I didn’t learn about pressure from a book.
I learned it in places where it had consequences.

I served in the Yugoslav People’s Army, beginning in the infantry. After six months of basic training I was selected for a Quick Reaction Special Operations unit, and from there moved into counterterrorism operations. In the final years of that service, I worked in executive protection, responsible for the safety of prominent politicians in post-war Yugoslavia, among them a national political figure who survived multiple assassination attempts.

In that world, composure under pressure is not a soft skill; it is the difference between a mission that succeeds and one that does not. I learned how elite units select people, how they train decision-making under ambiguity, and how they build teams that hold together when everything around them is coming apart.

What I took from those years wasn’t toughness. It was precision: the understanding that performance under pressure is a trainable system, not a personality trait.

I have practiced karate for 47 years and competed at the professional level for fifteen of them, across three decades. I fought in nearly 40 countries, earned a place on the national team for two World and four European championships, and took a bronze medal at the World Championships in Atlanta, USA, representing Yugoslavia. I have held a 7th-degree black belt since 2018.

Competition taught me something the military could not. In a unit, the pressure is shared, and the responsibility is distributed. On the mat there is no unit, no cover, and no second attempt — only you, a single exchange lasting a few seconds, and every hour you spent preparing for it. Every executive who has walked into a board presentation or a make-or-break negotiation knows that feeling exactly. I have lived it at the world level, and I know how to prepare people for it.

Fifteen years at that level also taught me what a single event never could: how to hold form across a long career, through injury, through losses that were entirely public, and through the seasons when preparation produced nothing visible. Sustained performance is its own discipline, separate from performing well once.

I founded Lozo Karate in Belgrade in 1987, moved it to Atlanta in 2000, and ran it for 38 years, training thousands of students from children to national competitors.

In 2007, I founded GL Consulting — now BIZ Consulting USA — and began coaching executives. Running both enterprises at once was possible for one reason: I had spent years training people to take real responsibility, and I delegated management of the school to instructors who could carry it without me in the room. That is not a footnote to my coaching career. It is the first thing I ever proved about developing leaders, and I proved it on my own business before I ever advised anyone else’s.

Since 2007, I have logged more than 5,000 documented coaching hours with over 150 paid clients — Fortune 500 executives, business owners, attorneys, physicians, and rising leaders. I hosted “Tough Love with Goran” on 100.5 Rock Atlanta from 2009 to 2012, taking the same direct approach to a radio audience. I closed Lozo Karate in 2026 to give the coaching and consulting practice my full attention.

Along the way I did the academic work to match the field experience: a B.S. in Workforce Education & Development from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, an A.S. in Sports Science & Physical Education from the University of Belgrade, an Advanced Coaching Certificate from Harvard Medical School Executive Education, and Chapman Institute WellCert certification in workplace wellness management. My coach training is through an International Coaching Federation–accredited program. After relocating to America, the U.S. Government granted me O-1 classification—a designation reserved for individuals with extraordinary ability and sustained national or international acclaim in their field. It led to permanent residence and U.S. citizenship. In 2026, at my initiative, the Governor of Georgia issued a proclamation establishing Georgia Workplace Excellence Day, May 6.