What If You Don't Need to Scale? Natasha Bhogal on Building a Business Your Way

speaker-0: Life happens, a lot of things are happening in the way. So it can definitely be ⁓ a lot to juggle as well. ⁓ so just one just give me one minute because obviously I've been in hopping in a lot of different calls and interviews. So I just want to make sure that I have the right information. But were we in touch or were you in touch with one of my colleagues?

speaker-1: ⁓ let me check. I I believe we were in touch.

speaker-0: Okay, let me just check. ⁓ okay. So it looks like Ben reached out to you first, and then we were in touch as well. Okay. Great. So, all right. So I'm just gonna do a really quick introduction. So ⁓ my name's Carmen, so nice to officially meet you. And I am one of the recruitment consultants at Cherry Assistant, and I'm also the Host and producer of the podcast that we have by Cherry Assistant. So I'm just going to explain to you a little bit about ⁓ how this podcast came to life and I'll walk you through the specific details about the podcast setup and everything that comes with it as well. Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to interrupt me anytime and I'm happy to answer anything. So basically, ⁓ I'm one of the recruiters at Cherry Assistant and we are a staffing agency. We focus a lot on ⁓ offshore VA staffing. So we partner up with a variety of clients from the UK and the US, and we help them grow and support their business in operational scale, right? So we've worked with a variety of industries from home cleaning, healthcare, med spa, educational field, ⁓ commercial real estate, construction, just sending them a few. And during the process, we've come to find the importance of really understanding. business setup, right? Not just purely the role, but really understanding the business setup, the challenges, the pain points. And this inspired us. So along with our co-founders, DJ Kim and Ben Decky, to launch the podcast behind the founders. So we thought, you know what, let's start this podcast. And we want to invite founders across different businesses and different organizations for them to really share how they built their business, what they've been working on, the challenges they face. Thoughts on AI and of course ⁓ also like your insights, you know, your experiences and takeaways from that process. So we came across your profile and we thought it would be lovely to have a chat and a conversation with you. So that's where we are. ⁓ So Natasha, you are ⁓ consulting director of Alliance College Ready Public Schools.

speaker-1: So I actually own a company called InCurrent Creative, and Alliance is a client of InCurrent Creatives.

speaker-0: Okay, all right. Incorrect creative. Okay. So that it's you've been around for four years. Okay, great. So ⁓

speaker-1: It's little bit longer. It's been around since twenty seventeen, but it rebranded to Incurrent Creative under a new model four years ago.

speaker-0: All right, lovely. Well, happy for us to explore a little bit more when we jump into the podcast recording. Before ⁓ we just hop on to reverse side, do you have any questions?

speaker-1: ⁓ no, no questions. ⁓ I'm happy to also talk about like my experience offshoring because a good number of my team members are offshore in the Philippines. And so I have found that that model has worked so well and I recommend it to all of my friends who are like starting their own consultancies and I think it just it's great.

speaker-0: Awesome, awesome. Well, we'll definitely talk more about that. I'm definitely gonna have questions regarding that you could share a little bit about your team organization, team setup, and everything like that. So happy to chat and learn a little bit more about your team too. ⁓ have you had the chance to take a look at the cover topics and information on the invite?

speaker-1: Yeah, it was it was pretty high level, just like background, what you do, AI. Yeah, it was pretty high level.

speaker-0: Okay, great. So then the way it works is this, right? So I've already done over, I think I've done already 22 podcast episodes. And I am not really like a fan of scripts. So those are just like the vague topics that we'll go over because I feel like I want to treat this podcast recording like it's really organic. So I want to make sure that everything is flowing, like we're grabbing a cup of coffee and having a chat. And that's when we can really extract like the best content and everything like that. Because what we're gonna do is after the call, ⁓ I'll do a little bit of debrief with you and then I'm just gonna like edit the clips and also extract a couple of sound bites. if you prefer, I can also share them with you before it goes out to all the different social media platforms. And then once I get the green light from you, then we can officially publish it across the different platforms.

speaker-1: No. Yeah. I don't think you need to run anything by me. I think whatever we talk about, like feel free to do what you need with it. And yeah, I think I think whatever comes out of it it will be great.

speaker-0: Awesome. Amazing. Perfect. So let me just send you the link to Riverside. Have you used Riverside before? Okay. No worries at all. So before we jump on, do you want to use headphones or would you prefer to use without headphones?

speaker-1: No. ⁓ I think just as this is right now.

speaker-0: Okay. All right. So ⁓ just give me one second because I'm just gonna grab my headphones and I'll be right with you and then I'll explain to you what needs to be done just to make sure we have the best audio quality. Sure. All right, I'm back. I'm gonna send you the link. So I added the link into the chat. So what I need you to do is when you click on that, be sure to click. There are two options. There's I'm using headphones or there's I'm use I'm not using headphones. Just make sure you click I'm not using headphones because what often happens is ⁓ if you click the wrong button, there might be some strange echo effects and we want to avoid that as well.

speaker-1: Okay.

speaker-0: Perfect. Just let me know if you have any questions.

speaker-1: Mm, will it allow the background blur?

speaker-0: ⁓ unfortunately no. But if you prefer a blurred background, another option that we could do is that we could stick, we could do the recording right in this call. I already started the read AI transcription. And what I and I've done that before with many ⁓ other podcast guests is we record this here and I'll download the video and then I'll do all the editing via Riverside. And it will be as though we've done it. the recording here on Riverside. So it doesn't really make a difference. So if that's what you prefer, we can do the recording just here on the spot.

speaker-1: Yeah, I would say like because I work from home and it's a home office, like I would just prefer the background to be blurred.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, no, that totally makes sense as well. I totally understand that. Great. So what's gonna happen is I'm gonna do an introduction and then I'll be like, hey, Natasha, can you introduce yourself? And then we'll just take it from there. just to be mindful, in term how do I pronounce your surname? Was it Natasha? Bogo. Okay, Bogo. All right, perfect. Great. ⁓ anything else to go over before we officially start?

speaker-1: Bobo. No, I just have a hard stop at twelve.

speaker-0: Okay. What time is it where you are actually because of the time differences?

speaker-1: Eleven eleven. So like about forty five.

speaker-0: Okay, we'll definitely get that done. No worries at all. Okay. I will definitely be mindful of the time. Okay, so let's start. Hey everyone, this is Carmen Durvat and this is Behind the Founders. Today, joining me here today is Natasha Bogle. Natasha, welcome. Can you introduce yourself?

speaker-1: Yes, thank you so much. So I'm Natasha Bogle. ⁓ I'm based here in Los Angeles and I'm a senior marketing leader or fractional CMO of a company called Incurrent Creative, which I founded ⁓ in 2017.

speaker-0: Great. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. To get us started, how did you start the business of InCurrent Creative?

speaker-1: Yeah, it's actually a really funny story. ⁓ so when I was in college, I never I never thought to be an entrepreneur. Like that path had never crossed my mind and it it was never something that I was leaning towards. But after college, I was working for a startup, and at that startup, I met a couple of very senior folks in various departments, and they introduced this idea of consulting to me. And at that time, It wasn't really heard of to be a freelancer or a consultant in any industry unless you were working for like a big four, like a true consultant. And so they kind of planted the seed of like being a consultant. And I was really curious. So I went on thumbtack, saw a lot of people on that app who were looking for like marketing or PR services. And that's truly how I got started. I pitched two clients. Not even realizing that they were clients, I I did two jobs for them and it turned into long term engagements, which snowballed into referrals and it just it just grew over time into what it is today.

speaker-0: Amazing, amazing. It's always the surprises, the plot twists, the unexpected, right? Because oftentimes we don't know where life is going to take us, but sometimes there can be very lovely surprises along the way. So for the listeners and the audience out there tuning in to this podcast, can you explain to the audience who have never come across in Current Creative what exactly is it that you do and what is your mission?

speaker-1: Yeah, totally. So Incurrent Creative is a full funnel marketing consultancy. Not to be confused with agency. I say this all the time. I think when we think of, you know, women in marketing or or women who have businesses in marketing, we naturally think about an agency. So there's a founder, there's a director, you have this entire team of people and lots of clients coming in and a lot of like full service agency level work in marketing. But ⁓ a full funnel consultancy is a little different where we're a team of consultants. So I'm the head consultant, and I have a team of my own consultants that I bring in project-wise. ⁓ so based on client needs or what's happening with you know folks coming in and out of Incurrent Creative, I'll bring in other consultants to support. Those consultants can be other marketers, they can be designers, video editors, producers, graphic designers, web editors. It it's really just Whatever the client needs in order to be able to achieve full funnel strategic marketing. So full funnel means that we start at the top of a traditional marketing funnel. So top of funnel, social media channels. We want to bring in as many interested buyers as possible and generate leads for you on the B2B side. And we nurture them all the way down to be either a completed customer or someone that continues to return and buy your product or service. So the full funnel side typically and traditionally is more B2B based. And so a lot of the companies that I work with are in education or they're wholesalers or they're just not on the glitz and glam side of marketing or like packaged goods or lifestyle or retail. It's the other side, the more traditional, unsexy side of marketing, of businesses really looking to help. expand their own business offerings and bring in clients for themselves.

speaker-0: Yeah. I was actually going to follow up with the next two questions, but you kind of answered it already, which is, you know, what kind of clients have you been working with? How many clients do you currently have?

speaker-1: Yeah. So I think when ⁓ InCurrent first like rebranded and really took off, my goal was no more than 10 clients at a time, just realistically because it's a consultancy and there isn't a large team bandwidth wise. And I think I have just learned that the smaller the number, the better. And I I just feel the work is so much more impactful and we can do so much more by serving under five, under five really big. Corporate B2B clients. And I mesh myself directly within their teams, which is where we get into the fractional work.

speaker-0: Yeah, I love that you know you've positioned yourself as being very quality driven rather than taking a bunch of clients in because that's when you can really be more intentional and purposeful and help them to scale up as well. So you mentioned that you focus more on a lot of the traditional side of the companies that need a lot of support and help in those marketing aspects from the partnerships and collaborations that you have. done with your existing or pre-existing clients, what were some of the challenges that you have identified when working with them in terms of helping them in those marketing aspects?

speaker-1: Do you mean challenges like just within the marketing itself or just any challenges that may arise through this process?

speaker-0: I would say the challenges you've arise that have arise within the process with the clients you've worked with.

speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So because of the the model behind Incurrent Creative, the qualifications for the clients that I typically work with need to exceed 2 million in revenue. So those are typically more well established. They've been around. They have a good revenue stream flowing. And I think the challenges that I'm noticing, I actually had a conversation with someone recently about this, which is The bigger the client and the more money they make, the more rules you have to abide by in their internal organization, even though you are a consultant. So though I'm not a full-time employee for any of my clients and we have this consulting relationship, I still abide by their procurement processes, which are very different than mine. I have to use their tools, their systems, adopt all of their programs, which may not be intuitive to me, whether it's a sauna or Monday.com, like whatever dashboard or custom configuration they're using, it's my job to kind of come in and learn it. And it's always different for every client. So even if I have my own consultants coming in and supporting a project, there's this learning curve of I need to work with my own team and help them understand the client and their systems and tools. And then when we get into the people management portion of it, I think that's also been pretty challenging where Anytime like a senior consultant is coming in, regardless of the organization, I think full-time, you know, staff members always get a little nervous. So they're like, why, who's this person? Why are they coming in? What are they here to do? And so I think we don't talk about it enough, but there are a lot of challenges for consultants coming in at that level where you still have to do this people management portion and you still have to build that team with them, even though you are not a full-time employee of the clients. Right. Like you have to work with them, talk to them, engage with them. There's still a level of professional development that you are obligated to provide to help them succeed. And then of course, if they're unable to succeed, then there's a different conversation with executives of okay, well, it's not working out. It seems like we need a cleanup shop and rehire. So there's a lot of challenges and nuances in that people management portion that can be really taxing sometimes.

speaker-0: Yeah, I can imagine as well. And how do you manage that, especially when it's about managing people, managing expectations? I can imagine people are complicated, right? Humans are complicated. You cannot predict them.

speaker-1: Yeah, it's really hard. I recently had a situation where with one of the client teams I work with, there was ⁓ a member of their team who just just taking everything that I was doing in a negative way. Even though my intentions were, you know, of course not negative. It was always from a place of like, let's grow and learn and up level our work. And that was a really interesting situation because I had no idea that someone was feeling, you know, a certain type of way. And I think all you can do is just try to be as grounded as possible and just really let the other person talk and communicate their feelings and create a space where it's okay for them to share these things and just try just name for them like what do you need from me so that you feel supported and that you can move forward? Like I think that's been a big thing for me. It's I can't just always come in and say, we're gonna do X, Y, and Z and this is the way. It's it has to be a very collaborative. Process because of the model of like coming into a team and like really supporting them all the way through. So just naming for them again and again, like, what do you need from me in order to feel like you're being successful? And everyone's answer is always different. It's never the same answer. And so just figuring out how you're going to then provide what somebody else.

speaker-0: Dominic. Hmm.

speaker-1: Whether it's time consuming or not for you, or if it's something that you've never done before, like there's also that professional development for me as I'm navigating through this. And yeah.

speaker-0: Sure. It's definitely from everything that you've shared, it's it's a huge learning curve because you're also building a lot of ⁓ adaptability. And I think what's so interesting to shed light on is that as founders, you are also learning a lot of new things. You're learning how to navigate different expectations, needs, requirements from people, and also while learning about new tools and systems that you've navigated. So it's like it's also. Challenging, but it's also there's this rewarding aspect at the same time that you're also continuously growing and growing as well. And I think this is something that's extremely valuable for the listeners out there to understand, especially, you know, as a founder, that you are learning and growing too. So, Natasha, I would actually love to revisit something that you mentioned earlier in this podcast, is making is really to challenge the differences in terms of. marketing consultancy and marketing agency. And I find it very interesting, you know, that there's this emphasis on that. So how what would you say is the difference between a consultancy and an agency?

speaker-1: Yeah. So I don't know if the consultancy is a true like name. I think it's something that I have just started saying to explain what it is that I do. And the context behind it is, you know, the more I meet folks and they ask me, you know, what are you doing? What is in current creative? I think the assumption is if you work in marketing and you're you founded a business, the the natural direction is you have an agency. Like the only way to scale and grow is by building an agency. And I knew very early on that I did not want to be an agency. Like, like I said, I didn't really choose the entrepreneur, like founder path. It just kind of happened. But I knew really early on that I was not interested in a traditional agency, having worked at many agencies prior. And I didn't like this, you know, lots of people that you hire. Again, the people management portion of it, the payroll systems, the infrastructure. What I really cared about was just the marketing and doing the work and getting to meet really cool people along the way. Like when you meet other businesses or other executives and you hear the mission and you know, like their strategic vision and what drives their goals for organizations, like that's what I love. Working one on one with these founders or CEOs or organizations and like helping their team succeed, that was always the most meaningful thing to me. And so I was really clear with folks I'm not an agency. When you hire me of in current creative, like you're not getting an account manager and a And an assistant, an intern, like you're not getting this illusion of like six people on a team managing your account. And I also want clients to understand that they're not one of a hundred clients inside of in-current creatives structure. It's like very personalized, very tailor-made, like exactly what the client needs in order to succeed to meet their goals. And they have teams that need that need the help. Right. Like they have teams that are doing the work, but they're just unable to achieve their goals. And so that's where the consultancy came in. It was you're, yes, you're hiring in current creative, but you're really hiring me, the primary consultant of the business. And as our scope of work expands, I will bring in folks that I have vetted to help you continue to achieve those goals as needed.

speaker-0: Yeah, great. So so far we've talked a lot about what the ideal partnerships collaboration looks like when you're working with all these clients. Let's talk a little bit more about your current internal team setup at in current creative. So if you could walk us through a little bit about how many people are on your team, who does what, the specific unique roles and Would love to hear more about that.

speaker-1: Totally. So my core team is made up of three people ⁓ internally. They're all consultants. And I'll be really transparent that two of those three are actually offshore. So they're in the Philippines. And I have found in this entire process that offshoring the work has led to the best results possible, which I know may be the opposite of what most folks think. And I have had clients who have chosen not to work with me because of my offshore team. Like it just goes against whatever it is they believe in or their core values. But when I was looking to expand, like there's only so much one person can do. Right. And as you're trying to like build capacity and to stay in like a more strategic mindset, you definitely need more hands on deck to do the implementation. And so I had started offshoring with a company called the Freedom Geek.

speaker-0: Okay.

speaker-1: It worked out really well for me. I hired my first offshore person. and she's great. And she she's still it's been like three years. She's been with me since day one. And she does a lot of the content management, ⁓ video editing. She's like very, very creative and excellent in her job. Prior to finding her, I had interviewed so many folks. ⁓ you know, here, anywhere here in the US. And I was just finding that I wasn't getting someone who Who was so motivated as I was, who was just so passionate about the work and passionate about doing the work in a way that really served the client well. That's what I was really struggling with. Like anyone can do the job. But it was really hard for me to find folks that cared as much as I did and went above and beyond to make sure that whatever was being produced was not surface value. It was in the best interest of a client. ⁓ so then I hired another offshore person. She is my marketing manager and she has truly been my ride or die. and I think we have a really beautiful relationship. She's very hands-off. We meet once a week. ⁓ in that week we communicate via Slack and Notion, and you know, it's it's been it's been incredible. And then my third person is a designer. She's a consultant based here in the US. And we've been working together again for about three, three to four years, and I really lean on her. for like website design, landing pages, like bigger design projects that kind of come through. And she has a really good marketing lens. So that's my core team. And as other needs arise, other consultants come in on a project, like per project this.

speaker-0: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So regarding the offshore hiring, the support that you've been getting, they are all based in the Philippines.

speaker-1: Yes. Two of them are based in the Philippines, yep.

speaker-0: Okay. And how do you manage and navigate the time differences?

speaker-1: Yeah, it's actually not so bad. ⁓ I mean, there is a huge time difference, right? Like their morning does not start until my afternoon. Like I'm in office. So, you know, when we usually meet, it's around five or six p.m. my time. ⁓ and honestly, I have found that it's it actually works out really great because the talent that I'm hiring is really good at what they do. And so our touch points once a week are really just about. Just making sure everything's good, answering questions, like giving them the support that they need. But the majority of our communication lives via Slack or on Notion, which is my like management tool. And if something is really complicated, I'll record a Loom video. I mean, I record Loom videos for clients too, and I'll send it over. And yeah, it actually works out really well. Like I don't feel that there's a time difference or a delay or that it's hurting me. I think it's been the best solution for me personally.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, of course. And I'm glad that you're able to find something that really works well for you. And just wanted to ⁓ revisit something that you mentioned earlier, how some of the clients that you bring in ⁓ have reservations when it comes to finding out that hey, you know, you have some offshore staffing. I would love to hear from your perspective. Why do you think that is that a lot of people Have certain reservations when it comes to offshore staffing.

speaker-1: Yeah, I'm personally I'm not sure. If I had to guess, I think there is some fear of I'm scared that this is a scam or I'm scared my account will get hacked or it'll get flagged. Even though I can reassure them that like, look, I'm here, I'm overseeing it. It's it's nothing like that. But you know, if someone's logging into your like HubSpot, for example, and you know, a client will get a notification, like someone in the Philippines at this time trying to log in, like it's like fishing. Right. ⁓ and I have to keep reminding them over and over again, like, it's not fishing. I promise. Like this is this is just what it is. So I think there's just some fear behind it of ⁓ you may get hacked or like something is not right. And and so I think that's one aspect. And I think the other aspect is clients have like, you know, told me directly that it it just doesn't align with some of their core values. So some clients who are really focused on like community building in their local areas or up leveling the businesses in their local area, I think their core values stand behind trying to give as many folks in that community an opportunity to earn an income or, you know, find a professional and meaningful career. And so it would go against their core values. I think that's really nuanced, but Very nuanced, but but I can understand it, right? Like if you are like a chamber association, for example, your job for being a chamber, let's say of like Los Angeles or another city here. of course, as the chamber, you want as many businesses to come in and as many jobs to be created for your city to thrive. So I can understand why you would have reservations about a company who offer

speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So just out of curiosity, when you're talking about the core values, that it's going against the core values, what exactly do the clients mean by that? Is it because they're looking for somebody that's on site or is it are there other aspects to it? Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah, I think it's just the the core value of like if you are an organization that's really community focused or community driven. So let's use like Santa Monica. Like I'm I live really close to Santa Monica. ⁓ if your organization was all about building community in the city of Santa Monica, as part of building community, you would want to provide as many resources and opportunities to all the residents in Santa Monica. So if there's a business coming in or a consultancy that you're working with that is not open to hiring locally or hiring anywhere in the US, I think there's just this this feeling to it of why can't we hire here? Why must you go offshore? And I think I think the nuance here is because it's marketing and there's this feeling that, like, you know, marketing isn't as technical or it's not as complicated as you offshoring an entire ⁓ like web development team that does your hosting. You know, it's it's not as technical that you would have to go offshore because there's truly no one here to do it. It's you could find someone here to do it, but

speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, makes sense. I think the beauty when it comes to offshore staffing is that it really does open up a lot of doors because you're not so restricted when it comes to finding the right talent or right person that would help you to grow your business or grow, in your case, the the marketing consultancy, right? Because ⁓ it would just open up a lot of doors that you know it doesn't matter where in the world you are, as long as you establish a really good form of communication and you're able to find the right person who's really sharing the same mindset, the same passion, you know, same aspirations and so on. ⁓ then that's really what it matters, is really finding the right person out there, whether they're really in different time zones and things like that. Yeah, yeah.

speaker-1: I tell everyone that if if I didn't know that these two girls that I hired were in the Philippines, like I would have never questioned it. I would have been like, Yeah, you're you're you could be anywhere. Like you could be in LA and I just would I wouldn't question it because the quality of the work is so good and the way we work together is so strong that I would never even think like, ⁓ you're in the Philippines or you're in India. I was just like, You're just great at what you do and that's all that really

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So currently at the current stage where you're at, do you feel like you are experiencing any challenges where you're like, okay, if I could delegate something immediately for extra support, what would it look like?

speaker-1: Yeah. Actually I think that's where AI kind of comes in because I think the need for wanting to free up bandwidth or try to create a process where recurring projects or recurring tasks that you're doing on a daily or weekly basis can be off, you know, offloaded to something else or somebody else. In this case it would be Claude or Chat Chi.

speaker-0: Yeah. The main issue.

speaker-1: Yeah, so I think I have I think it's it actually makes more sense to find ways to leverage AI in those ways because a lot of those projects or tasks, they don't need to be done by a person. I also think that if I am bringing in another consultant or I'm hiring someone to support in current creative, like I want them to do actual meaningful work. Like they're designing something or they're writing something or like we're actually doing things inside of a client's funnel.

speaker-0: Okay.

speaker-1: But if the task is something as simple as data reporting or use of anybody's time, it doesn't matter like how like what your seniority is, it's not a good use of anybody's time to sit there and you know put numbers in a cell. And and these tools actually very rarely make mistakes, at least from what I've seen on the marketing end. Like they're pretty good and they can do the data analysis and the reporting very strong. They can create really great insights and

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: If that can be offloaded to an AI tool and it just runs competitively, great.

speaker-0: Yeah, for sure. I think when it comes to AI, right? And we can definitely dive more into that. ⁓ do you currently in your core team, are you proactively introducing ⁓ different AI trainings just so that they can all upskill when it comes to fulfilling their role?

speaker-1: Yeah. So I think initially and and I think there was just a wave of this everywhere. It was this fear of I don't want to be caught using AI because ⁓ yeah. And I've always seen like, why is it a bad thing? It's actually a really great thing that you're using it and you're learning from it and you know understanding it. So yeah, tell my core team all the time, use it. And if you don't

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, that as well, yeah, yeah.

speaker-1: have like if you're not paying for a license yourself, like I will invite you into my my enterprise license. And you should use it and play around with it and use it for your client work because it will help you. Like it will only make you stronger. It will not replace you. Definitely will not replace you. It will just make you stronger and more efficient at your work. And so ⁓ my first my my VA, my marketing VA, ⁓ I just gave her a content brief for social media content just for for in current creative. And I named for her like Generate this using AI. Like, let's have fun. Let's play around with it. Let's see what it's capable of doing and see if that works. So I bury AI forward and then for clients. ⁓ part of the of the senior marketing work has now been helping clients understand AI and adopt AI into their own infrastructure. Part of my work has been. Just figuring out what are the challenges clients are facing that I'm seeing on a regular basis. And I will go and I'll create like a custom, a custom GPT for them, or like I will schedule tasks for them in an AI tool and I'll help their team like adopt it and use it. And so far it's working pretty great.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, awesome. I'm loving that how you're really just normalizing AI tools because I think there is probably there, you know, there are always like two sides or two opinions, or you know, people have really polarized opinions when it comes to AI. And part of it is also like, ⁓ using AI could be such a taboo. We really have to prove ourselves in our writing and our posts that we're not using AI, especially with the dashes, especially with the hypens. And because of that, people feel the need to worsen their quality of let's say. creating a text or a caption or content just to prove that they were not using AI. But you know what? I think it's really about the perspective of like that ⁓ how we use it, you know, ⁓ that there shouldn't be like an over dependency, but it's a useful tool to really help you generate ideas and so on and so forth. Yeah. So Natasha, just one final question. And this is a question I typically love to ask towards the end of every episode to all my guests coming here. If there was one piece of advice or insight that you would love to pass on to someone who's considering to start a business or someone who is curious about diving into the world of being an entrepreneur or a founder, what would it be?

speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ I have two. I can give you two. I think ⁓ I don't think both are that great. So I think you can choose between the two. Like whoever's listening, you can choose between the two which one is like better. But ⁓ the first piece of advice that I did that I received from someone that really rubbed me wrong is actually the advice that is like always ringing in my ears till date, which was ⁓ you don't need a lot of clients to be successful.

speaker-0: All right.

speaker-1: You just need a small handful that you can charge a lot for in retainers. And that in itself is really successful and leads to sustainable growth. when someone told me this, you know, this is before I had rebranded to Incurrent Creative and it was very early stages of my consulting. And, you know, there was this ego of like, I want all the clients, I want to do all the things.

speaker-0: The more it's better. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1: And I didn't understand this idea. And that's why I really harp on the distinction between consultancy versus agency. Agency has a lot of clients coming in and out. Yeah. Consultancy is like a very small core number of clients. And that has led, at least for me, it's the most sustainable approach that has led to so much like revenue growth year over year moving forward. And it's just very sustainable. It's very healthy. There's a healthy relationship in this business. And as other like women start to find their own businesses that offer services, the advice that they're always going to hear is build an agency. You need to scale. And scaling building an agency, getting an office, like hiring people, like doing all the things under that agency realm under like growth. But That is not the only way that growth can be captured. And you don't like it's not a and or. It's you have multiple different ways that you can build and grow. And it is absolutely possible with a very small core number of clients.

speaker-0: Great, great. Love that.

speaker-1: And the second one, which I really love for me, it's not for everybody. I'll I'll name that it's not for everybody, is like lean into the resistance. So I think a lot of times there are a lot of ideas that come or you know that feeling of you get this gut feeling if if something is for you or not. I think a lot of us are taught to ignore that. Like ignore your gut feeling. Your gut feeling is wrong, right? Like You have weird vibes about someone, you typically ignore it. And then later on you realize, okay, gut feeling. The same thing in business. I feel like there is this gut feeling and lean into it. And you're gonna feel so much resistance all the time. And I have found that when you just take a step back and really lean into that resistance and feel uncomfortable and think about why I am feeling all this resistance, you will find that there is something else that you need to learn.

speaker-0: All along, yeah.

speaker-1: Some other piece of information that just has not unfolded yet that you need in order to move forward. And so all the resistance that I have felt, I have just taken a step back. I don't put pressure on it. I don't try to force myself into doing something. I just wait and I see. And usually something else needs to unfold. And then I make an even better decision that leads to something a lot more beautiful.

speaker-0: Yeah. Thank you so much, Natasha. I feel like both of those insights are extremely insightful and very intentional as well. I love what you mentioned about the first advice about quality over quantity. And through that, you're able to build long-term sustainable partnerships rather than just gathering a bunch of clients, but really focusing on retention and long-term partnerships, which of course builds a lot of trust as well. So I really value both of that and I hope and I'm pretty sure that the listeners out there are gonna take have a couple of takeaways from this particular episode. So Natasha, thank you so much again for coming on and it's been lovely chatting with you. This is behind the founders. Be sure to stay tuned for the next episode. Great. How did you feel?

speaker-1: Thank you so much. That was great. ⁓

speaker-0: Awesome. Awesome. Happy that ⁓ to have the chance to chat with you and I really definitely enjoyed the conversation as well. It's getting me to reflect about a lot of things as well.

speaker-1: Amazing. Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time. And if you need anything from me moving forward, just feel free to let me know.

speaker-0: Definitely for sure. So I do have to jump into a call in the next few minutes, but I just wanted to briefly check in because you mentioned that, you know, you're currently you have experience hiring VAs in the Philippines. And as you know, we are also doing a lot of offshore staffing for different clients. I just wanted to follow up to see if currently you're looking for support in terms of offshore staffing and so on.

speaker-1: Yeah, I think right now I'm okay. I I do foresee that there is gonna be a need in the next month or two to bring in another like graphic designer. Like graphic design, web design. ⁓ I'd be totally open to exploring like a different partner. You know, Freedom Geek was just a referral. So I had a direct contact and that's that's just how it worked out. But yeah, if you could share any insight with me on like the process and like placement fee looks like. I would love to consider it.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, sure. So just a little bit of a background and happy to definitely schedule like a discovery call with myself or one of the co-founders. We've had a lot of experience partnering up with a lot of clients who've also worked in marketing agency in a variety of industries that I made at the beginning. We have done offshore talent in the Philippines as well as Latin America, but actually our Primary focus has actually been a lot in South Africa. And we have to find, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure. Have you had experience with ⁓ hiring South Africa? Okay.

speaker-1: But I am open to Latin America. I'm actually I'm open to any offshoring really.

speaker-0: Yeah, so something that we found has worked really well. So an interesting story is that we did focus a lot on offshore staffing in the Philippines at the beginning. And then we had one client coming in, they were requesting, hey, we were looking for someone in South Africa. And then through that, we've come to find very, very promising candidates simply because the time differences is a little bit ⁓ there's more overlaps and also because of the cultural mindset, right? They're more aligned in terms of the Western culture, also. with English being their native first language, we've come to find really good, a lot of good VAs in that space as well. ⁓ so if this is something that you're open to exploring, happy to either do a call or we could also follow up as time goes on when you are in need of like a graphic designer, happy to set that up. Just let me know what which direction you prefer to go for.

speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ I think if you can send me any details about like just like the cost, the placement, like just like the process, that would be great. And then I I feel I have this feeling that I'm going to need to bring in another person ⁓ to support a client that I have an active retainer with because the retainer that I currently have right now, her bandwidth is pretty full. I just want to be

speaker-0: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I would say I would just provide you with a quick summary and then of course I'm going to share with you all the details, a link of the website, and if needed, we can also jump into a call. So basically we have different options, right? It really depends if you are looking for somebody who's a junior or associate or senior, whether it's part-time, full-time. So depending on that, we of course have different subscription fees. And then what we typically do is that we really are kind of like what you're mentioning, right? We really want to customize every role. So when we have clients coming in, what we typically do is we would sit in the call, I'm going to be asking or another associate of mine will ask as much questions as possible because the more information you share, the better it is for us to really tailor what you're looking for. And then what we do is that we really customize the job description. We will have AI tools to record that. And then it would be a fresh job posting specifically for you. And then what we do is we have our internal ⁓ ATS tool, Higher Salva, where we really have a pool of 200,000 candidates in the pool. And then we're able to really proactively find profiles that really align closely to that. And what typically happens is that there's a 250 US dollar deposit fee. And that's when we kick off the What we'd like to call a two-week sourcing period. So within those two weeks, what the recruiters and I do is we really do a lot of interviewing, vetting. So we have, let's say, a thousand applicants or few hundred coming in. And then we would interview between 20 to 30 candidates for the job because we really want to make sure that we find specifically the right ones. And then from there, we would identify the top three profiles that we believe are the best fit, the right targets. And then you will meet those three. Within ⁓ two weeks or even earlier, depending on how quickly you need them. So it's really about speed and quality as well. And then from there you decide, okay, do I like them? Do I not? And then if you are not happy with them, we will restart the process. If you're not happy, the deposit is refundable. So that way you would really get a lot of those options. So that's what typically happens. Yeah. And then in terms of the subscriptions, right?

speaker-1: Assim.

speaker-0: We really manage the paywall, we cover everything from paywall, working hours, contracting, things like that. So that's an overview, but of course I'm gonna share all the further information as well.

speaker-1: Got it. Okay. So then I would just pay you all and then you will pay

speaker-0: Yes, we handle the rest. Everything's included. Yeah.

speaker-1: Okay, nice. Okay, great. Yeah. And then typically what do the hourly rates look like in South Africa or Latin America?

speaker-0: ⁓ do you mean what the candidates get paid or the subscriptions?

speaker-1: ⁓ right, because I would just be paying a subscription.

speaker-0: Exactly. Yes. And we handle the hourly weights of the candidates. Exactly. You just pay this monthly subscription and we just handle the rest.

speaker-1: Hmm, okay. Okay, I kinda like that.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Okay, yeah, let's let's talk more. I would love to schedule a follow-up in about a month or so. Like sometime in August. And I'd love to explore this further because I again I have a really good feeling I'm gonna need to expand.

speaker-0: All right, let's do it. Yeah, yeah. ⁓ so how would we like to do is should we book already a slot right now in August just so that we have something in the books, or would you want to take a look at your calendar and then get back to me?

speaker-1: Yeah, we can book some time and I think what I would like to do is just kind of share with you like a job role that I'm looking for. Perfect.

speaker-0: Right. Anything you can share would be extremely helpful for us. Again, the more information you provide, the more we're able to really customize exactly what you need. And I'm pretty confident that we're going to find the right target candidates and profiles as well.

speaker-1: Yeah, if we could actually schedule something for August twenty-seventh, it'd be great.

speaker-0: Okay, perfect. Right. Any time preferences? My calendar's really open.

speaker-1: Let's see. I would say if we could do like three PM. ⁓

speaker-0: Okay. You are based in your C time. Okay, 3 PM. Got it. All right. Let me just book something in right now.

speaker-1: Nothing. Actually I think two PM may also work.

speaker-0: Okay, let's do that. 2 p.m. Okay, Natasha. Is it the same email address, Natasha at InCurrent Creative? Perfect. Awesome. ⁓ just send it to you. Let me know if you receive it.

speaker-1: I hope not. I'm sure it'll come in.

speaker-0: All right. Maybe it might be in the spam or something where it just takes a few minutes for it to go through.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, I don't see it yet, but ⁓ there we go. Perfect.

speaker-0: Yeah. And you know, I think what we could do is this. So yeah, anything you have, any helpful job descriptions information you have, it would be really helpful. And of course in the call, what I'll do is I'm also gonna guide you through what I believe would be a really good subscription model, working hours, and then we'll just take it from there.

speaker-1: Okay, sounds like a plan.

speaker-0: Awesome, Natasha. It was very nice to meet you and looking forward to catching up ⁓ in a few weeks. Awesome. And also regarding the podcast, I will keep you posted once the videos are out and you are also going to have access to the different sound bites. Amazing. Awesome. Speak to you soon, Natasha. Take care. Bye.

speaker-1: Yeah, thank you so much. Okay. Sounds great. I'm excited.