We recently had one of the most impressive people and founders I've ever met on the podcast.

She grew up in poverty in Israel, served in a combat unit, earned 6 degrees, is fluent in 5 languages, invested in startups and is now an energy startup founder herself.

Check it out

Shoshi Kaganovsky was born in Russia where her family faced persecution for being Jewish.

Her father passed away before she was born and at 5 years old her mother made the decision to move their family back to Isreal.

Once in Isreal, her family fell into deep poverty.

Despite her mother having multiple PhD's, she wasn't able to find work due to the fact she couldn't speak Hebrew.

This forced Shoshi to start working at the age of 9 and start managing her family's finances.

When she was 18, she joined the Israeli Army as a combat soldier where she served on the border of Syria and Lebanon.

After her military service, she attended university where she obtained 6 degrees.

In 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, Shoshi's house was hit by a missile.

Everyone around her was packing their belongings and fleeing, selling their homes for 25% of their value.

Since she had been managing her family's finances since age 9, she had been able to put a little money away into savings which she used to buy 5 apartments in her area.

She then renovated the units herself, doing all the labor to get the properties up and running to rent out.

After four years of renting, the area stabilized and people started moving back which led to her realizing a 1200% profit when she sold the properties.

This is where she made her first $1million bringing her out of poverty.

She then took that money and started investing in startups.

Being an investor and board member to these companies, she decided that she wanted to start her own.

She developed a machine-learning algorithm that could detect helicopter failure 6 minutes before it happened and notify the pilot to abort.

She started looking for ways to use the technology to make a bigger impact.

One of her clients asked if it could be used on Oil and Gas Pipelines.

She had no idea about the O&G industry and did everything she could to learn about it.

After several years, she had the technology to predict pipeline leaks 2 weeks before they happened.

In 2016, she officially founded Sensoleak and decided against people's advice that she needed to move to Houston, Tx.

In August 2017, her belongings were packed and she was ready for her flight as she watched Hurricane Harvey destroy Houston on the television.

Her flight was canceled, but she was adamant that the airlines put her on the soonest flight so that she could get to Texas and help her new home.

Once there, she volunteered her time and money to helping in the shelters and rebuilding homes.

Today, she's a valuable part of the Houston energy tech ecosystem and is helping contribute to a better world by making Oil and Gas cleaner with Sensoleak.

I absolutely loved her story because she embodies what it means to have grit.

No victim mentality like so many Americans have today, just knuckle down and get shit done, no excuses.

To hear her story, check out the show here: https://digitalwildcatters.com/sensoleak-on-oil-and-gas-startups-podcast/

Also, I know how to spell Israel, sorry for that and other typos. Long post, twitter fingers were hot after this one.