My Story
miroslav gojak
Growing up in a lovely family in a small country on Europe’s border is the earliest memory of his happy childhood, as he remembers it. Ever since he was a kid, his mind was flooded with creative ideas. Besides imagination, Miroslav had a powerful drive to make his ideas alive, no matter how crazy they seemed to be.
The war in Croatia started when he was 13—interrupting a happy childhood. It was a hard time for everyone: uncertainty was everywhere, people were dying, the economy was collapsing, and a hormone pumped teenager became committed to becoming a professional soldier and weapon designer. Action-driven minds made him start training martial arts, finish diving courses, and learn AutoCAD since he wanted to design his own weapon. Luckily, the war ended when he turned 18 and didn’t become a professional soldier, except doing regular military service, which was obligatory. On the other hand, the AutoCAD technical design, combined with knowledge from technical high school and technical college he attended, helped him do calculations and drawings for construction companies as a freelancer. His diving passion led him to the instructor level, so he worked in commercial diving and underwater works for a few years. He financed himself with this multiple jobs through college. After the war, the depressed economy in Croatia was ruled by war profiteers.
After finishing college, he became a mechanical engineer specialized in turbine construction. He right away got a job in the Alstom turbine factory, moving between the design and maintenance department, gaining experience in both fields. Entrepreneurial spirit and love for diving made him open a PADI diving school parallel to his job in the turbine factory. Entrepreneurs always combine their passions with knowledge and hard work—no other way to success.
An exciting life story took him to an assessment in an HR company searching for executives. After passing an evaluation with high scores, a management position in an international oil company OMV with headquarters in Vienna opened. He accepted the job with incredible thrill and swiftly climbed up the corporate ladder, working his guts out. “For a few years, I had no free time at all. I gave up martial arts, gave up diving school, and all my freelance work. The most important thing that the oil company position gave me was two business and life coaches. Besides my parents, these two people played the most important role in my business life. I got two kids meanwhile, and exchanging 100% of my waking hours for company career was not an option anymore.”
So, he resigned from an Oil company management position and turned to his passions: engineering, diving, boats, and nature. He bought and improved a boat design drawing, made a business plan, financed the mold production with his savings and management bonuses. He made a pre-sale of 20 boats before the first one was produced. “It is the best small RIB in the world” Miroslav claims.
Miroslav believes that people are the ones turning the impossible into reality. He invests in people in the first place and looks at the project after: “I met Ivan Klarić at that time. He reminded me of me being ten years younger. He was an extremely motivated, honest, and a hardworking young entrepreneur. He had a vision and believed and lived every word he said. I believed in him 100%, although my IT knowledge was too weak to understand everything he was saying technically. I financed his project from an early stage, learning a lot of things from him meanwhile.”
Due to some unfortunate market circumstances, and mostly because of not insisting on a firm binding contract with the sub-suppliers, some of them misused his trust. He was not able to deliver the boats he pre-sold.
He paid all of his suppliers, strongly insisting on always paying his bills no matter what. In less than one year, from an ideal position, Miroslav ended up without money, without cash flow, with no job in sight. His investment in Ivan’s small IT startup company required more funds to move forward, and Miroslav was totally broke.
“At that moment, on the very bottom, without a penny in my pocket, with two small kids, mortgage for an apartment, no job, I graduated on my entrepreneurial college.”
Believing in Ivan Klarić proved that Miroslav’s investing in people approach was right. From a small IT startup through many storms and bad times, making its ends meet for a few years, a successful IT company emerged. The potentials of the company were recognized, which led to the acquisition by an international company, “Superbet” (part of one of the world’s biggest investment companies, “Blackstone Group”).
Finally, being able to focus on his passions and family, he meets Roger Simonson. “Roger is the man who made my childhood’s belief possible-I wanted to create machines almost indestructible. As a kid, I imagined robots, but my imagined robots didn’t have to go to service all the time like today’s machines!”
Roger is the owner of two Canadian companies, “One Eye Industries” and “Black Powder Solutions.” He invented a very disruptive (in a positive way) technology of magnetic filtration that dramatically increases the equipment’s lifetime to an unbelievable dimension. It solves many challenges we had with turbines, gearboxes, rotational equipment, pipelines, and the like.
Miroslav and Roger met in London in September 2016, understood each other very quickly, and started expansion on European and Kazakhstan market. Roger’s companies operate for the last 25 years in 40 world countries. Miroslav said: “It is tough to install our solutions on the systems that -feed with cash- the maintenance companies and OEM’s. But it is challenging, and I love challenges that are in line with my beliefs.
Equipment has to be efficient and reusable. If rockets can be efficient and reusable, then lot of other things can also. Redistribution of the technology has to come. Equipment, food and energy can be produced locally. Unnecessary transportation and moving lots of good around the world makes no sense economically and ecologically. Challenges are in changing the economy of changing and implement the economy of re-using.
By being a real nature admirer, leaving a positive ecological footprint also is of crucial importance. Sustainability is the key for the future of economy.
“Technologies that are Innovative, Simple, Effective, Reliable, and Sustainable are the only ones that are acceptable to me. My strong belief that this approach can overcome the significant challenges of the upcoming crisis and creating a sustainable economy, acceptable from both economic and ecological aspects.”
My Specialties
I’m here to help you find the game changing point and extend the lifetime of your equipment the period where it’s design allows it.