Latest / The Chris and Mike Show / #119 - Yury - Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

Transcript

#119 - Yury - Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain · The Chris and Mike Show

• 0:07
  There it is. There it is.
• 0:10
  We got it. Now we're cooking with gas.
• 0:12
  We got cooking with gas. This is Mike and I's band Yuri
• 0:22
  song called Freeman Do. You guys have?
• 0:34
  Hey boys and girls, it's Christian Mike Show.
• 0:35
  We are here with Yuri. We are I see live right now on
• 0:39
  YouTube as well as Twitch. So if you happen to be on those
• 0:41
  platforms, welcome to the show. Welcome and then, as always, in
• 0:45
  a couple weeks, this episode will drop on our podcast channel
• 0:48
  and all the podcast outlets for your reviewing re listening.
• 0:54
  You know what is the word pleasure?
• 0:57
  Pleasure, pleasure. Hey, thanks for coming on, Yuri.
• 1:00
  It's nice to meet you. And just so everybody knows, we
• 1:03
  just popped Yuri's cherry because he has never been on a
• 1:05
  podcast before. So, so welcome, Yuri.
• 1:08
  Welcome. Thank you for doing that with
• 1:10
  the you know. Thanks for coming on man.
• 1:15
  Yeah, so far, I enjoy that. Can you?
• 1:18
  Let's go, Let's go. Depart.
• 1:23
  All right. Hi, guys.
• 1:24
  Yeah. So what I did, you know
• 1:29
  homework. I realized I have to talk about
• 1:32
  myself quite a lot so I I guess I should my LinkedIn page and
• 1:37
  kind of copy paste and ask myself to just read it out loud.
• 1:42
  Well, this this is. Tell us like, who you are, why,
• 1:45
  why you want to come on. You know what inspired you to
• 1:47
  want to come on and talk to two knuckleheads like us?
• 1:50
  Yeah. And where?
• 1:51
  And but before we start that, where are you at?
• 1:52
  Because I'm in Arizona, Mike's in Illinois.
• 1:54
  Where are you? Right now I'm in a pool house.
• 1:57
  It's pretty much no. I know you're in a pool house,
• 1:59
  but I want to know where you what's what city, what?
• 2:02
  Country. Yeah, it's a small town,
• 2:04
  Greenwich, next to New York. Greenwich, CT.
• 2:07
  It's right next to Manhattan, maybe half an hour.
• 2:10
  OK. So New York's cool.
• 2:11
  So you're in New York, I'm in Arizona, he's in Illinois.
• 2:13
  So it's a beautiful thing. That's technology, man.
• 2:15
  You got to love it for that part of it.
• 2:16
  Right, but you obviously have an accent, so where did you grow
• 2:18
  up? Yeah, it's a it's a great
• 2:20
  question, especially nowadays. I have a cover story I always
• 2:23
  use. Actually, I recently used that.
• 2:26
  I'm from Romania. I know it.
• 2:28
  Awesome. So no, I actually grew up a
• 2:31
  friend. From Romania for years that I
• 2:33
  worked with was a cool. Guy Yeah, right, right.
• 2:35
  No, actually the the real, real story is I grew up in Soviet
• 2:38
  Union platform is how I called that.
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  And maybe 20 years back, when I quite was guided by my
• 2:48
  grandparents, I made a big decision.
• 2:50
  I moved out and now I live in the United States for the last
• 2:53
  20 years with my right. So you grew up in Romania?
• 2:58
  No, Romania is my cover story. Because nowadays, in a place
• 3:01
  where I actually grew up, because it's, it's not a good
• 3:05
  thing. Oh, OK.
• 3:07
  It's not. Yeah, it is Soviet Union.
• 3:10
  He. Actually hit the nail on the
• 3:11
  head, Chris. He grew up in the Soviet Union.
• 3:13
  You said that before he came back on.
• 3:15
  Right. I just assumed because the name
• 3:17
  of the accent, but I wasn't, I wasn't sure.
• 3:19
  So. Yeah.
• 3:21
  So how was so how so? Because we like, we like we like
• 3:24
  to talk about anything and everything.
• 3:26
  As you know, we're just, it's a conversation.
• 3:27
  I want to hear that part of the story.
• 3:29
  Right. I want to hear.
• 3:30
  I want to hear what the Soviet. Union.
• 3:31
  What was it like growing up? Yeah.
• 3:32
  Yeah. Wow.
• 3:35
  All right. Please.
• 3:37
  All right, let's go from, I think from the beginning, I
• 3:41
  guess it's, you know, Soviet Union platform.
• 3:46
  I, I, it's how I called it Soviet Union LLC Soviet Union
• 3:50
  Corp was powered by certain beliefs and that was because
• 3:55
  they all came back to communism party.
• 3:58
  So the communism communist system was designed for everyone
• 4:06
  pretty much. And obviously my family members,
• 4:09
  my parents, my grandparents, they are under this umbrella.
• 4:12
  They believe what they should believe.
• 4:15
  And I was super lucky when I grew up at that point, when I
• 4:19
  was let's say 10 and 11. It's actually the point when you
• 4:22
  start asking yourself questions. All right, how long I can live
• 4:27
  in a life, right? It's 100 years.
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  So I already had 10% of my life down when I was 10 years.
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  So I was lucky at that point in life, the whole, the system, if
• 4:37
  we call IT system and actually the system, right, starts
• 4:39
  falling apart. And I found that wherever my
• 4:43
  parents, they believe actually it's alternative reality.
• 4:49
  And I had the luxury to challenge that and ask them
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  direct questions because at that point it was already OK to ask
• 4:55
  what the heck is that, right? So honestly, my mom, she was
• 4:59
  more conservative. She had more political correct
• 5:02
  answers and my questions why we do this, why we do that?
• 5:05
  My dad. You're freezing up on us.
• 5:37
  Yeah, and I looked at my thing. I'm uploading fine.
• 5:43
  So is he. Weird.
• 5:48
  Sorry ladies and gentlemen here. He's having technical
• 5:52
  difficulties, which really sucks because I'm super engaged in
• 5:55
  this story. I know, I know, right?
• 5:57
  I've never met anybody from. Russia.
• 5:58
  No. No.
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  And I really want to hear about how he grew up and like how old
• 6:02
  he is now. That was one of the questions
• 6:04
  he'll. Be back.
• 6:04
  Yeah, Yeah. No, absolutely.
• 6:06
  Because that that's something that's fascinating, right?
• 6:08
  Because it's you're going behind the Iron Curtain.
• 6:09
  Is that what that was called when you're growing up?
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  100% good job. So be able to see, you know, at
• 6:15
  least at least listen to a story of.
• 6:18
  Of let's make sure we establish how old he is now so we know
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  what years we're talking about when he was growing up, because
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  if he's close to the same age as us, yeah, you're going to hear
• 6:28
  what his experience in life was compared to going to an American
• 6:31
  school every day. And sure, right away you can
• 6:33
  just you hear the difference in what those people went through.
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  And right away, at 10 years old, he was aware that his life was
• 6:40
  10% over. Were you aware at 10 years?
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  No, no, no. And right away, my brain went.
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  I had no idea my life was. 10% over at 10 years old.
• 6:50
  But see, that means that he plans on living to 100, right?
• 6:53
  But. What I'm saying is that was the
• 6:55
  despair and the hopelessness that life was, you know?
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  It's just. You're just kind of waiting to
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  die because you're going to do the same thing over and over and
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  over and over again because everything's for the system,
• 7:08
  right? Right.
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  And that's, that's communism, which you know.
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  It doesn't work. No.
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  And you eat the same, you sleep the same, you work the same.
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  You do this. I mean, it's, it's, it's
• 7:18
  Groundhog Day movie to an extreme.
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  Yes. And that's that's.
• 7:23
  A great way of putting a great analogy.
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  And I had no idea he was where he was from when we were talking
• 7:28
  because it it, it just, it wasn't his resume, his, his life
• 7:31
  resume he sent me was more business related and things like
• 7:34
  that. So this really surprised me when
• 7:38
  when I first heard him speak. I'm like, oh, he's not from New
• 7:42
  York. No, no, you hit the nail on the
• 7:47
  head. I couldn't believe it.
• 7:48
  Yeah, he's like, I'm from Romania.
• 7:51
  That would have been cool enough.
• 7:54
  Here we go. Absolutely.
• 7:56
  Yuri is piping back in, ladies and gentlemen.
• 7:59
  You're good. I don't.
• 8:00
  Know you're good, man. We were.
• 8:01
  So I was just like, Oh my God, I'm so engaged in this story.
• 8:04
  I want to hear the rest of it. Right.
• 8:08
  Oh. He froze again.
• 8:12
  Let's see if he was in Russia, I could see like, you know, the
• 8:15
  three continents, right? Or two continents apart, right?
• 8:19
  You know, and there's other Wi-Fi.
• 8:22
  No, because the weird thing was is he was keeping up with us on
• 8:27
  the upload speed. Oh, interesting.
• 8:29
  Which is nerd talk, ladies and gentlemen.
• 8:31
  But it is nerd talk. You have to have a decent
• 8:33
  Internet connection to use this service, so that's why we're
• 8:37
  always talking about it on the. Podcast And that's why I
• 8:40
  included in all my welcome to the Hey, there you are.
• 8:43
  There you go. Nope, there you went.
• 9:00
  You're still freezing up on us, brother.
• 9:07
  Man, that sucks. Yeah, because now he does suck.
• 9:10
  0% loaded. Yeah, but he, you know, he's
• 9:13
  looks like he's having a good time.
• 9:14
  He's got a smile on his face. I want to ask him if he's on
• 9:17
  ADSL connection. Oh, that could be it.
• 9:22
  Because you and I are sitting here talking to each other like
• 9:24
  we're in the same room and we're 1800 miles apart, so.
• 9:27
  We are. So I wait for your to come back
• 9:30
  on. Mike and I were talking before
• 9:31
  the show that that I have a unique ability in my vehicle to
• 9:34
  get ethanol gas. OK, so there's two stations in
• 9:38
  Arizona, both are in the East Valley, one's in Tempe, one's in
• 9:41
  Mesa where you can actually get this ethanol fuel.
• 9:44
  So I go to the one in the East Valley because I'm on that side
• 9:47
  of town this morning doing real estate stuff.
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  What was I pull up to the gas station slash restaurant.
• 9:53
  And the restaurant inside gas station is one of, you know,
• 9:55
  Arizona's favorite fast food Mexican stops called Filibertos.
• 9:59
  Yeah, Filibertos, right. So I pull up in there and
• 10:03
  there's there's a landscape truck and you know, a AA44 door
• 10:07
  Crew Cab, dually wheeled tire, massive truck with a long
• 10:10
  trailer that's probably just as long as a truck.
• 10:13
  And this gentleman's blocking 1233 pumps, right?
• 10:17
  Which means you're blocking 6 people's ability to pump
• 10:19
  gasoline on the other side. The ethanol nozzle on that side
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  of the pump is broken. So the only ones on the side
• 10:25
  where his trailers at in front of that spot is another truck.
• 10:29
  That's one of those, you know, they have to have to the back is
• 10:32
  empty open. So you unload, you know, like, I
• 10:36
  don't know, drop off pickup donation type truck.
• 10:38
  OK, right. It's like going to the
• 10:40
  restaurant and look around. I kind of, you can kind of tell
• 10:43
  a landscaper because they're everything's covered from head
• 10:45
  to toe except their face because of the Arizona sun.
• 10:47
  So I was like, excuse me, you know, is that your white truck
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  out there? He looks out there, looks at it,
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  looks back at me, doesn't say anything.
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  I'm like, is that your white truck?
• 10:55
  I said you there's ethanol there.
• 10:56
  I like to pump that gas for my vehicle.
• 10:58
  And that's the only one that's working.
• 11:00
  Gentleman behind him rattles something off in Spanish and the
• 11:04
  guy that I'm talking to responds in Spanish that rewraps his
• 11:07
  burrito and continues to eat. So I'm standing looking at him
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  for about 3 seconds and I'm like, I'm like I just need you
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  to move your truck forward so I can get gas.
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  It's not that. Big a deal.
• 11:15
  Reasonable request. Didn't respond to anything I
• 11:17
  said OK, so forget exactly what I said, but it's something to
• 11:21
  the level. Well, if you're going to be a
• 11:22
  Dick about it, then maybe when I, when you come out there,
• 11:24
  you're just not going to have any, any air in your front 2
• 11:25
  tires. And I walked out and none of
• 11:27
  them moved. Like, no, it's, it's and it's
• 11:32
  somewhere in that conversation that point out the fact.
• 11:33
  I know you understand what I'm saying because what you do for a
• 11:35
  living, you have to at least understand what I'm saying.
• 11:38
  Whether you speak it or not, you have to understand what I'm
• 11:40
  saying. And there's two guys here.
• 11:41
  There's three guys here and then there's the door and there's
• 11:45
  there's four guys that are there.
• 11:47
  Don't look like they're a landscape.
• 11:49
  And again, in Arizona landscape, like legit, you're wearing a
• 11:52
  bright white yellow shirt and the only thing that's open to
• 11:55
  the air is yours on your face. And even when you're in the
• 12:00
  yard, you put on your face with a mask of sunglasses.
• 12:03
  So there's nothing exposed to the sun, right?
• 12:05
  But you have to, and I've done that when I've done light, it's
• 12:09
  actually a cooler environment, being completely covered from
• 12:11
  the sun. And the only thing really
• 12:12
  exposed, Nothing. Nothing really.
• 12:16
  When I run my bones, everything, I'm just like a landscape.
• 12:18
  So and nobody wants skin cancer. No, but it was just, it was a
• 12:22
  reasonable request. I wasn't being a jerk.
• 12:24
  I was, I was slight and and respectful about it.
• 12:28
  And he just looks at me like, like, fuck you is basically what
• 12:32
  he said. And then the guy behind him
• 12:34
  again changed on something Spanish.
• 12:35
  And I'm learning Spanish, but I'm not quick enough to pick up
• 12:38
  what they say because, you know, people who have spoken Spanish
• 12:41
  their entire life. Well, I mean.
• 12:46
  They're talking as fast as we are right now, right?
• 12:48
  So there's you. One second, he's going to finish
• 12:54
  this. I got to finish this story.
• 12:56
  So my point is, boys and girls, it's not an unreasonable request
• 13:01
  to ask someone to move forward when you're trying to get fuel
• 13:06
  if the only pump that is allowing fuel to be dispersed.
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  Be a human and respond instead of just being a Dick and staring
• 13:13
  at the. And one thing I would like to
• 13:15
  add to that story, yeah, is true, genuine, heartfelt
• 13:21
  Mexicans that grew up in Mexico hate Mexicans like that because
• 13:27
  they give them all a bad name, right.
• 13:28
  When you fake that you can't speak English.
• 13:31
  And that both that I've known plenty of good Mexican families
• 13:34
  who came here illegally and then, you know, made it legal
• 13:39
  later on, but their parents were always careful to make them
• 13:42
  speak English when they were in the house and, you know, just.
• 13:45
  We're in this country now. Here's what we're going to do.
• 13:48
  So I, I hear that in my head too.
• 13:50
  It's like, man, those, those kind of people, they give
• 13:53
  Mexicans a bad name. They do.
• 13:55
  Well, and it's just, it's just a human respect thing, just.
• 13:58
  Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't matter, but it's I'm talking
• 14:01
  now. It's the language barrier thing
• 14:03
  too, you know. Yeah, Yeah.
• 14:04
  Anyway, sorry you're. Yeah, no, we were talking about
• 14:08
  little situation happened this morning when I asked somebody
• 14:09
  politely to move their vehicle so I could get some fuel and and
• 14:12
  they just stared at me like I was and, you know, a space, an
• 14:15
  alien that just had no relevance.
• 14:17
  It was the strangest thing, man. So, you know, so anyway, so we
• 14:22
  want to we want to continue. This is Yuri.
• 14:24
  He lives in New York. He's originally from the Soviet
• 14:26
  Union. And we were talking about how
• 14:29
  Mike and I both you made the statement that when you turn,
• 14:32
  1010% of your life was gone. That hit he and I, like you,
• 14:35
  wouldn't believe. Because when we were 10 years
• 14:38
  old, we were not aware at all that our life was ever even
• 14:41
  going to end for one thing, let alone know that it was 10% over.
• 14:46
  So what made you hyper aware at 10 years old that your life was
• 14:51
  10% over? That's my first question.
• 14:53
  Oh, it's a it's a great question.
• 14:54
  And I actually first time in life, I asked myself why I I
• 14:58
  knew that why I had this kind of concern, right.
• 15:01
  And you nailed it. I didn't expect it.
• 15:04
  Let me think about it. My guess.
• 15:09
  All right, So here's what happened back in the time in our
• 15:14
  culture when I say our culture, whatever culture we had at that
• 15:17
  point, right, Sure. When grandparents or adults die,
• 15:22
  the holdest event, the holdest ceremony, I called it right, was
• 15:28
  designed around tragedy and it was really depressing for
• 15:32
  anybody, even adults. So I, I guess at that point I, I
• 15:38
  was witness of few, maybe relatives or some neighbors that
• 15:42
  die. And obviously that concept that
• 15:45
  life is over a certain point was introduced by not even asking me
• 15:48
  kind of right. And it was introduced in a
• 15:50
  pretty harsh style as a whole. This, you know, process to say
• 15:56
  bye to those, you know, people who die.
• 15:59
  It's, it was set up like like a real, real experience, right?
• 16:05
  You can see actual dead body, right?
• 16:07
  And that dead body, it was not like modern days.
• 16:11
  It was not designed to be. It looks healthy.
• 16:16
  And nice. It wasn't, Yeah, it wasn't, it
• 16:18
  wasn't more. It didn't go to mortician and
• 16:20
  get it all cleaned up and stuff, right?
• 16:22
  Right, right. So yeah, yeah.
• 16:23
  Now you kind of went to, it's not a therapy session, right?
• 16:26
  I don't pay you guys right. So I think at that point in
• 16:30
  life, I was first time experienced, second time
• 16:32
  experienced that that concept that you might be bright and
• 16:36
  and, you know, running around to doing some shit when you child
• 16:40
  obviously, right. And then at certain point you
• 16:42
  that piece of disposal piece of meat which looks ugly.
• 16:47
  And so I think it was it is my answer why I was kind of aware
• 16:51
  of the fact that eventually the whole this, you know, version of
• 16:55
  the life is over eventually that that that dude or that Lady
• 16:59
  were. Yeah.
• 17:01
  OK. Now my next question real quick
• 17:02
  is how old are you? So we have a time frame of when
• 17:06
  we're talking about. At that point or right now?
• 17:10
  Right now? Oh, right now I'm roughly 45.
• 17:13
  OK. Yeah, I would say it's my kind
• 17:15
  of. Cool.
• 17:16
  So I'm, I'm 10 years old and you, Mike's eight years old.
• 17:18
  And you, so you were, you were 10 years old in the Soviet
• 17:20
  Union. Right.
• 17:22
  OK, so when did you move from the Soviet Union?
• 17:24
  How old were you? I needed that when I was in
• 17:28
  college. Second year in college where
• 17:30
  maybe it was 19, it was in Boston.
• 17:33
  And actually it was not Boston. Yeah, it was New Hampshire.
• 17:36
  Right, OK, so you so you lived there till you were 19?
• 17:40
  Right. I I was OK till 17 1/2.
• 17:43
  I would say pretty precise. So.
• 17:44
  So what was it like being a teenager growing up in Russia,
• 17:47
  man? Partly have Which part of that?
• 17:51
  I don't, I just like, I know what is obviously we know what
• 17:54
  it's like to grow up in America as teenagers.
• 17:57
  And it was, you know, when we were teenagers, right?
• 17:59
  There wasn't the social media, there wasn't the Internet.
• 18:01
  It was, it was basically, you know, you, you get home by the
• 18:04
  time the street lights come out. So it was a great childhood from
• 18:06
  that aspect. If you look at what kids have to
• 18:10
  deal with now, right? Because there was no hiding
• 18:12
  behind texts and phone calls and cell phones and shit like that.
• 18:14
  It was just you're going to knocking on Mike's door.
• 18:16
  Hey, Mike, can Mike come out and play?
• 18:18
  You know, and then parents like no, he's grounded.
• 18:21
  He'll you know, or he's doing a homework, whatever.
• 18:23
  So did you have so just. I mean, I don't.
• 18:26
  Here's a way of asking that, I think here's a way of asking
• 18:29
  what you're trying to say. Did you have that same kind of
• 18:31
  freedom even though you were in a communist country?
• 18:35
  I mean, you could you could come and go as you pleased as far as
• 18:38
  playing with your friends and going to a club.
• 18:40
  Or that's what he's asking, right?
• 18:42
  Robert, I think it's. It's.
• 18:47
  It's not making. Teenager in Moscow, in Russia.
• 18:50
  Yeah. So in my Moscow, different
• 18:52
  cities as well, right, right, right.
• 18:54
  I think the whole concept, the whole narrative, we are less
• 18:58
  free nowadays. Our kids, I have 3 kids, right?
• 19:02
  It's international. So back in a time when you're
• 19:05
  17, when you're 15, when you're 14, the level of freedom and
• 19:10
  level of independence, I would say, right, if we put any number
• 19:16
  on that, it was maybe less than 10X.
• 19:18
  So we did have a pretty similar experience.
• 19:21
  You just go to somewhere and you come back from somewhere and
• 19:26
  your time and obviously you have some expectation from, you know
• 19:30
  yourself that your parents wants you to see before the dark and
• 19:34
  you can have access to the bike. You can bike somewhere and
• 19:38
  explore and find sometimes you find troubles, right?
• 19:41
  Sometimes you find something very interesting and sometimes
• 19:45
  you build, build, bring those troubles to your household,
• 19:47
  right? So, and I grew up in a small
• 19:51
  town, like roughly 9000 people compared to a local town.
• 19:57
  So I would kind of say that it's more like small version of
• 20:04
  Queens in New York. OK.
• 20:06
  You have quite diverse community.
• 20:09
  You have people who are successful doing, you know, good
• 20:12
  stuff and a wife and obviously. You have some Russia.
• 20:16
  It it was small town near and usually in upgrade that time it
• 20:19
  was Gorky and that small town was primarily built around two
• 20:24
  different 2 businesses. One business produced food for
• 20:31
  peaks and second business produced peaks and obviously
• 20:35
  humans, we eat those, you know, pigs.
• 20:38
  So it's pretty simple. Pretty simple, logical I'm.
• 20:41
  I'm pretty good with geography, but are you closer to the
• 20:44
  European side of the Soviet Union or are you more like in
• 20:49
  the interior of the country is what I'm asking I guess.
• 20:53
  It's right in the middle. I would say it's right in the
• 20:56
  middle. And like, I know we're right
• 20:57
  where you're at. Then yeah, like let's say 4
• 20:59
  hours by good car, 4 hours from Moscow.
• 21:03
  It's very much to to put a point, right.
• 21:05
  So that lifestyle was evolved pretty dynamic dramatically
• 21:10
  when, you know, systems start falling apart.
• 21:13
  The whole freedom was leveraged by not just kids, but adults as
• 21:18
  well. So the whole system was very
• 21:22
  like maybe 2 years a transition from one type of everyone
• 21:28
  shared, everyone united by same vision.
• 21:31
  And now over 2 years it become more kind of independent
• 21:34
  lifestyle. So each family who?
• 21:36
  Lived under two different regimes, right?
• 21:38
  Right, so I what was? The first regime.
• 21:42
  I'm sorry. What Who was in charge during
• 21:45
  the first regime, when you were like, from birth to whenever
• 21:49
  Putin took over? Right, right.
• 21:51
  So the the last guy, I think to be political correct, we should
• 21:54
  kind of stay away as far as possible so our podcast can go
• 21:57
  live, right? We don't talk about that guy.
• 22:02
  I will stay away from that part, OK, Just for the reason.
• 22:05
  Fair enough. I don't believe.
• 22:08
  I don't believe I have so much, you know.
• 22:10
  What? You call him Bob.
• 22:12
  Yeah, I don't have kind of very concrete balls and.
• 22:17
  I like what Chris says. Let's call him Bob.
• 22:19
  And when Bob was in charge, what was life like?
• 22:22
  And then when Putin took over, what did you notice like
• 22:24
  immediately and then maybe progressively afterwards, so.
• 22:29
  The the Bob I wasn't part of Bob umbrella How to say that when
• 22:35
  Bob was on top of family is a family member.
• 22:40
  I already am flying over to you know my new life.
• 22:45
  So but when I grew up, it was a dude named Gorbachev, right?
• 22:50
  Based on based on record. Think of his name.
• 22:52
  Thank you. Yeah, yeah.
• 22:54
  So that dude, he was pretty kind of human focused kind of.
• 22:58
  He was not a good manager, but obviously he managed the
• 23:02
  country, which was not a good business in the first place.
• 23:04
  So maybe we would have much more success in the business if he,
• 23:09
  you know, run, you know, pretty good business at that point.
• 23:12
  There's a previous guy, whatever previous guy name, he could not
• 23:16
  build as a country, as a business in any perspective.
• 23:18
  Yes, it was super inefficient. It was super.
• 23:22
  How to say that super not right? Inefficient works, and no
• 23:26
  inefficient works. It just it wasn't.
• 23:28
  It wasn't performing the way it should be.
• 23:30
  And the people suffered under that right.
• 23:33
  Oh, it's a great, great note. I didn't see anybody in my
• 23:38
  circle who had zero, who had any negative emotional things in
• 23:47
  their life. Right.
• 23:48
  The system itself, when you unite people on their same
• 23:52
  vision and you let them go in that direction and you tell them
• 23:57
  to feel, you know, the fact they actually part of that journey
• 24:02
  and they can feel, you know, accountable for whatever there
• 24:05
  is. They have to be the one guy who
• 24:07
  might, you know, part of you know, he might be plumber second
• 24:10
  guy, he might be big boss, right?
• 24:12
  But at a certain point, everyone has access to the same table, I
• 24:16
  would say, right. And when people united by
• 24:20
  something huge, they actually feel very happy about the
• 24:24
  lifestyle. They even it's not about money
• 24:26
  at that point, right, It's more about where we going.
• 24:31
  I would say Ellen masks. He isn't biggest communist type
• 24:34
  of guy right. He's trying to put you and me to
• 24:37
  the Mars and when I grew up, the guy who is in charge, our Ellen
• 24:43
  Musk, they try to put me in a live way in the future.
• 24:47
  We all happy. I forgot exactly the tagline,
• 24:50
  but we did at we had exact same branded message from the system
• 24:55
  as well. OK.
• 24:57
  That makes sense, yeah. So let's go to the Mars so.
• 25:02
  So this is kind of a random question.
• 25:05
  I don't know if if it's even a legitimate question.
• 25:07
  But as I grew up not really understanding communism, right,
• 25:10
  because I lived in America, right?
• 25:11
  So I never had this struggle through that.
• 25:15
  Is it true that that the government would dictate what
• 25:18
  your occupation was? At a certain degree you you
• 25:24
  more. Your journey started in high
• 25:27
  school. In high school, you're pick
• 25:30
  something based on your parents observations, right?
• 25:33
  So your parents pretty much put you on some path and that that
• 25:36
  specific path will place you somewhere in the society.
• 25:39
  And you got a full time presence in society and you feel very
• 25:42
  happy because you go to the to the to the Mars.
• 25:45
  Gotcha. OK.
• 25:46
  OK. Then with that said, sorry
• 25:48
  Chris. You're good.
• 25:49
  No, you're good. I like where you went with that.
• 25:51
  With that said, what if you wanted to be an artist?
• 25:53
  him and I played in a band together, right?
• 25:55
  We chose that as part of our profession for a portion of our
• 25:59
  lives. What if you wanted to be a
• 26:00
  guitar player in a band? You don't have that freedom.
• 26:04
  You have a freedom to play guitar with any rhythm you can
• 26:09
  come up with because guitar music doesn't impact does have a
• 26:13
  direct message, right? But as soon as you open your
• 26:16
  mouth, whatever comes from your mouth, it has to be in a certain
• 26:22
  Li was a message. We go to the Mars.
• 26:25
  It's got to be politically correct.
• 26:27
  Pretty much. You can't be.
• 26:29
  Anti establishment gets you taken off the stage and shoved
• 26:32
  in in a closet in the backroom for days.
• 26:34
  Pretty. Much, Mike?
• 26:36
  Yeah. Yeah, so like it or not, we
• 26:39
  could Chris and I could have went on stage and said, you
• 26:41
  know, fuck America. We hate this fucking the way
• 26:44
  this country's run, which we never would have said because we
• 26:47
  love where we live, but we already.
• 26:48
  Said that right. To get up there and what if?
• 26:50
  What if you did that? Oh God.
• 26:54
  In my time, in my yeah, sure, yeah.
• 26:57
  I don't see anybody. I didn't see anybody in my life
• 27:02
  in my circle. And I did have some, you know,
• 27:05
  very bold and proactive activists wherever people who
• 27:09
  against the system. Nobody would say that.
• 27:13
  Yeah. It's it's so it's not just bold,
• 27:16
  it's it's not even the the the bad news when system when you go
• 27:21
  too far too long for to the Mars you actually start, you actually
• 27:26
  believe you, you you're in a path to the Mars and anybody say
• 27:29
  the Mars is fuck anybody say that the Mars is illusion.
• 27:35
  Not so many people can hear the message.
• 27:37
  Not so many people can support that.
• 27:39
  So what are we screaming your Microsoft on the stage.
• 27:42
  Not so many people can, you know, get reacted in that
• 27:45
  passed. Away.
• 27:46
  Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense.
• 27:49
  So now, so now you're in America.
• 27:50
  You like you, you moved from Soviet Union, Russia and you're
• 27:54
  in America now. You go to you go to college.
• 27:55
  What did you study in college and was and what did you notice
• 27:59
  when you came over from a communist country to the
• 28:01
  freedoms of America? What was the biggest culture
• 28:03
  shock for you? Great question.
• 28:07
  Yeah, go back to education part then we can culture police.
• 28:13
  OK, Yeah, I, I just maximize opportunity to study as much as
• 28:19
  I could. Thank you for, you know, to my
• 28:22
  parents, I guess they, they are pretty direct.
• 28:25
  You, you better still learn and be smart than not.
• 28:30
  Yeah. So I went to same.
• 28:32
  Message. Right, right.
• 28:33
  So I went to mechanical engineering school.
• 28:35
  I graduate after 70 years, been in a in a pretty good college
• 28:41
  and I went to PhD and as a mechanic engineer type of guy.
• 28:46
  And obviously I drop out for the sake of someday I will say it
• 28:51
  loud. I drop out PhD instead of high
• 28:55
  school. So this I, I Max out the fact
• 28:58
  that we had free education system.
• 29:00
  It's a good part of the kind of go to the Mars.
• 29:03
  It's it's, it has a good benefit, right?
• 29:06
  When you go to the Mars, you have to build a good platform
• 29:08
  for education. You have to get to the Mars, you
• 29:09
  need engineers. So I spent seven years studying
• 29:12
  math, finance, where we named that.
• 29:15
  So I was full time in a few different education systems.
• 29:18
  The good news, I paid 0 for that.
• 29:20
  The best news, sometimes I even get paid for that.
• 29:22
  If you started good, if you got good score points, whatever you
• 29:26
  call that, you actually get paid.
• 29:28
  And so transition to cultural question, what was quite
• 29:32
  different versus here versus Russian culture?
• 29:39
  Yeah, honestly, it's more I'm trying to go back that time, my
• 29:45
  impression that time versus my impression nowadays and.
• 29:50
  That time he's been Americanized, Yeah.
• 29:52
  Yeah, yeah, it's kind of, you know, it's now I'm going to
• 29:55
  different Mars, right. Right.
• 29:57
  Exactly. And my belief system already
• 30:00
  kind of influenced by years. Be present.
• 30:03
  Be present here. I'm not going to say prison.
• 30:07
  Well, maybe, maybe, maybe pose. Let me, let me pose the question
• 30:10
  this way. Like so when you, when you first
• 30:12
  come to America, right, and the freedom that you were then
• 30:16
  allowed, was that just like overwhelming, like, Oh my gosh,
• 30:20
  I can just get up whenever I want.
• 30:22
  I, I can go to McDonald's and get a cheeseburger or I can go
• 30:25
  in this movie at blockbuster. You know, just that type of
• 30:28
  because you're going from like a what a communistic world where
• 30:31
  you're kind of told what to do, when to do it, how to, you know,
• 30:34
  all this stuff, right? And now you're now you're
• 30:37
  completely free to kind of do whatever you want, right?
• 30:41
  Like you can go in the middle of the not.
• 30:42
  Exactly not, not not even exactly.
• 30:45
  I would take even absolute the good news in my personal case
• 30:49
  when I was out, when I checked out from that hospital, from
• 30:54
  that Mars expedition, right. Yes.
• 30:57
  I would say it the last two or three years, the, the, the, the,
• 31:01
  that regime, the system was already collapsed, right?
• 31:04
  It was complete freedom that time in that part of the
• 31:08
  country, not OK that those three years after the system
• 31:11
  collapsed, it was the biggest freedom you can experience in a
• 31:14
  life. So you do whatever you do, you
• 31:16
  go against legal things and your legal system, you, you quite
• 31:20
  control that. You go against messages.
• 31:23
  You can open your mouth, you can say whatever you want because
• 31:26
  the system doesn't exist now. You can say it out loud.
• 31:28
  Your parents were dumb. Follow this, you know, one to
• 31:31
  three belief. So back to your question was a
• 31:34
  big like difference in the freedom to be honest here I
• 31:39
  experienced much less freedom. So right it it was much less
• 31:43
  you, you you observe by rules. There is something you you you
• 31:49
  have to be compliant every day, right?
• 31:51
  It's what I experienced here, right?
• 31:54
  So if you compliant follow a certain protocol.
• 31:59
  It's what I discovered here. Is it good or bad the first day?
• 32:03
  Yeah. The first time you kind of you
• 32:05
  don't feel comfortable. You you feel control kind of,
• 32:08
  right. You have some boundaries, right?
• 32:09
  But eventually, when you realize all those girls, they actually
• 32:13
  designed for good of your things, for good of your
• 32:17
  presence, being part of the system.
• 32:19
  I I decided, listen, that that version of control is much
• 32:22
  better than what I experienced when I was a child.
• 32:25
  So give me a simple example of something that you have to do
• 32:28
  here that you did not have to do when you lived in your hometown.
• 32:32
  Oh my God, so now? This is, this is, this is that's
• 32:35
  a, that was a fast, fast answer, Yuri, because really, I never
• 32:38
  would have thought coming from communistic control.
• 32:41
  Have a claim that he had less, more freedom there, Right,
• 32:43
  right, right. Give me a simple example.
• 32:45
  Right, which if you. Think one off top of your.
• 32:47
  Head Brilliant insight, man. But again, big note that we're
• 32:52
  trying to compare apple and banana.
• 32:54
  Yeah, we know, right, because the last three years it was
• 32:56
  episode of companies. If you compare communism
• 32:58
  different different animal, right.
• 33:00
  So the the the biggest thing, not the biggest one of oh wow,
• 33:06
  it's going public, right. Let me pick something in a more
• 33:14
  easier to to to let's. Get you in trouble?
• 33:18
  Right, right. So I'm trying to stay away from
• 33:20
  trouble all about. You see how much KGB now?
• 33:22
  Oh, let's doorman. I'm knocking on my door either.
• 33:26
  Let's use that thing as the fact we we're trying to discover,
• 33:30
  right? You see, when we try to say
• 33:31
  something here, right, we're still trying to filter where
• 33:35
  there are some messages they can put you guys and me in certain
• 33:38
  trouble if you go to let's say, oh, the big one, which, and
• 33:43
  obviously let's not count details because I don't know,
• 33:45
  we're kind of in trouble for sure when we go races, when
• 33:49
  we're trying to define different personalities driven by
• 33:52
  different, you know, ethnicity, the history behind each.
• 33:56
  So we all came from different places, right?
• 33:57
  We have to have some expectation who that person based on ways
• 34:01
  he's coming from, right? So that subject, the race, it
• 34:05
  might be color, it might be the size of the body, etcetera in
• 34:11
  the country we're part of right now, right.
• 34:13
  It's much less written to, to emphasize, to explain, to be
• 34:18
  verbal on that subject, much less like I would say, TNS.
• 34:24
  Yeah, Holy crap. Amazing example, Yuri.
• 34:27
  Wow, that was a brilliant answer, man.
• 34:29
  Thank you very much. Now I understand.
• 34:31
  I. It was just.
• 34:32
  In the show. Just in the show.
• 34:34
  How? Do we go up from there?
• 34:37
  No, but that was that, that was amazing that way.
• 34:40
  And that was a, that was a great way to, to, to frame that
• 34:43
  because I never would have thought of that.
• 34:45
  So over there, you're just over there, you're just communistic,
• 34:49
  you're in that world and that's how it is.
• 34:51
  So they don't see any of that per SE, right.
• 34:53
  And over here, like you just said, there's so much division
• 34:57
  from from the cultures themselves, the race, the
• 35:00
  religions, because you didn't touch religions, right.
• 35:02
  There's religion and religion is the mother of all wars, right?
• 35:06
  That's why the world's always been at war as religions and
• 35:08
  stuff. So I mean, that's that was a
• 35:09
  really great insight on on the difference between the two for
• 35:14
  sure. Nice job.
• 35:18
  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, Yuri from from, from, you know.
• 35:23
  Yes, I think it's better phrase that way.
• 35:26
  So OK, so here's another fun question because Mike and I
• 35:28
  talked about this before you came on the show.
• 35:30
  We were talking he like we've, we've always asked people what
• 35:33
  is America's perception from the country, but obviously we're not
• 35:37
  going to ask that because you're in America now.
• 35:39
  But we've learned that people that are in other countries
• 35:42
  outside of America, some of them think that we're arrogant pieces
• 35:45
  of shit. And then Mike had a conversation
• 35:48
  with someone and and the answer was basically, well, we only
• 35:51
  speak one language in America, whereas your buddy speaks how
• 35:54
  many, Mike? 5. 55 So how many languages?
• 35:58
  He speaks 9 languages, but he speaks 5 fluently.
• 36:01
  And where is he from? Norway, right?
• 36:04
  So what about you, Yuri? How many languages do you speak?
• 36:08
  I think the English, my second now become eventually the first
• 36:12
  one, I guess because the way I process, yeah, first one
• 36:16
  English, second Russian. I can speak, I can speak Ukraine
• 36:19
  to support Ukraine. And then somehow I understand
• 36:25
  Espanol and Spanish and pretty much that's it.
• 36:30
  I'm not language guy, I'm more. No, it's, but still that's.
• 36:33
  Still speaking? You're still speaking 2 fluent
• 36:37
  languages, then you can understand two other ones, so
• 36:39
  that's still 4. Languages.
• 36:40
  I only speak one fluent. Right, right.
• 36:42
  I'm learning Spanish, but it's not, you know, I had my little
• 36:45
  ordeal today and I didn't understand the thing those guys
• 36:47
  said because they said it so fast.
• 36:48
  I was like, it's like, OK, so no, that's still that's props,
• 36:53
  man. That's good job.
• 36:55
  Now I had an uncle who took Russian in college and
• 36:59
  supposedly that is one of the hardest languages to learn other
• 37:03
  than like Latin which is a dead language anyway.
• 37:05
  So they say that Russian is actually the hardest language to
• 37:10
  learn that's actively spoken every day on the planet today.
• 37:15
  Would you agree with that or no? It'd be hard for you to agree
• 37:18
  with it because you grew up with it, yeah.
• 37:20
  No, it it was hard for me as well.
• 37:22
  It was like I said, yeah, I was pretty good in physics, math,
• 37:27
  and, you know, such science, right?
• 37:29
  Can I ask you a quick question? Why are the words this long?
• 37:33
  And I'm, I'm holding my fingers really wide.
• 37:35
  Ladies and gentlemen, why are there so many letters?
• 37:37
  There's where in a, in a, in a, each word.
• 37:40
  In Russian, yeah. Like when I look at Russian
• 37:43
  signs, you know when you see them on TV, like the the names
• 37:47
  seem like they're 14 letters long.
• 37:49
  Yeah, they do. Oh, I think oh wow, is a test.
• 37:56
  No, no. OK, let me nail that.
• 37:59
  The the biggest difference between English American
• 38:04
  language, right? There is a symbol might have
• 38:08
  there are two symbols, right. But when you write description
• 38:11
  for how you pronounce that, you have to come up with three
• 38:13
  symbols, right? OK, in in that type of group of
• 38:16
  languages like in Bulgaria or Romania as well, right?
• 38:19
  And all those languages is Slavic.
• 38:22
  There is no such like to be honest, there is no such
• 38:24
  language as Russian. They all function of it's a mix
• 38:29
  of and they always evolve, right?
• 38:32
  They answer your question. They are not.
• 38:35
  They don't have issue to write all small sounds, so you just
• 38:39
  can read that exactly what I see.
• 38:41
  You don't have to generate big sounds from, you know, small
• 38:46
  symbols. Kind of.
• 38:47
  It doesn't make sense. OK.
• 38:49
  So whatever you see, you have to read that in English, you have
• 38:53
  to memorize certain combinations of symbols and you pronounce
• 38:58
  them quite different whether you see actually in the paper.
• 39:01
  OK, so, so if dog in in America is dog in Russia could be what's
• 39:04
  your call and it could be 14 symbols long.
• 39:08
  Yeah, right. No, actually, right, right.
• 39:10
  No, that animal, the one who have have.
• 39:13
  Yeah. In English there are three
• 39:16
  letters and it's dog in Russian. Sabaka is 11 more symbol bigger.
• 39:23
  OK, but no need for that. We can call it Sabah.
• 39:26
  Whatever. Sabah.
• 39:27
  Yeah. So now, yeah.
• 39:28
  Now we we simplify like become more English.
• 39:32
  I know, I know Russian Sabah. So now that we now that we've
• 39:36
  picked your brain about how you grew up and all that kind of
• 39:38
  stuff because it's fascinating, Mike.
• 39:40
  Now let's turn our attention to what you do now and and what you
• 39:43
  want to share while being on the Chris and Mike Show.
• 39:49
  There's no specific message to share beyond us.
• 39:52
  It just going through the life and be have quite different
• 39:58
  experiences. Eventually you, I ask myself.
• 40:02
  I should talk to myself directly, I guess.
• 40:05
  At what point I should actually combine this knowledge and at
• 40:10
  least in my head and feel it, enjoy it and so feel the whole
• 40:13
  life, which I already went through right.
• 40:15
  So being in the camera, being in the podcast, thank you guys.
• 40:19
  You know, for to be here. It was pretty much the main
• 40:24
  driver. There is no direct message or I
• 40:27
  have a message XYZ. No, I actually, I decided, OK,
• 40:30
  it's time to. I'm 25.
• 40:32
  I already had the laugh. And maybe it makes sense to help
• 40:36
  yourself become, you know, more public versus less public, I
• 40:39
  guess. Sure.
• 40:40
  So with that said, Yuri, let me ask you this question.
• 40:45
  Obviously, you probably looked over your shoulder for quite
• 40:48
  some time when you first came here.
• 40:50
  Do you still do that? What do you mean by that?
• 40:53
  By the way? I discourage.
• 40:54
  Were you nervous about being here on your?
• 40:59
  Well, just because the, I think Mike what, what he's getting out
• 41:01
  of the atmosphere in America, you know, the Cold War and
• 41:06
  stuff, I don't think that was still relevant.
• 41:08
  Relevant, right. But but the fear, the fear like
• 41:11
  I'm from another country, in any given time, somebody could just
• 41:14
  tap on my shoulder and say, you know.
• 41:16
  Oh, the, the, and we're talking about, it's not about
• 41:18
  podcasting. It's about, you know, back to
• 41:21
  the first part of the outcome. Yeah, yeah.
• 41:24
  No. Just what you just said.
• 41:26
  Were you ever did you just kind of go into a headstrong and say,
• 41:30
  this is what I'm going to do and I'm going to move forward in
• 41:33
  this direction? Or you know what, you at some
• 41:38
  point you had to make a decision that you're going to change your
• 41:41
  life. What?
• 41:42
  What triggered that? The the trigger back to it's a.
• 41:49
  It's a next great question, which might be quite.
• 41:51
  A great question. Right, right, right, right.
• 41:54
  It might be there are multiple triggers.
• 41:58
  It was not just one, right, Obviously the fact the fact,
• 42:04
  right, I didn't believe that go to that specific Mars.
• 42:09
  It was a good, you know, time to spend.
• 42:13
  I didn't believe in that vision they had when I was 10, whatever
• 42:17
  11 would say, right. Then next time, next chapter,
• 42:21
  like when you from 10 to 14, I guess when systems start falling
• 42:25
  apart, I had clear picture that there is no such system as the
• 42:28
  system exists. You pretty much define your own
• 42:31
  system when you go. And obviously there are some
• 42:37
  external messages from grandparent, let's say right and
• 42:40
  from somebody else who might whisper to ear its norm that's.
• 42:45
  Still super intuitive at 14 years old.
• 42:48
  I'm going to give you that again.
• 42:50
  Yeah, but again, when you're in a journey to find signals and
• 42:53
  symbols, you you can find them even you, I don't know, five, I
• 42:57
  guess, right. I have, I have a sound history
• 42:59
  as old right now, right. And I can see.
• 43:01
  His I was looking at girls at 14 Yuri.
• 43:03
  That's was my only. No, no, no, I I did that as
• 43:05
  well, but just for record, I, I. No, I'm not saying you.
• 43:09
  I'm not saying you didn't. You're, you're a man like
• 43:11
  anybody else. I'm just saying that was my only
• 43:15
  concern at that point. I I wasn't thinking about.
• 43:17
  This my only concern as well, to be honest.
• 43:21
  No, we we, we, we, we, we all right, so we, we probably have
• 43:25
  to go numbers, right. Sorry.
• 43:30
  Back to the shoulder part. Let's go back to the shoulder.
• 43:33
  It sounds like we missed that part.
• 43:35
  The shoulder part yeah, being in different ventures different I
• 43:42
  was an entrepreneur trying to make different things in the
• 43:45
  life trying to I was trying to generate cash flow.
• 43:51
  I didn't know that thing. I would say cash flow at that
• 43:53
  time, right. But obviously I was involved in
• 43:56
  so many different ventures and some ventures I was part of a
• 44:00
  joint somebody think somebody initiative, right and most of
• 44:04
  the time it was mine, right. I was a guy who designed idea.
• 44:08
  I was a guy who actually go after and I was the one who you
• 44:12
  know, to take all the responsibility for the outcome,
• 44:15
  good or bad. So being on different ventures,
• 44:19
  multi different country, it was the easiest project I took over
• 44:24
  in my life to be honest. Well, we're done.
• 44:27
  That's a great answer. Yeah, that is a great answer.
• 44:31
  So let's, so you, you, you sent me a, a, a full back history on
• 44:36
  you. And I kind of I, I skimmed
• 44:37
  through it because again, we like this being real raw and
• 44:39
  relevant. So I don't, we don't like really
• 44:41
  knowing who we're talking to too much because it's, it's the
• 44:45
  reactions in the conversation is more genuine from our point of
• 44:49
  view, because I, I had a radio show and so I did all that and
• 44:51
  that was, you know, as cool as, but it was never, never genuine.
• 44:55
  And, and what Mike and I like about this is we're genuine and
• 44:59
  the people we talked to, they're genuine conversations and like,
• 45:02
  like this entire story about where you, where you grew up.
• 45:05
  And that's fascinating to both of us.
• 45:07
  And you answered questions for us, probably for a lot of people
• 45:09
  that will listen to this episode that are watching now too,
• 45:11
  because you never really get to get in depth with someone who's
• 45:15
  lived behind the Iron Curtain. So that was cool.
• 45:18
  Totally appreciate you sharing that.
• 45:19
  And hopefully that, you know, the KGP doesn't come knocking on
• 45:21
  your door tomorrow. I don't know if they still
• 45:23
  exist, but if they do, tell them it's our fault and they can come
• 45:25
  find me. Right.
• 45:27
  And it's a record. I, I didn't share any secret so
• 45:30
  far. So by the way, I can share both.
• 45:33
  It's all for Sale, by the way. Any secret guys?
• 45:40
  Reach out if you want to get some secrets.
• 45:41
  Yeah, listen. We can talk about the business
• 45:43
  model behind the podcast. Yeah, Yeah.
• 45:44
  Let's get a business model together and we'll we'll connect
• 45:47
  you to and you know, we can make some money there.
• 45:48
  I'd love and you're anymore every.
• 45:50
  Minute that goes by, right? So you're married now?
• 45:54
  You have three kids, right? How long you been married?
• 45:58
  20 I guess it sounds like. Right.
• 46:00
  OK. Yeah, my wife and I'm together.
• 46:02
  I'm 32. So good job.
• 46:03
  And you, you said you had a 3 1/2 year old.
• 46:05
  What about the other two? How old are the other two?
• 46:08
  I have a quite diverse portfolio.
• 46:10
  The oldest asset I have 22, OK, the middle 112 and the youngest
• 46:17
  3. So it's kind of wow, 10 years
• 46:20
  gap. Yeah, that's OK, you know.
• 46:24
  And there's. There's I have a friend who had
• 46:26
  had what their kids were all gone up and grown and then all
• 46:30
  of a sudden they decided to have another kid.
• 46:32
  And so there's like 25 years apart, you know, it's crazy and.
• 46:35
  Just for record, same acts, same sperm, same exact kind of thing.
• 46:44
  That's. Funny, Vernon, so talk a little
• 46:50
  bit about your, your, your business side of what you do
• 46:52
  now, because I did, I did skim what you sent me and you talked
• 46:55
  about some ventures and real estate stuff and, and things
• 46:57
  like that. And, and, you know, give us a
• 46:59
  little insight to what you do now.
• 47:00
  Is there something that you want to, you want to share?
• 47:03
  I mean, are you, you know, like, what's your like?
• 47:06
  We OK, let me put it to you this way.
• 47:07
  Like we've had people on here that are health and Wellness,
• 47:10
  that are fitness coaches, peptide experts, writers,
• 47:15
  authors, producers for movies. We've had a professional boxer
• 47:20
  on who ironically enough, a week after he was on our show, he
• 47:23
  like literally just dropped this guy with one punch.
• 47:25
  And he was the most quiet, sincere, polite, gentle human I
• 47:31
  think we want to talk to. And he just laid this dude out,
• 47:34
  man. Like we just one punch and then.
• 47:37
  He jabbed him and then he just laid him out with the second hit
• 47:40
  to hit. It was beautiful.
• 47:43
  It's just, you know, so but that's the cool thing.
• 47:45
  Everybody has has something, whether it's it's are we going
• 47:49
  to be a coach or we're going to, you know, teach about investing
• 47:51
  and things like that. So that's kind of what I'm
• 47:54
  getting at with that, because obviously we connect a while
• 47:56
  back because we have such a a scheduled out show.
• 48:01
  But what is it? What's your passion in life,
• 48:03
  man? What fuels your fire?
• 48:04
  What What makes you up in the morning and get you excited?
• 48:07
  Yeah, what makes your ego now at 45 in America?
• 48:11
  Yeah. Right, it's good coffee, I
• 48:14
  guess. That helps.
• 48:16
  We love we. Should have a product placement
• 48:19
  right here like Dunkin' Donuts I guess or.
• 48:22
  Chris and I, I think he's still drinking it.
• 48:24
  We drank Don Francisco's butterscotch toffee.
• 48:27
  If you want to send it to me by the case, I'll talk about Don
• 48:31
  Francisco's from here to Kingdom Come.
• 48:34
  Yeah, yeah, Mike introduced me that.
• 48:36
  It's legit, dude. It's like you don't even have
• 48:38
  anything. It'll change your life.
• 48:40
  Yeah, you don't have to have anything in it.
• 48:41
  It's that good. It's just and, and they have a
• 48:43
  wide variety, Yuri, there's a wide variety of flavors from Don
• 48:46
  Francisco, you know. All right, I should try that and
• 48:50
  thank you for time to to let me process and come up with the
• 48:54
  right answer. I guess what makes you wake up?
• 48:58
  Well, everybody wakes up because they're alive.
• 49:01
  But once you wake up, what's your?
• 49:02
  Yeah, I know that party. I got it.
• 49:04
  I've been trying to make a joke, I guess.
• 49:06
  Still here? Right.
• 49:07
  No, it's good. It's good, man.
• 49:08
  Yeah, There's a child. He's three years old.
• 49:10
  He makes me wake up. No, actually, the biggest
• 49:13
  answer, the right answer would be I still, I have curiosity and
• 49:19
  a level of nine out of 10, I guess.
• 49:22
  And it comes to the price. Sometimes you go to too many
• 49:28
  directions, right? Sure.
• 49:29
  So yeah, that is. Main reason that's called ADHD.
• 49:33
  Yuri squirrel. Squirrel.
• 49:35
  Welcome to United States. We all have kind of diagnosed
• 49:40
  kind of thing. No, actually it's curiosity when
• 49:42
  you have interest in something, right?
• 49:44
  So nowadays, right, I, I found myself with a big, big, with big
• 49:49
  passion involved in, I called it opportunistic investment
• 49:54
  transactions. And, and what I found the whole
• 49:57
  my life is more opportunistic type of investment.
• 50:01
  I invest my, my time to execute certain vision which I can come
• 50:04
  up when I wake up one day, right?
• 50:07
  So pretty much the answer your question, what it wake UPS.
• 50:10
  Nowadays I have a vision that me and my team, we can build quite
• 50:17
  sizable portfolio of passive investment investments.
• 50:22
  So we can retire with a quite stable cash flow and enjoy this
• 50:28
  American dream, do nothing pretty much, and still have a
• 50:31
  nice lifestyle, right? That's my dream too, Yuri.
• 50:34
  Yeah, you see how I nailed it? You see how I made it right And.
• 50:39
  And I'm in tune with that dream too.
• 50:41
  So let's all find that dream together.
• 50:43
  Yes. How do we find?
• 50:44
  The dream is not it's challenge. The dream I can, you know, write
• 50:47
  it down. The dream I can give you a lot
• 50:49
  of details of what this dream is about, right?
• 50:51
  The whole thing. Is put it into.
• 50:52
  Emotion. Yeah, the whole exercise to find
• 50:55
  the path to the dream, right. And that is called execution
• 51:00
  center point. And at the same time, it's more
• 51:03
  not just execution part, just sometimes it's not execution as
• 51:06
  well. Sometimes you put to yourself in
• 51:08
  a in a treadmill and you go on direction, which doesn't bring
• 51:11
  you to the vision that you come up with, right.
• 51:13
  So sometimes it makes sense just doing nothing, right.
• 51:16
  So if the equation, what makes me up sometimes doing nothing,
• 51:20
  right? So I'm, I'm most of the time I
• 51:22
  take a break to do not most of the time.
• 51:24
  Sometimes I take a break, do nothing, just kind of reassess.
• 51:27
  Is it right path, not the right path.
• 51:29
  Is it right action plan to the vision?
• 51:31
  I can I just come up recently. So nowadays I'm in debt space,
• 51:36
  investment space, trying to find deals, trying to find
• 51:39
  opportunities, make sure that those opportunities, they, they
• 51:42
  bring the value for to me, to my investors very much.
• 51:48
  So do you run like an investment portfolio?
• 51:50
  Do you run like a hedge fund? Help us understand.
• 51:54
  It's coming up, it's coming up. You know, it's more friends and
• 51:57
  family structure because I do that.
• 52:01
  I do that. I'm investor had for the last,
• 52:05
  let's say four years, three years and a half before I was a
• 52:08
  guy who's a horse when I say horse and the guy who run the
• 52:11
  show. Yeah, I.
• 52:12
  Know I got that. Right.
• 52:14
  I was a guy who focused on start up.
• 52:17
  I had and I was trying to build something big, building an.
• 52:21
  Empire. Right, right.
• 52:23
  So whatever Elon Musk's dream is about right.
• 52:25
  And then last three years I shipped gears.
• 52:27
  I realized there are different approach to to the the goal.
• 52:31
  There are different strategies how you can accomplish your goal
• 52:34
  passive, all this type of income, right.
• 52:36
  So last three years I shipped completely from active guy.
• 52:40
  Obviously I am active to find a deal, but I I prefer that that
• 52:44
  deal has one more driver. OK.
• 52:48
  Who can drive? So you, so you, So you're the
• 52:50
  passenger. You're the passenger in the car.
• 52:52
  Right. Sometimes a passenger, sometimes
• 52:54
  you step on a on a gas station and you put a gas in a in a car.
• 52:58
  So there has to be somebody. Yeah.
• 53:00
  And somebody has to tell the the driver where, you know, the
• 53:03
  highway ends and it become, you know, Paver Rd.
• 53:06
  So you have to slow down the guy.
• 53:08
  Yeah. OK.
• 53:09
  That's do you have some great analogies?
• 53:11
  Man, yeah, he does. Yeah, right.
• 53:13
  I love it. I like the.
• 53:14
  You should like it. Just write a book about
• 53:15
  analogies. Analogies by Yuri.
• 53:18
  That's a. That's a good analogy, man.
• 53:20
  You're very good at making people understand.
• 53:23
  Yeah. Complex things, yeah.
• 53:25
  You're good at painting a picture.
• 53:26
  Your answer's painting a picture.
• 53:27
  So it's not just a generic answer.
• 53:29
  It's like you're framing it, which is perfect for for
• 53:31
  podcasting, for people to listen to it because then they can they
• 53:35
  can picture what your answer is because the way you frame the
• 53:37
  response. For your first podcast, you've
• 53:40
  done amazingly well and I've been captivated the whole time.
• 53:43
  First off, I've never met anybody that grew up in Russia,
• 53:46
  so you got me right there. That was a win.
• 53:49
  Thank you guys. I agree with Chris, this whole
• 53:52
  time we've been talking about some pretty seriously complex
• 53:55
  issues and you have a really good way of painting a picture
• 53:58
  to make my stupid brain understand it.
• 54:02
  Not just listen, there are such thing as stupid brain.
• 54:05
  Just being funny. I think it's it's a stupid
• 54:07
  approach to explain things. So I I was trying to make your
• 54:11
  your brain comfortable. You did a great job.
• 54:14
  Yeah, for sure. Man, you did absolutely.
• 54:16
  That's fantastic. So what's on the horizon for
• 54:19
  Yuri? What's what's, what's the,
• 54:21
  what's the five year where you're going to be in five
• 54:22
  years? What's the goal?
• 54:23
  What's the target? There's goal you're.
• 54:25
  Going to take over the world and and and we can join.
• 54:28
  No, no, no, I I'm not that dude. I have 0 Mars plans.
• 54:34
  I don't see myself in the Mars 0 plans for that.
• 54:37
  I don't. Want to go to Mars either man?
• 54:39
  No. I don't even have I have 0
• 54:41
  desire be in a part of any government or related journeys
• 54:47
  processes would say right. I agree with that.
• 54:49
  So the plan is very simple, stay humble as much as I can, kind of
• 54:56
  control emotional part is obviously we get older and we've
• 55:00
  found ourselves that the middle age crisis kind of behind the
• 55:05
  back. So control that part.
• 55:07
  So where we can accomplish wherever I can accomplish, it's
• 55:10
  migration, right, It would be good enough.
• 55:14
  So obviously tangible part of the equation, what I expect it
• 55:20
  be to have, I have a least, I have a vision board.
• 55:23
  I did it maybe 10 years, 10 years ago.
• 55:27
  Certain point I can share with that with the with the crowd.
• 55:29
  I guess I'm not ready right now, but obviously there are some
• 55:32
  tangible. We're going to, we're going to
• 55:34
  have you back on the show, man, because I mean, we're not done
• 55:37
  yet, but we're going to have you back on the show because you're
• 55:39
  an interesting conversationalist for sure.
• 55:41
  You're very intelligent because you're a mechanical engineer.
• 55:44
  So that alone you have a very analytical mind, which is
• 55:46
  fascinating. Which is good and bad, right?
• 55:50
  Well, no, but it's it's been. Great for this podcast.
• 55:52
  That's all we care about right now.
• 55:54
  We're damn glad to meet. You Oh, you guys selfish, right?
• 55:56
  No. You should think about my brain.
• 55:58
  I have to analyze everything what we discussed here.
• 56:01
  Just just nature. It's my muscle.
• 56:03
  I can't help you there. You're you, you got to live in
• 56:05
  that body. I get to live in this one.
• 56:07
  We're just, we're just happy that, you know, like Chris said
• 56:10
  for a podcast, it's great for the audience when you can paint
• 56:13
  a picture and make them understand right along with us.
• 56:16
  So. The the really cool thing is
• 56:20
  that your your, your responses to the questions, the fact that
• 56:24
  you pause and think about how to respond shows your level of
• 56:28
  intelligence because you're just not wanting to to quickly answer
• 56:31
  something just to fill the space.
• 56:33
  You're wanting to answer the question with a legitimate
• 56:36
  response to help us understand why we asked and and the answer.
• 56:41
  So don't ever feel like like your answers were wrong.
• 56:43
  They were they were spot on. It's public speakers, right?
• 56:46
  When you go to see a public speaker, they will have pauses
• 56:49
  when they're on the stage. And those pauses on stage are
• 56:51
  because in their brain, they're going from this chapter to that
• 56:53
  chapter. But what that pause does, it
• 56:56
  makes the person kind of lean anymore.
• 56:57
  What's he going to say? And then when you deliver your
• 57:00
  answer, because the way you do it so eloquently and the way you
• 57:03
  frame it, it's a great answer. Like it's just, it's a great
• 57:07
  answer. Like I want to ask you what you
• 57:08
  have for breakfast, but I'm afraid you'll you'll make my
• 57:11
  breakfast pale in comparison just how you would paint the
• 57:13
  picture. It's very simple.
• 57:16
  It's a yogurt and two knots. See, it still makes our
• 57:20
  breakfast sound like shit, just the way he said.
• 57:22
  It. All right, so yogurt.
• 57:25
  It's yogurt and it's and a white colored yogurt.
• 57:28
  I'm not going to raise this here.
• 57:30
  It's a white yogurt. That's awesome.
• 57:36
  That was hilarious. So.
• 57:38
  So did you ever watch the Rocky the Rocky trilogy's the Rocky
• 57:40
  movies with Sylvester Stallone? Fight the guy.
• 57:43
  Oh yeah, I did that. That wasn't that sport as well.
• 57:47
  Oh, right on. So so that's great because I
• 57:49
  love, I love boxing. So does Mike.
• 57:51
  So you're from so so you're from Russia's and Ukraine's in that
• 57:55
  area. The Klitschkos did you?
• 57:58
  Have you? Did you watch them in their
• 57:59
  careers? Not not enough.
• 58:02
  Because I'm not. I'm not a box guy.
• 58:04
  I'm kickboxing guy. OK.
• 58:05
  OK. So you're more you, more you go
• 58:07
  boxing just for physically fitness and just to do that so.
• 58:10
  You I gotta go kickboxing? Oh cool, right on.
• 58:14
  Straight up kickboxing or Muay Thai.
• 58:17
  Straight, yeah, the, the, the, the basic one.
• 58:19
  The basic one, right. The regular one when you when
• 58:22
  you use your legs to break, to break somebody else's legs.
• 58:28
  So when you watch the Rockies, did Dolph love Dolph Lundgren's
• 58:32
  character? You know, the Russian guy?
• 58:34
  Was that a good stereotypical example of, you know, the
• 58:37
  steroid arrowed Russian athlete that was just juiced up like
• 58:41
  crazy? That was a great look.
• 58:48
  You didn't answer the question with the look man.
• 58:52
  In real life, in the real life, this guy who looks quite
• 58:55
  different to be honest, he is more his shoulders more rounded,
• 58:59
  he's more less organized, I would say, right.
• 59:03
  But it was important for local crowd to to enjoy the fact that
• 59:11
  we can nailed that type of machine.
• 59:15
  So it it was a picture not for me, it was a picture for you
• 59:19
  guys. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense for
• 59:22
  sure. I must break you.
• 59:23
  Yeah. Yeah, it was a style machine.
• 59:25
  I never saw such guy. All my friends are good guys who
• 59:28
  actually perform nicely in the kickboxing, etcetera.
• 59:32
  They are quite different. Yeah.
• 59:36
  Yeah, do you know? Do you know who Bert Kreischer
• 59:39
  the comedian is? Yuri.
• 59:41
  Google that. OK.
• 59:43
  Yes, Google's your friend. He has a great story of going to
• 59:47
  Russia when he was in college, and he's told this story a
• 59:51
  million times and he elaborates on it each time he tells it.
• 59:56
  But I will say the one thing that he says about his time in
• 1:00:01
  Russia is it was the most intimidating experience going
• 1:00:06
  into it. With some of the nicest people
• 1:00:09
  he ever met, he said they were scary as shit, but they were
• 1:00:13
  cool to him because they wanted to party with him.
• 1:00:16
  Right. And in general, yes.
• 1:00:21
  And in the general, general yes, yes, yes.
• 1:00:24
  I didn't find any culture any place when I travel and I travel
• 1:00:29
  quite remote spots in in the universe, I would say, right?
• 1:00:33
  Let's say in Bangladesh, right? I found myself so sometimes
• 1:00:37
  shocked by certain local messages for them.
• 1:00:41
  It's norm for me. Outsider is quite wow.
• 1:00:44
  I'll give you 1 which quite remarkable, at least for myself,
• 1:00:50
  right? I was in Bangladesh and the guy
• 1:00:53
  who was my kind of buddy, he's local, right?
• 1:00:58
  So he put me in a, in a program, like not a program.
• 1:01:01
  We went for different local cool places, etcetera.
• 1:01:04
  Right. At a certain point he was
• 1:01:06
  explaining to me about certain religion, which I don't want to
• 1:01:09
  kind of promote right now, not because I don't like that, just
• 1:01:12
  because I feel responsible for what you're saying here, right?
• 1:01:16
  So what he said that we all different and at that point,
• 1:01:20
  imagine what we had, we had a food in a good restaurant and in
• 1:01:24
  the food we had on table, we use our hands to use to to eat the
• 1:01:28
  food. So it's a restaurant, it's you
• 1:01:30
  have you dress nicely because those most guys are professional
• 1:01:33
  in that in that meeting, right? And they use hands and what he
• 1:01:36
  said, listen, we might be all different in any degree, right?
• 1:01:40
  We may have different, different, different opinions,
• 1:01:43
  different, etcetera. But in reality, if we cut our
• 1:01:46
  hand right here in this spot, you and me will have exact same
• 1:01:50
  blog. Yep.
• 1:01:51
  Yeah, we do so. And so the bottom line, he
• 1:01:55
  introduced me the concept that actually he's absolutely right,
• 1:01:57
  etcetera. And then I do believe we're all
• 1:02:01
  the same. We do have some differences just
• 1:02:04
  based on a place where we grew up, based on messages we
• 1:02:07
  listened from our parents and based on books we consume.
• 1:02:11
  And it's why I'm trying to stay away from books.
• 1:02:14
  I don't have been influenced by somebody else.
• 1:02:18
  So it's kind of the summary for, you know, to make this whole
• 1:02:21
  thing. I agree with what you said that
• 1:02:24
  that speaks to me because I don't buy into governments
• 1:02:30
  borders. We're all on this planet right?
• 1:02:33
  A lot of people don't even consider the fact that we are
• 1:02:37
  literally spending at 1000 miles an hour hurtling through space
• 1:02:40
  into Infinity and it could all end in 1/10 of a second, right?
• 1:02:48
  Something terminal if if the Earth, well, if the Earth
• 1:02:51
  doesn't stay at 23 1/2°, if it goes to 18, we're all dead,
• 1:02:56
  right? Yeah, yeah, that.
• 1:02:57
  Would be. That's how fragile life is.
• 1:02:59
  So for us to define all these things by races, religions,
• 1:03:03
  countries, cultures, it's just so stupid.
• 1:03:06
  We're all human beings. We all came a theoretically and
• 1:03:10
  you know, if, whether you believe, if you believe in the,
• 1:03:12
  in the big boom, right, the evolution with you, Carl Sagan,
• 1:03:16
  we all spawn from monkeys. But if you believe the biblical
• 1:03:19
  side of it, we all spawn from Adam and Eve.
• 1:03:21
  So sure, we're all related if that's the case.
• 1:03:24
  And there's I've heard something and you may know if this is true
• 1:03:27
  or not, Mike, because you're, you listen to so many things.
• 1:03:29
  There's a point in time where the world population was just
• 1:03:32
  under 2000, correct? And we still survived that.
• 1:03:35
  So we're all related in some way, shape and form to those
• 1:03:37
  2000 people. We can trace.
• 1:03:40
  This is a true story. I just got it.
• 1:03:42
  OK, They just figured out that they can trace all modern man
• 1:03:48
  down to one woman. Everybody that's in our current
• 1:03:52
  state today. They call her Mitochondrial Eve.
• 1:03:56
  She was busy. I got a joke by the way.
• 1:04:02
  What's your joke exactly? I got a message 19199 other
• 1:04:08
  people. Trying to get my style kind of
• 1:04:10
  explain couple of things in a simple language, right, right.
• 1:04:14
  We're going to. Practice that.
• 1:04:15
  We're going to practice that, Yuri.
• 1:04:18
  Every conversation we have, we learn something.
• 1:04:20
  Today. We've learned so much.
• 1:04:21
  It's, that's why we do this. Yeah.
• 1:04:23
  It's it's it's been fascinating talking to you to.
• 1:04:26
  Be honest, it was my question, why did you guys do that?
• 1:04:28
  What you. Because I got to meet somebody
• 1:04:31
  who grew up 10 years after me, 17 years.
• 1:04:36
  Right, right, right. Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  So we're all roughly within the same era as far as, you know,
• 1:04:42
  the way we grew up before the Internet and after the Internet.
• 1:04:45
  And that doesn't even matter. I would have never met.
• 1:04:49
  I might have gone the rest of my life and never met somebody that
• 1:04:52
  actually was born in a different culture, came to our free
• 1:04:56
  culture and has lived on both sides of it.
• 1:04:58
  And I got to hear it from your mouth.
• 1:05:00
  I don't. I like to speculate a lot about
• 1:05:03
  how, you know, different people grew up and live, but I don't
• 1:05:07
  know till I hear it from them. So that's why I do.
• 1:05:09
  This my question, sorry, sorry. Would you consider to have a
• 1:05:15
  sample the taste of different culture like a sample, you know
• 1:05:19
  the Whole Foods and you got a sample of new food on the shell
• 1:05:24
  and you got you got a bite and you can always shoot it tastes
• 1:05:27
  so different and good. I I don't have extra bite.
• 1:05:31
  Would you consider to go somewhere and have a bite of
• 1:05:35
  different culture? Absolutely.
• 1:05:37
  I would love to, yeah. For sure.
• 1:05:39
  Absolutely. I've just never afforded myself
• 1:05:42
  the opportunity to do that. So yeah, I would love to so.
• 1:05:46
  We have to push. Yeah, I guess.
• 1:05:50
  It's going to happen, yeah. So if I ever meet the future
• 1:05:53
  misses, I'm probably going to make that happen.
• 1:05:55
  So there you go. So now you mentioned Yuri, that
• 1:05:57
  you travel all over the universe.
• 1:05:59
  OK, We don't want to talk about stuff off planet Earth because
• 1:06:01
  of, you know, you're, we got to keep that stuff on the down low.
• 1:06:05
  We don't want KGB knocking on your door.
• 1:06:07
  So you mentioned Bangladesh. What other, what other countries
• 1:06:11
  or, or I guess it's a country or wherever.
• 1:06:14
  What's what's something that that somebody would be shocked
• 1:06:18
  to know that you went and visited?
• 1:06:21
  Not much to me. For me, Bangladesh was the
• 1:06:25
  biggest wow factor was the quite the I know there are some
• 1:06:31
  different countries exist. I I didn't have I had no need, I
• 1:06:36
  would say to go, but definitely there are some places don't ask
• 1:06:40
  me names. I have to Google that there are
• 1:06:43
  small countries and I met someone's been in I think it was
• 1:06:47
  in what country? It was in Indonesia somewhere.
• 1:06:51
  So I met some. I already was impressed how we
• 1:06:54
  different from local guys, let's say in Indonesia, right?
• 1:06:57
  And then in a breakfast in local hotel, I came across small talk
• 1:07:03
  to someone from even more different place.
• 1:07:06
  So that sample, the one I mentioned, Mike, you want to go
• 1:07:10
  Whole Foods, right? I had this bite.
• 1:07:12
  So what I back to the question which we can circle that what
• 1:07:16
  makes me wake up every morning? I still didn't touch.
• 1:07:19
  I didn't still bite other pieces of the pie.
• 1:07:24
  So there are some cultures, Laos, I guess.
• 1:07:27
  Laos, it's a country which I kind of in my not exactly bucket
• 1:07:31
  news. I don't believe in bucket news.
• 1:07:32
  It has to be a life list. So I'm trying.
• 1:07:35
  To dude, I love that it's lifeless.
• 1:07:37
  See, I have to have a thing where I call it's it's your life
• 1:07:40
  resume. Like what have you done in your
• 1:07:41
  life? What kind of things have you
• 1:07:42
  accomplished? That's a lifeless dude.
• 1:07:44
  It's so much better than a bucket list.
• 1:07:46
  That's cool. Again, the Uri euphemism.
• 1:07:49
  I like it too. Yeah.
• 1:07:51
  I'm adopting that one. Let's write a book, guys.
• 1:07:54
  Write a book. Man, we have to come up with the
• 1:07:57
  title. What?
• 1:07:58
  Yuri euphemisms. Yuri euphemisms, right?
• 1:08:01
  Euphemism title, Yeah. It has to be, that's what.
• 1:08:04
  Oh, that's what Yuri said. Oh, really?
• 1:08:07
  There you go. That's it.
• 1:08:09
  That's catchy. That's what Yuri said.
• 1:08:12
  I think it sounds like that I come up with a name in the past
• 1:08:16
  to to send some messages to my daughter.
• 1:08:18
  Oh, it was an exercise. She asked me in a random spot
• 1:08:22
  and she can put a camera in my face and ask me any wisdom to to
• 1:08:26
  me. So I would love to listen her
• 1:08:30
  records wherever I deliver, produce I guess for the last
• 1:08:34
  maybe 10-15 years because she collect those records.
• 1:08:37
  Yeah. So it might be good content for
• 1:08:39
  whatever book nowadays. So.
• 1:08:43
  You just sparked another question that I have because you
• 1:08:45
  talked about records. What kind of music did you
• 1:08:48
  listen to? Growing growing up.
• 1:08:50
  Growing up, yeah. Growing up, I was not in the
• 1:08:55
  space of music guys and I actually went.
• 1:08:59
  I put myself in music school for over the year just for the sake
• 1:09:02
  to be comfortable to have this conversation, I guess, with you
• 1:09:05
  guys. OK.
• 1:09:07
  Let me ask you this real quick. Music was not my thing.
• 1:09:11
  OK, when you turned the radio on, what did you hear?
• 1:09:14
  Like if you're at. Did they?
• 1:09:16
  Did they have radio in Russia? No, we, we and we had cold and
• 1:09:21
  hot water. It was a joke.
• 1:09:28
  I know. All right.
• 1:09:29
  So if you go right now in Miley's, I I rather talk about
• 1:09:32
  today's kind of things. Right.
• 1:09:34
  OK. What are you listening to now?
• 1:09:36
  It's. Pretty much function of previous
• 1:09:38
  things. You'll find the biggest one I
• 1:09:40
  have, which called papaya. So papaya is a kids music and
• 1:09:46
  somebody very smart dude come up with the rhythm and the like
• 1:09:51
  this how to say that it's it's designed for kids.
• 1:09:54
  But I enjoy it so much because when you listen to five times
• 1:09:57
  and it's stuck you in your brain.
• 1:09:59
  There's one more person I have to promote in this podcast and
• 1:10:03
  don't share with anybody else. I was a big fan of Selena Gomez
• 1:10:07
  and I was a big fan of Selena Gomez for one specific song.
• 1:10:11
  And don't ask me which one I learned.
• 1:10:13
  So if you go on my music list, it would be some classical
• 1:10:17
  piece. Just I trying to push myself in
• 1:10:19
  a classical. I don't believe it's good.
• 1:10:21
  Stuff I I love classical. Music I love most I can Queen,
• 1:10:26
  queen and such things. Now we we had access to any
• 1:10:30
  music we can. But obviously that if you go
• 1:10:33
  back to that, that time under umbrella of communism system,
• 1:10:38
  right, Obviously it was so limited and we had local guys
• 1:10:44
  and local guys somehow the copy paste international guides.
• 1:10:49
  So somehow through the proxy, my parents, they were part of
• 1:10:54
  global culture. But again, it's from the proxy
• 1:10:57
  visit local guy, he had access to international content and he
• 1:11:01
  produced local content, but influenced by international
• 1:11:04
  content. So I was part of your culture on
• 1:11:08
  a 10% degree, I would say. Gotcha.
• 1:11:10
  OK, gotcha. Yeah, cool.
• 1:11:12
  Good answer. So does your do you?
• 1:11:14
  Is all your family still in Russia aside from you?
• 1:11:17
  Most of the family, yes. OK.
• 1:11:20
  And so do you, do you visit or you just phone calls FaceTime?
• 1:11:23
  For multiple reasons and we all can Google those reasons.
• 1:11:27
  I I'm not part of that life anymore.
• 1:11:30
  Gotcha. And mechanically, emotionally
• 1:11:33
  and etcetera. So it's kind of answer for that
• 1:11:35
  question, right? That's cool, that's fine.
• 1:11:37
  I'm I'm in the same boat with my my my family so no worries there
• 1:11:40
  man. It's just a random question.
• 1:11:43
  By the way, my family lives. My my my mother lives about
• 1:11:49
  probably within 15 minutes of me, but I haven't talked to her
• 1:11:51
  in over a decade. My father lives in Illinois and.
• 1:11:55
  I know, I know, I guarantee there's a story behind that.
• 1:11:58
  But it it makes sense, there is. There is.
• 1:12:00
  There's all kinds of stories behind that, but this is about
• 1:12:02
  you. Now it's therapy session for you
• 1:12:05
  guy. My family lives next door to me
• 1:12:08
  and two blocks away and I see him multiple times a week, so
• 1:12:12
  yeah. Mike is a good guy.
• 1:12:13
  And Kristen? Yeah, Mike is a really.
• 1:12:15
  Yeah. I had a good family.
• 1:12:16
  Kristen. Not so.
• 1:12:17
  Yeah. It is what it is.
• 1:12:18
  But but like you talked about, like you're the person you are
• 1:12:21
  because of how you were brought up and and your influence, what
• 1:12:24
  your parents did and what you read and what culture and what,
• 1:12:27
  what world you were in as a child and that that formed that
• 1:12:31
  formed who you are. And I don't, I don't regret how
• 1:12:33
  I was brought up because it it made me the person I am today.
• 1:12:35
  I'm the points, the fingers. One of the things that I always
• 1:12:39
  say is the people that I find the most interesting
• 1:12:43
  unfortunately have the most fucked up lives.
• 1:12:46
  True, it's unfortunate. It's.
• 1:12:49
  True. Let me think about it.
• 1:12:51
  You know the most. Interesting.
• 1:12:52
  People I've ever met have had the most oppressive childhoods
• 1:12:57
  that anybody could ever ask for. And you can either come out of
• 1:13:00
  it triumphant, like Chris did, and decide this is my life and
• 1:13:04
  I'm going to live it my way and I'm going to be happy and
• 1:13:06
  positive and I'm going to go forward and be effective.
• 1:13:09
  Or I'm going to blame the way I grew up on the way I am for the
• 1:13:13
  rest of my fucking life. Right.
• 1:13:16
  And that's just there's. Nowhere to and and it's also we
• 1:13:18
  have a choice right, we can't. So is it kind of transition to
• 1:13:26
  let's talk about why you're so interesting based on how his
• 1:13:30
  life was fucked up. The good news it was fucked up,
• 1:13:36
  but it was fucked up under control of my personal.
• 1:13:41
  I manage how much I need fucked up, sure, and so I was lucky I
• 1:13:48
  was not fucked up like in our language.
• 1:13:53
  You weren't fucked up beyond repair.
• 1:13:54
  Right, right. So it was not I had so Oh OK
• 1:13:57
  now. OK, Speaking of your kind of
• 1:13:59
  language, I had to design artificial fucked up lifestyle
• 1:14:03
  to become interesting person. That was me.
• 1:14:09
  I had to do the same thing, yeah.
• 1:14:11
  Thank you, Mike and I, I kind of feel that, to be honest.
• 1:14:14
  I don't know why it's Yeah, right.
• 1:14:17
  So I wasn't an adjourned. I was actually I was always
• 1:14:21
  looking for something which Mike me which can put me on the edge
• 1:14:25
  of stupidity kind of and come out from this act whatever
• 1:14:31
  exercise experience clean and nice and make a mental note that
• 1:14:36
  thing whatever I did right now, I will leverage that to become
• 1:14:40
  good guy, a good person, interesting person, wherever
• 1:14:43
  that's I have so many occasion very another case stories in the
• 1:14:48
  life which obviously was designed and executed by me by
• 1:14:53
  my choice. I have nobody to blame.
• 1:14:55
  I actually was. I might very calculate sometimes
• 1:14:57
  calculated choices to do whatever I did.
• 1:15:01
  Yeah, that's awesome. Maybe a good example.
• 1:15:06
  Anything else you want to talk about, Mike?
• 1:15:09
  Any other questions for conversations with with Yuri?
• 1:15:12
  We're going to have Yuri back on.
• 1:15:14
  We have to have. Yuri back.
• 1:15:15
  We have to have Yuri, but now you're getting into the the
• 1:15:17
  podcast zone. So go do a couple more and then
• 1:15:20
  we'll have you back on. And, and, you know, just because
• 1:15:24
  there's so much stuff we could talk about just for the sheer
• 1:15:26
  fact that you're a great conversationalist man, you're,
• 1:15:29
  you're fascinating human. Thank you.
• 1:15:32
  Thank you guys. You are you too.
• 1:15:33
  You too as well. Listen.
• 1:15:35
  And you have and you have a pool house.
• 1:15:36
  I don't have a pool house. Mike, do you have a pool house?
• 1:15:38
  I don't have a pool house. No.
• 1:15:40
  Now do you have a pool? Yuri If.
• 1:15:42
  I have a pool house. I should have pool I guess.
• 1:15:44
  Why you you would think that, you never know, man.
• 1:15:46
  I just, I just, I'm trying to kind of educate kind of
• 1:15:51
  Meanwhile, no, I do have a pool which right now closed for the
• 1:15:55
  last three years it's shut and for for multiple reasons
• 1:15:59
  because. The young, the little one, the
• 1:16:01
  little one right you. Want to keep it's it's it's
• 1:16:04
  reason 55. There are like 54, you know
• 1:16:07
  before that. 54 other reasons OK.
• 1:16:09
  Yeah, 54, I can give you the main 1.
• 1:16:12
  I don't know why I need that when when we travel summer and
• 1:16:15
  we need a full Yeah, when it's it's sort of, you know, kind of
• 1:16:17
  place where you should have a pool.
• 1:16:19
  I don't know why people build pools nowadays.
• 1:16:21
  Private. That's what I always say about
• 1:16:23
  Illinois too. It's stupid to have a swimming
• 1:16:25
  pool and all. You know, it's more than that.
• 1:16:27
  It's like if you claim you can afford such property and you
• 1:16:34
  kind of calculated place that thing in the property, how much
• 1:16:40
  you stupid man like like you're going to use it five times in
• 1:16:43
  your life cycle and whatever and.
• 1:16:47
  Yeah, where where Chris is going to use his like 200 days a year.
• 1:16:51
  When we had a pool, we don't have a pool now because our
• 1:16:53
  grandson was born in like safety purposes, but where we lived
• 1:16:57
  before with the pool, I was in it every single day of the year.
• 1:17:00
  But it's Arizona, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:03
  No, listen, in Arizona you have to have a pool just for safety.
• 1:17:08
  They have to jump in a pool to cool down right?
• 1:17:11
  And N you have a pool to me I, I, I.
• 1:17:17
  I'm trying to find an actual like logical reason why you
• 1:17:20
  should have a pool. Obviously it looks sexy and nice
• 1:17:22
  when it's a blue kind of thing on your, on a LAN, on your.
• 1:17:25
  All it is, all it is around these parts, is to show your
• 1:17:29
  neighbors that you're that much better than them.
• 1:17:31
  It's a. Status.
• 1:17:32
  Symbol I hope my neighbors they're not part of the path
• 1:17:34
  cast, but if they hear that listen guys, if you I have a
• 1:17:38
  pool, I have a pool not impress you.
• 1:17:42
  It's the last thing I want to do.
• 1:17:43
  Impress you guys to be a second. That that's what I've
• 1:17:47
  encountered is people who have pools, except for Yuri, who live
• 1:17:54
  north of what we consider the South southern United States.
• 1:17:59
  It's a status symbol. It's a status symbol.
• 1:18:01
  Right. And he?
• 1:18:02
  Uses his it's a it's a dance floor.
• 1:18:04
  He just covered it with with a deck, right?
• 1:18:07
  And you just have barbecues and shit on the pool deck.
• 1:18:11
  No, I have. In my case, I haven't like kind
• 1:18:14
  of the the green colored condom, you just put it down there.
• 1:18:17
  There you go right now. I call it that way.
• 1:18:20
  Oh, this has been this has been fascinating year.
• 1:18:22
  We definitely want to have you back on.
• 1:18:24
  You've been a great a great. So much fun.
• 1:18:25
  Conversation with Mike and I wrap this up all the time with
• 1:18:29
  with if you're having a bad day, don't let the bad days when
• 1:18:32
  somebody's going to miss you, Somebody Loves You.
• 1:18:34
  So make sure you wake up tomorrow and and, you know, have
• 1:18:37
  a better day because once you go to sleep, tomorrow is always a
• 1:18:40
  better day. So if you're struggling, if
• 1:18:42
  you're depressed, you're down, you know, reach out to somebody
• 1:18:45
  that you know, they want to talk to you, they want to hear you,
• 1:18:46
  they want to help you get off that ledge and and keep you
• 1:18:49
  around because you know, this is what life's about conversations
• 1:18:53
  and meeting people. And this has been a great hour
• 1:18:55
  and 15 minutes or so. You're just getting to know you.
• 1:18:58
  And truly, Mike and I are sincere to saying we want to
• 1:19:00
  have to come back on at some point in time just to revisit
• 1:19:03
  and, and chat about life and things like that.
• 1:19:05
  Absolutely. So, So keep that in mind.
• 1:19:08
  And if you have anything you want us to do as far as you
• 1:19:11
  know, like we sent you links to like our, our pages and things
• 1:19:14
  like that and drop reviews on the Facebook group.
• 1:19:16
  If you have anything else you want us to do, by all means, let
• 1:19:18
  us know. We'd be happy to do it for you.
• 1:19:21
  Yeah, just reach out. Yeah, yeah, the the nice lady
• 1:19:24
  behind my emails, Sidra, she will to execute what she
• 1:19:31
  believes makes sense because I kind of ask her to become my
• 1:19:34
  producer. I would say I produce people all
• 1:19:38
  my life and now I ask somebody else to do kind of push me to be
• 1:19:42
  here. So it's a big thanks for her to
• 1:19:44
  her. She made it happen, to be
• 1:19:46
  honest. So where where all the emails
• 1:19:49
  you have is from her. And I think you see the very
• 1:19:51
  good job. Nice guys, Chris, nice awesome
• 1:19:54
  guy Mike. He designed lifestyle on his own
• 1:19:57
  choice is good as well. So we're on the same page, Mike.
• 1:20:00
  Thank you. Thank you man.
• 1:20:02
  Yeah. You're the first person to
• 1:20:04
  notice that on the podcast. There you go.
• 1:20:09
  You're, you have a fantastic game, man.
• 1:20:10
  We again, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:20:12
  It's been a blast, man. We've learned so much from
• 1:20:14
  talking to you, man. Thanks for coming on man, nice
• 1:20:16
  to meet you. Nice to meet you guys.
• 1:20:18
  We're a great human. We'll see you on Mars, buddy.
• 1:20:21
  No, I'm not. No, no.
• 1:20:23
  Stop, stop, stop, stop. We're just, we're just checking
• 1:20:25
  to make sure we're all still staying here.
• 1:20:27
  Right, right. Stay here.
• 1:20:28
  Listen, it is a fake bullshit vision.
• 1:20:31
  There is no need to ghost. We, we, we, we're good here.
• 1:20:35
  Yeah. Cheers.
• 1:20:35
  Bye. See you.
• 1:20:37
  Man, cheers buddy. Love you Mike.
• 1:20:39
  See. You love you too.
• 1:20:41
  That was awesome. Behind your eyes, yourself and
• 1:21:11
  need your nerves. Take a moment, look until you
• 1:21:17
  see it. Bite the bail and tear.
• 1:21:23
  Bite the bail. Put your bail.
• 1:21:25
  Hold your baby to your finger. The.
• 1:22:41
  Come down here, you haven't found solids in your sand.
• 1:22:53
  You keep fun fighting. Wait for the dead.
• 1:22:59
  When you close. Your eyes and you ain't no
• 1:23:04
  creature when you're playing smile and you just you press on
• 1:23:09
  the almighty dance. You got a team ruin your life to
• 1:23:16
  keep on going every day. Take the trail behind your eyes.
• 1:23:23
  Feel the soul revolution now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:23:32
  yeah. Take your moment.
• 1:23:38
  Listen to your fear. What's your better with you?
• 1:23:43
  More clear. You gotta, You gotta.
• 1:24:12
  You gotta. You gotta.
• 1:24:14
  You gotta. The.