The Blueprint to Overcome and Thrive - Be, Do, Have...and GIVE

What if you were born on a pig farm in Serbia, you couldn't speak English, you were totally broke and you couldn't speak English, but you hoped to one day come to America and you did, with $120 in your pocket. What would happen then? Well, today on this podcast, you're going to actually hear the real life story of a dear friend of mine who had that experience. He came here to America, he has prospered, and he's got some things to share with you that can help your life prosper as well.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome, author and world renowned public speaker as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rohm. I'm so excited today to get to be on this particular podcast with my good friend, B.K. semendek. B.K. is his initials and the reason he uses those as initials is because most of us who speak English can't pronounce his Serbian name. BK welcome.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Rohm. It's a real honor to be here with you.

You're one of my favorite people in the world. I always look when I see your beard. I always think, I wonder what all could be in there that he's hiding from all of us that we don't know right now. When was the last, how long does it take to grow a beard that long.

Right now? I didn't shave for six years, so it's.

Yeah, six years. That's great. Well, I know that you would be when you get older, you're going to be a Santa Claus in one of the department stores somewhere. So I know they're going to love you. So tell us a little bit about how you were initially, even the thought crossing your mind, I mean, you had a lot of strikes against you and something must have triggered, something must have happened for you to say the two magic words. What is if? So what happened for you to have a what if moment?

Well, that was a long time ago now. You know, the. In 2000.

In 2000. So in 2000 was 26, 24 years ago I was in studying university in mechanical engineering in Belgrade, capital of Serbia. And friend of mine said, man, it'll be really cool if we go to the United States. And we saw the sign in the hall of our university which says work and travel in United States. And I thought to myself, man, I don't even speak English. And so for the next six months or So I did everything and anything just to learn the basics. And In May of 2001, I arrived for the first time just to work as a lifeguard in Pennsylvania, some resort in Poconos. And when I was on the plane, they asked me. They came with the meal, and they asked me would I like chicken or fish. And I didn't understand, so I said yes.

Funny enough, they gave me both because I was £300 and I still am, so maybe that wasn't. But, yeah, that's how it started. And I came back after that.

Two more times in 2002 and in 2004. And I said, that's it. I made my money. I got married, got a kid, we bought a house in Serbia. And then as having graduated and got my master's in mechanical engineering, I got my first job with the $300 a month as a mechanical engineer. I had enough to fill up a gas.

So that I can go to work, pay for the food. And after the 15 of the month, that was it. Like, we just. We were surviving. And at one point, the guy that I used to work as a lifeguard, I heard that he quit his job as a operations director in. In that pool company, and that he started painting and cleaning company in Maryland. So I found his contact, send him an email, and I said, if I come, would you have a job for me? And he replied, I have a truck with your name on it. And that was it. I went, I got a visa. We got over here with my family, my wife and my kid, my son Georgie, in 2006. And that was 18 years ago. And then the rest is history. I'm here now living the American dream.

So you do believe that hard work and opportunity come together. They sort of give someone a vision of having a better life. So you and your wife Mariana and your son Georgie came here. You kind of got situated, but you still didn't have a whole lot of money. You just had opportunity and a job that a friend was able to give you. So how did you learn how to do the. What was it, a carpet cleaning company?

It was a painting and cleaning company called Apartment Turnovers. They still exist. He's now my business partner. We have a cleaning and restoration business. When I came here to work for him, it was just about me wanting to work. I didn't care what it was. I know that this country still today, I believe, is greatest country in the world. If you want to work, you can make it here. There is a reason why all these people are coming here, even illegally. I didn't want to stay legally. I did everything in my power to stay here legally, and that cost us a lot. And I'll be probably far better off, money wise, if I stayed illegally. But I didn't want to play the system. I just did everything right. Even we had to leave at some point back to Serbia to reapply for visa because it was really, really hard to stay here fully, legally. In the meantime, we got two other kids, Sophia and Vuki, and they're great young boy and girl. And Georgie is 20 years old now. We just. We just love this country. One thing that I would say that brought me here is that vision of unlimited opportunity.

On the way, I learned that I have to do a couple of things in order to be successful in the United States. You can be successful, but to really, truly be free and successful, you gotta follow the blueprint. There is a. There is a secret formula. And I heard that from Zig, and we can talk about that more. And of course, you were a big part of my life and helped me. When I met you in 2017 is when I first met you. But we've really connected in 2019.

Yeah. So how in the world does someone from Serbia want to know, even hear about Zig? Ziglar? That would be a great topic. I'm sure you were already educated. You were an engineer by training, and then you got a master's degree. And yet you couldn't really make much of a big living in Serbia. You wanted to come to this country. You're bigger than life physically, but you're also bigger than life as far as your personality goes. So you must have been listening to Zig. You ran into me. How does all this happen to someone?

You see, when I came to United States, I asked the guy, what do I need to be able to buy a house? Because I didn't want to pay a rent. It's like rent to me was putting money in the trash. You're paying somebody else's mortgage. And he said, well, you don't have any credits, really. You need two years of credit history in order to be able to buy a house. So I started building my credit and actually, one year and 11 months, we bought a first house. I was short of one month of two years when we bought a first house. Well, my mortgage all of a sudden is three times more than what my rent was. So I was. In order to pay my mortgage, I fill up my house, and at some point we had 15 people living in my house. That was 2,400 square feet, friend of mine, he didn't have a place to stay. And it was already 14 of us in the house. I didn't have any more rooms available, but I had a shed. And this is a true story in that shed, I just built the office where I'm going to run my.

My business from. And he said, hey, you don't have anybody in that office anyway. Can I stay there for like eight months until I buy. Until I buy a house? I said, yeah, man, sure. So he stayed in the house. And he told me, he said, by the way, there is a in Baltimore. And I think, Dr. Rome, you never heard this story in Baltimore. There is a. The speakers coming and is this guy Robert Kiyosaki? I'm like, Robert Kawasaki? Who? I said, never heard of them. He said, rich dad, poor dad. You never heard of him? I said, no. So we went over there. A long story short, some of the speakers talked about and mentioned this guy Zig Ziglar. And the name stuck with me. I had no idea who it was. The guy said that Zig Ziglar changed his name. It was Omar Perui, one of the speakers. And I just started looking for a Zig stuff. And I found the first audio. At that time was a Learn out Loud where I bought my first audio. It was building the best you. And that literally changed my life. I listened that over 50 times. You know, some people have to hear it, some people have to. You have to repeat to them. And for. For the third one, there's no point of speaking. So I'm the third person. I need to go not one time, two time. I need 50 times to something to get stuck with me. And oh boy, this did stuck with me until today. And that's the principle that I live by. And Zig said, you have to be before you can do. And you got to do before you can have. And you got to have before you can give back. So I followed that process. And that is my motto today. I live by that. You got to be before you can do. You got to be the right person. You got to do the right things. When you do the right things, you're going to have right things to give back.

That's one thing that I live by.

That's so true. You know, I hope our audience today will maybe write those four words down. And they do have a certain order to them. First is be, then do, then have, then give. And I got the opportunity to work with Zig, as you know, back in the 80s, 40 years ago. I can hardly believe it. I Was working with Zig Ziglar before Zig Ziglar was cool. And so that goes way, way back. He was. He's always been just bigger than life. Love him. And he's now in heaven. And his sweet wife Jean, he called the redhead, she's there, too, with him. They're united again. But he was a great, great, great influence in my life. And we got to share the stage together, travel together, work together. And people tell me sometimes they say, you remind me of Zig. I can honestly say I never tried to imitate Zig, but just being around him hopefully rubbed off on me a little bit enough to at least have some of his great characteristics. So, BK let me ask you this now. This is very important for all of our listeners. So there's somebody out there today who's thinking, well, my life's not going very well, and I don't know what I want to do later. And I don't have any money, and I'm not sure I'm going to ever get married, and I don't have a job. And it rained cats and dogs, and I got one with rabies, and it rained soup, and all I had was a fork. And in other words, life for them is not very good. You started out on a pig farm, cleaning pig farms that y' all didn't even own, and now you're happily married with three kids. You've got real estate, you've got money, you've got a business. What would you say to that young person today who's about ready to give up thinking, my life really does stink? What would you say?

Well, the first thing I would say, what Zig said, you don't have to be great to start, but you got to start in order to be great. The second thing is get in with God and put God first. You see, we can go successfully through our life straight to hell if we don't have a savior. So those are two things that I learned from Zig and from you. You don't have to be great to start and put God first.

Wow, those are two great things. You know, I love the fact that you got started. Charlie Jones was another one of my heroes. And Charlie used to say, hardest part of a whole airplane trip is getting that thing off the ground. So you got started. And then, of course, our faith. We mentioned this. We don't wear our faith on our sleeve. We don't try to knock people down with it. I didn't try to knock you down with it. I just wanted you to know that the Things that happened in my life, I believe with all my heart have happened because of my attitude that I believe there's a God. I know for sure it's not me. And I've asked him many times, please work in my life, help me to become the person you want me to be. And I've seen you do that too. I've seen you have that same kind of attitude. So tell me about a little bit about your business. We'll start to wrap this up. What are you doing these days as far as your business and your future? How does that look like for us to follow you?

You see, this is a fast forward 18 years. Today I have a business and a business partner who was my boss at that time when I came in United States first. We have a great business. Our business is doing about 12 million in revenue. We have 51 employee and we working in Maryland, Virginia and DC area. Cleaning, restoration and renovation, rental properties. The God for me did the great things since I accepted God. He accepted me from the beginning. He created me and he was so patiently waiting for me to show me what my life can be when I accepted Him. We can talk about everything, goal settings and doing stuff. If you don't have God in your life, it's not going to be the greatest. If you want really something that is the best that it can be for you, then you better get in line with your creator and he'll show you the way.

Yeah, that's so good. I've got to ask you this for those of you who are listening today, maybe you don't see behind BK is what he called his vision board. I see words on there like teamwork, goal manager, task motivation, family, respect, positive effort. So many great words. If a person, what would a person have to do to have a vision board like that?

You know, funny that you say Dr. Rome, when Covid hit a couple years ago, I was ready to quit my job, quit my company and I sit down with you and we came up with something that. It's called God's vision for your life. Goal setting by personality. I would say people, if you don't know what to do and what to do and where to go from where you are right now. I will look into the goal setting by personality and there is a business piece, there is a personal piece of. And what, what is great about that is that integrated the personality insight part and the zig Ziglar part where you can do the self assessment that shows you where you are. Because you know, in Alice in Wonderland, Alice was lost And I love this part of the, of the movie. Alice was, was lost and she found the Cheshire cat. And the Chester cat said, what's going on? She said, I'm lost. I want to get out of here. And the Chester said, where do you want to go? And Alice said, anywhere, just out of here. And Cat says, well, then you can take any road, because if you don't know where you want to go, how are you going to get there? So you got to know where you want to go. And the goal setting by personality will help you find that if you don't know where you want to go.

It's a great tool that came together from you, from Zig, from Howard Patridge and myself. And I think it's the greatest tool to help people start in their life.

That's awesome. Yeah, it's true. If you don't know where you want to go, any road will take you there. And we did put together. I'm sure there'll be some information for our listeners. If you want to know more about our goal, we have a program called Goal Setting by Personality Style that's available. You can learn that program. We have training materials and booklets that you can actually get your life organized, both personally and professionally. That's not only in your business, but in your personal life by getting your wheels, as they're called, in alignment. Well, one last word, bk, and then we'll be finished for today. If you could just say, other than setting some goals for your life and having God involved in your life and being on the journey, what would you tell someone who said to you.

What'S.

The next thing I should do if I want to go from my life not having any meaning and purpose? Is there a way I can do that today? Is there something I can do today that would get me pointed in the right direction?

You know, when I didn't know what I wanted to do, I wrote a list of things that I knew that I didn't want to do and I stopped doing them.

So you would say it starts with things you want to stop doing.

The fastest way to success. I heard this from Tom Ziglar, Zig Ziglar's son. He says the fastest way to success is to replace bad habits with the good one.

That's so good. You know, my mentor, he passed away last year. He was 85 years old. He told me one time something very similar. He said, I did not know what I wanted to do in life, but I knew one thing for sure. My way, the way I was living my life was not working. He said that was the first step in the right direction. He said, I don't know what I want to do, but I do know what I do not want to do. I do not want to have my way anymore because my way doesn't work. That is such great advice. That's wisdom. That would have come directly from Solomon had he been on our call today. But he wasn't on the call. But my good friend BK Semendic was on the call. I love you, man. I look forward to us doing some things. We've got a training together coming up in Cancun, Mexico, and then our families interact from time to time. I know I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, and you're in Maryland. Baltimore, Maryland. You'll be coming to Atlanta with your daughter this week for a volleyball tournament. So we'll be able to see each other face to face and break bread together and continue to grow on this journey together. Thank you for being on the call with us today. God bless you. We love you and wish the best for you and your family forever.

Thank you, Dr. Rome, and thanks everybody for your time. Appreciate you and God bless you all.

Thank you. I'm Dr. Robert Rome. This has been a podcast brought to you by Becoming Wiser. All of life is about becoming wiser, one day at a time. When one decision at a time. Thank you so much. God bless you. Bye Bye.

For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becoming wiserpodcast.com.