Defiant Hope: Frontline Lessons on High-Stakes Execution and Scaling Under Fire with Yuriy Boyechko

0:01John Lee Dumas:Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down Defiant Hope, frontline lessons on high-stakes execution and scaling under fire. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Yuriy Boyechko and EO Fire Studios. Yuriy is the founder of Hope for Ukraine and author of Defiant Hope, leading a network that served over 100 million meals under fire in dangerous war zones. Today, we'll talk about adapting on the front lines, the solar resilience program, clarity creates momentum, and oh, so much more.

0:37John Lee Dumas:A big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Yuri and our sponsors. Fire Nation, is your business stuck? Join Eric Trump and Clay Clark at America's highest rated business conference, November 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Learn the proven systems used to create thousands of success stories today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments, and course hosting all on one platform, plus award-winning 24-7 support.

1:14John Lee Dumas:Get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 15-minute private call with me and much more at highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Yuri, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? Good to be here, John. So I believe that planning is liability and momentum is everything. in the work that we do, I've seen firsthand that courage is contagious, right? And I was just thinking about, have you ever driven past the building that's been on fire, right? 90 % of people will sit on the sidewalk and wait for a fire truck, right?

2:10Actually, 99%. But there's 1 % of people who will actually grab a bucket of water and start putting out the fire before even the fire truck drives in and put the fire in the house. And that's what I've seen in our daily work on the humanitarian fields, that once you jump into the fire and try to put it out with a bucket, there's other people who will join you. And you sometimes can put out the fire even before the fire truck will arrive. so my motto is you know you gotta catch the momentum you know whatever you do you don't wait for a perfect perfect environment you don't you don't wait for perfect moment once you see the fire gotta drive to it not away from it because that's the only way to succeed that's the only way to save somebody's lives and that's the only way to to really to really you know live a happy life not to live a life on edge because i work with people with volunteers that look in the eyes of death every day right and they still don't give up they wake up every morning and then like i'm thinking about the woman that works with us her name is natalia you know she lost her home to occupation.

3:30She lost her father. She lost her husband. She has a son, 11-year-old. They live close to the front line. And every morning, she takes this drone detector with her, takes her son out of the house, and they go help others, elderly people in her community that cannot help themselves. So that's about a little bit that I wanted to bring in here.

3:55John Lee Dumas:Yeah. And I want to just kind of recap one thing that you said that's so powerful, is that courage is contagious. I mean, just think about that next time, Fire Nation. You're thinking about doing something contagious or something courageous, I should say. It's going to be contagious, so you're going to inspire others. It's not going to be in a silo. Other people will take action. You know, I spent 13 months in the front line myself in Iraq as a tank command, as a tank platoon leader in charge of four tanks, 16 men. You know, we were being shot at, having more rounds dropped on our heads, every other day for 13 months.

4:29John Lee Dumas:And it was terrifying, but I'll tell you, it was the people who set the example who were courageous. That became contagious for my entire platoon, and then company, and then battalion, and then eventually just everybody that was involved with that. And it honestly saved a lot of lives as a result. So we're talking today about Defiant Hope, frontline lessons on high stakes execution and scaling. What? Under fire. And I want to talk about adapting on the front lines. I mean, you were just talking about the front lines with Natalia. I was talking about the front lines that I experienced in Iraq. So you personally rejected the typical slow, top-down juradic systems that, let's be honest, let's be frank, they just don't get stuff done.

5:12John Lee Dumas:And you built a fast-moving operation that adapted in real time to what? The survival needs of families who are actually on the ground. So share how that approach evolved under pressure when we're talking about war right uh you don't really have three months you don't have even 48 hours for corporate board to approve things for you right uh so when full-scale war broke out in ukraine in february 2022 like all the people i worked with with right now i'm working with right now i didn't know them right but when we saw the suffering of people our first thought was how can we help so actually me and my brother you know we had some contacts in poland at the time so we had some money that people donated so we decided you know why don't we just go there and buy a truck full of uh uh you know food so we pull up to a place like costco in poland and then with a semi and we're telling them you know why don't you guys fill this up with milk with groceries and stuff like that and we brought that truck with food across the board in the matter of two weeks right and then we had all these volunteers i remember we pulled up with the truck and see all these internal people that were escaping the front lines at that time and they all formed the chain and say you know we're gonna help you to unload this truck right so we didn't have no forklifts nothing but they've seen you know courage that we jacked it right and they wanted to be a part of it and from there we got all these folks they said you know because our team is built out of community leaders right we don't uh hire outsiders we bring people who are part of the community who really want to make a difference where they live and then And lo and behold, we start folks coming in who had vans, like cargo vans, who had small cars that say, you know what, we will bring this food that you just brought into our communities, people where the people are suffering.

7:20So that's how it all started. And it's basically, it's been, you know, when you work in that high-stake, in life and death situations, and that's not only talking about where we are, but in any field you are in, you know, you have to be locked in and loaded 24-7 every day. So I've been on the calls. I've been locked in ever since for what is four and a half years. You know, I don't take time off. So because we need to get things done. And that's type of commitment that we show to our team. So right now we have 1 ,500 volunteers. I just want you to understand one thing. That's volunteers. So that's not folks who get paid.

8:08But that's folks who pick up supplies that we provide them and they bring to the communities. And we basically, as we were scaling up, we built the systems in place. So we put together an app that's helping us to track all the deliveries, track all the donations, so we know exactly where help is needed, where events are traveling so as we you know as we progressed we build the system so now we are able to manage but it's all started with that bucket of water running into the burning building and now that kind of fire truck has arrived after four years and we actually have a system in place that we really can help a lot of people but it all starts with courage again courage is everything whether it's in humanitarian work, in business, you should not sit and wait until somebody will come and write you a big fat check, you know, or you have a perfect plan, you know.

9:08If you have an idea, if you have passion for something, you just have to jump right in there and see what happens, you know. And if you, you know, if you're persistent, if you, you know, if you stay at it, you will succeed no matter what you do.

9:24John Lee Dumas:And Yuri, that's why I want to talk about the specific solar resilience program, because there was actually a moment that you realized that families near the front lines that you were sending supplies to and that were there, they had no safe way to cook. And let's be honest, food is life. Water is life. So share house solar powered generators and electric cooktops actually became a solution that restored both dignity, which I think is an important key here, and survival. So, you know, we were delivering these food kits. So right now we delivered 2 ,000 food kits a week, right, to families. So a food kit can feed a family of four up to 10 days.

10:01So that's basic groceries. So we used to deliver to the areas where the folks had no electricity, no gas, and they would cook on open fire. And when you work in an area that's completely covered by drones, right, and the enemy can see everything, the smoke, the movement, kilometers away right so um instead of having a meal that you cook on open fire you can get a drone in your window if you project a hit right so that's where that idea came about that we saw the need that we would bring these food kits and folks did not have anything to cook on and then we found a company that would that makes you know actually a u.s based company that makes great um solar power generators and we would also give folks the electric cooktop so even if they have no grid they can set up the solar power generator with a solar panel and hook up the cooktop and prepare meals so we launched that project that's one of the newest projects we launched it in january of 2025 and it's been such a huge success so many people in our community so many donors so many foundations have liked this idea that you know we are bringing um you know consistent and long-term solution to an energy problem so so far we've delivered these units to over 2 000 families and the good part about them that folks can also set them up inside of the apartment buildings right so a lot of folks live in apartment buildings so you cannot do a regular generator, but these units you can actually put in your home so you can cook food.

11:55You can also, if kids do remote studying, they can plug in the laptops to it. And because Ukraine goes through a lot of power outages because of the attacks of the enemy on the energy grid.

12:08John Lee Dumas:And this is so powerful, Yuri, and I love this Fire Nation. I want you to realize that people that are donating, like it's very powerful and meaningful to donate food to people. I mean, obviously, they're donating money, turning into food, people are eating food. But people love donating to solutions, to ongoing improvements. When they say, hey, my dollars are actually going to go to a solar generator that's not just going to be consumed in like one big gulp and gone. But it's going to be an ongoing solution for that family, for the families in the community for months and years to come. Now, that is powerful.

12:46John Lee Dumas:That's something people can really get behind and get excited about. And we're going to talk about a lot of things around this, proof of concept, blackout zones, when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, is your business stuck? Join Eric Trump at America's Highest Rated Business Conference, November 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Discover the success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories. See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you, who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire.

13:16John Lee Dumas:Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month, and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Yes, it's month to month, and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13-point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly. See thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshops featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire.

13:52John Lee Dumas:Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at Clay Clark's next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Fire Nation, if you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. That is why High Level is Entrepreneur on Fire's featured partner. High Level gives you a website builder and hosting, funnels and landing pages, email marketing, appointment scheduling, payment processing, course and membership hosting, and so much more. Everything you need to succeed all under one roof.

14:26John Lee Dumas:No duct tape. No juggling five platforms. Just one clean system for your business. And their award-winning 24-7 support has your back when you need it most. When you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you also get my exclusive bonus stack. a 30-day free trial, a private 15-minute call with me, JLD, access to my weekly live office hours, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something Execution Roadmap, and more. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Yuri, we're back. And one thing kind of doing a deep dive around what you have going on is is your proof of concept content.

15:06John Lee Dumas:I mean, you document the real world impact of the things that you do, like the Solar Resilience Program. And one thing that I love is that it's turned just these passive viewers who are like, oh, that sounds like an interesting title to watch this video or to read this post and to deeply engaged supporters and deeply engaged advocates. And that's so powerful. So talk about your success with that. You know, my background, I come from a filming and TV industry right before I got into this nonprofit space. So I'm a big on communication, right? And you know, what really helped us to grow this is we do updates on our social media every hour.

15:52I just want you to understand that every hour, seven days a week, nonstop holidays, Christmas, whatever you celebrate you get update from hope for ukraine on your feet so that consistency and that relentlessness that we practice and discipline because the way it works is we have that app that basically all of our partners and all our volunteers constantly dumping information to me right and to our team where they work and who they help and then and then we take that and we push it to our community to our donors to our supporters to our regular followers so i just want to give you one metric that really really fascinating so our main platform is facebook and that's where we live on basically because it's it's it's good for humanitarian work because folks can click on a link take to our website and and learn more about what we do so we about we have about 250 thousand followers on Facebook but our monthly views of our content on Facebook just Facebook alone is 15 million views anywhere between that's on average anywhere between 13 to 15 million views on average engagement rate of our content on on Facebook is about to get about 1 million engagements in months right so what happens is that a lot of the folks so as we deliver food as we deliver the solar energy resilient kids and these people just regular passing buyers on on feed on social media feed as they scroll and they see how these things changing people's life then the next step they go to our website and they learn about our organization as they learn about what we do how we make impact because I always tell to my staff and to everyone the money will follow impact so if you show people impact or what you're doing what your product can do how can make their life easier right you will get money and same thing here we want to make sure that every dollar we stretch as much as we can right that in 90 percent of everything the folks donate go directly to the programs and then we constantly tell people and show people and they see it and they become believers.

18:26And that's that courage that becomes contagious. And we're building an army of supporters like that.

18:32John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, when you understand exactly the process that Yuri's going through to get to where he has all of these millions of views, you realize he's doing this through what? Radical clarity, radical transparency. He's showing what's happening in the real world, in the moment, the success that they're having. I'm sure the struggles and failures that they're having as well. And by the way, you're doing this, you're executing this kind of stuff in blackout zones. I mean, Yuri, can you walk us through the actual logistics of delivering the high-tech energy solutions that you're delivering on a consistent basis to these frontline regions where, I mean, this is where traditional infrastructure is completely collapsed.

19:13John Lee Dumas:I mean, you just don't have what we're used to in a first world country like the United States right now. this traditional infrastructure is taken for granted. It's collapsed. What do you do? How are you operating? So we usually have a van that comes to our warehouse in Western Ukraine. We usually have three folks, and that's part of the team. They load up the van with food kits. They load up the van with solar energy resilient kits, and they drive toward the front line. day toward east of Ukraine or south of Ukraine so they drive during the day, they stay overnight about 60 kilometers from the destination and they sleep for about 4 hours so for you to understand the environment right now the sky is dominated by drones by Russian drones so they see any moment and they watch specifically civilian vehicles and on the ground you have a bunch of mines so we have to watch out for two things the drones and the mines right?

20:28So when our team come about 60 kilometers from destination area they wake up early because the best way to get into this area is when it's still not light because the visibility for these drones is not as good during the night. And also we're trying to go there when there's rain or when there's fog. Because this way, and then our drivers usually, they go 110 to 130 kilometers an hour at high speed on destroyed by war roads. Every team have a drone detector, right? That basically spots any danger that might be coming their way. and the two folks that are sitting in the back, they're looking through the window and listening to the buzzing noise in the air.

21:16So we have about a two-hour to three-hour window to get in the area. Then we park the car under the tree. The residents that live in those areas, usually they stay in the basement most of the time. The folks, so we have somebody from a local community that's notified that we are coming. They come out. The residents, they have about 20 to 30 minutes to grab the aid and then we get out like that. So basically, it's all been these routes and these procedures we've learned by trial and error, but by the grace of God, I mean, none of our team members, none of our volunteers have been injured or killed in these missions.

21:57You know, we did lose some vans, but vans are replaceable, but people are irreplaceable.

22:03John Lee Dumas:I mean, Fire Nation, if you're questioning what you did yesterday, don't worry, I am too. I mean, you're seeing what's actually happening in the real world, making real impact, doing real change, being courageous, which of course is leading to this being contagious with your courage, powerful stuff here. And I wanna bring this home, Yuri, by talking about the defiant hope model because you believe the future of humanitarian work belongs to lean, fast-moving systems rather than this institutional bureaucracy that we were talking about earlier. So what does this model look like in practice? In practice, when you see the need, you try to solve it, right?

22:45Without waiting to build a big corporate structure or get a big grant. Everybody can do acts of kindness, no matter where they are. And as you're consistently doing this day in and day out, it will catch fire. And then new people will start joining you. And basically, like I said before, right now, especially this new generation, the folks who live on social media a lot, you know, they want to see results right away. They don't want to wait for two years. They don't want to hear cohesion casting meetings, right? What are you going to do in two years? They want to see it right there, right now.

23:29and that's why the fine hope is when you see a big problem and you know there's going to be challenging right but you still get up every day and you bust your your you bust out your doors of your house of your car and you go and do it day in day in and day out and that's why i believe the next generation of um and actually you know the non-profits that will survive are the ones who really will adapt to this lean and mean type of action-oriented model, right? Where they will constantly let the supporters, let the donors know where they work and what they're doing. You know, we have so many people.

24:15You got to understand one thing. No matter what type of business you do, if you do something great, people will want to join you. They would want to join your tribe. We have so many people reaching out to us, two to three people a day from all over the world. They say, hey, can I come and volunteer with you in Ukraine? Because it comes back to courage. When people see that courage projected day in and day out, it becomes contagious. And that's what defined hope is. Because what we're working with, we've been in this tough environment for already four years. right? So, so long you cannot live on some fuzzy, you know, hope and believing in something, you know, pie in the sky feeling.

24:56You have to just do it. And that's what Defying Hope is about.

25:02John Lee Dumas:Yuri, if Fire Nation is listening right now and they want to learn more about what you have going on, they want to share with their friends, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Yeah, so you can go to our website, hfu.org. We're releasing a book that's going to drop in next February, actually, on the fifth anniversary of war called Defying Hope. Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage and Fight for Ukraine. and this is the book that I've been working on for three plus years. That's a book of the stories of the amazing folks that we work with. So, you know, you can get that book.

25:41It's on a pre-sale already. You're going to learn some amazing lessons from these regular folks and every purchase of that book supports our mission and I believe that because of this beautiful community, Ukraine as a country will survive and we will come out better than we were before.

26:04John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with YB and JLD today, so keep up the heat. And for links to everything that we talked about, visit eofire.com and type Yuri in the search bar. That's Y-U-R-I-Y. The show notes page will pop right up. And again, that will be links to everything that was talked about. the book, website, et cetera. And Yuri, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Yuri for sponsoring today's episode.

26:42John Lee Dumas:And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we're now accepting applications for EO Fire. So to learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guests and I will catch you there. or on the flip side. Fire Nation, is your business stuck? Join Eric Trump and Clay Clark at America's highest rated business conference, November 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Learn the proven systems used to create thousands of success stories today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire.

27:17John Lee Dumas:If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments, and course hosting all on one platform plus award-winning 24-7 support, get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 15-minute private call with me and much more at highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com.