Maria is an EdTech entrepreneur and the CEO of an e-learning company Art Heroes. She's previously grown and exited educational and community businesses, and she's currently on a mission to make Art Heroes the most reputable digital art Academy for industry professionals.

• CEO Hack: Masterminding
• CEO Nugget: Ask what's the new thing you can test or try out
• CEO Defined: (1) Being in charge and leading  (2) Not being afraid to make decisions amidst uncertainty

Website: https://artheroes.co/

Personal website- http://sirotkina.com/
Business Instagram account – http://instagram.com/artheroes/ 

FULL INTERVIEW

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless:

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I had a very special guest on the show today. I have Maria JD of Art Heroes. Maria, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:38 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

It's awesome to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless:

No problem. Definitely, the pleasure is all ours. Before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Maria so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Maria is an EdTech entrepreneur and the CEO of an e-learning company, Art Heroes. She has previously grown and exited educational and community businesses, and she's currently on a mission to make Art Heroes the most reputable digital art academy for industry professionals. Maria, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:07 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

Absolutely. It's really nice to get an opportunity. So let's go.

01:13 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about how you got started. So could you take us through what I call your CEO story and we'll let you get started with all those and work through doing.

01:22 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

Okay. Yeah. My CEO is also a founder story because I'm a co-founder of, art heroes. So, basically, yeah, it's very interesting. We've, I've, I'm very new to the industry. So to the digital art industry, I mean, I guess relatively, right? Because my co-founder has been in this for over 12 years, almost 15 years, I bet. And so I always wanted to, you know, like we've been friends for a long time and I've seen him doing this. And when the opportunity came up was like, man, we've got to monetize your following. We've got to do something amazing with what you do to make sure that you're not only an artist because I've been in education for a very long time and so I know how processes work.

I'm very much into operations and growth and putting things in order to make sure that they grow. So basically we partnered as of myself with the operations background and the growth background. And my co-founder was an industry professional, so he actually knows all the ins and outs about this niche where we're in. And well, by this time, I guess, I also know quite a lot about it. But when we started, I was like, you know, what do all these terms mean even? Yeah, so that's the story.

02:49 – Gresham Harkless:

Nice, absolutely love that. I feel like you kind of have to have and a lot of times when you, that's the beauty of having co-founders is you get to lean on each other's strengths, it sounds like, and he has the expertise and that industry knowledge where you have that system and building business knowledge, it sounds like as well.

03:03 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, I honestly admire people who go into business all by themselves because I am very much of a team player. So I function really well in teams with co-founders with partners. And I don't know, I think I would be super stressed if I had to do it all by myself. It's like you carry all the knowledge and the expertise and the systems and the processes. And like, yeah, it just like sounds so much more stressful to me.

03:31 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you only go as far as your team. So even if you are your own team, a lot of times you can only go as far as you allow yourself to let you know to take you. So it's so big to be able to kind of see, recognize, understand our lanes and be able to kind of come together to create and build something phenomenal. And so I know 1 of those phenomenal things that you're building is Art Heroes. Could you take us through a little bit more about that so we can learn exactly what it is and how you serve the class you work with?

03:56 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

Sure, absolutely. So Art Heroes is an e-learning business and basically, we are a digital art academy online so what we do is serve content to digital artists, and our I guess the major differentiator from places like YouTube and places like Udemy and Lynda.com, like I guess those are like the most famous learning platforms will be that we not only like serve videos and whatever comes with it, but also direct feedback and a lot of instruction. So if you can think of an actual college education with the difference that we work with artists who currently work in the industry, that would be us. So there will be feedback sessions and Q&A sessions and office hours, plus a bulk of content that's prerecorded and final projects and certificates.

So things like that. And our students normally are the people that work in video games and in movies. So for example, create characters for movies and advertising and cinematics. And yeah, so that would be a good example or create pieces for collections or actual like, so if you see this thing, like just, you know since I have it, we're recording the video, this is 3D printed. So something like this can be created. And actually, we were also like 3D printing program when people can learn how to put it from this from the computer to the desk. So it's like a combination of art, and visual facts. Yeah, that's what we are, that's what we do.

05:37 – Gresham Harkless:

Nice, absolutely love that. And definitely correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like you have that opportunity to really go in-depth about each of the different topics. As you mentioned, like college education, it's not just maybe watching a 20, 30-minute video and trying to execute it. You get the feedback, you get that interaction, but you also get the depth of really learning a topic in and out, it sounds like.

05:56 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

Definitely. Yeah, art education is not as straightforward, You know, like I know people that spend like years and years in different like art academies and at the end of the days about not only like learning the history of it but also like practices, current standards that change so fast in digital art specifically. Like every year there is a piece of software that everybody has to go and learn because it's used in production. And yeah, so like we're pretty fast-paced and just definitely teach what's on like and what's being used in the studios like these days and how to actually like along the way, how to get this job, how to progress your career. So it's like really helpful when you talk to people, you know, who are like doing what you want to be doing right now, not like 10 years ago.

06:44 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, absolutely. Especially with the innovation that's happening in the industry. As you said, you want to make sure that you're continuing to kind of sharpen that saw. You're continuing to kind of get better and having, you know, it sounds like a community. And obviously the education information. Yeah, communities are so huge. Yeah, yeah, sure. Would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? I know you touched on it a little bit. Is that the thing you feel kind of sets you apart? Is that ability to not just be the video, to not just be the anime as you mentioned, but to really be the hybrid

07:09 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

Yeah, definitely. 100%, we're an ecosystem more than just like a school or like, you know, or 1 instructor, because there are several instructors, they all have personalities, there is a community. And 1 thing that we really love is that our, you know, students get unlimited feedback. So it's not like, you know, like show up and, you know, like this is not good, go redo it, but like you can go and redo it and show it again and redo it and show it again and redo it and show it again until you're actually happy. So, and then like, this feedback is sourced from instructors and from the students because everybody sees what everybody else is doing. So it's like, yeah, and people like to meet each other. So I don't know I think this actual ecosystem would be the secret sauce of art heroes at this point.

08:00 – Gresham Harkless:

Absolutely, absolutely. But it's so important to kind of get that. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:14 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

That's a Great question. I think for me, my hack would be, like it's probably not something like super innovational, but I would bring the mastermind back again because it's something that has been pushing this business and like many other projects that I've had like way faster. And for me, this hack would be not just like joining a random mastermind group, but you can probably experiment and try. But for me, I have this one where we're like similar businesses at similar stages, in the same industry, and surprisingly, even the same niche. Like it's a bunch of, you know, like online art businesses.

So it's really, really close, like really similar to each other. But, you know, like everybody helps each other grow. And I guess, you know, just improves, improves each one's business. So, you know, like if you guys are not yet doing like a mastermind and it's not some woo woo thing, it is really helpful, very structured. And yes, as a, you know, as a structure, I really recommend trying at least.

09:32 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

09:44 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

I iterate fast and experiment because this is something that I always actually tell myself every week. What is this one thing that we can test? What is this one new thing that we can try out? And it's not always super easy to do because sometimes, you know, the routine and the planned activities, like, or just like the business essentials take so much time and effort. But if we're thinking 80-20 in business, of course, 80% is business as usual, normal life. But at least I definitely always want to set aside a little bit of my time and resources, like just other resources for this testing and iteration and experiments. Because sometimes you don't know where you can get this new learning where you can innovate a little bit.

So that's again, towards pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and doing something new for your business to your business. And it might be as small as I don't know, like AB testing, headings and subject lines in the emails or I don't know, or like AB testing, like different ad campaigns, or like making your marketing team do something new or just, I don't know, doing something new with your clients, with your partners, just let's say throwing something in like one random wild card. And something that doesn't take a lot of your resources. So like the typical lean startup thing. But when you do these small lean startup techniques, when you implement that on a function in business, you never stop improving.

So that's, you know, that would be my nugget. And as an example, you know, like, I'm just going to share what I'm doing, what I'm doing this week. So normally we would do and again, like, it's not like huge or like super innovation, but it's just something that we have not done before. So, for example, we just finished the major sale of the year, it was like Black Friday, literally just now. And we're following this with Cyber Monday to a different audience, like a completely different audience. And normally we would just do one, like one a year. But this time we decided to, like, we changed promotion. We changed like discounts and just doing 2 audiences, different audiences, and seeing how Black Friday versus Cyber Monday will perform for us and just you know we did a completely different last year so just you know as an experiment.

12:27 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, it's definitely a game changer sure And so now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Maria, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:41 -Maria JD Sirotkina:

To me, being a CEO means being, I would say, in charge and leading in good and bad, I'd say. So not being afraid of making decisions where you have a lot of uncertainty, this to me means being a CEO, because it's not really following what you're told to do. You're definitely that person who tells the rest of the team what everybody's gonna be doing. And so I'm sure that this year has been like this type of tester for many CEOs out there because you never know if what you're doing is going to produce a good or bad result, but you just like have to take a stand for your company and yeah, and then like keep your responsibility for your actions and yeah, and your decisions because basically you're the driver of your business and yeah,

you just do what will then produce like all these results. So kind of, you know, like in as well as keeping responsibility for your life, you also keep the responsibility for your company and There is no use of like saying, oh, like, you know, it's Corona. Of course, it's Corona, but like you also took decisions that, you know, caused your company to grow, to fail or just like to, keep it at standby. That's it.

14:15 – Gresham Harkless:

It's that Maria truly appreciates that definition. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best they can find out about you and all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

14:30 – Maria JD Sirotkina:

Sure. I really actually appreciate being here. It's been a really interesting conversation. Thanks for the questions. It's, I guess, you know, it's, there are all those things that we never, we never really think of on like daily life. But I would say 1 last important thing is building everything that you want to become in your routine. As a part of weekly planning, daily planning, or whatever planning you do, just always ask yourself a question, where am I going with my company? Where am I going as a person? And just incorporate all of this. Just like, you know, like always take a moment to think of that.

So I'd say this is a little thing that, you know, makes it, makes this change. And for me, just kind of, you know, like always taking a moment to think, not just like blindly copying my action items from last quarter to this quarter. But yeah, just asking hard questions the way, you know, like you do on the podcast, just ask yourself the same questions more frequently. That's yeah, I guess. And yeah, so the second part of the question. Yeah, artheroes.co is the main website of the business and is pretty easy to find on I guess, LinkedIn or Instagram, that will be my 2 platforms.

15:48 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that Maria, we will have the links and information in the show notes. And I love that kind of last bit of wisdom about asking yourself the same podcast questions because we need to ask ourselves those really hard questions to see where we are, things that we can improve upon, and realize that those small things become big things. After all, I think the quote is, and I'm going to butcher your thoughts become your actions, your actions become your days, your days become your months, your months become your years, and so forth. So you want to start and pay attention to those small things because they become big things. So I definitely appreciate that Maria, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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