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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🗓 The first day of the war in Ukraine.

📯 The 21st century is apparently not very different from the 20th.

✂️ How the relationship with work was impacted.

🚿 What it takes to keep morale high during dire situations.

🕯 The shift in priorities since the beginning of the war.

💰 Time is the most important non-renewable resource we have.

🧯 Logistical disruptions that impact day-to-day life.

🛠 Hardships can make you inventive.

🌱 Reaffirmation of life despite death.

KEY QUOTES

Nobody expected a war in the 21st century

Well, no one was ready. The point is that we all had the same feeling that war was something that happened in the 20th century. Now we are civilized. Now we are into trade and the global economy. But here is the problem of humans, we were blind to conflicts that were happening across different parts of the world, even in the 21st century.

Work was a welcome respite from the trauma of war

I didn’t take days off until mid-August. I was working all the time. Work was my savior, because when you read the news all of the time, you are not bringing any good to the world, you just become more anxious. You start panicking. But the truth is there is nothing you can control as long as you are in relative safety. 

Far from the borderline, far from Russian troops, I mean, there were still missile threats, but it’s a different story. But reading the news every day was something that made many people completely lose their time. 

I chose not to burden my brain even more. I was already traumatized, so I decided to work.

How perspectives and priorities changed with the onset of the war.

The other thing which is super important is actually the lesson from the work, is that you understand that work is important, but you become more coldblooded. I mean, as long as you’re not saving lives, everything is not that important. So while you have a week of bad ROI, so what, as long as you’re alive, and healthy, your family is fine.

Ensuring that morale isn’t destroyed.

I will tell you something very, practical and pragmatic. When I work, I make money. When I make money, I donate money. That’s something that makes me happy. My level of morale is dependent. It still depends on the good things I’m bringing to other people and to myself as well.

Usually, when I go to bed I ask myself, was there at least one good thing that happened to me today? One thing I did to other people? And when the answer is yes, I’m happy. 

Accepting and adapting to loss and grief.

I remember that the day he died and I had to go to the funeral, I didn’t take the day off. I had a meeting with my team. I was smiling and when the meeting was over, I changed clothes and rushed to the cemetery. It was such a surreal experience because one minute I was talking about scaling, creatives to help improve performance and the next I was standing and looking at my friend for the last time.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Shamanth:

I am very excited to welcome back Nataliia Drozd to the Mobile User Acquisition Show. 

Natalia, the last time we spoke, that was one of the most popular episodes on the podcast. You would think that something like UAC, which you spoke about last time, would get outdated fairly quickly. But a lot of the principles you spoke to were very long-lasting and universal.

My team and a lot of other people still reference that. 

Nataliia:

Well, thank you.

Shamanth:

I’m excited to have you because we are going to talk about something completely different this time, and arguably something far more important than UAC. 

We are going to talk about your personal experiences of functioning, operating and being a high-performing marketer during what is personally and geopolitically a very difficult time and something I can’t even imagine about.

Nataliia:

I’m so happy to be back. It has been quite some time since I appeared on the podcast. I’m so happy that the content I shared back then helped many people to have better performance from their UAC campaigns. 

For me, it’s super important to share knowledge because I believe that learnings when shared are actually doubled. So I’m always pretty open to help and try things and it’s one of the greatest pleasures for me, to hear that something I shared is actually valuable.

Even though things are changing, sometimes all drills do not apply. But it’s always good to look at things from a different perspective. 

UAC is still a black box, even more complex. Take into account iOS campaigns if you directly run them, but generally speaking, UAC and digital marketing are interesting things.

Shamanth:

Yeah. We are going to talk about something dramatically different, based on the experiences you’ve gone through in the last year. 

So tell me, what has been the impact of the war on your personal life as soon as a war broke out? Because I imagine nobody really expected or saw this coming. 

How has it changed as the months have gone by? 

Nataliia:

So first things first. We are recording this in February and on February 24th, it will be one year since the war began. It’s been a whole year for the Ukrainians and the whole world is now aware of the tragic and massive war that is happening because of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. 

Well if you look at me, I’m still safe and sound and smiling. I’m recording this for my apartment in Kiev. I didn’t leave Ukraine when the war started, but the war has become a part of my life that it’s so difficult to remember how it used to be before the war.

People in Ukraine didn’t witness normal life for the last three years with all the COVID restrictions and then the war broke out. 

I just remember that I was coming back from my mountaineering classes on February 23rd, and I was so excited about going to the mountains because my coach created a plan for me that included a few sessions in March 2022. I have a special love for mountaineering because I’m very much into it and I was full of enthusiasm.

I was also invited to speak at one of the conferences in March. I was planning to buy tickets to London to speak there, I was planning to go to Paris to run the Paris half marathon on February 26th – I had my tickets booked. So my life was full of plans. 

When I woke up on February 24th, I couldn’t believe it.

The news coverage was awful, my mom called me, my sister called me and then I heard an explosion and thought, okay, it is true. It was like waking up in a movie but very soon you realize, it’s the painful truth. 

When it happened, I accepted it very fast and started thinking, “I need to save myself.” So when the war broke out, I bought tickets and I went to the western part of the country where my parents lived. I took my friends and friends of my friends as well because we have a relatively big house. 

It was not about comfort, it was about saving people’s lives because there was a very high probability Russians would invade Kiev, which they almost did. Luckily they didn’t get to Kiev, but a couple of smaller cities in the region suffered dramatically.

On February 24th, it was one hour of shock. Then I took a cold shower, packed my stuff. I already had some things prepared because people were talking like something may happen, but nobody really believed in it. It was better to have a small suitcase prepared.

So I took my books, my laptop, my friends and my pets. I bought tickets to go to my parents. I called them to let them know that I was safe and sound. 

We all followed the news every second. I was checking the news, websites, social media just to understand what’s happening and where. I still remember a lot of strange feelings.

You pack your stuff, take your cat and go. 

Shamanth:

It sounds like it was shocking, surprising and completely unexpected. It certainly was for me just reading the news because I thought these things stopped happening in 1945 and I have no frame of reference for the kind of violence that happened. I can’t imagine what it was like to live through some of that.

Nataliia:

Well, no one was ready. The point is that we all had the same feeling that war was something that happened in the 20th century. Now we are civilized. Now we are into trade and the global economy. But here is the problem of humans, we were blind to conflicts that were happening across different parts of the world, even in the 21st century.

Not to mention Afghanistan, Syria, Georgia and other regions. Those wars were smaller, but it was a brutal invasion which also had a lot of shellings involved, but it was usually short and brutal. 

In the case of Ukraine, no one expected that we would resist for such a long time. If we remember the news from the first month, people were uncertain and asking “What the hell is going on?” But Ukrainians kept on saying it’s a war, an invasion, not a conflict, not a civil war. It’s one country. They were breaking the territories of the other countries.

It’s just strange. It’s very painful. It’s the longest phase we have had since World War II when it comes to European territory in war. But it’s not the first one. It’s actually a good lesson for all of us that we should never be blind to other people’s pain, because there is a lot of pain happening right now, not only in Ukraine but also in other parts of the world.

Shamanth:

Yeah, certainly. I can relate to that because, the country I’m from, India has had a fairly long standing history of violence that isn’t as much in the news, but certainly it’s been very present and I think there’s a good reminder for us to know and understand in the 21st century.

Just because we are in the 21st century hasn’t quite meant that we are still able to live peacefully yet. 

I’m also curious, Natalia, obviously you talked about your initial experiences. What I do know at least from the conversations I’ve had, the impressions I’ve had of you is that you’ve continued to work, through the war. You’ve continued to work and perform as a top performer that you are, all through the war. 

How has your relationship with your work changed, during the course of the war, and also how has this relationship been different from what it used to be before the war?

Nataliia:

I didn’t take days off until mid-August. I was working all the time. Work was my savior, because when you read the news all of the time, you are not bringing any good to the world, you just become more anxious. You start panicking. But the truth is there is nothing you can control as long as you are in relative safety. 

Far from the borderline, far from Russian troops, I mean, there were still missile threats, but it’s a different story. But reading the news every day was something that made many people completely lose their time. 

I chose not to burden my brain even more. I was already traumatized, so I decided to work.

At that time the company was going through some changes in the marketing department. So I had a lot of work to do and it was a very interesting experience because, for me, if there wasn’t work, it would be way harder for me to perform at high quality.

When you fail to face changes in your campaign structure, in your budgets and goals, it’s always hard things that are not easy to accept. But I had so many good things to keep in mind. Like, now the rules of my country changed just a couple of days ago, so I don’t really care that now I need to perform at this level versus that level.

The other good thing is that working helps me do a lot of things I’m good at. It brings joy because I love what I do and it also brings satisfaction. Because when you work and you see the results of your work, it actually helps to bring some positivity into your days.

The other thing which is super important is actually the lesson from the work, is that you understand that work is important, but you become more coldblooded. I mean, as long as you’re not saving lives, everything is not that important. So while you have a week of bad ROI, so what, as long as you’re alive, and healthy, your family is fine.

So the next week, you become less emotionally attached to your work, and for many people who are perfectionists or who have imposter syndrome, it’s actually a good thing because we now see perspective.

Shamanth:

Absolutely! If there are bombs dropping outside on the street all of a sudden, bad ROI for one week isn’t that bad a problem. Especially when you’re thinking about staying alive. 

I think work also gave your days meaning because the alternative to work was thinking about what was happening on the streets, reading the news and I fully hear you and relate to you when you say reading the news is never a good idea.

I think I briefly mentioned to you, Natalia, that I’m in the process of leaving a place mainly due to the street violence and I very quickly realized in the last few months there that reading the news about some of the street violence was just the worst thing we could do. The best thing we could do was just to plan our exit and focus on the things we can control, which is the work. 

Obviously, I’m not comparing street violence to a full-fledged war.

Nataliia:

All of our stories are unique. There is nothing bad about offering your experience in mine just because our measurements are always relative. 

I always say to friends my experience is different from yours, and the same to my people and to my friends who are abroad.

All of our lives are unique and all of our stories are different. The fact that you used one kind of a difficult situation is not anyhow different or less valuable. It’s all about how you go through those situations.

Shamanth:

Totally right. You’ve seen from closeup a lot of destruction and death, I would imagine. So how have you kept your own morale from being completely destroyed? 

As I had pointed out, you look like a ray of sunshine just now. 

So how do you keep your own morale from being destroyed?

Nataliia:

So first things first, I will tell you something very, practical and pragmatic. When I work, I make money. When I make money, I donate money. That’s something that makes me happy. My level of morale is dependent. It still depends on the good things I’m bringing to other people and to myself as well.

Usually, when I go to bed I ask myself, was there at least one good thing that happened to me today? One thing I did to other people? And when the answer is yes, I’m happy. 

The other thing, of course, is breakdowns because we are all humans. We are not Gods, we are not machines. We have our emotions, and you need to allow yourself to breathe. You need to accept your feelings and emotions when you feel pain and you want to cry. 

It’s also completely normal and natural to feel anger. Whether you’re being assaulted, when your country is being attacked, when somebody disrespects you, it’s perfectly normal to feel anger. It’s not normal to bring harm to other people, but it’s okay to find creative ways or expressions for your anger through art, music, therapy, and movement.

So I think my secret to happiness is running and mountains because I am running at least three times a week, and I didn’t stop this habit because physical activity, in fact, helps your energy to be released in an environmentally friendly way. Also, when you run, you see a lot of beautiful views because I was running in the countryside and it’s beautiful during the end of spring and summer.

When you feel a sense of hopelessness in this world, you just realize how many good things you actually have, because even the fact that I’m able to talk to you, I have the opportunity to work from home, it makes me so much more privileged than the many people who lost their homes.

I realized that I am very much blessed with the skills, talents and opportunities I have. So I use them and I feel grateful for every opportunity I have.

Shamanth:

Sounds like you are looking at what could have been a bad situation with acceptance and gratitude, and I think that’s a very helpful way of looking at things. As somebody said, we can’t control our surroundings, but we can control how we react to it. 

I fully agree that just looking at and recognizing the fact that we are privileged in some sense, obviously we all have our own challenges and struggles, but, just being able to work remotely, being able to connect with people remotely can be a huge blessing. 

It sounds like you’re focused on what’s working. Obviously, there are challenges, I’m sure there’s anger about what’s happening to your country and your loved ones, but it also sounds like you’re approaching this with a lot of acceptance and gratitude.

Oftentimes I think we’re blessed that when we have a situation that doesn’t work, we’re able to get out of there. My parents wouldn’t have been able to do that. They wouldn’t have the resources or the skills or the geopolitical privilege to be able to get out of a bad situation. 

I feel very grateful that we live in an age where bad things can happen and there are a lot of aspects of our life that we can still control. It’s certainly something I feel grateful for.

Nataliia:

My motto is, it’s not over until you are dead. As long as your brain is functioning and your body can breathe there is a way out. 

Shamanth:

I know you said briefly about how you’ve been almost cold blooded in terms of the perspective of your work. So I’m curious if you can share how the last 12 months have changed what you prioritize in your life, what you prioritize in your work, or what you say yes to and what you say no to.

Nataliia:

This is a very good question because interestingly, war helps you understand a lot of things about yourself in a very short period of time. 

First, how blessed I am to work with my team. I really love Fabulous. Human relations are important. 

If work is only about getting good results and money, it’s not enough for me. I was very touched on the first day of the war when I got emails from the CEO, CTO and all of my colleagues, even from people I didn’t work with directly, but they knew that I’m from Ukraine and offered to help to move out to different countries across Europe. That was when I realized, we are humans and we are colleagues.

One thing that I learned is you have to be a good professional and a good performer. But on top of this, you need to be human and you need to stay humane as long as you’re alive, if not, you will be replaced by AI. ChatGPT already does great work.

Our main competitive advantage is being human. That’s something that cannot be taken away because something that actually helps me to work is an excellent relationship with my colleagues, especially within the marketing department. 

Another thing that I learned was, I became more straightforward. If I don’t like something, I will not be silent. I’ll find a beautiful and constructive way to say and voice all the things that are not going correctly. Just because I want my company to succeed and our team to succeed. I don’t want to tolerate some mediocre behavior or mediocre results if I know how to improve them.

It’s always important to work in a team. So my attitude to work changed because I didn’t have time for bullshit talking. I have time for beautiful conversations about life. You actually have to be interested in other people’s lives. If I’m on a call with a vendor and they start some discussions about the weather, I would end the call 10 minutes earlier. What I really care about is if your tool can help me or not.

The same applies to talking to people within the team. I regularly call my closest team members, we always check on each other. For me, that’s not bullshit talking, it’s actually communication. But when somebody’s asking “how are you?” as a courtesy, it’s not worth my time.

Shamanth:

Time is the most important non-renewable resource we have. I think I can imagine that seeing lives end around you makes it very clear and visible how scarce and important time is. I can see how you are changing your relationship because of what’s happening around you. 

With the war, I would imagine there are also some very logistical challenges because I know the last time we spoke, I think the lights were out and you had somebody with a torch around you.

I would imagine that was a power cut. Obviously it’s a better situation than being bombed, but it is a problem nonetheless. 

So how do these logistical disruptions impact your day-to-day life or your work? 

Nataliia:

Any hardship makes you inventive. It makes you either adjust or you are out of the game, you move somewhere else where the situations are nicer. 

From October onwards Russia started attacking power plants and electricity supplies. So there are a lot of blackouts sometimes for a couple of days without electricity, heating or water, which is not a nice thing to have, especially when you have to walk 16 flights of stairs to get to your apartment. 

It’s good for your health, but it’s not what you want to do after a long working day. So generally speaking, people adjust and so did I. 

Power cuts were a bigger problem than bombing just because they happened more often and for people who work as digital marketers, who work remotely and people who need electricity are stopped from doing their work. 

Every problem has a solution. The same here, there is a huge market for generators that work on gas. There is a huge market for big batteries like EcoFlow. Actually, this is risk management now because I don’t want to have a power cut. So even right now, I have an EcoFlow next to me just in case something happens, so I can plug it in and we can continue our conversation.

Again, it’s not easy and it’s all thanks to a lot of international organizations that were helping financially to provide generators. But if you have the ability and opportunity, you go buy and make your house a better place, a safer place. 

Many coworking spaces and coffee shops found this as an opportunity to open up their basements. It’s a safe place, they have a power generator, cookies and coffee. They say “come and work with us.” 

People see opportunities in a lot of different places and it actually makes you a time management guru because when you have electricity at your apartment for two hours, then you really know what are the most important things, washing the dishes, vacuuming the floor or recharging your devices if you need them.

Instead of reading tons of books on self-improvement, on prioritization, just stay without electricity and allow yourself to use electricity for one hour. You’ll realize that all of your priorities will appear immediately. 

Shamanth:

It makes me happy and relieved to hear that at least in spite of all of these attacks, they were not able to shut down the entirety of the cities, that there were still underground coffee shops, co-working spaces where you could feel safe, where you could feel productive. 

Obviously, things like this force you to ruthlessly prioritize your work because you think, “Look, if I have two hours to work, that’s what I’m going to do.”

It’s also crazy because again, power cuts are one of the things that I thought we’d left behind in the 20th century. It’s crazy because I grew up in India and we did have power cuts, and while growing up, I was okay. But we’ve never had any in the 21st century, even in the towns and villages in India.

So I remember when I was little, if there was going to be a power cut at 8:00 PM, I needed to finish my school homework before it happened. 

In the 21st century, I’m glad we don’t have to deal with that. I imagine there are opportunities in these challenges which are not to diminish the challenges readily.

But certainly, there are opportunities.

Nataliia: 

You’re absolutely right and it actually brings you to your childhood memories. If we forget about the war in Ukraine for a second, is it possible to live without electricity? No. 

I mean, I need to do the laundry, I need to do my work. But the reality is you can live a happy and fulfilling life without a lot of these things. It’s slightly harder, but maybe you don’t need 24-hour wifi access. In fact, it can make your life easier because you’re not distracted by notifications.

Shamanth:

You’ve talked about some of the things you’ve had to go through in the last year or so. So, to the extent that you’re comfortable sharing what have been some of the hardest moments you have had to face? 

What have been some of the more rewarding or surprising moments that you’ve experienced in the last year?

Nataliia:

The hardest moment was knowing that my dear friend died. He was a soldier. He had been fighting since 2014, so he was in the army for a pretty long time. Then he came back to normal civil life and when the full-scale war started, he immediately went back to the army and unfortunately, he died.

This is like the happy-sad part about it. I was fundraising to buy an ambulance car for his military unit. I successfully did it and I bought an ambulance car, but it happened already and I learned that he died. It’s hard to let your dear people go, but I know he lived his best life. 

He is someone I still look up to because of the amount of love, joy and honesty he had. Even though he’s already gone there is a lot of love and appreciation for my dear friend. 

Also, this shows that our life is so short, it can end at any moment. People still die not only from war, but also from diseases or car accidents, and it just reminds me again, it’s so important to be kind. 

I remember that the day he died and I had to go to the funeral, I didn’t take the day off. I had a meeting with my team. I was smiling and when the meeting was over, I changed clothes and rushed to the cemetery. It was such a surreal experience because one minute I was talking about scaling, creatives to help improve performance and the next I was standing and looking at my friend for the last time. 

It also helps me to understand that our time is very limited and there is no need to overwork or to spend our time on things we don’t enjoy. This is why I feel blessed because I love my job, I love my team and I don’t overwork, I have time for my family and friends.

If there is one message that you take away from this whole conversation it should be, love your life and always stay humble and kind because you don’t know what other people may be feeling at this very moment. 

Maybe the best thing that happened was meeting my Fabulous team in person in Paris. It wasn’t the full team meeting. It was a spontaneous meeting because I was in Paris and it turned out that part of the team was traveling for some leadership meeting and we just saw each other in person.

Working remotely is hard and seeing somebody for the very first time in person is so rewarding. It was the moment when I realized that people who I have seen only on my screen, are even more amazing humans in real life. So it’s definitely one of the brightest moments of 2022.

Shamanth:

It’s a reaffirmation of life even though there’s death. 

I was reminded of this strip called Calvin and Hobbes. There’s this one strip where I think Calvin loses a pet and he’s shocked. He says, “I thought death always happened to other people, I never thought it could happen to me.” 

It can be that way for a lot of us. That’s what I imagine can be one of the hardest things to deal with around loss, death, and grief.

Thank you again, Natalia. This has been an openhearted conversation today, and I’m curious if you have any learnings that you feel other people can take away from your experience?

Nataliia:

I really hope none of you ever go through experiences Ukrainians or people in Iran are going through. It is something that helps us to become stronger, but the price is way too high. 

What are my lessons?

First of all, test, trial, fail fast, and never give up. Until you’re dead, it’s not over. If you feel like everything is lost, it’s not. As long as you have your brains and your body, do something with them. 

Second thing, invest in yourself. Your house can be destroyed, your car can be destroyed and your business as well.

But your knowledge will never be until you’re dead. So this is why it’s so important to invest your time in lessons, courses, workshops, and knowledge, because you may lose everything, but your skills will help you to rebuild everything. 

Maybe the other thing is to be kind because as I said, you don’t know what other people are going through at this very moment. Listen, be kind, and stay humane until your last breath.

Shamanth:

I think that’s perhaps a good place for us to wrap up this conversation. Certainly not a usual conversation for me, but I think it opened my eyes and my heart to what’s going on, and certainly gave me new perspectives. So, Natalia, thank you so much for sharing with us today.

Before we wrap up, can you share more about how people can find out more about you and everything you do? 

Nataliia:

Of course. I don’t write much or talk much, people can find me on LinkedIn.

I’m not very active there, but if somebody writes me a message, I always check it. 

If it’s vendors, I will most probably ignore it. But if you need marketing advice or if you just want to share some cute pet animal pictures with me, please do. I’m a cat mama.

Now this conversation was about war and marketing and management and philosophy in life, but if you have some marketing-related questions, especially subscription-based applications and user acquisition, app store optimization, I’m completely up to discussing those things because again, knowledge and learnings are the sayings that are doubled when shared.

Shamanth:

We’ll link to your LinkedIn, people can hopefully reach out if they feel so, but for now, we’ll wrap this conversation up. Thank you again for your time, Natalia. 

Nataliia:

Thank you very much. Stay safe, be kind and see you soon.

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