Inspiration & Success with Mila Smart Semeshkina
The list of your accomplishments and your popularity seem to be growing day by day. But let’s go back to where it all started – what is your origin story?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: Born and raised in a small town in Southern Russia, I was eventually accepted into a highly prestigious university where no one knew about my humble origin as I felt quite insecure about it. I constantly felt as if I wasn’t ‘good enough’ for the big city and therefore had to ‘reduce the gap’, by constantly improving myself and learning everything I could get my hands on.
Every success story has a certain breaking point where it becomes clear that there is no going back. One moment I was a student at a well-known university, dreaming about working for an international company and travelling the world, and then the next - my father died and my mother fell ill, making me the new head of the family who had to pay the mortgage and look after everyone else. Back then, I worked really hard while also carrying on with my studies, which made me the perfect example of a ‘strong woman’.
At 18, I went on a student exchange programme to the USA, which became one of the main turning points in my entire life. Having considerably expanded my horizons, this experience showed me that good professionals are needed everywhere in the world and that I needed to move to Moscow as soon as possible and start aiming higher.
Luckily, being a workaholic always came naturally to me which helped me to balance working in marketing and event management on the one hand and continuing my studies on the other. For almost ten years, I had been helping others with their education while also continuing mine.
As time went by, I started to notice that traditional education had nothing to do with real-life success and that the majority of graduates had no idea how to build a successful career, while all successful people had something in common.
Having made up my mind to accompany others on their way to success, I came up with a concept for a platform that would help people to improve their skills and build successful careers. And so Lectera was born – a tool that helps people to ‘climb the ladder’ and reach new heights.
How is your project doing nowadays?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: Today, Lectera is a large-scale project with over 500,000 users worldwide. Currently, one of our main goals is to localize it into nine more languages to make it more accessible to our Asian and Latin American customers. One of my biggest ambitions is to make our courses available to the majority of the world’s population, helping them to achieve their goals which in turn would act as a catalyst for the economic development of different countries in general. To ensure that, we made our courses more affordable, with some of them even becoming absolutely free. In addition to this, we also try to expand the range of our courses, adding new ones for the most current professions. Having ensured the sustainability of our project, we are currently focused on expanding our customer base.
Our second goal is to attract as many leads as possible, as we truly believe that we can offer everything people need. We want them to know that we are there to help them and that they are always welcome on our platform. As a socially responsible project, we would like to focus more on publicity, PR, and spreading as much awareness about Lectera as possible.
There is also another rather personal aspect: having gained a deep understanding of the EdTech industry, I cannot help but notice that it is currently experiencing somewhat of a crisis and feel that it is my duty to help overcome it by implementing certain cutting-edge solutions. As a big believer in blockchain projects, I am currently trying to come up with ways for their fast and effective implementation.
What was it that originally drew you to the EdTech industry and online education in general?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: Having devoted a large portion of my life to self-development and education, I have always been very passionate about learning.
As a long-time adherent of the lifelong education theory, I believe there is nothing more important than expanding one’s knowledge base and constantly improving oneself in order to keep up with the world’s rapid development.
In order to do so, you have to be able to work with a variety of highly effective tools, regardless of your work field. Having finished school extremely young, by 15 I was already studying at university; having completed my bachelor’s and master’s degree, I started a postgraduate course during which I was balancing writing my dissertation, working as a university professor, doing academic research, and taking part in international conferences all at once. Having learned the ins and outs of the traditional education system, I soon realized that traditional education wasn’t enough to build a successful career and started thinking about ways of making education more effective and less time-consuming. Working on my dissertation, I realized it was time I made a change. Having compiled my extensive experience in methodology and education, I started creating courses and professional training for specialists from different fields. Having made a conscious choice to stay away from traditional education strategies, I came up with a fundamentally new approach designed to make the learning process quicker and more effective – the approach Lectera was based on.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in your career, and how did you overcome it?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: Back when Lectera first saw the light of day, the biggest professional challenge for me was overcoming the so-called ‘employee syndrome’, which took me several years. Still, the less stability you have in your career – including the regular twice-a-month payments and certain employee benefits – the easier it becomes for you to leave your comfort zone. And so I had to adapt to the change and become a full-time businesswoman. When you have a team of 500 people to manage, change is absolutely vital. A year before Lectera was launched, our main focus was on completing the project which was one of the most challenging periods in our journey as we were running out of funding. We soon realized how important it is to start making money here and now – otherwise the project will simply fail – which was a realization that helped us to grow more than anything else. Nowadays, we do not have any external investors as we made a conscious decision not to attract any – a decision which taught us to make our own money which helps our budget to always stay in surplus.
What is your opinion on the current education standards?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: If we are talking about traditional standards compared to the trends in the current job market, they are two absolutely different things. One of the main problems of traditional education is the lack of professional expertise needed to do the job: year after year, millions of graduates find themselves in a situation where they realize that they are extremely underqualified which becomes a huge problem for them. One of the main requirements nowadays is that people have to work effectively instead of just pretending to do so. With macro- and microeconomics trends changing constantly, modern-day specialists should be flexible and creative individuals ready to adapt to any challenges they face.
What do you like most about your profession?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: It’s the ability to help people and see specific, real-life results. People often share their experiences with me by telling me that our platform changed their life, or that my career journey was a huge inspiration for them. It is at moments like these that I realize that I’m on the right path and that I’m going in the right direction in life. There’s nothing more rewarding than helping people to change their life for the better, with everything else – including money, power, and popularity – truly paling in comparison.
Is there a particular life lesson that helped you on your journey to success and that you could share with our readers?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: To tell you the truth, at this point I’m quite used to people telling me that my goals are absolutely unachievable. Back in the day, I was constantly told that I wouldn’t be able to make it, whether it came to applying for university courses of my choice, winning a grant for free education at the MSU, being accepted into a postgraduate program with an extremely high level of competition, collaborating with the world’s leading companies, launching my own platform, becoming a successful businesswoman, creating an international business… and the list goes on.
But the thing is, people, telling me that something is impossible to do - is a huge motivation for me: instead of trying to prove myself to them, I simply get up and start doing the things I find important and achieving the goals I have set for myself.
I think this would probably be my main advice – to always follow your heart no matter what while also keeping your head cool and your passion alive.
Who - or what - is your biggest inspiration in life?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: I cannot really name anything specific. There are lots of things I draw inspiration from – from nature to creative and strong individuals. What I find most inspiring is average people who manage to become extremely successful thanks to their hard work and determination and become millionaires while also staying humble and down-to-earth. I am also hugely inspired by strong and courageous women who are able to overcome all of their problems and use any difficult situation to their own advantage.
Have you ever considered working in a different field?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: If I wasn’t working in EdTech, I would probably work in communications and PR, in which I was involved at the very beginning of my career. I also quite like the beauty industry as I’m rather good at doing makeup – both for myself and for other people – and probably have better makeup skills than some professional makeup artists out there. I am also quite fond of fragrances, each of which I believe to be a work of art, and am even considering launching my own perfume brand. I could probably become a successful author as well as I have a way with words and like to inspire people through written text. My first book has already become an international bestseller, and I am currently working on my second one. In addition to this, I also own a rather well-known event business aimed at arranging events for big audiences of any complexity and scale. As the president of the Women's Empowerment Council, I also help businesswomen to find mentors, attract investment, and grow their businesses.
As a professional mentor and business coach, I help people from around the world to get the information and the inspiration they need.
My main motto in life being ‘everything everywhere all at once’, I am doing the things I am passionate about every day without compromising anything and without putting it off for later.
So what’s the secret to your success then?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: My rule number one is to only do things you are truly passionate about. Doing things we love gives us that twinkle in the eye which inspires others to follow our example and gives them the same drive and enthusiasm. There’s nothing more rewarding for me than seeing other people change their life for the better. As for my second ‘rule’, I believe that anyone who wants to become successful in life should be prepared to fight for it as all hard-working people tend to work 24/7. And the third rule is goal orientation as success means not just working but working with a specific objective in mind, always aiming higher, and constantly raising the bar. Do not let yourself settle for the second best and always remember that there is no limit to perfection.
What are your plans for the future?
Mila Smart Semeshkina: Our main plan is to make Lectera the world’s leading EdTech platform in each and every direction by helping more people discover their true selves, develop their talents, build successful careers, earn more money, and live a happy and fulfilling life. We strive to bring light, knowledge, and creativity to people’s lives, making the world a better place.
Pictures: Vlada Mihaylova
