My guest today is Ekaterina Solomeina who is the founder of the Future London Academy. In this episode, we discuss how Ekaterina discovered design as her calling, moving to London, getting the itch to do your own thing, birth of Future London Academy, choosing not to raise VC money, getting design experts onboard, customizing course syllabus to meet the customer needs, duplicating the Mckinsey consulting model in design, designing Bauhaus 2.0, using Slack to have alumni stay in touch, embracing being not a morning person, no meetings Wednesday, areas where design leaders can improve and much more! For show notes, guest bio, and more, please visit: www.designmba.show To learn how to launch your design side hustle, please visit my blog: www.blog.designmba.show Connect with me: https://twitter.com/jayneildalal www.linkedin.com/in/jayneil
Ekaterina Solomeina – creative director, educator, TEDx speaker and founder of Future London Academy. For the past 15 years, she has worked with some of the greatest creative minds alive, including Michael Wolff (founder of Wolff Olins), Donatella Versace and companies like Coca-Cola, Sony, Mars, IBM, Microsoft, Samsung – helping to grow brands, developing design teams and create innovative products. She co-wrote a book about British Design and has built and Bauhaus 2.0 programme at Future London Academy – rethinking what education of the future should look like. Future London Academy’s radically different approach to learning attracted a lot of attention from the design industry and has been featured in It’s Nice That, Abduzeedo, Creative Boom, Inc, AIGA, Dexigner, and others.
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Jayneil Dalal: Today's amazing guest is Ekaterina Solomeina. She's a creative director, educator, TEDx speaker and founder of Future London Academy. For the past 15 years, she has worked with some of the greatest creative minds online and companies like Coca-Cola, Sony, Mars (I love the chocolate), IBM, Microsoft, Samsung, helping to grow brands, developing design teams and creating innovative products. She co-wrote a book about British design and has built a Bauhaus 2.0 program at the Future London Academy, rethinking what education of the future should look like. Now, if you're a designer already working in the field, at times you hit this thing that we call the wall where you feel like you just can't figure out how to get to the next level like something's stopping me and you can't just figure out what it is and but you still want to grow in your career. Do yourself a favor and go to FutureLondonAcademy.co.uk and sign up for one of the amazing courses they have there. There are tons of courses on branding, design for managers. Check it out and tell them Jayneil sent you.
Ekaterina, thank you so much for coming on the show. Super excited to be chatting with you.
Ekaterina Solomeina: Thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure. And such a great name for the podcast. I was really excited to be on the show today.
Jayneil: You're in London right now, I’m assuming. Correct?
Ekaterina: Yes, I am.
Jayneil: So, I have to ask you. I’m a huge soccer fan. I am unfortunately an arsenal fan and we finally won something. So, do you follow soccer?
Ekaterina: We call it football, as you know, but no, I’m not really a huge fan. I support Manchester United just because my friend supports Manchester United but I’m not really like a core fan. Can't discuss any football news unfortunately.
Jayneil: I’m dying to ask have you been to one of the stadiums? I’m assuming it's nearby.
Ekaterina: Not really, no. I mean there are many but really not my thing.
Jayneil: Completely understand. I haven't been to London yet and it's my dream, someday, but when I come there …
Ekaterina: Definitely. Come say hi. London is an incredible city for anyone who does anything creative and that's the reason why I moved here 12 years ago as well because seriously, inspiration is everywhere, on the street, in the air, in the building. So, definitely the best place to be if you're doing any sort of creative job.
Jayneil: And where did you move from?
Ekaterina: I was born in Russia. I was born in a very cold city called Yekaterinburg. Then I moved to Moscow and then I moved to the UK.
Jayneil: And were you always involved with design from a young age?
Ekaterina: I had a very strange, I suppose, story because I studied Physics and Math and I was supposed to be a programmer. And after finishing Physics and Math school, I went to uni to study C, C++. I was quite good at it, I suppose. I’m good with Math in general but I wasn't really enjoying it. I kind of caught myself getting good grades but not having the passion for it. So, when I was finding a bug in the code for the whole night and remember, it was our final project and I really wanted to make it like amazing and I just literally couldn't find a bug and it was really frustrating, this was before Facebooks and before proper social media. So, I was just sending ICQ links to my friends across the world to fix me this thing that we were building. And in the morning, we found the bug and actually fixed it and everything was good and I just sat there and thought “This is not what I want to do with my life. This is just not how I see myself doing things.” So, at that point, I was already doing some freelance on the side and, I suppose, web design was just starting back then and kind of I did the whole CD and multimedia kind of projects. At that point CDs was a thing.
Jayneil: Yeah, I remember.
Ekaterina: So, I always knew I wanted to do something creative but I had that “You need to study design to do design.” So, I never felt like I was a proper designer if I didn't have a degree or a course and I also couldn't draw. So, essentially, what I did after I finished that project, during summer I went to the art school for the foundation, kind of summer school or something like that.
Jayneil: And you were still in Russia.
Ekaterina: Yeah. So, in Russia, I was doing like academic drawing, all the really tough stuff and I kind of got better at just normal, I suppose, traditional painting, nowhere near good but better than zero, which was a huge achievement. And that kind of gave me confidence that actually I can potentially have that as a career. And eventually, I changed my school. So, I went to a different university to study design. So, that's when, essentially, I discovered that it can be a profession and I got my first job while I was still at uni. I was doing two degrees at the same time and I had two full-time jobs to support those degrees. That was quite fun and definitely I enjoyed every single day of it. It was hard. I think the longest I went without sleep was five days like zero sleep, maybe 30-second naps here and there, but literally no lying down. And it was still fun. I think I was young. I just wanted to do it. I was so passionate about design and that's how I knew that's the right thing because never ever for a second, I felt like I’m exhausted. Sometimes, I was just tired physically but I would still want to do design, I would still have ideas, I would still draw, I would still do things. I could do it all night and day long. And that's when I thought “Well, it's clearly what I like doing. So, why would I do something else?” Eventually, after I graduated and because I already had some experience, I worked in a couple of different companies. At that point, in Russia, design wasn't a thing yet. So, no one actually knew what branding is or graphic design. Design was one thing and that involved advertising, that involved branding, web design. Everything was just design. So, I actually was very lucky because I worked in very, very different places. I worked as an art director in an advertising agency called Lowe, kind of a big international agency, doing TV commercials. I worked in a digital design studio doing websites. And I think that was just the beginning of apps era. And then I also worked in branding and creating identities. And again, no one ever questioned that these are kind of three very separate areas. So, when eventually I moved to London, I actually had …
Jayneil: Why did you move to London?
Ekaterina: It's an amazing city. I always wanted to live in London. As you mentioned in the beginning, you just have that thought. Even though you've never been there, you know kind of what the city will be like. And when I was, I think, seven years old or something, when I was very young, I’m a big fan of Winnie the Pooh, so I would read Winnie the Pooh and obviously, he is English and he lived in the forest and all of these things just sounded magical to me. So, always knew England is my place. So, when I was actually graduating from school and my parents asked me where I wanted to study, I said “I want to go to Oxford” and they were like “You can't really go to Oxford. You actually have your local uni and that's your own option. So, we were more asking like do you want to do Physics, do you want to do Math. These are your options. It's not really about Oxford.” So, only later I learned that actually you need a lot of money and a lot of connections to actually get into good schools, which eventually I managed to get. And, again, I suppose, we all can get what we want. Some people get it early in their life, some people get it later in their life but if we all work hard and towards our goals, we can get there. It's just if we were starting from a bit of a further start then, it will take some of us a bit longer to get there but it's all possible.
Jayneil: And I’m jealous of you, for the record, because I suck at Math and Physics like the differential equations and stuff, oh my lord! That will give me all the nightmares. So, you're coming to now the UK. And did you end up going to Oxford or going to a university here for design?
Ekaterina: No, I wish.
Jayneil: Because that's a lot of degrees then.
Ekaterina: I think I went to the University of Hertfordshire which is definitely not the best university, I have to say, for design but it was a step up from being in wherever I was back then. And for me, the goal was to move to the UK. So, actually, it worked out at the end and it gave me space to experiment and find the job. So, I managed to do the exchange program. So, I only came for the last year. So, I graduated here and that's essentially was my kind of the third degree. So, at that point, I found a job and started working and essentially, I had to start from the very beginning even though in Russia, at that time, I already it felt like I had a career. Now that I look at it, maybe it wasn't that long of a career, but when you're young, everything feels like you already achieved everything you could and you're so amazing. So, it was very hard psychologically to start from the very beginning again and having some sort of job, not necessarily the one that you enjoy, but at least I was doing design, at least they provided me a work visa so I could stay in the country. So, again, I started bit by bit, bit by bit building my career back and it took 12 years and here I am.
Jayneil: Wow! I struggled just to manage to get one degree and my parents are very thankful for it. And here you got three degrees. So, you built your career up after 12 years as a design director. Things are going well. Life's good. And suddenly, you're like “I’m going to drop all of this and start a school.” What was going through your head?
Ekaterina: It wasn't really a sudden moment. I feel like every time anyone tells a story, it all feels so logical but in the middle of it, it never feels very logical or makes any sense. So, at that point, finally, I got to better jobs and I actually was working with Michael Wolff the founder of [inaudible], incredible person, human being and my big hero. He's now, I think, 87 years old and is just an amazing brand legend. So, for me, working with him gave me a lot of perspective for what design is, what branding is, and what industry is. I also worked in couple of really great companies and, again, I learned from a lot of people there, a lot of agencies that we collaborated with. So, suddenly, after all these years of not being in the industry, I suddenly was in the middle of it. And I had lots of connections. I met lots of people. I worked with some of the most incredible minds and kind of was in that community of designers in London. And I realized that there are other people like me who potentially would want to have that access, who were essentially me many years ago, not having single connection or not having access to all these incredible talented people and their wisdom and their thoughts. So, originally, we just wanted to build a place where you could get inspired from the actual people who are doing things. So, that's how we started seven years ago. And it was a side project. I still had a full-time job as a creative director and it was just a thing that we wanted to do with my former colleague and we started running this one week programs that people will come to London from all around the world and they will learn from all these agencies here and we would go to their offices, we would have teas and coffees with them, we would learn from their teams how they work with clients, how they approach projects. It was so much fun. It was incredible and everyone enjoyed it. And that's why we kept doing it just because it was fun for us. And for me, I was learning so much from all these agencies because I had one job but it felt like I worked in hundred different companies because I could learn from hundred different companies. And there was Spotify, there was Pentagram, there was like all these agencies and companies that I admire and I could just learn from them. So, that felt also very magical and you didn't need to quit your job to learn from them as well, which is again a very interesting concept. So, eventually it started growing and growing and it got to the point where it couldn't be a side project anymore. And at that point, I quit my job and started doing it full time, we grew a team. And from there, I think, it took off because we started having clients who would come to us and say “This is amazing what you guys are doing. It's a completely different way of learning. It's very immersive. You learn directly from the industry. Can you do something like that for our team? We have 15 people and they want to learn that way. They don't want to go to a boring course or something like that.” So, that's how we started growing with more clients and now we work with some of the most, again, amazing companies. We work with Mars globally. We work with Tik-Tok. We had Ministry of Thailand who would send all their ministers to learn this way at Future London Academy. So, it's amazing where this kind of original side project took us. So, eventually we landed to this new executive program for design leaders that I’m sure we'll talk about today, which is essentially a new stage in everything that we are doing and it’s come from my personal frustration how difficult it is to be a creative director or at any senior position in the creative industry without understanding the business side and all the other things that you want to learn.
Jayneil: So, Future London Academy, at the grassroot level, is basically to level up designers who are stepping into leadership positions, who may not have had exposure to get MBAs or talk to business. And once you launched this program, in the early years, did you ever think about raising venture capital or some kind of funding or why did you decide to keep it bootstrapped?
Ekaterina: It never even occurred to me, I have to say. I think growing up in Russia, we didn't have credit cards. It’s just they didn't exist. The concept of borrowing money never existed. And actually, I had one business before starting Future London Academy. So, I tried to create a design agency which was a completely different story and it was a fun experience and definitely learned a lot from that but even then, it was always saving up money and using your own money. And with Future London Academy, I was lucky to have quite a good salary at full-time job. So, I saved enough money before quitting my full-time job to make sure that next couple of years can be successful and I didn't need to stress about making money immediately or making a lot of money immediately. We were already profitable at that point. So, that wasn't an issue. I think with any service-based models, I have to say bootstrapping is always the best because you always generate money that you can put back into business. It's a different story when you need to build software up front. That, again, requires a lot of labor and you can't have an MVP before you actually build something. So, you need to pay salaries. You need to pay top people. We were much luckier because our model is very different.
Jayneil: So, now, you've got 200 plus speakers now from some of the top companies in the world but starting out, you're trying out this new model, how did you convince all these speakers or all these teachers to come on board and teach at Future London Academy? Were they getting some kind of equity model? Did they get paid or was it just like “This is the vision and we want you to come invest in it?”
Ekaterina: Sure. So, when we originally started with these one-week programs, as I said, it was a fun side project. So, at that point, I was just asking essentially my friends in the industry because, as I said, I built a good network back then and I was just asking people that I knew that I interacted with or worked with or their friends or whoever they could recommend to be involved because I knew the value they can bring. And I was surrounded by people who were up for it and some of them had fees, some of them wanted to hire talent, some of them, again, they had different reasons for doing it. Some just really wanted to meet these people from around the world and just see what they're like and ask them questions. So, there were different reasons. And I’m obviously super grateful for these first agencies and first people who believed in us when we didn't have a company, we didn't have anything to prove that this will be an enjoyable experience for either side and somehow they agreed to host people in their own agencies, to give people teas and biscuits and spend their time and be generous with their thoughts and very open. I think that's another thing that was very unique from the beginning with all the programs that we do. Everyone is very honest because we always run experiences for very, very small groups, which means that it's not a conference where you're on a stage in front of 2000 people and you try to be your best self and only show you have case studies and how your life is amazing. Suddenly, you're with the peers who have similar years of experience as you and challenges they have are very, very similar to challenges that you have in your business. So, there is no reason to lie, to hide. And actually, people get suspicious if you only share your successes. So, all our experts and speakers and mentors started sharing their failures, their challenges, how they work with clients, how something didn't work out very well and how they got out of it and that made it very real and very honest. And sometimes, we have to sign NDAs and all the things that essentially, they share, we can't share externally because that learning happens in everyone's head and you go away with learning. You don't go away with a piece of information you're going to use somewhere. It's what you learn from that and how you will apply that in your own business but I think the new program which is a year program is even a level up from that and kind of how we learn from all these years of experience of what does it mean to learn from someone and how we can build a holistic program from that. That was a fun journey as well.
Jayneil: So, let's just talk a little bit about the different offerings. And you might have to correct me if I get this wrong. You have the corporate training which is if companies want you to come on site and custom tailor a program for them, you've got that. Then you've got the short courses which might be about branding or design, just like a short one-week or two-week courses for people to come in. And then you've got the new one that you're launching which is the Bauhaus 2.0. So, can you just briefly talk about all three of them?
Ekaterina: Sure. So, I’ll start with the short courses because that's what we started our business with, these one-week programs. They used to be face-to-face in London. Now, we also do them online. And it's a really great experience for anyone who has 10, 15 years of experience in the industry and wants to learn something new. So, you're already very good at what you do but you want to level up, you want to get inspired by other people what they're doing in much more depth than any conference can do but in much more fun way than any course will ever do. So, it's somewhere kind of in between that inspiration and knowledge where you actually enjoy it but also learn something new for your work, frameworks, processes, all the other things that will be useful. And those we have on branding, on UX, on innovation, so kind of all the topics that modern design led companies need to have.
Jayneil: And one quick question there is if I’m coming there for that one-week program and I’m trying to level up. So, I might have a different pain point or weak point that I’m trying to improve on. Maybe my thing is that I’m not good at maybe managing people, for example. Somebody else might be something different. So, how do you, in that course, identify that out of these 10 or 12 students, each one has a different need that they want to work on? How does that happen?
Ekaterina: Good question. Because of that, it's not really kind of a traditional course where it's a very strict curriculum and you learn only one thing. So, the whole week is essentially every day you have several master classes from agencies and teams. And each of these weeks is curated with someone from the industry. So, we always collaborate with someone. Let's say we're creating a new UX and product design week and we collaborate with head of UX or head of product design from some great company and he or she tells us “Okay, right now I want to learn what does it mean to change your entire design system?” or “How can I build research ops?” or whatever that is and what are the topics that currently they are struggling with they want to learn about. And based on that, we select experts who will cover it, companies who are doing it well, and we create the whole program based on that but you're right, everyone comes with a very different pain point, with different experience. No two people will ever be the same with kind of same questions. And that's why we always have enough time for Q&As and all of these discussions are very thought provoking and you can always bring your own challenge saying “Well, I use this process but this is where it doesn't work. I try doing it with my team but this way it breaks.” And then our experts and mentors always say “Okay, this is what we did. This is who we hired. This is how we changed it around to make it work.” So, it becomes very personal rather than kind of a very traditional conference setup where you kind of have 30 seconds to ask your question and get somebody to answer.
Jayneil: And that too in front of everybody.
Ekaterina: Yeah, exactly. So, that's essentially how we built it. So, we have a core structure that we built from our personal expertise and with collaborating with experts what's needed for this state of the industry. And then on top of that, we have enough time for Q&As and discussions to make sure that everyone gets out what they came here for.
Jayneil: And usually, the goal is to get the companies to pay for the employees or employees pay themselves or it doesn't matter?
Ekaterina: It's a mix of both. Some people pay for themselves. Some people are paid for by their companies.
Jayneil: Okay. And then the second one is obviously where you just go on site to a company and just custom tailor the course to their needs.
Ekaterina: Correct, yeah. And we deliver programs around the world. So, anywhere from Brazil to China to Russia to Germany. It's really fun and we always collaborate with local experts there. And, again, the same principle. We never get any professors, coaches and there would never be a person who’s just a theoretical someone who can talk about things. It's always about practitioners who are doing these things that can teach how they do them. Sometimes, people come to London. So, sometimes, actually it's a good kind of off-site thing of companies bringing their teams to London and then, again, it becomes quite similar format to our one-week programs but could be one day, two days. It can be customized.
Jayneil: Now, if, let's say, a company in India wants you to just come there and do that executive training, how would that go about? Because, I mean, if somebody comes to London, obviously you've got all the agencies you know and you can get their people to come there but if you're going to India, you can't just take all those agency people with you to India. So, in that case, would it be your team members that teach the course but you also mentioned that you try to get the local experts there? So, can you just talk a little bit about that like how would you go about doing that?
Ekaterina: Sure. So, we would actually fly people in again before the world became very different but we would fly anywhere and we would fly experts from London, from US, from wherever we think are the best experts on that particular topic. We'll fly them to the location. So, that's one model when specifically people are interested in something very precise from the companies here or we get local experts. So, if, for example, we're teaching innovation course for one of the clients and that's across the world and it's a two-day workshop, that is led by innovation experts. So, the curriculum has been created by the industry together with the industry and now is scaled over 20 locations of that company. And so, even though the curriculum is the same, it's still always delivered by a local experts who can share stories on top of it, who can share their personal experience and struggles and whenever someone asks a question beyond the content of this two-day program of like “Well, what if this happens? What if we don't have time to do this?”, they always have an answer from their personal experience that is also much more valuable for the local culture, for the local environment because they know where this person is coming from.
Jayneil: Wow! So, in a way, it's like you always got this freelance model in a way of all these experts around the world that can just treat this as a way to share their experience and also in a way like a gig where they can go in and fly with you and teach the program there and then you're able to deliver that experience. That's just amazing.
Ekaterina: I don't think we invented anything new there. I think companies like McKinsey and the whole model of having associates, I think, that's essentially what it is. You have associates around the world who are experts in their fields and you just collaborate with them when you need to. And all the other time, they're crafting their expertise, they're working on their own projects and that's how they always stay up to date.
Jayneil: Wow! And then the final one would be the big upcoming one, the Bauhaus 2.0.
Ekaterina: Yeah, this is something that I just can't wait to start. It's something we've been working for the past couple of years on and it came from my personal story as well as stories from everyone that came to our previous programs. Essentially, when you have at least 15 years of experience, you usually get to a certain position or a job title whether it's creative director, chief creative officer, essentially you're now not just doing design but you're also in charge of people in charge of making strategic decisions, business decisions or you might be running your own company as well and, again, now you need to understand Operations and Finance and everything else. And you suddenly realize that you have that gap in your knowledge because you've been learning everything about design all these years. And, yes, you pick up things about management and leadership as you go but you never had a proper structured approach about it. And I personally found it very difficult to understand all financial terms to talk to the Finance team in the way that they will understand as well as make the right decisions on behalf of the company because you need to not just think about the design side of things but Operations and business strategy and everything else in a bigger context of the company. So, essentially, I wanted to go to study somewhere and it’s not really an MBA and that's why I love the name of your podcast which is Design MBA because that's essentially what I was looking for, a place where I could learn all these business skills but I didn't want to learn from old school teachers who haven't been in the industry for 20 years. And also, I’m not planning to build a traditional business either. So, I want to learn how to run creative businesses. I want to understand how to run tech and innovative businesses and same as everyone who I spoke to. So, essentially, we thought “Well, maybe we should create that place ourselves” and that's how the executive program for design leaders came about. And we created the curriculum that essentially is a replacement for a traditional executive MBA and we have modules on Finance and Operations and kind of all the heavy stuff, Legal and Sales but it's, first of all, by practitioners. So, we have the legal team talking about legal. We've got people from Spotify talking about accessibility. We get Finance people from TransferWise talking about financial control and finance. So, all these topics, you learn actually from people who are doing it in modern innovative design-led companies. So, that's what essentially that is and it has been a fun journey creating it. And, obviously, it has a lot of leadership topics and management topics. We collaborated with a lot of psychologists to create the whole human module, essentially how can we understand ourselves better, what motivates us, how we focus, how we lead, what does it mean to be a leader and who are we as a leader because we never actually have time to properly explore it throughout our careers. So, yeah, it has been a fun journey. And now this program launches in October and it only accepts 20 people. So, we've got over 600 applications for it. It kind of proved that it is something that is needed in the industry and people did value our approach of learning directly from people who are doing it and having a curriculum that is relevant for the modern time.
Jayneil: Wow! There are just so many questions I’m trying to ask you because my head is like this is just insane what you've created and I’m just trying to like understand all these things they probably know like one of the things was if you're getting somebody from Spotify to talk about accessibility or something specific, is there ever a concern that maybe Spotify would not be okay with their head of design talking about this or they have to get some kind of written approval like “You can talk about this but not about this” even if it's in person, not recorded.
Ekaterina: Absolutely. So, with every company, and that's why our team expanded because there are lots more contracts, a lot more legal work that we have to do now. Part of it is just every company has their own policy of how they collaborate and they just tell us what they're comfortable with and we are happy to work with them. Again, for us, as I mentioned before, we can sign any NDA. That's absolutely fine as long as people leave with knowledge. They don't need to leave with particular details as long as they leave with learnings from it, how they can do something and how they can apply all of this to their work and life. So, yes, some people ask us to sign NDAs. Some actually really like to have these discussions and get insights from these people from around the world because those people are also incredibly amazing. I was doing interviews with probably every company you can imagine. So, people applied from Netflix, from Google, from Facebook, from small companies, from startups, from a variety of organizations. So, the 20 people who will be on the program, they are the best of the best in the world. So, who wouldn't want to be in the room with them? It's incredible.
Jayneil: Yeah. And then you've got some amazing lineup of speakers. I saw Morgane Peng was there. And I actually had a chance to interview her on the show as well. So, do you personally vet all these people that you want? Is there a list of people you want to come on in the program and teach or is it referral or you kind of talk with them and see if they're a good fit or not?
Ekaterina: Again, that kind of came with all the years of experience that we had running the programs. So, we know quite a lot of people in the industry. So, we knew who to go to for specific things as well as we do our own research on topics that we're interested in. So, essentially, how we structure the program, each of this module has a curator. So, a curator, similar to our shorter programs, is someone who is an industry expert who is doing that right now. So, for example, the Finance module was curated by CFO of Qubit, Jamie, an incredible person, really fun person to work with. He said “Okay, if you want to learn something useful about Finance, these are the things that you need to learn in a tech company, in a design-led company. These are the things that are relevant. So, there are lots of things that you can learn about finance but not all of them are relevant. And also, you're not planning to become a Finance expert. You're planning to become a company owner or a design leader who understands all the financial bit.” So, essentially, each curator decides on the topic and then they either recommend someone that they think would be amazing for each of these topics or we do our own research in terms of like “Okay, if we need to talk about Logistics and Operations and kind of that particular technology in Logistics, then these are the types of companies that are really good at and this is the type of person who would be the best to talk about it.” And luckily, through these years, we built a really great brand that when we reach out to someone, people are really, really interested in collaborating with us. Actually, we had a comment from someone that is like “Oh, my colleagues were so jealous because I was invited to speak on the program because it's an honor” and it's obviously good feedback for us that all this hard work that we put throughout these years actually now is paying off in in good reputation and good relationships.
Jayneil: Is there like a Slack group or some kind of communication channel for all the ex-alumni and all the speakers to keep in touch after the program?
Ekaterina: Good question. So, we’re actually about to create a Slack group for alumni because what we used to do is, we actually had WhatsApp groups for each of the cohorts. So, they would still talk and I’m in all of those WhatsApp groups and it's amazing. They travel to each other's countries, they do projects together, they share photos from their offices. It's a lot of fun. They do stay in touch and we're really, really proud of the community we built and kind of our mission is to connect creative communities around the world and give them knowledge and inspiration to make the world better. So, the community aspect was there from the beginning, something that we always wanted to have and to do. And in every program, we always bring people together and they stay in touch afterwards. And especially for this year-long program inspired by Bauhaus, that's even more important for us to make sure these 20 leaders, they rule the world and they do great things together because they will be taught and mentored by the best, best, best in the industry. So, obviously, they will have powers to do great things but we are thinking now of kind of combining all these groups into a Slack channel also for people to cross-pollinate between each cohort and stay in touch.
Jayneil: Wow! And you're doing so many things. How big is your current Future London Academy team that's working with you?
Ekaterina: We are very small. There are only 10 of us and we work with a lot of contractors and freelancers. So, depending on the day and the projects, obviously, our team can be much bigger but this is kind of the core people that we work with.
Jayneil: You're doing the program. You're there in all the programs. I’ve seen photos and videos. And then you're doing your own podcast too. Somebody's got to keep up with the Instagram followers and all that. So, what does a day look like in your life? What does the schedule look like?
Ekaterina: Mad. I am not a morning person. So, I don't wake up early. And I always hope that it will change at some point in my life. I don't think it will. I’m most productive at night and I kind of made my peace with it that I should use my life as it is rather than trying to …
Jayneil: I’m yet make peace with it.
Ekaterina: And, actually, I now structure my day. So, when we were all kind of working normally, our work day was 11 to 7. So, that way, the team could avoid traffic. So, you kind of come in without being squeezed on a bus or on a train for 11 o'clock. And some people are morning people. So, they would go to the gym and do everything beforehand and, again, they come very fresh at 11. And 7 is not too late to kind of finish the day as well. And, again, we're very flexible. Obviously, if someone wants to shift their hours and days or anything, that's absolutely fine. And now, obviously, it's even more flexible with everyone working from different places. So, in that sense, I prefer to come in just a bit earlier. So, I would usually come in for 10 or 9. Again, I can prepare for the day like plan all the things that I need to do. And I live at a 10-minute walk from the office. The best decision I’ve ever made in my life probably is moving close to the office because I work late and I was just wasting too much of my time on the trains and taxis and all these things. So, when I moved close, it just became such a nice experience of coming to the office and going home. It's just no stress. You come fresh. You still have your energy to do anything you want. So, it's amazing. So, I come in at 9, 10 and prep for the day. I always start my day with a coffee. I can't survive without coffee. And we are based at WeWork. So, we have incredible barista here. And, again, he makes good coffee. So, my day starts with that. I check emails. So, I try to check my emails not more than three times a day. So, that's another thing that really helped me to keep my sanity. And if something, obviously, if it's a special day that we're waiting for something or something big is happening, I might be checking more but in general, I keep my kind of emails in these batches and either in the morning or evening, I will be replying and then I have another check-in just to see if something urgent came in. And then it would be the day with the team. Mondays we have team meetings. So, we'll discuss our plans and then keep working. I think, every day can be different. Fridays I usually keep for meetings. So, my Friday, I’m usually out the whole day or on Zoom the whole day, depending on the situation, and uh to just keep calls after calls. I have Wednesdays without meetings which is, again, something that I fairly recently, I think it has been maybe half a year since we started that in the team and I found out that we did not invent it. Apparently, that's a thing in Silicon Valley. Everyone has Wednesdays as a no-meeting day. And actually, it's massively helpful because this is the day when you can do deep work without any interruption. So, even internal meetings, we don't have for Wednesdays like literally no meetings are allowed. So, whatever you need to do, whether it's a big one-day thing that you need to dive into, you can do that. And it also resets your mind quite well because you're constantly between the things other days while Wednesday you can actually focus on one thing, which is great. And I try not to finish too late but I would finish maybe around 8, 9 p.m. and I’ll have a break and then go home. And sometimes, I would work from home afterwards like from 12 till 2. Now, I’m trying to sleep a bit more. So, I might [inaudible] at 12 but it depends on the day. And sport is very important. Also, every day, I do sports at lunch time. I don't have lunch. I feel too sleepy after lunch. So, I never have lunch and I actually do sports instead.
Jayneil: What sports do you play?
Ekaterina: Everything and anything. So, I do Muay Thai. I’m really into rope skipping which became a recent thing. I do all sorts of dances. I used to be a dancer when I was young. So, I keep doing now all sorts of anything from street dance to seriously cheerleading, all sorts of strange things. And then any sort of exercise, spinning, running, anything.
Jayneil: I am a horrible dancer. And last year, I think, I spent about a year just to get a little bit decent and I joined some hip-hop classes and some Salsa classes and just trying to work on the beat and trying to figure that out.
Ekaterina: That’s so cool. Did you like it?
Jayneil: It was fun. I think what I found out through that was Salsa was not my scene. I mean, the way it kind of works is, as a guy, you have to know how to lead and then if you're not good, then nobody wants to dance with you but with hip-hop, it was this individuality like individual contributor type of role like computer design where you're not relying on somebody like you're doing you and it's like the classes were like a mix of Zumba. So, I think I found that really enlightening and really just cool thing to just hang out around.
Ekaterina: Oh, absolutely. I think everyone needs to find their own activity. And people who say that they're not active people are not sports people, they just haven't found their thing, seriously. There are so many things you can do. Some people just prefer Yoga and Pilates. Some people prefer dancing. We have proper circus classes in my gym as well. So, you can do trapeze as well, which is mad. I tried a couple of times, got lots of bruises but it's fun and it's something different. And seriously, there are so many things everyone can do that I would encourage everyone to just search for weirdest classes and exercises they have in the area and just try everything.
Jayneil: No, absolutely, I agree with you. One of the things I remember, one of your courses was, and these are just some off-handed questions that's coming to my mind, one was that you take part of the cohort to California and have them interact with the VC firms. Can you just talk a little bit more about that and part of it is because I’m always curious about the VC scene? So, I’m just kind of curious like how did you reach out to the VCs and build this out.
Ekaterina: Sure. So, you're talking about our executive program for design leaders inspired by Bauhaus. And essentially, each module of that program is built around a certain topic. And for those who haven't been on our website and don't understand what I’m talking about, it's a year program but it's split into five modules. Each of them is two weeks. So, essentially, you don't take the whole year off. You only travel for two weeks at a time. And then one of the modules is in California. It's a one-week module and that one is particularly focused on startup and VC ecosystem. And that one, obviously, it was a part of how we thought about what skills creative directors and business owners and anyone who works in innovation, design and technology needs. Obviously, they need to understand the whole ecosystem. Everyone or majority of us will either have to raise money, their companies might be acquired, they might sell their companies or they might be in the companies that will merge or will be buying other companies. So, we will face one sort of scenario most likely during our career, which means acquiring or being acquired or investing or being invested in. So, that's very important to understand what the relationship is like, what the scene is like and what VCs are looking at, what big corporations are looking at when they are acquiring companies, investing in companies as well as what does it look like for startups to be acquired and merged. So, we built the curriculum around the brief of acquiring a startup. So, essentially, during this week, the cohorts will need to acquire or invest in a startup and they will have a brief from one big company, I won't name it yet, but it's a big tech company that mainly focuses on B2B software. They acquire a lot of startups. So, they will be giving a real brief of the company or the type of company they're interested in acquiring. And the task will be during the week to meet lots of startups. And by that time, the cohort will already have the Finance module. They'll understand what to look at as well as, throughout the week, they will be meeting VCs and meeting angel investors, so people who constantly invest in startups.
Jayneil: Can ask a few names of which VC firms or angel investors, if you don't mind?
Ekaterina: I will keep it a secret for now. We will be announcing it very soon. So, maybe by the time the podcast comes out, we’ll already have the names on the website. Let's put it that way. There are very big well-known names involved there that I personally can't wait to meet and learn from.
Jayneil: And I had to like dig into detail, how did that interaction go? Let's say, I’m just going to pick a name, let's say Accel VC firm. If you were to get them on board, how did the conversation go? Did you already have a contact in the UK that connected you with them and then you pitched the idea? How did you make it happen?
Ekaterina: That's another great thing about all these seven years of our work that we’ve built an incredible global network. And that's why we talk about community so much because we’ve not just built a London community and kind of became part of the London community but we’ve also interacted with so many people throughout our life across the world, people from Googles and Facebooks and Amazons like literally everyone on planet and California is a big part of it. Throughout our programs we have lots of people coming from California. So, we actually knew quite a lot of people there and we collaborated with one of them to build the program. Again, we'll follow with more details. There will be official announcements coming soon. They're partners essentially with the company and they're helping us to build the whole curriculum and they have also lots of connections with VCs and help us with introductions but in general, it's all about connections, seriously. I think it is true about London and building your career here. It is true about building a business. It's true about actually doing anything in life. The more people you know, the easier and better whatever you do will be.
Jayneil: I could not agree more. One of my sponsors always told me early on “Jayneil, it's all about who you know” and the way he phrased that, it was a little bit crude but it was so true, he just said “It's all about who you know and who you got to please and if you understand that, you can go miles and miles ahead.” And I do want to change a little bit of gears by saying that you've encountered so many design leaders that have come to level up. So, if I had to ask you what are some of the areas that design leaders, after a certain point in their career, get stuck and where they need leveling up on? And maybe you can give examples of some stories.
Ekaterina: Sure. I think the overall theme is very similar. So, a lot of creative people want to know more about Finance and business side of things because this is something we've been exposed the least to throughout our creative careers and I can definitely relate to that during my creative career that all I knew about Finance that I need to submit invoices on time and if I need a budget for the project, I’ll send it for approval and either it will get approved or not. That's all I knew. And when you get to a higher level, you need to have much more strategic conversations and you're part of the budgeting teams. And this is where you either don't understand enough what's going on and you constantly feel like you don't want to sound stupid, so sometimes you don't ask the questions, sometimes even when you ask questions, the answers still don't give you the full picture of what is this budgeting process and what all these different words mean. So, one is just understanding lots and lots of business things that now are more than ever important for creative leaders. There is this whole conversation about how design is now getting to the C-level, the idea of CDO – chief design officers – the idea of, again, McKinsey Report where design-led businesses outperform any other type of organizations by 200%. So, it's like all of these things now are proven that design needs to be at the top level but a lot of people are not equipped with everything they need to know when they're at that level. And some people, again, learn as they go and I think that's always a good way but sometimes it's more efficient to just learn from the best as fast as you can and make the right decision without making old mistakes and learning from them. So, Finance is one area, Finance, Operations, business side.
Another thing is human side. And I think even if you meet an incredibly wise successful leader, they will always still struggle with the same things we all struggle with. And they could be mental things. They could be things about their own brains and souls and everything. It could be about other people and how to build cultures, how to build teams that are performing, that are inspired, that are motivated. Humans, unfortunately are not easy to learn and easy to understand. I don’t know anyone who mastered that to the highest levels. There are people obviously who are much, much better than others and it's kind of different grades. That's the area that I’m the most focused on myself right now. I’ve got a coach as well who helps me a lot to understand different …
Jayneil: Like your own coach.
Ekaterina: Yeah. And probably the best. Another very good decision that I’ve made. And she has a degree in Psychology. So, she talks more from the Psychological level of what people think and what people might feel and that helps me to understand how to build better teams, which is great
Jayneil: I’ve never had a coach. I mean, I have had a sponsor and a mentor but not in a formal capacity as a coach. So, what would you say is the difference between just getting a mentor and, I guess, working exclusively with a coach?
Ekaterina: You need both. And I also always had mentors and they're incredibly helpful. I think having a mentor and having a good one especially, having a few one as well because every mentor is always limited by their own experience, so having a few people that you can just ask questions, it's better than anything. Coach is more precise. And I don't think it's always the right time to get a coach. Mentor, I think, it's always like the right time to have a mentor at any stage of your career. Coach is a bit more precise when you get stuck and you want answers about very certain things and you need someone to work through those things with you. And, for me, it was understanding how we can create a better team and work better and not all work because I’m definitely on the hard-working side and making sure that we have great culture. So, essentially, this is what we've been working with her. And lots of things that is just amazing stories and psychological concepts that she tells me and I learn from that and they are applicable as much in your work life as well as in your personal life. So, it's just great learning experience and constantly improving yourself, just being a better person, more wise and more calm, better.
Jayneil: Oh my God! What are some of your favorite books?
Ekaterina: I have many. I read a lot. Actually, I don't read. I listen to books. I never have an opportunity to actually sit down and read a book but I’m always walking around, I’m like doing things. So, it's always like audiobooks, seriously. It's great invention because I can listen to them when I’m going for a run. I can listen to them when I’m doing something else. So, a couple of books. One that I keep recommending to everyone who especially wants to learn anything or they feel like they could be better at something and this is Carol Dweck and the book is called Mindset. It's an old book but it came definitely in the right time for me because it talked about how there are two mindsets, there is fixed mindset and growth mindset and fixed mindset, essentially, is when you feel like every trait of your character is fixed. So, for example, you're a creative person or you're not good with Math or you're always late, whatever you think like that's your genetical thing or whatever, so you have to live your life with it. And the Growth Mindset, it talks about the opposite. Actually, every trait of your character can be flexed, changed and grown and you can get better at anything you want. Turns out people with growth mindset achieve more in their lives and have happier and better lives. So, it kind of makes sense to have a growth mindset. That's essentially the premise of the book. And, for me, personally it was that I was always a creative person, I was always associated with certain things that I was good at but I am, for example, not good at Finance and I wasn't good at Operations and other things that I just never had exposure to. And I always felt that that means I’m not good at them and I will never be good at them. And after reading this book, I realized that actually, I could learn these things and I took a Finance modeling course, I took lots of different courses to learn different things and I slowly, slowly started getting better and I eventually got … I’m still learning, obviously, but it was a big, big change to suddenly understand the things that your entire life you thought you'll just never be good at them and suddenly you can learn. I think that was a massive thing. So, anyone who hasn't read the book, I would recommend it. If anyone has kids, it also talks about how to raise kids with a growth mindset. So, definitely worth reading.
Second book that I would recommend is Culture Map. Have you read that book?
Jayneil: It's on my list. Funnily enough, Morgane recommended me to read that.
Ekaterina: I think we discovered it similar time and I think when she was doing talk at one of our UX and digital design weeks, she mentioned that book. And at that point, I only started reading it. So, I kind of prioritized that and it’s definitely such a good book. Talks a lot about how different cultures are. And being Russian, living in the UK, working with international clients, something that I can relate to and answered a lot of questions for me. So, if anyone listening has a mixed background or moved countries and cultures, definitely read the book because it will help you understand your own culture a lot and why you do certain things certain way. And especially when you move countries, sometimes people might see it as a bad thing. Russians are very straightforward, for example, but that's a very stereotypical thing. The book actually talks about how Russians are not straightforward all the time and actually, they're very contextual in lots of ways same as Asian cultures but in negative feedback, Russians are straightforward but in positive feedback, they won't be straightforward. So, it's very, very selective. So, we only see one thing from the stereotypes but actually by reading the book, you understand how all the aspects work together. So, worth reading.
Any particular type of book? Give me a hint. Do you want to hear about design, leadership, business, what would be there? I can recommend a third book.
Jayneil: For the third book, I would say what would you recommend in general for a designer who's trying to level up?
Ekaterina: Designer level up. I don't think books are good for designers to level up because I think designer, if what you want to level up is design, not management, not your efficiency, I think you should just do design and not read books. You could obviously read about classical color theory, layout, anything inspiring.
Jayneil: Leveling up in terms of management.
Ekaterina: I’m just looking through my list in Audible and thinking which one should I pick because literally there are so many good books. I think a couple of others that I would recommend. One is Culture Code which is about how to build great cultures by Daniel Coyle. And, essentially, he talks about how Google's culture and all the other cultures are built and what's good, what's bad and how to make sure, again, your team works well and feels valued and all of that. It's very practical. It's less of a kind of big thing of “Yeah, we need all purpose” and all of this. It's much more granular, what rituals can you have as a team and what you can do as a person to make everyone more connected and more motivated and happier essentially. So, that's a good book. And I suppose the last one I will recommend is Radical Candor by Kim Scott. So, that's a good one. I think it's, again, on this Psychology side of things and, again, talking about leadership and how we can all be better leaders by being radically candid. Definitely very close to me because, again, talking about Russian culture, I prefer to say things as they are and, I think, being in the British culture for very long, which is the opposite way you do everything, not the same things as they are.
Jayneil: Beating around the bush.
Ekaterina: Yeah. So, that confused my brain a lot. And now, I’m back to kind of trying to find the middle ground where you actually can be candid with people and just build more trust through being honest and through being yourself.
Jayneil: Wow! Now, for the future roadmap for Future London Academy, you talked about the Bauhaus Program where it's going to be 20 students or 20 designers who are going to take part in that. What are your thoughts on scaling it or do you focus more on the quality rather than just worrying about how to scale the business?
Ekaterina: Both, I suppose. I think one thing that is great about not taking any investment is that you don't have the urge to scale as fast as possible. And you've probably seen a lot of data recently how, obviously, that old model of getting a lot of investment and scaling as fast as you can actually is quite bad for lots of companies. And now, more and more businesses are getting to a more holistic model of growing slowly but better. And essentially, it's not about creating a lifestyle business, it's not about not growing but it's more about being conscious about your growth and doing it well. So, we're definitely on that side. We want to make sure that everything we do still has the same values, still has the same quality. It's very important for us to make sure that every life that we touch, every person we collaborate with benefits from it. And because of that, we are not interested in suddenly growing at all costs. And it worked very well for us during this weird year where we actually didn't need to fire anyone. We kind of kept the team and just rethought lots of things because, again, we didn't grow at all costs and we didn't have hundreds of people just waiting for this big, big growth to happen. So, in that sense, we're still sticking to that model of making sure that we're growing at the pace that makes sense for us but we're definitely looking into ways to touch more lives and scale more because we proved that that's what is needed. And everyone who’s been through our programs sends us letters and emails, they're very, very sweet about how we changed their lives. And lots of people started their own businesses. Lots of people grew in their careers, collaborated with people they met. There are so many great stories and that's what keeps us going. So, it's just understanding how can we give it to more people who potentially can't physically come to London, who are in different economic situations. So, again, we're definitely not affordable to everyone yet and we totally acknowledge that. And, unfortunately, right now, that's the right thing for us to do because we want to build a great quality but we're also constantly thinking what can we do to make sure that we can give access to people who might not be able to afford everything that we do but still give them something that will help them and will create better communities in every single country. So, constantly thinking about that and, I suppose, digital became a massive help in that journey. We launched our online programs now, which again are much more affordable and we're even looking at other models, how we can make them even more affordable for lots of different people. So, it's a journey and we want to make sure we're doing it the right way but we already saw during this past three months how creating new online programs expanded our geography. So, I think we had about 60 countries before that we had people coming from. And I think we definitely added 20 more just in the past three months and great countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, Egypt and lots of other countries who were never able to come to our programs before can do it online, which is amazing. It's so much fun meeting designers and creative people from a completely different culture, completely different environment and hearing their stories. They are doing so much cool stuff. It's crazy. And during our online programs, we also have these community chats. So, we put everyone in breakout rooms in Zoom and we kind of facilitate certain discussions with the people. So, essentially, you'll be with four strangers from around the world who do the same thing as you. So, if you're a product designer, there will be other four product designers but there will be one from California, one from Australia, one from Nigeria, one from Saudi. And then you kind of realize that you all have the same problems. Even though it seems you live completely different lives but your clients have the same kind of challenges, you as a company have the same challenges. And it's fascinating how the conversations that happen in those breakout rooms and how people connect and then find their own little circles they collaborate with. It's amazing.
Jayneil: Oh, I bet it is. In closing, I guess, what I would like to ask you is what is your favorite failure that later set you up for success?
Ekaterina: Favorite failure. That's a good one. There were so many failures and they only feel like failures in the moment. Afterwards, you forget that they were failures because you always see that they were actually a learning. So, when you look back, you never see failures. You only see learnings. So, that's always very difficult to go back and pick a failure. If it was happening in the moment, I probably would be able to say like “Right now, I’m devastated because this is happening.” Looking back, I would suppose … Which one shall I pick?
Jayneil: The first one that comes to mind.
Ekaterina: I think my first company that failed. I tried to build a company.
Jayneil: The agency.
Ekaterina: A design agency. I was young. I was 19. And that's when everyone dreams about having their own agency but you have no clue what does it mean and what it takes. And I had a business partner. She was much more business minded than me. And we actually had clients. We did some work. It was going somewhere and we were making money and kind of we had something there but we didn't have a proper plan. We didn't have a vision. I suppose we didn't have enough reasons for doing it apart from our own egos of wanting to have an agency. I just liked the idea that I could say “I have my own agency.” And that was the reason and that's the wrong reason to start anything. You really need to want to do that, the heartbeats, you need to like the process. And now I know I actually never wanted an agency. I just liked to say that I had an agency but I actually never wanted to run it. So, I think that's why it didn't work out and it was a definitely good learning. And I suppose, the best learning out of it was the fact that we started Future London Academy and that succeeded because if you start something and it fails and you stop there, you stop as a failure but if you pick yourself up and start something again and again and again if needed and eventually you succeed, then you're suddenly a success. And I suppose that's the best learning that even if something didn't work out and after that you feel like you're probably not good at it or maybe you'll never be able to do something, that's not true. It's just this particular thing didn't work out and you need to learn from it and start again and see how to make it better.
Jayneil: I love that advice. Thank you so much, Ekaterina, for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom. Thank you so much.
Ekaterina: Thank you so much, Jayneil.
Jayneil: How do people find you? How do people get in touch with you?
Ekaterina: So, follow us on social media. We have Future London Academy everywhere, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. We're in Tik-Tok as well. And we're @FLondonAcademy on Twitter. We do share a lot of insights, advice, inspiration. So, definitely worth following us on all of those. We also have a podcast called Creative Capes where we talk to different leaders in the industry about their process, about their challenges. So, follow us on podcasts everywhere, Spotify, iTunes, wherever you listen to it. We also have a YouTube channel where you can actually see all of those conversations so you can see our faces and the people that we interview. And FutureLondonAcademy.co.uk is our website. And if you're curious about this design leaders program inspired by Bauhaus and want to be a better leader, then check out Bauhaus.FutureLondonAcademy.co.uk.
Thank you so much.
Jayneil: Amazing. Thanks a lot. And thanks everyone for listening. I hope you found something useful there. And if you want to message me personally, also find me, my name is incredibly difficult to pronounce but it's Ekaterina Solomeina, and I’m sure you can Google it and send me a note and I’m always very, very happy to help. And I’m a very friendly person.
Ekaterina: So, just reach out but thanks for having me on your podcast. It was a pleasure and, hopefully, see you in the future.
Jayneil: Absolutely.
If you made it this far, you are what I call a design MBA super fan. And I’ve got a gift for you, my super fan. Head over to designMBA.show where you will find my email address. Email me one thing you learned from this podcast episode and I will get on a 30-minute call with you and help you in your career goals.
See you in the next episode.