Minter Dialogue with Oleksandr Buratynskyi

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Oleksandr Buratynskyi:

• Check out TTravel.me here (or scan the QR codes to the right)
• See Alex’s SuperPeer Agile Coach site here
• Find/follow Oleksandr Buratynskyi on LinkedIn
• Get Oleksandr’s book: 12 Lessons from 12 Years

Other mentions/sites:

• Check out Dillon and Mark’s Mission For Ukraine here

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes.
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Oleksandr Buratynskyi. I have, I’m very happy to have you on. You have a background that people who are looking at the video might be able to recognize. But it is a most green place. In your own words, who is Oleksandr and where are you?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: I’m actually in Kyiv. And who am I? I’m a founder, I’m a coach, I’m you know, some kind of an octopus who’s doing everything and everywhere for a bit. So, I started my career, I would think in 2012 and it’s like an IT career but before that I was working in multiple places. I had, you know, not very well situation in my family. I needed to work from my 16. So, you know, I was a merchandiser, I was a promoter, I was, I was, I was selling CDs some time ago when CD with music was still popular. I was in logistics as an operator, you know, just on the phone with, with other people, kind of like forwarding the cargo to the place where they should be and in it. It was big data, it was fintech, it was logistics. Also actually working on American companies, European companies. I’ve lived in Poland for three years, a couple of months in London working in city center. So, like for, for Sweet Banks and I was a travel blogger also a bit. That’s how my startup started actually because we were asked for this solution from our audience on YouTube. It’s a smaller audience, not the biggest podcast of course, like 27,000 people, but still we appreciate those people and it was a jumpstart that we had. So, currently I’m in Kyiv and I’m a volunteer and I’m an executive coach and I’m a founder of startup. I would say like yeah, it’s short, the executive version.

Minter Dial: So, on your LinkedIn profile you write down you are Jooble Agile coach. I have no idea what that is. And basically I want to say that people who are listening, many will be, let’s say active operational people, but a lot will be like me which are people who really know these words, read about them, but really they’re quite far away. As like you say, I think in, in your piece you write, you talk about people who are old fashioned in their style, old school. That’s me. So, what is a Jooble Agile Coach?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Jooble is a company, it’s the name of the company and it’s a job board that operates in 67. So, basically an aggregation website which aggregates traffic from people who are looking for jobs. Mostly it’s not white colors, like blue color. And aggregate these websites where this job is. And Agile Coach is more kind of vague, I would say thing. It’s something that no, not many people understand. I simply help business to solve complex problems through the communication, through the trainings, through the workshops, through the facilitation and mediation conflicts. So, it’s very strange meme, but you can imagine like a coach in football, right. And seeing his team playing. This person did already all the work before on the preparation. Right. And then only seeing team playing and shouting some bad words to them. Come on, you did, you did the exercise, but you didn’t, you know, put the ball in the basket. No, you don’t execute something like that. Yeah. So, you can imagine that this is a traditional coach, but in the environment of technological companies or product companies or like just, you know, make companies that make shoes, it doesn’t matter, you know, it’s. It’s a coach for this company. Yeah.

Minter Dial: Well, one of the things that’s interesting is the more I get into tech and I’m doing my own startup that’s a tech startup. What I hear are there are so many types of roles that actually need to be everywhere. So, I’ll take an example. Marketing, which is where I came from, used to be the marketing department. Well, it turns out that marketing should have their nose in corporate branding, employer branding, and how the brand is lived everywhere. Product. The chief product officer is the interface between business and tech. Agile Coach is someone who, you know, especially when you have, you know, Scrum masters. And yes, people are kind of involved across the business. It kind of feels like ultimate. And the CEO of course should be across the business. HR should be across the business. It feels like we’ve done so many segmentations and walls that so many new positions are really all about breaking those down.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Oh yeah, that’s actually interesting that you said that. For breaking it down, for breaking like for descaling the system a bit. You know, more people but with broad horizon of responsibilities with, you know, more intense focus on the soft skills, more T shape, I would say like comp shape even like now people are saying that it should be a comb shape, like this octopus, like everywhere. And with all your own like specific knowledge, you should be everywhere. And like old systems, old companies and enterprises, they if they stable or people if they, you know, live in a stable environment, they tend to create status quo. And more and more roles like Scrum Master, like Agile Coach are supportive in a way to crush this status quo. Like trying to rebuild it from scratch or saying, okay, you have process in the sake of a process. But no people are aligned in this. No one want this. You’re sitting in silos in departments and you don’t want to interact as a people. You just want to give some paper, approve it and give it back, you know, some such transaction. So, very good that you, you spotted that. You know, more and more people are working in big, I would say enterprises, but in the form of a small startup where people are still know each other and treat each other well and communicate more efficiently. So, yeah, I, I think that’s like the next step will be the progressive, like small communities all around. Like if you treat the business as a small government or something, or a small country actually. So, there will be communities that will. Next big thing will be to align and to collaborate between communities of practices, between communities of people that already shaped it already.

Minter Dial: Well, so great. I love that. I mean, and I being a literature background myself and having played a lot of sports and potentially becoming expert in certain areas that are like business and pills and stuff, I’ve always believed in having a myriad of visions and perspectives to help. So, I’ve always subscribed to that. So, there are lots of things I really want to get into, but I think all of it must be structured around your context. So, the topics that I want us to be able to talk about will translate into peaceful situations for most of the world. However, if it’s peaceful, it also is in extremely turbulent times, even for people outside of Ukraine. And I want to talk about things like resilience and building trust and unity. But let’s start with your story because at the end of the day, if you are a master in agility and you have Your book the 12 Lessons from 12 Years of Working as an Agile Coach. Yeah, I should say booklet to be more fair.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yeah, yeah, it’s for sure. Booklet.

Minter Dial: Yeah, exactly. And you have your own business, Tea Travel, which I’d like to talk about as well. But you started your business and then all of a sudden the war comes in and it changes things. Talk us through. And I tried to do it, breaking it up into pieces. But what you started before the war and how you dealt with the transition into the war.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Actually I can say about myself that I was very naive. We did at the time, like before the war started, I had a couple of processes going. We with G Travel, we had like very good spike of user interaction and we, me and my co founder, we like three days before the war we were invited to, to attend NEST Bootcamp. It’s a special acceleration program that was made by UNIT City, it’s Ukrainian cluster of it project. And like three days before that we were on like visiting the new office where we needed to be like for half in a year and going through acceleration program. We will. We were going through all facilities and checking out what’s happening. And in like in the same moment I had a project that was like preparing. It’s like it was American company and of course like many people then was terrified and more. I would say they were more caring about what will happen than Ukrainians because Ukrainians will say, ah, okay, we like, we have the war from 2014. Right. And it’s ongoing and this is too huge to be true. We had a lot of propaganda that this is, you know, annoying already. We don’t believe in propaganda. So, we. I was, I was very naive and unprepared in some, in some cases because I was living my dream through working and building my own startup.

Minter Dial: Yeah, I think this point is relatable for everybody because we live in our world and we sort of get comfortable in our world. We create our story that this is how it is. And then, you know, and I want to do this. And when, you know, let’s say George Bush was whispered in his ear there’s been an attack or World Trade center, the ability to compute massive change like that is. You can see how difficult it was for him and obviously for you. And yet you knew there was a set. There’s always these. You write about in your exclusive unconventional adaptation story amidst war crisis. You talk about how there had been rumors going around, circulating. And the question I have here is how do you keep your eye on the ball and not wonder whether is this any use or not wonder? I mean, for me example, I was running a hairdressing company selling shampoos. And then 9, 11 happens and it just felt like selling shampoos didn’t actually mean much.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Oh yeah, yeah.

Minter Dial: So, how did that tell us how that was processed before and then right into the news?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: From my perspective, yeah, we did all the necessary preparation in terms of like people for like what is resilience, right? Resilience is that you will have plan B, plan C, plan D. You, you have things covered. You will not get caught. You will not be, I would say in the middle of bombing, you will not. You will have food, so. Or you will have light, some energy in your like sockets or something. So, with, with my like with the startup, you were just, just doing what we can because we survived Covid and it was, it was funny that like, okay, next full scale war and next will be alien. So, it doesn’t matter. We just work each day as we can. You know, Ukrainians are joking a lot about aliens because it will be next level after we beat Russia. So, yeah, after all the history that was behind us. So, if I’m telling about myself and like a tea company I was in. So, we prepared people that some scenarios can be true, some other scenarios. So, we’re keeping our eye on the ball and yeah, let’s not be too naive and let’s not have only plan A. If you need to some funds, you know, to be on your card, let it be another card. And if in case Ukrainian system will, banking system will shut down, what do we do? Let’s provide another, another kind of option for our employees. Like if Kyiv will be under siege, like where, like what do we do? Like people, people should go to more safer places if they can or of course we appreciate if they will go and fight for, for Ukraine and you know, just defending the country. So, I would say that like from the day first when I, when I woke up at 5am and my girlfriend said that where I started I was just prepared that I’m staying in Kyiv for sure. I, I, I don’t leave the Kyiv at all. And I, I, I love this country and I want to be here. But I will, I will transfer my girl to her relatives and I will, I will seek for the way to be helpful not only you know, to my company, but to my country and to, to the place where I live. I want to defend the place where I live somehow. So, it was, it was a call on the phone and, and then we, we met under like the, the missiles were blowing all the day, all the day air alarms and some explosions and we were going through this explosion. Of course there was a lot of panic like around, around but I, I was aiming to actually to save my girlfriend to give to because I didn’t have a car at that moment and I wanted her to be with relatives who have a car and can go very fast straight out of Kyiv, you know, in a safer place. But my aim was to understand how can I be helpful. And I’ve seen the lines of volunteers to join the army and I, I’m, I don’t have a lot of health actually. You know, to, to be, to be like two or three years in the army. They have hernias. I have a lot of, you know, stuff like that doesn’t allow me to even, even run much. But I’m, I’m looking better than feeling it you know, 36 years old already feels a bit different.

Minter Dial: Yeah, well, by the way, wait a little bit. It gets worse.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yeah, yeah, it gets worse. I believe that. I believe I, I already know the lesson, so. And I came home and actually like, started to seek for volunteering opportunities. You know, how, how to be a volunteer. What is needed. What is needed in terms of food? What is needed in terms of like, power banks or like, what is needed. We need to do a hacker attack on Russian resources. Okay, I have three laptops. Let’s do that. So, everything that was possible to do, like in the beginning, I did. It’s kind of. It was not a waiting time. It was a time of new connections. We have our own, like, I have apartment, I don’t know. And it’s. It’s a series of buildings with apartments right where I live. But we, we did like a fence around it or like, maybe if you compare this to the TV series, it was like Walking Dead serious. Like we, we just made our own. I forgot the word. Like, in her fortress, I would say that that will, that will save us, that will defend us from, you know, anyone who, who come with, with. With a rifle or with this.

Minter Dial: Because at this point, you, You’ve gone through scenarios and one of them would be a full invasion of Kyiv.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, that was it. I actually thought that it will be a scenario and that we need to, you know, to take all the food we need to prepare our homes. So, that was one of the scenarios that I was thinking can be, maybe because like, we were monitoring the news and the main channel is telegram, as you know, like telegram still is the main channel of communication, though it’s, it was already banned from communication, our government, because of security issues or something. But because it’s.

Minter Dial: It’s owned by a Russian.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: It’s owned by Russian. Yeah, yeah. And we, we don’t know what’s happening, who’s here, who he’s owning, what, you know, so like, what, what he has to do or like, I don’t know. So. And really I would, I would tell more like in the bad words, if it’s. If, if we would talk in another language. Not in like the English, not my native language, I would say, ah, it’s not. Okay, so. Because it was intense. It was intense. But the main scenario was to defend Kyiv.

Minter Dial: So, the story that this reminds me of is how after 9, 11 in America, in New York, we spent oodles of management time talking about what we should do if there’s another attack. So, it was afterwards that we ended up thinking about having an alternative office and how should we deal with if an airplane comes into our building and you know, all these other things that ultimately had zero benefit. We had nothing of course, further to worry about per se, but gosh, do I remember that. And I had this feeling of oh, this is really important. That sort of sense of this is existential, as opposed to making more shampoos and making the line, the factory line run faster. And the notion I was going to lean into a little bit was this notion of volunteer and unity when you’re defending your country. I think a lot of people today struggle with this idea of nationhood. It’s sort of, let’s say the progressives of the world are saying we don’t want to have nations anymore. It’s all about the global world.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: I was the same before Voltskill invasion. I can say, yeah.

Minter Dial: And then we have ideas of what is hardship. And today in the west people think someone scratching my BMW is hardship or someone said a nasty word. Black, white is a nasty word. And that’s the end of the life. We have this idea of unity. I work for a company, this is my company. But the idea of being a volunteer, of volunteering yourself, that provides another type of engagement that companies so often don’t have because they have a paycheck. How do you look at that story of engagement through volunteer and then owning or being part of a company?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: So, it’s a very curious thing to even spectate to see the volunteering phenomena is rising. And I can say that not all of the Ukrainians are brave and smart and wanted to stay in Kyiv. And you see that from my perception, 5% of people stayed because I, I really remember that like first who flee, you know, was a Porsche Cayenne or like Porsches, like Ferraris and all. They were the first from Kyiv. They like the fastest fast track, you know, in the airport or something. So, they were going away and the cars that stayed, they were so, you know, it’s like from Mad Max, you know, like very old cars on the diesel, like with, with the dark smoke from back.

Minter Dial: We Lada.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yes. And we were using those cars, you know, to go through the Kyiv. And oh by the way, the light.

Minter Dial: Yeah, this is real life. This is proof that you are there.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the proof like first of was I was doing a lot of communication from the shelters, and it was like connection was worse, a lot worse. And you know, always the light was something like that. Some, something white and I was in Half Dark. But doesn’t matter. Like if.

Minter Dial: Well, it does matter. Actually, it does matter. But you’ve learned how to deal with it.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: But yeah, actually we learned how to deal with it and for us it doesn’t matter. It’s like the important thing. As you said. What is matters the most? Not shampoo, but something more existential. And we like myself and you know people that stayed, they were planning one step ahead. You know, they were, they were not thinking about the future. Like we, we all had the vision of the future that Ukraine should be independent, prosperous country without any, you know, enemy soldiers on our territory. We had it in. In mind in our hearts. But the plane was one step ahead. Okay, what next should we do? Kasha, we need to, you know, transfer some food to the people. We, we do that borscht for our soldiers. We do it. Next one. Power banks. We do it. Next one, you know, hacker attacks. We do it. And so step by step we did a lot of, you know, important things that are currently in our focus and it. The, the planning for the companies is in Ukraine is still. It’s kind of agile approach when you don’t plan more than a sprint and a half ahead because everything could change. So, most of the companies even cannot, you know, do this like if, if you say like in Europe, in Europe, like what do you do in December for example, we do strategic sessions for planning one year ahead or like five years something Ukrainian companies saying no one quarter max. And it will be a milestone. It will not be hard plan and like one sprint ahead of tasks that we should do. That’s it. Other, other things will be as agile as we can. And that is actually shows how resilient companies like company can afford to not to plan ahead and move quickly when something like new information come when new things happening or not. So, it’s interesting. Sorry for being, you know, jumping.

Minter Dial: No, no, no, I’m totally, I’m totally following you. So, what I heard was you have a shared vision of the future of Ukraine.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yes.

Minter Dial: And that seems to be like a meta purpose.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yeah.

Minter Dial: Yet you have to function because who knows what the heck is going to happen tomorrow. And so this and you know, maybe your milestone of, of having your, your 10,000 customer by the end of the month. Well, not going to happen because you know, Missile. Yeah, so that’s. That sounds like you have to operate short term and, and I’m wondering for companies because I mean generally speaking, I would characterize short term thinking as one of the illnesses of business. So, on the on the other hand, you have this vision, the longer-term vision of Ukraine, but underneath that, to what extent do you have a longer term vision for the company? Even though you’re having to operate day by day?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: It’s. I would say that it’s short term, it can be treated by illness. Like an illness. Right. If, if company doesn’t have this roadmap, doesn’t have milestones in mind and it’s like everyone should be aligned on, on actually on actual milestones. It can be shifted in, in a way that it will not happen in a day that you planned. It will, will happen, but it’s an event that should happen when we aligned, and we did everything to make it so. Like our. I forgot the word, but our precious Kirillo Budanov, he’s how this word is like, he’s like analogy of Mystics Agency, but in Ukraine. Can you help me mentor?

Minter Dial: I. I don’t know if I can. I. I don’t know.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Like a secret Secret Service agent.

Minter Dial: Oh, I see. Right, right. FBI, CIA? Yes, that kind of.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yeah, some. Something like that. I forgot the word unfortunately. But it’s like a secret Service and he’s, he’s thinking in a way that, okay, we don’t have a like timeline, like November, December, January or something. We don’t have a days. But we have events that need to be achieved in place, need to be achieved and need to be in place somehow to achieve another event. It should go even by event. And when I’m saying milestone, it’s a set of events that needs to be achieved before we can jump into next serious event and next planning, etc. So, I wouldn’t say that it’s like any less. It’s a different vision of what is happening with the company. It’s not, maybe it will not be a metric, maybe it will not be some, you know, value or some money goal, but it for sure will be some series of events and some transformation of companies that happened and that allow us to go to another level.

Minter Dial: So, this is definitely a foreign idea for me, the idea of milestones as events as opposed to some sort of KPI, some key performing index and all that. When you have so many changing pieces, keeping unity can be very difficult because your assessment of a perturbing thing may be, oh, this is nothing. And someone else may think, oh, this is the end of, you know, and I can’t do it anymore. And how do you. I mean, I think of this like also in marriage, when you were married with somebody, things happen and you change and evolve. But you basically know either, you know, you don’t know that you’re there for each other forever. Even though there’s happening now, keeping that unity through all these changing pieces. What, what do you think is the, the key to that for you?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: And if I remember like I didn’t say it, but I wanted to say it, but I didn’t say like we if remembering. If I’m thinking about the first days of full-scale invasion, I remember that we had a policy for many people to make their own choice. So, like we had people who wanted to just stay safe, and we had people who had this adrenaline rush and wanted to be volunteer be, you know, had this purpose in their mind and wanted to be helpful. So, we kind of separated a bit and that’s how we kept, kept unity, you know, unity of people who wanted to do something here and now and people who wanted to get to the safe place and safe zone and be safe first and then think how they can help to those who are on the front line. So, in first days, unity was like the main thing because not many people stayed actually. So, we sometimes we even. It’s a phenomenon but we did even could stay silent for four hours but doing things that matters together. And it’s a phenomenon that I think switches on as some primal instinct when there is a day like actual existential danger. Those people who. You see what’s happening right now in the world, we don’t have such unity because like in some places started to be safer, something is under control. So, existential threat isn’t so close to many people. It’s close to the front line, but it isn’t so close.

Minter Dial: Lviv is so much further away. They don’t feel it the same way as someone who’s living in.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: And if you will come to. Yeah, and if you will come to Lviv, for example, in September we have, in the end of September we have a huge IT conference with many people and it’s safe. And yeah, we had only one air alarm I guess when I was there in September, at the end of September.

Minter Dial: Just one.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Just one. Yeah, it’s just one, you know. Yeah. For us like three, four, five is a normal thing in Kyiv because we have like. Yeah, I don’t know. Did you know this information? The last months we had only one night without our attacks by these drones. Like only one night and the whole month was sleep.

Minter Dial: So, we’re recording this interview on 3rd December. It’ll be published a little bit afterwards, but so we’re Talking about the month of November 2024. I can’t imagine, I can’t imagine what it’s like sleeping with fire alarms going on. It’s bad enough when a neighbor is. Got a kid that’s running up and down the, you know, the floor and keeping you awake and you know, the stomping, but having. Keeping your sanity and your business going without sleep, which constantly being interrupted. How do you personally, Oleksandr, get through that?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: For me, it’s a mix of actually medication. Yeah. Because I have my own psychiatrist. I have, I have psychologist and currently we like I already understand we have a lot of channels also in telegram where people are saying, okay, this is Shahed and it’s on above some specific district or it’s missile that is on odors or something. So, we are always in connection of what is flying from where and to which point it will, it will, it will get. So, for me it’s. I’m sleeping better with medication for sure. But you know, it wasn’t always like that. I was, I was sleepless. I was going always into the shelters and in the first days now we just kind of get used to it, I don’t know. And understand the shade like 50 shades of gray, like shades of danger. And it’s like how far Shahed is flying, I can now distinguish by the sound of it. So, it’s, it’s adaptivity that and. And the agility of people that are currently in Ukraine that they understand those shades of danger and then they can sleep.

Minter Dial: Yeah. So, you build up this. You’ve now got years under your belt, and it must really, you know, such evolved from your very first days. And you. We talked a little bit about this existential quality that you are facing for Ukraine. I write a lot about this, and I feel like in the west in general there’s an existential battle going on as well. It’s more of an ideological existential battle and therefore gets a lot of people up in arms, excited, emotional, irrational perhaps. And therefore, the idea of fighting an existential threat and running a business actually describes a lot of people in the west. Even though it’s actually not a Russian invasion story. It’s a ideological invasion story and in, you know, in different forms that it takes, but that speaks to it. And the question for you is the idea of resilience. I see resilience as being very weak around me in the privilege of a peaceful pacific environment. How do you look at building resilience? And if you’re, if people are listening to this from. Let’s Say the, the, you know, a peaceful place in the rest of the world. What message do you have for them about building resilience?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: That’s interesting question. Because I cannot, you know, I cannot tell people just to be resilient and.

Minter Dial: No, of course not.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: I cannot tell people that. Okay, now you’re in a warm bath, you know, now you’re laying in a warm bath and everything.

Minter Dial: Everything’s great.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Everything’s so great you cannot even imagine. I cannot say to people, right, because they will tell. No, I have my own problems. I have this ideological things going on. So, I understand that it’s a hybrid war and ideological war is as much important as what is happening on the battlefield. It. It should come together. It’s a mix of wars. And right now in the war, like global war is about people’s minds and like to be resilient is. For me, I would say like to be mature, right? As I. I started from. From the sentence that I was naive. I wouldn’t. I. I couldn’t believe that full scale can happen. I was very naive because for me it was a status quo as well. Something like warm bath. Although it was after the COVID But you know, if we compare to the event that happening now, it wasn’t worth. For sure. So, I would say that it’s like resilience. It’s when you are mature enough to understand what is going on right now in the world, right? That couple of threats that people are aiming you as a target with their own idea, ideological position, with their own propaganda, with like information war, like war of information is going on. People are aiming you as a target. And just to be mature enough to understand that resilient is being a grown-up adult. I would say yeah, who’s understand that wars will not stop because people clash with their interest. People have different opinions. There always be some conflict. It. It can be verbal, which is pretty safe, but okay for someone. It cannot. It also will not be safe, and it will be existential. Depends on the situation. But if you want to survive, not only survive, but strive in modern world, you need to understand that it. This modern world kept all the specifics of historical events, right? We. We have this evolution of technology, but the people remain people. They remain to be people. And they. They still have their own interests, they still crash like with. With their interest. They still have wars, they still have miscommunication, they still don’t understand each other and don’t want to understand each other yet many, many, many cases. So, I would say that this resilience is equals maturity. And if you don’t want to be resilient so it will be bad for you in some way. Let’s see.

Minter Dial: I love that you write about in your booklet or actually maybe in your longer piece with regard to your adaptation.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: I think it will be in the longer piece.

Minter Dial: Yeah. And you talk about retroactive what it may and you talk about how in the military you have a after action review to review things. What that felt like for me is about adding perspective. There’s the mistakes that happen and learning how to deal with mistakes, that’s one thing. However, it’s also like, you know, wait a second, how bad is this? You know, am I suffering from food? Nope. Am I suffering from no roof on my head? Nope. Let’s put things into perspective. And I think that is also part of the maturity.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s for sure. I totally agree with you because like a lot of, as you said, if someone scratched your BMW or something on the west, it treats like existential threat. It’s been treated, but it actually isn’t the only existential threat. Yeah. I don’t want people to, to be, you know, harmed in any way. But you can, you can just try to visit Ukraine like while you have this opportunity and see what is actually existential threats. You, you cannot imagine even how many people cured from psychological disease by this full scale invasion because they, they understood what is actual danger, like existential danger. And they all that I was living by overthinking my problems all these years because this is danger. This is like all, everything I was thought was dangerous for me is not.

Minter Dial: Yeah, and I, I absolutely agree with that. And I’ve even written about how Maslow’s pyramid. We have our basic needs, then we get up and up to more abstract higher order of needs like fulfillment. And we’ve gone so overboard in the west that it’s really, and you use the word I, it’s, it’s all about me and, and what I can do to have full fulfillment. And you know, what, what is my identity and all that. When you go back down, there’s another thing which is important, which is also about community. And, and at that base level, you’re not trying to save all of Ukraine because you can’t. You have your fortress in your zone. And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to contain our protection as a community. Probably 130 people, you know, Dunbar’s number, whatever it is, 150 and so on. So, forth. I want to finish Oleksandr, just to talk about two more things. One is what your actual business is and, and then how can anybody help you come and give you some, give you a shout out or anything like that?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Oh, you know that that’s something that is different from what we, we were talking about. Like imagine people like Ukrainians that are in war but all they want is to have sincere interest in, in the products, in what we produce, in what we do, in like IT technologies that we provide. So, for me, I explain my situation. I’m a startup founder and I’m aiming to do like a global startup about travel. Yeah, T Travel, it’s called TTravel.me and you can check it out. And this startup is about you know, being open to the world, being a creator, being an artist. But in, in the field of travel and all that you need to do is to use it. That’s it. So, helping Ukraine can, can be not. Oh we, we need to send some money to buy weapons or yeah sure. No, it shouldn’t be like only about that. We have funds that are support like that supporting our army. That’s only one value stream I would say only one direction. So, we have a lot of people who buy medicine and it’s, it’s totally okay to only buy medicine and we really appreciate it but we have also a lot of startup founders, a lot of people who strive and produce new products and kind of trying to understand our own like pain, be more empathetic and be more emotional and help the world with, with something that you, you just can be, can buy for seven bucks or instead of your coffee, you know. So, like I would say that people can help by just using Ukrainian products seeking what is there. How can we help technological society in Ukraine and how can we help like, like just average people to live their like better lives?

Minter Dial: I would say love it. Well, a shout out to my nephew Dylan and Mark & Dillon the Mission for Ukraine in case that’s way some way well wants to go participate. You should check out their activities. It’s great. And as far as you’re concerned Oleksandr, I’m going to encourage everyone to go see TTravel Me which is a way to collect your memories while you travel. I’ve been in, I’ve done two travel businesses myself. I took a little look at it and enjoy the idea, appreciate your feedback, filling it out and hopefully people who have listened had a chance to add some perspective to their lives and seek to add a little bit more meaningfulness into what they’re doing, including unity and success. So, Oleksandr, many thanks. Tell us, where can anybody reach you? What’s the best ways to contact you?

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: The best way to contact is through LinkedIn. Yeah, it’s the fastest way, I would say. That’s good. Welcome all who wants to reach.

Minter Dial: Many thanks, Oleksandr. We’ll stay in touch. I’ll let you know when this all goes out. Thanks for coming on.

Oleksandr Buratynskyi: Thank you for having me.