thing.

My insurance brokerages are in business to help people protect their assets while saving them money and we even offer financial retirement vehicles that may offer stable retirement income.

I love good authentic and high-quality teas; therefore, I established a tea company that offers top quality teas that we buy fresh directly from farmers and make them available for our clients.

I love golf and unique apparel, so I created a company that makes some of the highest quality apparel with unique designs that will definitely make you stand out from the crowd. We don’t want to be ordinary. We want to be unique.

 

I really hope that I will be able to deliver anything of value to you—whether it is advice or suggestion, useful information, encouragement, motivation or products and services that you will benefit from. I really hope that I will be able to contribute to your life and make it better in some way, form or shape.

Cheers,

Slava Hreski