SDS 320: Mentorship

Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast, ladies and gentlemen, super excited to have you on this episode. So today I have with me here Vitaly and Hadelin, my two good friends and people who I actually consider my mentors. And we are in New Zealand. We’re doing a motorbike trip and the background noise you hear is because we’re at a restaurant, something different. Decided to try it out. So let me know what you think about this kind of format. Very casual. We’re having dinner and let’s say hi to our guests. Vitaly, how are you going?

Vitaly: Good guys, I’m doing really well and great company, great country, great food.

Kirill: Awesome. Hadelin?

Hadelin: I’m exhausted. We’ve just ride for 8 or 10 hours and we did 500 kilometers. I’m just freaking exhausted.

Kirill: Awesome. Okay, so we’re just having some dinner and some wine and we decided to talk a bit about mentorship because it’s a topic that’s come up for us over the past couple of days. As you may know from the podcast, Vitaly is my mentor and he’s really helped me out with becoming an entrepreneur and growing my business and yeah. So just, guys, what are your thoughts on mentorship? What’s it all about?

Vitaly: It’s a must thing to have and I think pretty much everyone has either formal or informal mentors. I think the sooner you formalize and realize whom you want to learn from and what you want to learn the better. The same way Kirill mentioned that I’m his mentor, which I’m honored to hear. I think the same way Kirill acts for me as a mentor in areas that he’s good at, being an entrepreneur, working together in a team with Hadelin and many other guys from SuperDataScience, building the business, trying different projects, succeeding, failing, succeeding again. That’s an amazing skill to have and I’m still learning that. So, mentors are a must. I have quite a few of my own and if you as listeners don’t have any at this stage or you can’t come up with your top three mentors, it’s a good time to pause and take a piece of paper and a pen and write down and think about it a little bit more. What do you think Hadelin, do you have any, do you have any mentors of your own?

Hadelin: I don’t right now, but I’m actually looking for one. I was not convinced about a mentorship until recently. I thought I could you know, I thought I didn’t need a mentor. But recently I’ve been doing a lot of a personal development. I’ve been reading a lot of books, I’ve studied a lot of success in business, successful business stories. And I figured out that most of the most successful entrepreneurs, even celebrities, sport people, most of them have a mentor. So this got me pretty convinced that I also need a mentor. And so yes, for the past few weeks I’ve been looking for one and I hope to find one soon. Because now, I honestly believe that it’s really necessary, as you say. You can grow by yourself, you can develop your business and grow, as well personally, as professionally. But I am totally convinced that you will do it much more efficiently with a mentor.

Kirill: But how are you going to find a mentor? These are the past few weeks you’ve been looking for one. What does that mean?

Hadelin: Yeah, I’ve been looking for one. So I looked at some websites, I contacted mentors that are recognized in the field and yeah, I guess I’ll find it. When you look for something you, you, you’ll find it.`

Kirill: Very interesting. My experience with mentors has been different. For me, it’s always got to happen naturally except for when you got a business coach. Like I have a business coach, but there as well, you have to look that that’s kind of more what I think that’s the part where I was looking for someone and going through different people and finding the right person. In terms of mentors like the way Vitaly and I met was just, I was moving furniture for him.

Vitaly: Would you like to tell him the story?

Kirill: So I was moving furniture to Artem Vladimirov and I we worked at Deloitte and then we had another friend there who worked there as well his name is Dimitri. He’s also been on the podcast at the very start. Then Dimitri one day asked us, “Hey guys, could you help me to come move furniture? We’re moving to a different place.” So we came over helped him move furniture, at the very end, his roommate Vitaly comes over and like I look at Vitaly and in his eyes I see like so much passion, energy, intellect. Then in there is like love from first sight. I decided that he has to become, I need to make him my mentor or ask him to be my mentor and yeah. Oh and wait, wait, wait. Do you remember what happened after that? 

Vitaly: Yes, I do. So I’ll take like 10 minutes back. I see Kirill for the first time. I see he’s kind of like a wild eyes, like crazy craving for learning. And he said, “oh Vitaly do you mind like, we’ll catch up sometime for an hour just for informal chat. I would like to ask you some questions” and I kind of like half-hearted listen. “Yeah, of course. Sure.” Thinking that he’ll forget it like tomorrow. And I’ll be all good.

Vitaly: Half a day later I kind of like received a text message, like asking for the place and location. And a day later Kirill rocks up with a notepad and like 25 or 30 questions and written down and I realize that’s going to take time. And by the end of it I was like extremely happy. The questions that Kirill asked were like profound. They started simple like how do I manage my time, what do I use to manage my commitments? Like in terms of the calendar and whatnot. And it went all the way to how do I decide whether I’m happy in life. And those things started to make me think and I realized that the questions Kirill was asking were quite profound and useful for me even to reflect on. That’s how it started like three hours later and like a half of a notebook written with a handwriting and that was an amazing session. So yeah, thanks a lot for setting up and asking those questions.

Kirill: Thanks man for helping me out. And I remember you recommended the Tim Ferris book “The 4-Hour Workweek”. That’s where I found out about it and really helped me out in that part of my career professional journey. And since then like I’ve, I’ve also, I don’t know, I guess I’ve acted as a mentor to some people and I always try to recommend a book that is relevant to them in their career journey at that point in time. Like I know many good books, maybe like 5 or 10 that have affected me profoundly, but I only recommend one and I choose that based on where they are.

Vitaly: Interesting you said that because Hadelin and I our last night discussed exactly that. Do you remember Hadelin? About the books and movies, the role they play in our lives. What was our conclusion from, what are your takeaways from our dinner last night?

Hadelin: Let’s see.
Okay, so first of all I was happy to see that I was not the only one who could be really, really inspired by characters and movie to whom you identify. So yes, I thought it was pretty cool to see that movies can inspire and help you also a lot. So we talked about the personality tests, whether we are introvert or extrovert, but we already covered that in another podcast episode. 

Vitaly: Could you mention, your top three, top three books?

Hadelin: Oh yes. Okay. So my favorite one is The Power of Now, which I actually have right now during this motorcycle trip in New Zealand.

Hadelin: The second one is Sapiens and the third one is A Father, A Son, An Odessey. In French? In French is [inaudible 00:09:14]. So yeah. Okay. We talked about this yesterday. We talked about a Greek mythology, so I don’t want to reveal the story, but it’s, it’s kind of the same stories as in the Greek mythology and yeah, it’s a, it’s about a relationship between a father and a son. And so I really, I really liked it because I could also actually identify to the story even if it happens in some ancient time. And it was written a long time ago. So, yeah, I don’t know, what about you? What were your main takeaways?

Vitaly: I think you’ve covered it pretty well, but I think my main takeaway was that if you don’t have always a person, physical person that you talk to that you consider a mentor, a lot of times you have characters. It could be a fictional, could be real that you tried to aspire to be like, and you watch their behaviors you reread the same books. Re watch the same movies, so that was an interesting observation that we had last night about that. Kirill, do you think you identify yourself to any of the characters of the movies or books? Do you think books and movies or maybe theater plays acted as a mentor, as a in lieu of a mentor for you?

Kirill: Cool question. I don’t identify any like any specific one character, but like when I always watch movies, the movies I like the most is where I can identify. In terms of books, I read very cool fictional book recently called Red Rising about colonization of Mars and I actually read Red Rising, then what is the second one? Golden Sun and Morning Stars like a trilogy by Pierce Brown I think. That is just really cool. Very Sci-Fi, futuristic, amazing book. Highly recommend to everyone and there, it’s really served like a great mentor to me in terms of leadership, like the leadership skills that are portrayed during a war, during difficult times, during space battles and things like that. Like I learned so much from that and friendships even how to maintain, nurture friendships. I learned so much from that, from those three books. I don’t think I could’ve, I had known those things before. I could have learned that it would’ve taken me years to learn those on my own. Was really really cool. I enjoy that a lot.

Vitaly: So having said that, like the discussion that we had, what would be the call to action? What would be the suggestion to the podcast listeners right now?

Kirill: We’ve already did the go-to action. I think a good question for you guys is because we discuss like movies, books, you can listen to podcasts and have mentors that way, right? You can, I don’t know, like attend webinars, go to seminars and so on, like have mentors in a passive way that the other person might not even know that they are your mentor. My question would be is there a difference between in-person mentorship versus passive mentorship where you’re just absorbing information, not having those one on one conversations? What do you reckon?

Hadelin: No, no, no, no, no. For me, you must have the one on one conversations because I guess the most valuable help of a mentor is not only to guide but also to push to take action and you can only be pushed to take action with the one on one sessions, but then yes, I’m new to mentorship. I actually don’t even have a mentor yet, but I’m interested to know what you think.

Vitaly: I think it’s a good one. I think if you have what would probably we called a passive mentorship, there was no one to objectively, or at least to look at you from another point of view.

Vitaly: If you learn by yourself, you are identifying your own gaps and trying to feel them with what you observe them from a mentor. In one on one interactions there is a person to tell you something that you didn’t know like to make an observation about your behavior or to ask a question that you are not able to ask yourself otherwise. So I think there is a difference. There is an increased value in having those active mentors and having those conversations to hear an awesome like $1 million question from a mentor is worth a lot. It could change your life. You might not be able to hear that tailored question through a passive mean like through a podcast through a book. What do you reckon Kirill? 

Kirill: I think there’s value to both whether passive or active, but I definitely think the person should not limit themselves to just passive mentors. The amount of information insights I’ve gotten from podcasts, books, I don’t know, webinars, seminars, excuse me and so on is incredible. However, like Vitaly can say during our chats, we were talking about this earlier, sometimes Vitaly says like it’s just like one sentence and changes the course of my whole career because I respect him so much and because he understands my situation very deeply, it’s not so generalized, the advice is specifically to me.

Kirill: So like for instance, those of you who have taken our Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence A-Z courses, whether on Udemy or the SuperDataScience, Hadelin and I did the Machine Learning A-Z course and the mentor that pushed me to do that was actually my mom. That was my mom, yeah, Machine Learning A-Z because Hadelin translated the Data Science A-Z course into French, which you did super efficiently like in this space of a month, which was incredible for a 20 hour course. And then I was like “Ahh, let’s translate some more courses” and so on, but you wanted to do something really cool. And I talked to my mom and she was like, this guy is super-efficient. Super cool. Of course you got to do something together. And like bam, I was being a bit lazy, but my mom pushed me to go ahead and do it. 

Hadelin: That’s what I’m talking about the mentor helps you, what pushes you to take action and to take action in the right path.

Kirill: Yeah, exactly. And so then we buckled down, it took us another two or three months to do the Machine Learning A-Z course is now like the bestselling machine learning course in the world as far as I know. 

Kirill: And it’s got like what, 300,000 students and everything. And you know, that was a push from my mom. But then after that I again, I relaxed. I was focusing on other courses or other things I thought we should do like maybe other topics and data science and so on, but you were like, let’s do an artificial intelligence course. Remember that?

Hadelin: Yeah.

Kirill: And then, and then so I was, I wasn’t sure should we, and anyway, I was basically, I’ve always said in my view that we should do other topics, branch out into visualization and other things. And I chatted to Vitaly. I said, hey Vitaly, by the way, this wasn’t, I remember this wasn’t a central topic of our discussion. It was like a “by the way” type of thing, but anyway, “Vitaly this guy Hadelin and I created a course together when we, well, you know, he’s really excited, enthusiastic to do another course on AI and things like that. I’m not sure about it. What do you think? “And so Vitaly is like “Well, where does most of your revenue come from?” Do you remember that conversation?

Kirill: So Vitaly is like, “where’s the most of your revenue come from? How good is that course?” Like, “that course is amazing. It’s doing really well. You know, 80% of our results are coming from that course. And he was like, “well, there’s your answer. Just do more of that course, you know, like focused on that for a while.” And then bam, we did the Deep Learning A-Z, launching Kickstarter, raised about $150,000, 150 on Deep Learning and then AI A-Z raised $200,000 plus launched the course.

Vitaly: Yeah. And the revenue is the proxy for the interest and for the value that you guys provide to to the customers. So while we talk about the numbers, that’s a objective measure of how much you value the contribution the guys are making in the educational space. So there is no better way to look at it. Like if you are willing to give me the money it means the product must be good and it’s a feedback that I think Kirill and Hadelin listened to like where the money comes from, where you guys are putting your money and you’re willing to spend and learn these things and do more of that. Do more of what the listeners want.

Kirill: Exactly. Very, very good point. And all of that came from one sentence you said we were just having all the usual catch up one sentence you said, bam done. I can numerous times you can name like probably a dozen more of the times, there was somebody underperforming in the team. I asked you what to do, you gave me some advice and now this person has grown, flourished over the past two years and now we’re, Hadelin and I are working on now,

Hadelin: He’s becoming our partner.

Kirill: He’s becoming our partner in the business. It’s crazy. So highly, I think the value of in-person mentorship, if you find the right person, if you actually feel it, that’s like Vitaly asked me that question today, right? Like how did you know? Why did you pick me as a mentor? You just feel it. It’s really hard to like calculate. You just feel it.

Vitaly: It was an interesting question that other one prompted me actually to ask and that’s something that he asked me last night, [inaudible 00:19:05] so that was a good.

Hadelin: It’s actually, it’s really important. How or why do we find a mentor? Why are we convinced that a mentor is the one that can help us? So you actually answered it at the beginning of this podcast episode. You said it happens naturally, but would you like to tell more of how it happened between Vitaly and yourself?

Kirill: Yeah, yeah. As we, as we like as I mentioned a bit like I just saw it in his eyes and I don’t know, it was just like I felt it. Is just a feeling for me. I don’t know if it works the same way for everyone. Yeah. It’s not a, Vitaly’s making the heart sign as if I felt love.

Hadelin: Yep. For me what you’re saying totally makes sense. Because I also feel that I can understand someone and see if a person is nice through his eyes. You know, as we say, the eyes are the reflection of the soul. So by looking really deeply at someone’s eyes, you can have a good idea of how good is the soul.

Kirill: Yeah, I totally agree. That’s probably for me the same thing. But Vitaly you have a few mentors yourself. Who are they and how did you choose them?

Vitaly: Good question and Hadelin asked me that question last night. That’s why we came about the topic of this podcast. For me the mentors, specific mentors changed all the time like at different times of my life and career, there were different people. And my current set of mentors actually relate more to what I want to achieve in life today, they are related to family and to becoming a great husband and future father of my kids. So a number of people that are not in the business world are great mentors for me. If I mentioned some names they wouldn’t probably mean anything to the listeners in the business world. Actually I look up to you guys quite a lot of the way you provide a value to the listeners of this podcast to other data scientists is intriguing for me to look at and I want to be at proxy in my own line of career to do a similar thing to scale the impact you do with your abilities.

Vitaly: There are number of professional consultants that I look up to because of their skills. One of them is Victor Cheng or the ex-McKinsey guy who currently runs his company and his website is www.caseinterview.com. He prepares people for management consulting career, like very narrow specific niche and also gives a general advice. So he definitely has been my mentor for a while. There are a number of close friends and relatives that were cherry picked who I want to emulate and mimic. Yeah, I would say there is a bunch. It takes a village, I guess, any specific skills from different individuals that I want to combine and learn from and to become myself. So it’s not a copycatting I like, I’m not doing a very bad thing. Kind of like coping of a person. It’s speaking things that relate to you the most. Could be one skill or one value, one type of behavior and saying, this is what I want to be. I want to emulate, I want to learn, I want to grow combining them and it becomes you. So yeah, that’ll be my answer.

Kirill: Interesting. So for me it was like a feeling, for you is these are people in your life or people you know like I’m assuming Victor Chen is someone not directly in your life, but somebody you knew about and then and then you decide, okay, this person has a certain skill. This is what I need now I want, I’m going to approach them as my mentor. I’m going to like learn from them. Right? But before you talked about formalizing the relationship, do you every time formalize this relationship or not? And what does that mean to formalize a mentorship relationship?

Vitaly: I guess it’s if I mentioned formalize, what I meant is to acknowledge for yourself that this person is a mentor and make a regular time and effort commitments to learn from that person. It could be through a one on one meetings, through a call, through an email subscription. There are many ways to formalize it, but just to not to think about it like I’m being like ad hoc, spontaneous, I believe might not work as effectively as if you did it regularly. So big things are usually done in a lot of small, consistent steps and that’s what I believe the good mentorship is about. A lot of small, consistent quality advice from people that you’ve deliberately chosen.

Kirill: Totally agree. Consistency is key, right? If we hadn’t meet, we catch up maybe… Before we’d catch up, they were being usually weekly. We would catch up like once a quarter. There’ve been years where we’d catch up once every six months. Recently we’ve been catching up more often I think because now we have more interests to do, like just have crazy adventures together. I am talking about partners, no we have partners.

Vitaly: Now we are just talking about our partners in life that also we bring them together like to dinners and whatnot. And the frequent listeners know that about your relationship. No. Well here’s the spoiler. It’s nice to meet not only like individually but also with significant others, introduce them and find even more of common interests. So Hadelin, I think you’re next right? In terms of finding your passion, love and joining the crew.

Hadelin: Absolutely. And you know when I wonder about my purpose in life, it seems to be finding love and it’s so hard, but I believe in it. And you know what, I’m going to reveal something. The reason why I’m looking for a mentor is more on this personal side of life than for a professional or, [inaudible 00:25:17]. 

Kirill: Wow. Very interesting. Tell us more, why? Why is that?

Hadelin: Well, I mean in business I don’t really feel the need for a mentor right now. I’m sure I’ll have one one day cause it’s the same thing. A mentor in business can help you save a lot of time, grow more efficiently and all. So I’m sure I’ll have one day, but what I’m looking for is more a personal development mentor. That’s why it’s probably more difficult to find because it’s less common, but yes. Vitaly, since you are a mentor yourself, I have a question for you. What advice would you give me to find a mentor?

Vitaly: Sounds like it’s another huge topic that we’re just about, we’re just about to open another can of worms, I guess. A good question. I don’t think I’m a master in this. I think I was like damn lucky finding my own love and my passion, my significant other. I don’t think I did any deliberate moves or actions to find that person. So my, the observation that I have, it came at a moment where I has been looking the least. So if you’re really looking for your love, that’s where you are likely not to find one because you are being so thorough and methodical in your search. There was always like a checklist. It removes a lot of spontaneity and opportunity for a random spark. When you let it go and be and trying to be yourself do business and something. You find that people emerge in your life and sparks happen like left and right. And one day you will look in the eyes of a person and say, I think I want to spend, I want to grow up, grow old together with that person and that might be the one.

Hadelin: Okay. I agree with what you’re saying and actually I heard that before. You know, you’ll find love when you don’t look for it. However you know, the past four years I was not looking for that. I was only focusing on the business, growing the business, making it successful, create online courses and I was not looking for it. And it turns out that, I ended up in a situation where, you know, because I was an entrepreneur growing my business in a community of data scientists, well it turned, I rationally understood that it was hard for me to find love.

Hadelin: So I guess you’re right. But I guess I should do some some kind of required steps and some efforts in order to find it because my situation today would lead me, if I’m not looking for it, my situation today would lead me to find love with a very low probability.

Vitaly: There was one thing that occurred to me while you Hadelin was talking about this. Tony Robins is a probably a common mentor of ours in many ways and we’re planning to go like together to the Date with Destiny this year, 2020. One of the takeaways from last date with destiny that we attended Kirill, you and I attended two years ago now, was forgiveness to some of your, forgiveness and gratitude to some of your past relationships in order to be topping up to future opportunities. It was something like one exercise I remember Tony Robins made us to do is to write a thank you letter and forgiveness letter and I did it to my, one of my ex-girlfriends like that also I didn’t have great relationship with in the past, made myself close up a little bit. So that might be something that an exercise that is due.

Hadelin: Wow all right.

Vitaly: Kirill?

Kirill: As per Vitaly’s spoiler, I am in a relationship now and I’m pretty excited. Pretty stoked about it, actually very stoked. And what I would say Hadelin is, you’ve been there the whole time, right as I’ve been going through different relationships and dates. So the one thing, I wasn’t looking for it as well, but one thing I understood, like what I did was I worked on myself. I worked on opening up more and with different psychologists in order to open my heart and started feeling more. And then not necessarily looking for love, but then it kind of just like happened so. But I don’t know, you know like everybody’s journey is different in that way.

Kirill: Yeah. I guess in the matters of the heart for me is not not finding a mentor to help me find love, but a mentor to help me become a better person, to be more, to attract the right type of person that I want to be with. What do you think of that?

Hadelin: I definitely think that a psychologist can help. Mentors can help, but I still think I should take actions. I should do something. By that I just mean not, I should not stay passive.

Kirill: Perfect I think that’s some great insights.

Vitaly: Speaking of, not being passive and about mentors who are there to push people to do, what do you think guys is the take away for the listeners of this podcast? What are the immediate steps they could do in the next week?

Kirill: I’ll start. I’ll say find a, obviously if you don’t have passive mentors, start there. Find, well, if you’re listening to this podcast, that’s already a good start, right? So you’re, that’s a good step. Maybe find more passive mentors. See what kind of books you’ve read in the past that can be your passive mentors, but find an active mentor. Like identify that one person in your life who right now, doesn’t necessarily mean for the next year or two years, but right now there’s a gap that you, you need to fill in your life and a person that has that skill, that can help you fill that gap. So identify that person and formalize that relationship in your own mind and go and talk to them on a regular basis and see what happens. But basically like Hadelin said, keep looking. And even if that person doesn’t work out, second person, third person will work out. Maybe by the fifth one you will find a really good mentor.

Kirill: All right. What do you think Hadelin?

Hadelin: I think that’s a, the major takeaway, and I’ll say this just to be very clear, is find a mentor, very simply, find a mentor. You won’t regret it. I don’t have a mentor yet. I know, but I studied a lot the question, I thought a lot about this. And having a mentor really can help you save a lot of time in life and also take the right path, the more meaningful path, a more successful path, and a better life. So now I’m convinced, I hope I will find my mentor soon. I already had two interviews, but I didn’t like, I didn’t have the connection with them. So I’m going to look more and more and more and have more interviews and I’ll find the mentor.

Vitaly: And the way you, how would you find out whether you found one or not? Kirill I think you’ve said something important. It’s about identifying that vacuum, whether it’s a skill or value or something that you want to feel. What are the criteria for a mentor? Like someone with more experience or demonstrated capability to do something. What are the things mentorship process… Hadelin, can you answer that one?

Hadelin: Yes, of course. So someone with experience and all is important. But I think the most important is that this mentor must understand you. I see myself as a pretty complex person, with a very complex psychology. So the key to find a mentor for me will be to find someone who understands me. I think that’s the most important because the first step to guidance is to understand.

Kirill: I think I’ll redirect discussion back to Vitaly cause like for me it’s, I find mentors based on a feeling, not a specific skill. I need to feel you’re better at that than me. For me, it’s like as long as I feel I’m getting value, I’m getting takeaways every time I talk to them, that’s valuable. But in terms of skill that’s how you find mentors. So what would you say?

Vitaly: Yeah, raising such a good topic about feeling versus understanding and thinking about a particular issue, like a mentor selection. I don’t know. I think building on what Hadelin said, I think there should be connection in values. I feel and think that it’s difficult to learn from a person who has a mismatch like on a personal and professional values. Like if I don’t trust, if I don’t want to associate myself, want to be a part of the family with that person, then it will be hard for me to learn any professional or other skills. So I think that connection on the value side of things would be a must. And obviously seeing that person being miles ahead on any topic, what creates that vacuum gap that I want to close by spending time with a person, by asking him questions or her questions or waiting to answer those questions that he or she will ask me.

Kirill: Awesome. Fantastic advice. Yeah. Okay, I see. I think we’ll leave that there, that touches on a cool topic on thinking versus feeling and something were really chatted deeply about already on this trip. We’ll continue that on another episode, so thanks very much guys and thank you to [inaudible 00:36:46] for powering this conversation with energy. And yeah, we’ll continue on the future FiveMinuteFriday episode we’re actually thinking of recording, yeah, this has been a 41 minute, FiveMinuteFriday, but we were thinking of recording a longer episode as well. Okay, everybody, cheers.

Vitaly: Bye.

Hadelin: Bye bye.

Kirill: Awesome. Happy analyzing until next time. Bye.