Relationships over Product Knowledge
Two people that I learned from really allowed me to grow my career. One I got to thank personally. The other, not yet, even though we've lived near each other for a considerable amount of time. The person I want to talk about is Chris Haroun. The second, Kirill Eremenko. The commonality was their courses on Udemy.
"Business is about relationships first, product knowledge second." Bonding with people allows me access to everyone else's knowledge. There are plenty of books and people that tout this, but not necessarily in as succinct a concept. Sharing ideas and experience becomes paramount to expand capabilities, limitations and problems that fresher eyes or more experienced eyes can provide.
Teachers, mentors, friends can all add to your growing network of people you can reach out to. Overall it can be more impactful than others. We surface new things that we come across to others who haven't heard of something. Or they provide a deeper level of understanding behind what you may just be exploring.
They aren't the exclusive people that have helped me through the years, but they certainly opened my eyes to what my collective experience has become - mix of finance, data, valuations and automation. Where we consider connections between products/companies/customers and how they're influenced by various factors, whether it's data or how we split segments. The amazing part is in seeing people like this grow.
Kirill launched all-encompassing site and platform around his venture SuperDataScience and Chris moved off Udemy to his own site/platform Haroun Ventures (among the helpful YouTube channel he enjoys producing). These were two people paramount to helping me grow my knowledge in finance, valuations, data science (data quality, modeling, classification and prioritization) but more broadly by displaying and showcasing the manner by which other people helped them get to that point. How connections are the way we can grow the most.
I hope to hear others talk about who they've enjoyed learning from and how they expand their adjacent networks through community. Let's talk!