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He Lost His Language When He Immigrated to America with Vladimir Baranov · find your cause

• speaker-0: I had a situation where a founder wanted to leave a co founder because we just downloaded the business. speaker-1: Alrighty, thanks everyone for tuning into this episode. Today we have Vladimir Baranoff, who's a coach for science and tech executives. Vladimir, thank you so much for your time today. ⁓ speaker-0: Thank you for having me, Joseph. speaker-1: All right. So we historically in our two hundred plus episodes that we've done over a few years, we haven't interviewed many coaches. So I'm excited for where this goes. But I'll be the first to admit that I don't have too much experience with interviewing other coaches. It's something that I do. It's funny how the roles flip sometimes. But talk to us a little bit, Vladimir, about about who you are and what you do. Yep. speaker-0: That's a great question. So I look at myself as more as a bridge builder between the knowledge that you have to the knowledge that you need to have in order to run successfully the company as a scientific and technological founder. What I've observed over my years of being a founder and executive myself is that somehow, by the nature of chance or by avoidance, technologists and scientists as they're going through their education and getting the experience. They're not exposed to any sort of like leadership responsibilities or any sort of management responsibilities. And somehow they end up in the positions of leadership and somebody people and people tell them, just go ahead and do it. And while they're super smart in the area of science attack, people is a very different issue. And a lot of them struggle and a lot of them not succeed. And I think that's a failure of a society, not necessarily their individual, because we don't provide them tools to how to do that well. I do believe that a lot of scientists and engineers are extremely good at problem solving, although within their domain, but if we translate those skills of problem solving into also human domain, we can enlist so much more intellectual power and so much good that can come out of those interactions if those skills are learned. speaker-1: Yeah. And why you? Why is this something that you've chosen as your current career path? speaker-0: Because I'm the smartest person around. No, I'm just kidding. I one one of the things I selfishly decided is that I would like to lead a life that is purposeful and mission oriented. I spend my twenties and my thirties thinking like what is a good cause to work on. And in the end I figured out that we are really locked into two missions either maintaining life that we have on this planet or we're proliver proliferating ourselves outside of that. Both of those missions require innovations in technology and sciences in order to be successful. And through experience of being a founder and being executives, I have observed, as I mentioned before, that we're lacking those leadership and management skills. So a lot of problems even though technically very much feasibly of solving, we're failing because we're not reaching the right markets. We're reaching because we're not negotiating well. We're not selling well. We're not communicating well the solutions that already perhaps already exist. And going back to why me I think a lot of other people can do it, but I selfishly want to live a purposeful and meaningful life. And I thought if I insert myself there and use my proverbal lever of experience like Archimedes said and use that as a pivot, I can move the earth by a very small multiplier and perhaps enabling those maintenance and growth missions to go forward faster. speaker-1: So as you for example, find a new client and onboard them, what are some of those initial first questions you're asking them to get an understanding of where they're at and where those biggest gaps that maybe they have, whether they come from a technical background or a leadership background and need more technical acumen maybe in their job later? speaker-0: Yeah. So interestingly you you'd be surprised the first questions that are being asked in the conversations are not by me, they're by the client. Because a lot of times the clients that come to me, they're first time coaches and they're trying to explore what are they going to get through those conversations? What does even coaching mean to them? And they're asking very insightful questions like what are the outcome we're striving for? And I agree like coaching sometimes can mean that we're not very clear right away what the outcome is. And part of the conversation is actually figuring out what is that version two point ⁓ the person looks like or what are the outcomes that are meaningful and countable that once we're arrived there, we can conclude that they actually have been achieved. But to answer your question directly, I like to ask questions to find out why do they want to be coached. Because some people are just assigned coach sometimes as a punishment. And I don't agree with that philosophy because everybody who is the best coach can be coached needs to want to be coached. Because otherwise there's a lot of internal resistance to any kind of conversation or answering question because they're worried that they're gonna answer everything correctly and something will happen on the other side. So we ask about their intentions. We also ask about their dreams and vision, right? Because this is probably the first time in their lives that they actually disclose anything in their head of who they want to become as a person, as a leader, as a problem solver, as a parent. And we get to all it all out. And I'm very curious to understand. Where all of that is coming from? In which books have they read that they need to be acting like this particular person? Where did they learn the value and meaning of this particular mission? Why do they want to do that? And frequently, if we find out that the pictures that are clear in our heads as we're thinking about our future are not as clear as we try to talk and communicate about them. And it's not really a failing of any of us individually. It's that we have pictures in our heads and it's very difficult to take the picture and convert it into words and describe it in the same way that the other person listening to you will have exactly the same picture there. Like what I mentioned be you about the mission thing, my own mission of what I'm trying to accomplish, it took me decades to crystallize that message in a way that is actually understood by others, which was until that point only clear in my head. And I had failed many times to communicate it over to others. So a lot of questions I ask about understanding where they're at, where do they want to go, what have they tried so far? Why do they believe that they're actually going to or two? speaker-1: Yeah. Is it a correct assumption that people maybe want coaches to get to the next level in their career or just be better in their current leadership role? Are there patterns that you're seeing or more likely reasons why they're reaching out maybe for the first time having a coach? speaker-0: Yeah, no, sometimes it's very directional. So like ⁓ to s next step targets, like I wanna get a next role, I want to be promoted, I wanna jump to another company. But a lot of times it's very tactical. Like I don't think anybody understands me when I talk because I speak such a heavy tech accent that I don't understand why they don't understand it. And sometimes bottlenecks is other sometimes bottlenecks is others, but when we are the communicators, it is our responsibility to own the medium, to own how the message lands on the audience. And even though you might get promoted because you become a better communicator. Some of the people who come to me, they realize that they want to be a better communicator for the sake of bringing the message that they have to others and to be able to relate to others in a better way. Also having relationship with other people in your company, sideways, downwards and upwards, because you're feeling misunderstood. Because I have to say a lot of scientists and technologists are very uniquely smart within their own niche. And they haven't had a chance to actually observe and study what others value and how they are thinking. So it makes it very difficult for them to relate to others. And we try to find analogies, we try to find stories, we try ways to relate and to feel together with other humans as a team and not feeling isolated intellectually or I isolated emotionally from the group because of the way that the engineers and scientists think. And there's another parallel where let's say sometimes people realize that once they have worked fully in the career role, they actually want to start their own business. And this is something that I do as part of my training too, is that I speak with prospective founders or existing founders and who want to jump from a corporate world or their current career and say, I would like to start something of my own. And it takes on a completely different mindset than being in a role at a lab or building a lab a role at a larger company. speaker-1: ⁓ I wrote some stuff down here. I and that could just speak to my experience. I've worked at Amazon for almost eight years. I've been an individual contributor the whole time, but my education background is in management in international business. I feel like I'm finally to a point where I can make that jump and get into leadership. But that my trajectory at Amazon has been can you kind of start at there's like leveling within Amazon. So you come in as like an L3 or L four. I so I came in as an L four and and I'm an L six right now. And there's also an opportunity to get into management from IC or just to stay in my current level. And so that's a has been my experience and throughout my time at Amazon I've had managers I've had mentors, I've had mentees, and and how have you seen people maybe that work that you've worked with that work for these larger companies and if and why it's important to also have coaches outside of the company? Cause as you can imagine, massive company Amazon, you could find a million people to be your coach, but what's the value in having kind of some that outside perspective? speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. I didn't realize we're gonna have a coaching session as part of a podcast, but let's We we can definitely dive into that. It comes down to definitions of the coaching industry and the field of what coaching is and you usually four modalities are being brought up. You have mentoring, you have advising, you have consulting, and you have therapy and coaching. So I said four, but it some of them overlap. In consulting speaker-1: I'm in the test room now. Yeah. speaker-0: You tell somebody exactly what you want them to do and you pay money for them. And sometimes they give you a different opinion and you can have several conversations, but at the end the whole thing is about the whole project is about them being paid for exactly what you want them. On the other side of the spectrum, you have therapy, where you have somebody professionally licensed, talking about perhaps some psychological issues, perhaps some brain in the capabilities, sometimes gaps in the brain, from perspective of who you have become based on where you were. And then you have a mentorship, right? So mentorship sometimes is where you'll come to somebody with a specific question and you ask him for them for experience that they had within the specific subject. Coaching is more of us trying to figure out how you can solve problem yourself by asking a lot of questions, by asking clarifying questions, by asking a lot of why, how, what, versus providing direct advice. No. That's official kind of pseudo official definitions. Everybody's expression of their role, the modality varies depending on the relationship. I like to have my expression of coaching a little bit of a hybrid. It's about eighty percent coaching and eighty twenty percent mentoring, because sometimes you can ask a lot of questions, but if you have the experience of dealing with a specific situation, it can take twelve coaching sessions for somebody to get to their themselves, or you can just say, Hey, do you mind if I share what has worked in my context? And thus we can try to see how we can bridge my context with the existing context of the coach. So going back to figuring out like whether or not you need a external coach or maybe an internal coach, I don't know what I recently found out. One point eight million people at Amazon do? Like they they have. Like it's a really huge organization. So there's bound to be at least one coach somewhere. So I would love to h provide external help, but I have a feeling that some of people on Amazon probably have benefit from internal coaches. And again, this is a skill that anybody can learn, right? So ⁓ mo most of my differentiation is not just the coaching part, is that actually had an experience of a lot of things that I coach about. So it's a little bit easier to work within the same context. A lot of us when we are being asked for advice, and I don't know if it's a natural thing or is this something humans do all the time, we don't ask any clarifying question, we don't ask for any details. We just really wanted to dump all the information that we have. And A lot of time that happens during the mentoring situations where ⁓ mentee will come in and say, I have this question. And the person who you're talking to, they will just dump all their experience about this and you walk away thinking like, Okay, I will try to do that. In coaching relationships, and again, this is a skill that all the mentors can learn and all advisors can learn too, you try to get as much context from the person who is asking you for that advice before you even proceed forward. And my goal is actually to delay giving any answers until we have context figure it out completely. And what I've noticed in a lot of corporate relationships, you get, I don't know, maybe 15 minutes, 20 minutes to talk with somebody and you're really asking for a quick something. You don't have an hour or 90 minutes where you can really outline all of the context from which your question is coming. But also you don't have an opportunity to explore why you're asking this question. Why is this question important to you based on what values, based on what identity, based on where are you going? Because a lot of times in corporate environments you have some conflicting interests. Yes, you can your boss can be your mentor. But can they tell you how to best relate to them? Or can you discuss with somebody the experience that you're having with them and change it in a way that is beneficial for you and maybe also for your boss, right? So there's conflicting evidence. And if you go to somebody who's a peer of your boss, they also have conflict, right? Or if you even go way outside of organization somewhere else, they might not have enough context, they might not have enough time or you don't have an ability to reach that person. Now, I'm not saying mentorship is not important. It's absolutely important. That's how we get transfer a lot of information. It's just a slightly different modality. I I but I'll also be the first one to argue that the best coach for you or the better is somebody who is almost like you, but let's say three or four years ahead of you, but has a coaching skill. And that person most likely would be found on Amazon somewhere who has a coaching skill. But chances are they don't might not have that and they might not have actually exposure to other people doing. things differently at different organizations so you can have the contrast and compare versus how it's being done at Amazon. speaker-1: Yeah. I think one being at Amazon, I there I I definitely do see the differences of people that are more technical by nature and by personality and that are more non-technical. What if you were to say one area in each of those categories that comes up as the biggest area of opportunity of improving via coaching? And I and it's hard not to stereo like stereotype or gen generalize saying technical people are bad at talking to other humans. Or people that are not technical can explain things well. I don't know if those are good generalizations, but you have the first hand experience. I'd love to to hear what are some of those gaps that maybe you see that you really try to hone in on initially. speaker-0: As long I think generalizations are great as long as we're aware that we're making one. But there are there are safe ones, like people from Japan are most likely to speak Japanese or people from Greece are most likely to speak Greek. And engineers is very likely to be good at math and not really good at language. But also we know there's probabilities. There's also people who have changed and have adopted different ways of doing things. I've met a lot of engineers who have all great soft skills and they realize that's their power now and actually they don't want to do engineering anymore. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ but I'd say and sorry, can you repeat the question? speaker-1: Yeah, so like you have those two different arc like personality types. If the generalizations are true with those two, what are some like really initial coaching focuses that you have with each of those? speaker-0: types. Yes. So f very frequently, because engineers and scientists are very smart people, they expect a lot of answers to be coming directly from their brains. And they believe the pressure is on them to finally figure out everything for themselves. So when they're being told to do something or they receive a message, they believe that they got all of the information, all of the data that they need to work in order to reach a conclusion. So an engineer, engineering leader, would come frustrated with me and say, That person told me that and this needs to be done, blah, blah, blah. And they would then spin this big story and this big vision of how those relationships are and so on. And I would ask them have you asked any clarifying questions? Or have you asked for more details? Or have you asked how they felt about when they were asking you this question? So asking for more context. And for some reason, Many engineers, many scientists, including me in the past, we don't ask contextual questions because it makes us feel stupid. It makes us feel like that we haven't figured it out already from the two little bits of information that was given to us, we haven't figured out the whole picture. And what's interesting And how do you not speaker-1: How do you not because I want to continue this that that part of the conversation? How do you because I feel like it's probably 50% on that engineer and 50% on whoever's creating that culture on that team where they're not comfortable enough asking the question? Yes. Do you how do you effectively split up those two occurrences and say, here's the part that you probably have control over? You can't really control this or you can't control that. speaker-0: So I believe that you're actually in control of everything that's happening to you. Now I know some people say that is not true, but I still believe that is most likely to be true because we can be there in the room or we can also choose not to be in that room. We can also try to change the leaders who are working with us. It's a very difficult job to do and I know it's not always successful, but you have in control. And you kind of I agree with it. You gotta pick your battles, but in the end I still feel a lot of things are under your control. If I was a manager of the organization and those two people came over to me, of course I'd be spoken to manager and saying, Hey, we need to fix this culture situation. But if I was speaking to individual who's experiencing that culture, they need to make a decision. Do they want to stay in this group? Do they want to talk to their manager to understand their way and why things have happened? Do they want to change the whole thing or do they want to go to a different company? 'Cause all of those are choices. And Sometimes it's could be just a matter of perspective. The engineer could be perceiving things not in the way the manager is. And if they just talk to each other and gather more context and ask clarifying questions, they would be so much more on the same page. They will have a more cohesive group. But unfortunately, somehow groups do not develop those practices. And when people become managers, especially engineers, they don't have that experience building company culture. They don't have experience having regular one ⁓ ones about the things which are not projects. Just figuring out what is like the interface is between the two people. What are they some people like doing or not doing? I had those issues myself too, assuming that other people think the same way that you do, or other people as smart as you do when you're sharing service. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons which I named my company human interface is so it's accessible science engineers. It's like there's an interface between me and another human and we're trying to debug it. We're trying to make sure that it works the best. And We sometimes just receive a message from a random sender and we assume that is it. It's the form and the shape and the meaning at the same time. speaker-1: I another thing that you mentioned that I think is really and I want to catch myself too, because I always fall into the trap of assuming people think like I do or that my my answer is the right answer. But you the I feel like one's individual perception of control they have. Yes. There's a correlation to personal accountability towards something. Maybe an example of that is in my example I gave of the person saying the culture is not open for me to ask this question, so I'm not gonna ask that question. That mindset I feel is that person has zero perception of control over their instance. But if they'd had the opposite, if they felt like they had one hundred percent control or over their decisions like to be in the room or not, then that completely changes their approach at how to solve or get through that challenge. So have you d have you had any clients where you've had to work with them to if it's the right answer, to work with them to to change their framing of what is in their control versus what is not in their control? speaker-0: Yes. I also have to be ⁓ cla clarified that a lot of clients who come to me, they want to be coached. In a sense, they have already analyzed the situation and they realize they need to gain this specific skills or they add this particular type of self-awareness in order to become successful. And in your question, if I take it apart, it could be also perceived that I might be talking to somebody who's not aware or who is not ⁓ even knowing what they're doing. And in those situations sometimes coaching gets assigned as more as a punishment or a corrective action. And it's very difficult to work with those individuals because they have not yet become enough self aware to start noticing those things. But for those who have become self aware, they already come with the question I have this situation. Can I influence my manager to do this thing, X, Y, and Z? Or is it completely fruitless? And then we start to figure out a strategy. What do you know? Where do you want to go? How do you wanna accomplish this? What are you comfortable with doing? And what happens if you succeed or don't succeed? And how do we can we design this strategy in a way that it's actually flexible, that even if you don't succeed, it doesn't look like a failure, it just looks like a next step. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: Okay. I feel like those types of coaching engagements sound very tactical. There is something that they want to fix or achieve or accomplish. In those examples of clients you have, do you also try to weed in like bigger picture or do you like come in and let's get really tactical and then talk bigger pictures? speaker-0: Almost all of the clients come in with tactical requests first. And what happens actually over the next couple of session ⁓ the first couple of sessions is I would put that request on a shelf and I tried to find out why. Because they come in and say, I want to go faster than that's other person. I'm like, Define faster. Define the other person, define you. And we all of a sudden realize that that we have copied somebody else's desires and mapped them onto our own. And we're not pursuing our own vision. And then some many times the question just falls apart because they've been angry in a place which does not accept them and they're just so different. And sure, yeah, we can spend days, hours, like weeks figuring out how to affect that person who does not even respect you for the skills that you have. Sometimes you don't have to solve certain problems to be successful. Sometimes the best decision is to leave. But to figure that out, as you mentioned, you have to get to that identity, that purpose, that those values, the mission and the meaning, because then everything else becomes easier. Sometimes we're just too proud to walk away from a d very difficult problem, but sometimes that's the easiest thing to do. speaker-1: Or scary. It's scary leaving, you know. That's also a thing. Yeah, having to think about finding a new job or yeah, a new role. That's a very scary thought. There I feel like I read a recent survey or something where and and I was mind blown by this that the number one reason of people's happiness in their current role is mana who their manager is. It's not money, it's not like what the company does, it's just like their manager. Yeah. Have you it's from your experience, has that seemed true or from the clients that you've had, is that is there a different perspective that you've had? speaker-0: I think it's a combination. I think in the end, even though we push it on the side, our purpose and meaning is very important. And even if the manager is terrible but you're saving lives every day, even though you might not be happy day to day, you're happy over a year. I'm not saying you should be staying in that organization. But in saying it's like people find happiness in different ways. Is having a good manager a great contributor to that? Absolutely. But I feel like the meaning of work is the most important thing that keeps people happy and motivated. speaker-1: Yeah. I think one of reflecting on my career and I think one of the superpowers or I think positive traits I've had is being able to connect whatever I'm doing to something more meaningful. Yes. By like and I think as you start your career, the transitive property, like there's a lot more connection points between like your activity day to day and like impact. But I think that's something that I've been able to be good at. So the cut I'm in a sales role. So the customers that I have really understanding what their mission is in in my head thinking and believing that the activities I'm doing to support them as a customer are helping them achieve that mission. So like easy A equals B equals C equals E, so A equals D, kind of that that justification in my head. Is that like a process or how do you work through that with somebody that is in a job that is really meaningful but they're not really seeing it yet? speaker-0: It's a good question. I'm not I'm not I I don't usually coach for people to say, Okay, you gotta find meaning in what you're doing right now because otherwise it's like I'm projecting my worldview on them. Yeah. But I do ask a question like what have you been put on this earth for? What would you like have been put on this earth for? And it's okay not having those answers, but sometimes we can wiggle those out. And questions that I ask there Many times they're end of life oriented because that's makes us more serious about our existence. And questions like what memories that you haven't made yet come up for you in the fa last five, ten minutes of your life? For many people it's actually memories of family, of things that you haven't done yet with your family. And they get surprised, like it has nothing to do with work or accomplishments or anything else. And I'm not saying that's what should it be. But it's gives you a reflection, gives you a better understanding of what you would like to accomplish in your lifetime. And what are you actually really working for? And does it matter if you're gonna find meaning in the workplace or not? Or you start questioning. And this is where like my responsibility as a coach is to ask enough questions when a person leans in their chair and just thinks for two minutes, like, I've never thought about it this way. But I haven't told them anything. I just ask. speaker-1: And have you had examples or have you had moments where you've seen that light bulb come on in people's eyes where they're like, ⁓ that's what I really want? And maybe work is a means to that end and ⁓ that's why I'm doing this. Or maybe other similar examples of aha moments. speaker-0: So there's some time so I have I had other aha moments happen during the session. The purpose in l in life and meaning usually happens in between sessions because a lot of this activity by writing things down or asking yourself a question is like six to twelve to fourteen, twenty hours period of your thinking continuously and clients do experience aha moments in those moments, but not typically during the session. During the session I would counter with a question. Like I had a situation where a founder wanted to leave a co founder because they were just done with the business. There's nothing wrong with them re their relationship but they would just be done. I just want to quit. Like I'm so disappointed. And I asked them the question, like, let's say let's switch roles. Let's say your co founder was living you would live overnight. How would you feel? And they paused. Damn, I didn't think of it from that perspective. Well yeah, like I cannot do that to him. He's been really good person to me. And while I'm feeling this terrible feeling about the business, like I don't wanna do wrong by him. And so we ended up concluding that he's gonna go and just have a conversation with a person what would make them the most comfortable way for departing. Because sometimes we're so self absorbed with our own pain and struggle, we don't sometimes don't always see how it affects other people. speaker-1: How's your kind of personal development journey evolved over your early career to now? And what did you self-reflect on were areas that you wanted to improve on? speaker-0: It is definitely becoming a coaching session, but now you've flipped it. speaker-1: I'm just curious. That that whole generalization component. Yeah, I'd love to hear your experience. speaker-0: Yeah, great question. So I think a lot of adventure books early on by Jules Verne or Conan Doyle or like all of those had a lot of influence and so are sci fi books and movies and so on. I wanted to work with technology 'cause it was easy for me. I also in retrospect realized that I was probably not very good socially. I had friends but I was not particularly looking for making new friends in the way that I do now, which is a little bit more intentional. Then I immigrated and when you immigrate, especially when you're a man, you lose your language. And when you lose your language, you lose that ability to interact with others. And so I double down or triple down on interacting with technology because it spoke the same language as I did. And it took me, I think, maybe s six, seven, eight years after immigration to feel comfortable speaking English and being around other people who spoke the same. And during that time, I think I was not able to learn as many skills as fast as I could because of Now I work with technology and then be g gain identity is acknowledging okay, I wanna work on very difficult technological problems because that's now my identity is. I think some shift happened when I started dating because I realized that the opposite gender was just looks at the world very differently than I as an engineer and also as a man do. And that i introduced a lot of growth like how to be a better communicator, how to be a better listener, how to dress better, how to use your body language better. And I think that growth happened to me in the mid twenties and I'm glad that I did it in New York City, although I heard Chicago is awesome because I was surrounded by other people and I had exposure to other people giving me feedback of what I wanted to do. In the background, I was also working on a career, right? I was going to larger banks, I was thought I was doing s exciting things. But when I started doing them and actually accomplishing things, I realized that I've been accomplishing it in a very different context in my head versus what's happening in reality. Large organizations, no matter how much you work, or how little you work, you still get paid the same. So I felt like the recognition structure in large organizations was not very sufficient to satisfy my ego of being recognized and being visible in a way that I've found meaningful. And that pursued me to move away from large organizations and join a smaller organization. So I'm d as I'm working on this I'm so I'm developing the mindset and the model of how the universe works. So before I started out and thought I'll go to this large organization because the book said go to work, start work. Go to the manager, become the CEO, win. Obviously, it does not happen that way. So, like through my process of discovery, worked at different financial institutions for eight years and realized I want to switch to a small company. Ha by happy stance, found a partner who is starting a wealth management SAS business. And I like, okay, I want to do this, right? I'm probably gonna get older, I'm gonna get kids, I wanna try this out, take this risk on. That took off. We grew the company over seven years, we sold it eventually to larger financial institutions, fantastic journey. And then in a retrospect I realized that I spent now fifteen years in financial services. And I realized while technically I did all the things I wanted to do, from smaller companies I actually did the things that I wanted to do too. But now I've I still feel empty, right? So like I didn't felt empty before, but now I felt empty. Like I didn't feel as meaningful and purposeful. It's like I wanted to accomplish something real, something that moves the needle for people's lives. And I looked around and for the best opportunities was which was overlapping with my skills was going to aerospace. That's what I did. I dreamed a startup as a third person and I thought like aerospace is where all the human problems get solved, right? You go there, you advance the human species, you're doing fantastic work, you're doing God's work because you're just moving people between planets, which is awesome. And we had a great experience as an engineer, like we'll launch a couple satellites, we took pictures of Earth from space. Wow, if you've never done that before, you've never exposed like a great euphoria. What I have observed is that like I had thought that this was my final destination. Like this is it. I put all my effort in and this again as Archimedes said, that is my pivot point. I put all my effort in and the fast outcome will get there. What I've thought about it over the years is that speak about a space economy a lot. And it's fantastic, all these new companies coming in. But to me, I for some reason I was fixated that in space economy, in a true market economy, we need to have a lot of clients. And we need to have a lot of people who are suppliers. And in space economy these days, for now, the only client that we really have is government. And it started resonating to me very similar to my previous experience when I was working for a large organization, that if I really want to feel impact of my work, if I want to feel impact of how my work affects different parts of the organization, I actually have to be a lot more influential and I ha or I have to have a lot of money, let's say Yolan or Jeff, who are able to take us to different planets, which they still haven't. Which made me decide, I guess, even with that amount of money, you cannot take us to different planets. So, like, how can I pursue that route? So that the only route was remaining, okay, I need to figure out how I can have the most influence in kind of space government relationship. And I realized that's also very risky. You need to stay in the industry for forty years. And even then, you might still by happy stance be not assigned to the proper projects, programs that might not influence things in the way that you want to influence. And kind of I started thinking more what are the other ways can I influence or let's accelerate human progress, technology progress and the kind of connecting to the story that I shared with you in the beginning of how I came to be a coach, this is where my decision made was made is if I help those people who are already changing our lives for the better to be even more awesome at it, I will feel accomplished and it will be also moving things in a direction that I want them to go. But that's how like my thinking trip yeah, yeah. This is how my thinking changes Yeah. But it's definitely bottom bottom up approach. I didn't start with this vision that it was like okay, I'm gonna work at this vision. No, a vision changed as I was getting more information. Yeah. speaker-1: Yeah, I I very much r relate with that a lot of parts of that that that trajectory and story you shared. When you say move the needle currently of impact that you have, are there have you been able to distill it down to like with your clients when this has been achieved, you feel like accomplished, like you did move that needle a little bit. Or is it like Is that like a C set at the end of a co s I'm wondering like how you measure it? If you've been able to measure it yet, or if it's like a feeling that you get when they have those aha moments, for example. speaker-0: You're actually absolutely right. So it's definitely maybe not counting but just remembering the aha moment. It's the individual emails of change. They come two years after we had a session. And so I I remember what you said and I practiced it like what we did here and we were able to get the results and those thanks that you get over email and also testimonials. And testimonials like especially when they come unasked for, that those are the most appreciated, and that's how I measure the impact. ⁓ I obviously these things are really hard to measure because that can sense it's a mindset change, right? Here's the weights of the model in your mind right now and here's the new models weights that you have. What if the delta is? This training set really h I cannot do that. So I wish as an engineer you'd probably hear that, like I can quote to find that. But no, this is like I think deep breaths, relaxation, the thanks is how I measure my progress. speaker-1: And did did it sounds like early on in your career when you're working in the financial institution, organizations, larger companies, you mentioned that kind of that recognition component of the job was really important to you. That importance, it sounds like a as you starting being a coach, you're likely not gonna get any of those Maybe not likely, but maybe so it's gonna take a while if you get to the point where you have those two like you get to the two year mark with somebody and they have the aha moment. So how did you was that a mindset shift where you're like, I'm not like that component is not as important or I'm okay with delaying delaying to see that because I know I'm gonna have an impact? How how did that mindset change for you? speaker-0: ⁓ I I think it's watching the changes from day to day, from session to session, and I'll give you an analogy. Imagine like you will save your loved one if you have to dig a trench from New York to Chicago. And you know you're haven't accomplished your goal yet, but you know you're moving towards it by digging ten, fifteen feet today and maybe another ten, fifteen feet tomorrow. So you're definitely seeing progress and progress on its own feels satisfying. And especially if you're moving in a direction off your goal, no work is actually that difficult or that torturous because you are accomplishing it step by step. speaker-1: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know why that reminded me of the story of the two Masons, one of which, when asked what he's doing, he said, I'm just building a wall and the wall's not gonna be built for a hundred years, and yes, another one, and his responses or her response is I'm building a temple for everyone to use in the next for the next X amount of hundreds of years. So it's also like that perception of that brick that you're laying, like it's gonna have an impact, but how do you perceive the actions that you're taking? speaker-0: Yeah, n narrative we're suckers for narrative as humans. We we we need that north star. We need somebody tell us that's the destination. And that's why we also get so frustrated when that north star is being changed by our leaders very frequently. Because then which where are we going? I have all this energy, I have this old effort, I have all this smarts. Which direction should I be putting it in? speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ Well this is amazing. ⁓ I've learned a lot. Like I I think coaching is something that can be a force multiplier for a lot of people. And I think coaching can s like connecting what your impact is, like your when you feel like you've moved a needle in somebody's life and the impact, like speaker-0: Yeah. Wow. speaker-1: applying that to that person in their current role with whatever job they have, like the more effectiveness and the more ability of them achieving their full potential and whether they work for a company or not, the full potential of their company that they founded or the company that they work for, I think there's just like a an endless opportunity for really having that trickle down massive impact in coaching. And from my personal experience, I've had a couple of coaches And I just haven't found one that I think I've connected with yet. But again, like I've had evolutions in my career personally. And maybe it's just like the timing of the type of coach that they are is didn't align to like where I'm at in my career or what I'm trying to accomplish or what I'm trying to solve. Yeah. But yeah, I I think at some point I'm gonna have to get reconnected with a coach myself. ⁓ I think it's a mud. speaker-0: I do I do have to say is that unfortunately coaching is not certified profession, like we have certifications, but it's not something that is regulated. But contact sharing is very important for the two individuals to understand each other. If they have ⁓ shared experience, ⁓ they have come from the same industry. And what I have noticed with a lot of coaches that they're fewer coaches. Like they've never done any sort of like industrial work before, they've never been engineers, they've never been scientists, and while they can observe and analyze the mind and to be good at coaching, a lot of time they just don't have the same context. And yes, I w admit that perhaps after twenty years of coaching engineers you will notice the patterns and you'll become much better at it. But it's harder without understanding the context right away. So let's say if you are re engaging with somebody, is somebody who is a coach and shares a lot of your background and the understanding of the vision and values, those conversations would be more reliant and more fruitful. Yeah. speaker-1: Well people that are listening and want to get engaged, Vladimir, where could they go? Where could they find you and what type of engagement do you look for? speaker-0: Yeah, no great question. So our general engagement usually ⁓ starts with a discovery session, which is complementary. We're which try to figure out whether or not the things that you're trying to solve through coaching are approachable and could be solved. And I do get into a little bit of coaching itself on the calls in the sense you might get value right away. And for those interested, you can just jump on a website, human interfaces dot CO and you'll see a big button, schedule a discovery session and a welcome for you to join and since you're all joining listening to Joseph, I'd be happy to give fifteen percent off my regular coaching fees because Joseph is awesome. speaker-1: ⁓ you're setting the bar hide for me, Vladimir. Awesome. So yeah, so people that are listening, please reach out. Getting a coach is a force multiplier in your career. And and yeah, no, I'm really excited, Vladimir. Thank you so much for your time. I've learned a lot. I did definitely try to steal some questions in here that maybe I have in my personal life. So thank you for for being flexible and answering some of them. And thanks again for your time. speaker-0: That's good. Of course, of course. Thank you for having me, Joseph.