Where to start. Well I'm Roman Prokopchuk and I'm the host of the Digital Savage Podcast.
I was born in 1984 in Lviv, Ukraine when the country was still under the Soviet Union. I almost died as a baby where I was rushed to the hospital practically lifeless, and by the will of God somehow pulled through. My 6 other family members left Ukraine in 1990 as religious refugees where had to renounce our citizenship before leaving where we essentially left with no country. It's like being disowned by your family. Ukraine under the Soviet Union was rough. People disappearing, not being able to speak out without being fearful of death or imprisonment. My family were all believers and worshiped in church even though the government forbid it.
We went through Vienna, Austria and Rome, Italy with the clothes on our backs and what we could carry and arrived in New Jersey to a 2 bedroom apartment. Everyone went to work even my grandparents that retired. And we made it work. The American dream right. Hustle to do whatever needed to be done.
I went to college in New Jersey. Rutgers University for criminal justice. Was training to go to Officer Candidate School for the Marine Corp in order to receive a second lieutenant commission but was side lined when almost dying from an ulcer caused by Helicobacter pylori. That ended that pursuit and in my last last semester in college I interned with the Secret Service on the Counterfeit Currency Squad with a top secret federal clearance.
And the I graduated with a degree in criminal justice when the 2008 recession hit. State, local, and federal agencies froze hiring. I was down and depressed for months from not being able to find a job for months. The only thing that kept me together was going to the gym. One day after speaking to someone they told me to come out to their car after my workout that they had something that could help me out. With nothing to loose I said why not and they opened their trunk and handed me a packet about search engine optimization. They said read it, look online, and you can start doing seo for my business.
The rest is history. In 14 years in digital marketing I've held 3 director roles on the agency side, managed 7 figure marketing portfolios, worked with fortune 500 clients, worked on over 600 accounts, and founded Nova Zora Digital in 2012.
If I actually started a podcast when I wanted it would of been 5 years earlier. I started my show in a solo format talking about my life experiences and expertise to help other in marketing and life. But as it progressed I decided I want to have conversations with people all over the world about their journeys and successes. I've had over 300 interviews with people all over the world and have been on 140 other shows sharing my story. I try to be a resource and help as many people as I can. The show has been listened to in 100 countries and has been downloaded 200k times. It's been a top 100 show in many countries in apple podcasts and has been identified as a top .5% of all podcasts.
My wife and I have spent 100k+ out of pocket in the last 4 years on infertility treatments and have experienced 6 miscarriages, 2 of which happened on Christmas Days.
We decided to become foster parents as a way to help and grow our family. We were licensed May 31st, 2018 and next day we had 2 boys dropped off at our door. Since then, we've had 26 kids in our home. I try to do as many interviews speaking about going through miscarriages and being a foster parent from the male perspective.
This is just the abridged version of my journey. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions and give the show a listen.
