[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer Podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I am lucky enough to be joined by Vladimir Baranov. he is a space guy, not a space. He has stuff in space, which is probably the coolest intro for any guest.

He's the coach. At Human Interfaces, aerospace, fintech, and coaching. It's an interesting combination. Vladimir, hello, how are you, my friend?

[00:00:50] Vladimir: Hi,glad to be here.

[00:00:52] Jay: so, I don't want to bury the lead too much, but, you have satellites in space right now, is that correct? Do

[00:01:02] Vladimir: that is true. As far as I know, Space Force hasn't called me this morning that they've been taken down.

[00:01:07] Jay: you have to, like, are you involved in that still? Or are you just like, you shot it up there and then you went somewhere else?

[00:01:13] Vladimir: I went somewhere else. but I do have, people who are, can call and check like, Hey, what's the temperature of that battery kind of

[00:01:18] Jay: Got it. Okay. All right. I'm just making sure I didn't, you know, I don't know what kind of rules there are in

[00:01:23] Vladimir: Yeah.

[00:01:23] Jay: all right. Well, where did you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:01:27] Vladimir: Yeah. So that's actually a big part of the story. I grew up in Russia. and left it at when I was 14 to come to the States. And, I think my first understanding of entrepreneurship was, very much formed during the turbulent nineties, of Russia time, where you would open up, newspapers and on the front of newspapers, you would always have, like, Some entrepreneur or some VP or some CEO was gunned down in front of their office.

And I was kind of thinking to myself, my teenage self, like, I don't think I want to do that. You know, like, like the whole dying thing with the bullets is not kind of my jam. So it's repressed the idea of starting my own company, but it was always kind of there in my mind. Like, how do you even do that?

Cause all the schools I went to do not talk about any of that. Like. moving to the States, slowly started changing that idea, in sense that I get to the thinking process that, okay, fine, I'll do something on my own, like I did in college, but I'm not going to charge people for it. It's just going to be super nice because open source and open community is so great.

People think how great I am and that's how I'll make my name. I build a book sharing website. I mean, concept is pretty simple. Probably there's so many, people who have attempted building that, where textbooks are so expensive. And so you buy used textbooks from others on campus.I think it went great.

there were about 7, 000 books that were entered as part of library for a 20, 000 people campus. I think it was quite a success. But again, I didn't charge anything. So it's a pro bono project. So I don't know, is it entrepreneurship or is like nonprofit intrapreneurship? So I guess that's, what is one of my bigger attempts to try doing something like that.

I actually had a more successful business, before that in the high school. we are, I would sell candy that I bought from Costco and I think my investment capital was about 100. And I think a total, and I ended up with 600 in revenue, after all said and done. but at some point I got too, I guess, cocky and, my box was confiscated and I was not allowed to sell.

Candy anymore because I tried peddling the sugar, during one of them, not essential classes, in my opinion, but yeah,

[00:03:36] Jay: created a library Genesis or lib Genesis or whatever that website, the Russian website for all the illegal book downloading. but that is not what you made. Well, so, so, tell me about how you got into aerospace. So is it just something you always kind of enjoyed doing, or is something you fell into, like what, what is, what led you there?

[00:03:54] Vladimir: yeah. So I think maybe if I started a little bit earlier, maybe to kind of share the story, it might make more sense. I ended up in finance a bit of by happy stance. I know your question was about space, but prior to that, I had about 15 years in finance, just because I was. It was my 4th, 5th year in the country, like kind of 1st generation immigrants.

So I don't know how things work here. You don't get a job is what I know is like you started making money, like pursue your dreams and aspiration. What are you talking about? so the jobs which were available in New York City were pretty much finance jobs, and that's what I went for. And that kind of generalize that.

Well, I, you know, I'm smart. I can solve the stock market, you know, like give me a couple of years. I'll become rich and everything's going to be great.didn't happen, but, I spent about eight years in capital markets being trading systems, but I learned something about small companies that I didn't want to stay at large companies anymore.

and after I completed my MBA, I decided to kind of quit cold Turkey and said like, okay, I'm young enough, but I'm not old enough. I don't have family yet. So I can take the risk to actually pursue the things that I want to pursue. And I started a company, peer to peer lending company with, with, with, with the same student from the same MBA program.

I spent about six months doing it. I didn't take off and try to do lending to the subprime, section of the population. There is a reason why their interest rates are so high there. Like a lot of people just are not able to pay back. And we thought we're going to solve that. But we're not able to do, especially in such a short period of time.

during that time, I met somebody else who was having some troubles getting their wealth management company going from technology perspective. And because I was in technology, I could help them. That ended up being somewhat successful. So we took it from two people to 150, sold it after seven years to, Franklin Templeton.

and it taught me all the different ways of how startups should and should not work. managing large teams, acquiring companies, selling companies, very great learning experience. Did I learn everything? No, but the first hand exposure is very important for anybody who is trying to get their first customer or tries to practice business.

It's, it's, an enormous experience over that time. I kind of. I realized that I made my first trajectory jump, right? So it went from finance, large company. I went to something small where I knew the outcomes of my work was visible right away, but then it kind of started gravitating a little bit away from finance.

It didn't feel as satisfying. And I thought that what other industries would I like to explore? Jump in and, figure out what is right for me. And I think this is where I used it tapped into my aspirations and dreams, into my previous experience and all the things that I have learned while at work.

I picked the aerospace. No, I don't have any aerospace background and I didn't, but I did have entrepreneurship background at that point. And I did have a software, software background. So I could do that. And I tried to. Position myself in a way. So like, let me find a company who probably are not able to pay for anybody full time.

but maybe pay me a little bit, but in exchange, I'll get a lot of experience in this new industry that I know nothing about. And I was, I started looking for small companies in industry and eventually I found one and I joined them as a third person to help them grow. We grew to, I think about 20, 25 people.

and over four years, we got a bunch of contracts from the government, which was fantastic. And we launched a couple of satellites again. Fantastic.but at some point I felt like a lot of work that I was doing was not in the same way that I thought I would be doing, aerospace, a very unique industry where you only have four or five clients and all of them really have the same boss.

And that's the American government and 90 percent of the contracts just go to the same place. So it's not the same dynamic market that it is outside in any other area. very few commercial opportunities like. There is a sense of commercial space where startups are selling to other startups, but in general, it's the same money being exchanged.

So in a sense, slightly different markets, slightly different thinking. And I felt like the impact and outcome of that was a little bit,it could have been brought from my understanding and my next kind of jump. And this is, so this is where I got to aerospaceand the next optimization that I started thinking about is like.

Well, all this great people, right? And, in engineering and scientists, they're doing all this great things. But I, as I was exposed in aerospace, I was exposed and, college and other institutions, but they struggled to take their product to the market, right? There's a problem with them. Selling it, getting market traction, understanding how the market works.

But I felt like I had at least some understanding how to do that. And I felt if I bring it to them, I would enable this great asset that humanity has and multiply the outcomes of my time and how I can be impactful in this world. And that's my transition to do the business coach role that I'm, practicing now, helping scientists, engineers and other tech founders build those efficient businesses in, with the use of technology, but also understanding how technology relates to the humans, because in the end, it's humans who make the purchasing decisions and not the technology on its own.

So that's the arc. It does answer your question about the aerospace, but like, that's the feel like the arc I was on so

[00:08:58] Jay: Yeah, no, that's great. Well, who was your first customer in the coaching business?

[00:09:02] Vladimir: Ooh, that's a good question. Now, ICF, International Coaching Federation, defines a customer, somebody you bargained with for your time and not necessarily just dollars. So we're going to clear the definition, dollars wise, I think it was,an aerospace student who wanted to enter aerospace.

and I basically coached them on the business of how aerospace works. And I got paid, I think 200 a night because it was. Son of a friend, I assume to make it a charitable contribution to one of the charities. So I'd say that was the first customer. Now, first person who I actually coach with the word they were not paying because like I just had to get to a specific number of hours of coaching to get certified.

and I think I found those at my MBA graduation. Sorry, not correct. Reunion, events. So I just am entering coaching practice. I'm looking for some first class to work with. It's complimentary. Would you like to work with me? And that was as simple as that is that like, it's a slightly different conversation when money is getting involved, but for complimentary sessions, that is as simple as that.

[00:10:02] Jay: And who did you go out? I mean, beyond the 200 student, who was the first, would you consider a real, you know, paying client for your coaching services

[00:10:10] Vladimir: Yeah. So that was, I think one of the first ones was a director, right? T of one of the nonprofits in New York. and, the, we're struggling with some of the chaos though. It is happening at their organization and that we had to work through, some of the interesting leadership problems up and down.

that existed in order for them to be more efficient and effective in their role. So that took, I think, six months since I started to get to close

[00:10:40] Jay: and how long you've been doing it until right now? That's coaching.

[00:10:43] Vladimir: total. Okay. So it's about two years, two

[00:10:46] Jay: And so, so who was your, who did you think your customer was when you first started or what do you think it was going to be? And who is it today?

[00:10:54] Vladimir: Good question. So in the beginning, and I think this story is probably very similar to others as I. Whoever pays you the money is your customer. So you just hope and stretch whatever truth positioning messaging you have to say, well, do you do this? But do you also work with grandmas who are like, maybe don't necessarily do anything business and it's 50.

I'm like, yes, of course I do that. but over time you realize that it's hard to pursue. Every single one of those opportunities because you have to mold your identity to more, unique set of promises or offers that you're making to the clients. And I, over time, have gravitated to, more technology oriented founders, scientists, engineers, and specifically focused on their business and executive function, in order to make them more successful.

[00:11:42] Jay: how have you. Changed your, marketing slash outreach slash lead generation slash getting new clients, like, what do you do today to get new clients?

[00:11:54] Vladimir: yeah, that's a good one. I'm still innovating. So like in a sense, I'm still looking for different things Right now I'm pursuing a strategy of having 15 to 18 different channels that I Pursue in different ways many of them are passive with coaching and There is a way to, there are platforms out there for coaches where you, as long as you have the certification, you can register and sort of, some of those leads come to you, but it comes also with caveat that some of those platforms have their own quirks, like you have to position certain keywords, certain pictures, certain profiles, you know, for those leads to be generated.

Now, I'm not saying that a lot, but I'm on a bunch of platforms and two, three, maybe leads come from them. so that, that's useful,conferences and any social events. I feel like I'm most effective because from coaching perspective, we're dealing with this particular issue where a lot of people who work with don't actually know what coaching is.

And, one of the ways to try to approach people with that service is actually one is to you in the conversation is try to figure out if there are any, sort of directions that the individual might want to work on and migrate into that conversation immediately as you're talking to them so they kind of understand the flow and understand what kind of thinking is being done, what kind of, the question exchange happens.

So they start feeling what coaching is. And so, and you hope after, like, Okay. I don't know, 20, 30 minutes of conversation. The person say, Oh, I get now what you're doing and this establishing the beach had and say, like, you know, I think I know somebody else who might be, you know, might use your services or might want to use your services.

And I actually might come back to you too later. that enables me to do that life. It's, it is limiting from online perspective because I cannot show people what they do unless they get on the call. but I would say the most effective one is in person.other methodologies and I try a few months, there's the warm LinkedIn where you kind of introduce, your current network that, Hey, I'm doing this right now.

would you like to try a complimentary,session or something else? And that sometimes works. I've tried a few cold approaches where it's a cold email or cold LinkedIn and they have a success ratio, but it's very low right now. And it, I think it's trending to even lower numbers. So eventually I kind of gave up.

I think on uptick, there is more LinkedIn participation because in the end, marketing is just getting eyeballs. And if you're a comment and do posts on LinkedIn, there is some conversion. I'm, this is like my week four of like doing active participation. I'm already noticing some changes. then there's the SEO.

I think that's also effective. Like, as long as you know what the market is looking for, like I always thought of myself as a founder coach, but what the CEO market showed me is that founder coach gets four clicks per month, and business coach gets. 10, 000 clicks per month and thus I'm a business coach.

Now that has nothing to do with actual thing that I do. I mean, does, but I have to speak the language of the market in order for the market to understand what services I'm providing and when the market speaks, like we're all listen.

[00:14:48] Jay: I love that. Yeah, I mean, cause it doesn't matter what you call it. It doesn't

[00:14:55] Vladimir: Exactly.

[00:14:55] Jay: matter what we think we do, if it doesn't match up. And we've, I mean, even in something that maybe you would think is super straightforward, like quality assurance or something that we do, like there's even caveats in the way that people search for that or describe that, or maybe they're using specific tools.

So they're not going to say QA consulting, they're going to say, you know, this specific tool consulting or whatever. So there's different ways to kind of get. You know some clicks. That's it. I like that point though It's kind of listen to what listen to how people are describing what you do As opposed to telling them and just being upset that not everybody's clicking on your founder you know your founder coach link when nobody's calling it.

That's a really good point you had to start over today from scratch knowing everything, you know, what would be step one?

[00:15:42] Vladimir: I'll probably go work for SpaceX.

[00:15:45] Jay: So no, no business. I

[00:15:48] Vladimir: No, forget that.

[00:15:49] Jay: I got it. I got it. Yeah, I got it.

[00:15:53] Vladimir: can you really ask him maybe differently? Like, cause

[00:15:55] Jay: yeah. So, knowing what, you know, now learning what you've learned so far over these two years, if you were going to go start a business slash founder coaching practice tomorrow, and you wanted to hit the ground running, what would be the first thing that you go do?

[00:16:10] Vladimir: I'll probably narrow down the positioning as fast as possible. I would probably, figure out my SEO strategy much faster as opposed to like wavering this way and this way, like just one thing

[00:16:21] Jay: And how would you do that? How would you, I mean, it's, it is a very, it's akin to like market research, right? It's this very like nebulous, like squishy things, like SEO, like what, but I mean, just from practical terms, what would you do?

[00:16:35] Vladimir: So, there is a practice that you can pursue, sorry, a method you can pursue where there's a bunch of tools like a traps and mods and like Simrush. Where it's the SEO tools, where you can see popular keywords around the topic that you want, let's say coach on, let's say entrepreneurship, you type in entrepreneurship and it tells you like what versions of that word people are looking for and how many hits you're getting.

And you can optimize either for your own interest. Like, I don't know. you're coaching women entrepreneurship and you focus on that and you're getting. 500 clicks per month. And that's what it is. Or you maximize your rich and you're trying to think like, well, I don't want to just focus on this subgroup.

I'm going to go a little bit broader. What are the, higher, keywords that could lead to, and you kind of maximize it and add them together and build identity out of those keywords. Maybe a little bit spice, maybe a little bit, not. But you go with a goal is just to hit those keywords very well on your website, on or your other profiles.

So probably start with that, like where it's market driven versus necessarily my skills driven, but it overlaps.

[00:17:37] Jay: I love that. I'm going to link those tools, in this episode. No. well, I think we could talk for a very long time and I definitely want to pick your brain about aerospace one day, because as most people know on the show, I'm a huge space nerd. So, thank you for being into space. No, thank you for sending more satellites in between me and the things in the cosmos, but you know, we won't, I won't hold that against you.

I have one more, non business related question. I am curious what your answer is going to be to this. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:18:05] Vladimir: That's a good question. I have this grand philosophy of whatever things we're doing per day. If you want to be purposeful, it's either for sustaining life or growing life beyond our planet. and I call it. I don't want to go, I call it pro life, but it's in a different meaning of it. Cause I feel like if you're not pro life, then you're anti life.

And what I want to be like when I wake up every morning, I don't want to be anti life today. I want to do whatever is possible to sustain life or grow life. And that's how I find my purpose. I think if we get rid of a little, a lot of suffering and provide a lot of opportunities to those who deserve, and those who maybe even don't deserve just through per share randomness and statistical probability, we're going to be a much more.

successful and, humane society because I feel like there is right now so many disconnects between how and who gets to appear on public media and social media and the realities on the ground. And I think there's so many opportunities to bring those together. Now, do I like competition and should there be a competition between different people having literally more, a little bit less?

Absolutely. It's healthy, but I think it's detrimental to the world to have such a wealth discrepancies. And if I could have done anything, my power, I would have fixed that.

[00:19:33] Jay: I love that. It's a great answer. All right. Well, there's just the, the final sign off between me, you and the weekend. So let's get through this. if people want to reach out to you about anything they heard today, your coaching services or anything is how do they find you? And then how do they find human interfaces?

[00:19:49] Vladimir: Yeah. So, the best way is to actually visit the website, human interfaces dot co, and you can look there for a complimentary session. and that would be the best way.

[00:19:58] Jay: Beautiful. All right, Vladimir. Well, Hey, you were a great guest. I love your story. I love the arc. You know, you can, can't help but think of a rocket launching into space with your arc though. but you've been great, man. we wish you the best of luck and let's stay in touch. All right.

[00:20:12] Vladimir: All right. Thank you so much for having me, Jay.

[00:20:14] Jay: You got it, brother. Have a good weekend, man. I'll talk to you.

[00:20:15] Vladimir: You too. Bye bye. 

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