Nadia

I fled the war with my husband Sergey and our children, and we arrived in Chicagoland with nothing but Sergey's hands. He is a master craftsman with over twenty years of experience, but his English was broken and no one would hire him. He started looking for work in Russian-speaking online groups, and his first two clients tried not to pay him.

That was the moment I understood: we needed a real company, a real system, and real protection. I launched Sergey Helping Hand LLC in January 2025 and took over marketing, hiring, sales, financial planning, and insurance. Sergey focused on his craft and training our team of five skilled master craftsmen.

Then in September 2025, our eldest son was hospitalized and needed three major surgeries. I stepped away from the business to care for him, and our revenue collapsed to 17,000 dollars that month. That shock taught me a hard lesson: a business cannot survive on one person. I built a back-office team of Russian-speaking talent from Kyrgyzstan and Dubai so our operations could continue no matter what.

Today I also mentor other immigrant tradesmen at local business clubs, sharing what I have learned about running a company in America.

This funding will help me hire more Russian-speaking master craftsmen who face the same barriers Sergey once did, and expand our marketing so more Chicagoland families find us. Within three years, I dream of opening our own workshop for accent walls, custom built-ins, and full home renovations, and later growing this into a franchise. My deepest hope is that Russian-speaking master craftsmen finally earn the dignified pay and recognition their work truly deserves.