Episode 575: How To Streamline Your Business Operations and Overcome the Fear of Delegating Tasks for Extended Time Off with Natasha Zolotareva

EBT575 – Natasha Zo

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported.

Megan Porta  00:37

Whether you are preparing to take time off from your business or not. This episode is going to be super helpful for you because automating, delegating and streamlining your business is super powerful. Natasha says Zo, from NatashaZo.com joins me in this interview. One of her main messages is that when you streamline your business, you create you, I absolutely love that line. It’s really hard for a lot of us to delegate because we feel like we can do it better than anyone else. So getting over that is step one, and then doing the delegating and opening up time for you to create you is the next step. In the episode Natasha talks about how to hire and create the team that you want, how to treat your team really well and support them and nurture them so that they stick around. She also talks through some common issues that you might face when you first start delegating, and some tips for you to get going now. This episode is gold. It is number 575. Sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor  01:43

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Megan Porta  03:15

Natasha Zo is a former journalist from Siberia running her international PR and visibility agency. As a PR agent she’s helped authors launch number one best selling books, booked national TV and landed clients on the world’s top podcasts and magazine covers. Leading up to this she has lived on three different continents volunteered in Central America, managed a high performing marketing team in Asia and taught public speaking to refugee teenagers. She is on a mission to see less clickbait and more empowering knowledge in the media. 

Megan Porta  03:46

Natasha, how is it going today? 

Natasha Zolotareva  03:49

Hi, Megan is so good to be here talking to you.

Megan Porta  03:53

I’m so excited to talk to you about automating delegating. Streamlining, oh, this is like one of my favorite topics ever. I think it’s so important for busy entrepreneurs to know all the stuff about this. Let’s do it. But first, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

Natasha Zolotareva  04:08

Oh, fun fact nothing to do as my business or anything else is several years ago, I run the marathon in Cambodia. And it’s not just the marathon running is the is Cambodia which means you like start at 4am in the morning and you start in the dark and we run around this Angkor Wat temple which I’d never seen before. And then you finish off your marathon at like 10am in the morning or something like this and then you get to see the sunrise over to this is amazing. So that’s Oh,

Megan Porta  04:39

oh, okay, that painted such a beautiful picture. I love that. I love that you start in the dark too. Yeah,

Natasha Zolotareva  04:46

it’s it was so, so special. It’s like well, when you can feel the presence of that ancient site before you can even see it. I never experienced anything like this ever in my life. Because you know, as a tourist you just can check out the spots. That was really special. 

Megan Porta  05:02

Wow. And I suppose that takes away the pain of running.

Natasha Zolotareva  05:07

It disrupts your mind.

Megan Porta  05:09

distraction. That’s a good word for it. Yes. Well, so cool. I love that. Do you do other marathons as well?

Natasha Zolotareva  05:15

So we’re gonna get into it. I was about to train for my second marathon. I was like, Okay, that’s about the time let’s do another one. And I started training, and then two weeks into training. I’m like, Oh, I’m pregnant. I can’t run a marathon anymore. 

Megan Porta  05:31

Oh, wow. Okay. And I think we’ll get into that part of the story. Right. Okay, cool. I love that fun fact. So cool. So why don’t you start Natasha by just giving us a little bit of a background on your business?

Natasha Zolotareva  05:43

Of course, yeah, I have a PR agency. I work with a lot of online entrepreneurs, people who build personal brands, people who, you know, whose business is basically relies on their own presence online, and their, you know, their reputation. So we help authors, book authors, course authors to get on podcast and radio, TV magazine covers, and I’ve been doing it for seven years now, I have a wonderful team of powerhouse women that’s been with me for for several years. And this is an mission to support them in businesses and entrepreneurs like that, I believe, whose message I believe in to help them to get more reach more audience better recognition.

Megan Porta  06:33

How did you start your business? What motivated you to start?

Natasha Zolotareva  06:38

It is a story, but let’s do it. So I had a normal job. My normal job was not so normal. My normal job was in Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur and the head office. So this company for some company called Mindvalley. And then, you know, at some point, I was like, Okay, it’s time to grow. And to spare the explore something on my own. This is Kuala Lumpur was very entrapreneurial culture, people are doing startups, starting businesses, and I’m like, What can I do? I don’t know, I haven’t I grew up around entrepreneurial culture in my childhood. So I knew that I wanted to do something, but it wasn’t I’m not sure what. So I gave myself time to experiment. And I wrote some articles about that. And about A B testing my career, I came up with like, few options, okay, maybe I can work and maybe I can continue working in marketing, maybe I can run some events. Maybe art, art is a passion, right? So so maybe I can do something in art, maybe I can pursue more of the copywriter side of passion. And I just got some consulting gigs for myself to kind of cover the bills. And I was really intentional about the fact that all the rest of the time is gonna go into experimentation. And I don’t need to make money on all the rest of the projects that I was doing, like I was running community event for creative community. I was Yeah, I was to testing myself as a writer. I was then like, you know, the art, the art theory died out really quickly. I was like, okay, yeah, I enjoy painting on the weekends. But you know, I cannot personally turn it into a career. So that was a really interesting moment. Because, you know, rather than diving straight into some business, and then are realizing, oh, you know, that doesn’t work for me, after already, you know, after already put some time and effort, and maybe even money investment on them, or the line there. I gave myself time. And then in this year of experimentation, I met this couple, they were traveling, the world’s leaving off the sailboat making a documentary, and I’m like, oh, I want to tell their story. I want to write about them. And I’m, like, you know, a few ways to publish about them to like, create a story to create articles about them on different websites and different platforms, got a lot of attractions around it. And I’m like, Oh, I actually want to be doing that more, that I don’t seem to get bored of this. Let’s see who else I can support who or what are the other, you know, enterpreneurs, whose stories I can tell. And that’s that, that fact that you know, that I found something that I can be doing consistently and repeatedly, and not get bored of it and like, Okay, that’s it. This is where I gonna build, this is what I’m going to build my business around this. At first, I didn’t even think about it, this is going to be a PR agency. So it’s kind of went really gradually I said, Okay, I can, I can spend my whole day doing it. And I can spend my whole day doing that. And I get I don’t get bored about it. And that’s exciting. And there’s so much to learn. And there’s, you know, the luckily had people who you know, who hired me very early on to, you know, to give me an opportunity to also learn on the work and, you know, then that was getting results. I was learning very quickly. I was learning what actually helps entrepreneurs in personal brands in terms of PR what kind of tactics are working then you know, that I had At the moment, when I had more requests that I could possibly fit into my own working working hours, I started thinking about hiring some assistants for myself, educating the assistants, etc, etc. A few years down the line, I found myself saying, Hey, I have a PR agency. So yeah.

Megan Porta  10:15

I love your story, I love that. I love how you went into it with the mindset of experimentation, and you just started doing things that you loved, and you saw it stuck. And then you just kind of went from there, and something you’re passionate about. So you asked the question, whose story can I tell? And that was something that you really seemed like you got lit up about, like that was something that really inspired you, right, like telling other people’s stories. Yes, I love that.

Natasha Zolotareva  10:43

My background is journalism. And yeah, I’ve been journalist for several years. Before, before I even had a job marketing job at Mindvalley. And there, that’s kind of its initial passion, telling the stories, which finding people who inspire me and get this is my, this is my core inspiration. This is, this is the thing that makes me tick, people who are crazy passionate about something, I’m like, okay, I can never really do that. On a daily basis, that’s too much. But I’m really interested to first of all, explore it for you know, for a day or two or a month or so, and kind of, you know, step into your world. But also I’m really passionate about seeing your passion and seeing the spark in your eyes about that particular topic. And I love that and I want the world to see more of that more passion in your eyes, people to see that passionate individuals, people who are so dedicated to one thing, one career one, you know, one service, that’s very beautiful.

Megan Porta  11:51

Yeah, it’s like you get the best of all worlds, you get the thing that lights you up hearing other people’s stories, but you also get a little, like, first row seat front row seat other people’s lives for a bit too. 

Natasha Zolotareva  12:03

Absolutely, I choose the things that interests me, you know, and I choose the people that inspire me, and I get to learn from all of them. And so I very much focused on working as a person development into industry, conscious enterpreneurs. So I always get to learn about, you know, the better relating conscious parenting, intimacy techniques, breathwork meditation so much, 

Megan Porta  12:28

Oh, gosh, yeah.

Natasha Zolotareva  12:29

Well, I pretty much created myself like the gold non-stop University.

Megan Porta  12:35

The way you created your business is really inspiring in itself. I love this. And then that you talked earlier a little bit about, you know, your maternity leave. You alluded to that. So I know that when you started going on your maternity leave, that really helped you to start streamlining your business. Do you want to talk about that a little bit. 

Natasha Zolotareva  12:56

So I had already I already had a team at that time. And maybe for one on talk about, you know, just delegating and automating the business that would be a better point to start with of like, you know, kind of a first hire. And then we can also talk about taking it to the next level when I completely went off the business for several months when I had a baby. So those first hires were a huge lesson for me, and I’m really proud of my team. By now I have five people on the team. Four of them have been with me for over three years now. And people just don’t leave, they have a very kind of supportive environment, very tight team that supports each other. But you know, of course, it’s kind of it didn’t really just just came about, and I really love looking backwards at how it happened. And I had bad hiring experiences. But what I think happens is, people would, you know, people would hire someone, and they wouldn’t they would go wrong, or you know, there wouldn’t be any rapport, there wouldn’t be any understanding, it wouldn’t be easy. And then people are like, Oh, no, hiring doesn’t work. It’s not hiring. Not like the whole concept of you know, of getting people in your business doesn’t work as like, it’s didn’t work between you and that particular person. Or maybe you haven’t yet to build a skill of hiring, that’s also very important because delegation, just like anything else in business, right, delegation is a skill. But also, like anything else in business is also a little bit of an opportunity for personal growth. Because why why is it hard to delegate like quite often, or the very common type of feeling that I’ve seen people is like, oh, because no one’s gonna do it better than me. Right? There was this ego thing going on. Like, it’s so common, it’s like, don’t even think business think. I don’t know. Being asking, you’re asking, you know, if your husband is not the one that cooks all the time, like, you know, like asking your husband to make a dinner, right? And then you come, and he used like a different knife to cut the potatoes. That night is so much better. Let me fix it all for you. 

Megan Porta  15:21

Right, let me be controlling and do everything for you.

Natasha Zolotareva  15:24

Oh my god, like to this day there is so much moments when I have to, like, stop myself but both in, in personal life and in business. So yeah, relaxing is a huge is a huge point of delegation on like, you know, first you got to make sure that your result is the result that you expect is very clear there. So whenever I hire anyone, whenever I hired for my team, I started with writing down a document of like, this is a list, this is a list of your tasks, and I make sure to have it written down. So this is something that both of us can refer to. So you know, it’s not just passing by in a conversation. It’s a firm agreed. But then another really important thing is like, Okay, you give the person the task, have it, have them kind of retaliatory iterate to you, what did they understand from it? All right, because I think I’m gonna use the husband example a lot in this conversation. That’s something that a lot of us can relate to, like. What I imagine a clean house, for example, is a very different thing than what my husband imagines is a clean house. We have a really different understandings that and it’s the same thing with anything thing that you want to accomplish in the team and our company, you know, what’s you? For example, I don’t know, you want to automate creating captions for a social media? Alright. What do you imagine is like a quality copywriting is a very different from what someone else would imagine. So it’s writing down the task as specific as as you need it to be. And then having person tell it back to you, Hey, what did you understand from it? What do you think I expect from you tell it, tell it back to me, because it’s also you know, it’s also there happens a lot. You give someone a task there, okay, I understand. And then, you know, one thing is when the thing is delivered, okay? It was wasted of time, right? This is preventable, right? This is preventable. And in fact, whenever I hire anyone, this is something that I make sure to schedule their weekly one on ones, where it’s much more about, you know, it’s not that much about tracking their results, but it’s the it’s education time. And it’s a time where we make sure that we have common ground, we have a common understanding of where we go in what is the result that we are achieving what’s considered a good result is what’s you know, what, what are the elements that I look at what is elements that our clients gonna look at, at cetera, et cetera? 

Natasha Zolotareva  18:04

So it’s kind of from the moment I hire anyone, this is a continuous thing that we do. Every Monday, we have a call individual call, was everyone on the team to talk about what was done last week, what was you know, what, what are the challenges they are facing? And they even, you know, even years to working together, will still come across different aspects of, you know, this task or that task, but we understand like, okay, no, this is, you know, you see this way, no, this is not what I actually expect. This is not what I actually mean, this is not what I what our clients care for, etc. So it’s really important on there, this this kind of cultural the dialogue, so it’s, you know, it’s not like, Oh, my God, you’re done wrong. Hiring doesn’t work. But it’s, you know, there is…

Megan Porta  18:50

You have to foster it. 

Natasha Zolotareva  18:51

Yeah. small alterations.

Megan Porta  18:54

I think it’s for this weekly one on one that you’re talking about, I think it’s so important that we do this, but it’s also so easy to set it on the back burner like, oh, everything’s going fine. I don’t need to check in. Do you have thoughts about that? Like, how important do you think it is to regularly check in with your team? And do you do it individually? Or do you do it as a group? 

Natasha Zolotareva  19:15

We do individual calls, every Monday for years? One on one? I used to do it myself? And then yeah, that’s that’s a part of a story when I want to, I went on maternity leave, like one layer that was created, and my team is the team manager, someone who I saw could step up to that. And that’s a whole separate conversation. But yeah, like, currently, she takes 80% of those calls. And then to your question, we also do a team check in. We used to do a team check in every Tuesday. We now killed it down a little bit too, every other Tuesday. I also find that really important for everyone to to check in and to connect with each other in our case, most of the people in the team do the same kind of job. They just, you know, they their account managers doing it for different clients. And it’s very, it’s, if I treat one on a once more like, you know, let’s drill down and you know, if, if you are not progressing, let me help you. Let me give you some ideas, let me you know, let me help you to see it in a different angle. Team calls, connect, you know, understand where everyone around this ad because we’ve been together through so many, you know, as well crisises internal and external. It’s kind of bonded us as a team very much to having been through the COVID and everything, everything after that. But also, that’s a little bit of a bonding, but also it’s them exchange or, you know, best practices among each other.

Megan Porta  20:49

Yeah, that’s amazing story. I love how you it seems like you’ve created just a really supportive and nurturing team and checking in regularly kind of fosters all of that. And that is such a good example for us because it like for I feel like for food creators, food bloggers, it’s so easy to just get caught up in what we’re passionate about, which is usually cooking and creating. And then we get to the point where we hire a team, and it’s like, oh, I don’t really want to manage these people. So then what you said earlier, it’s like, oh, I’m really bad at being a manager. I’m really bad at hiring. I’m really good. We go to that default, like, like as a crutch like, Oh, I’m really bad at it. So I’m just gonna take it back. And then we take back control. And it’s like this vicious cycle.

Natasha Zolotareva  21:37

Yeah, it’s so liberating to like, get over this initial like, Oh, I’m gonna do it better than them. Yeah, then you actually get to focus on the things that you love.

Megan Porta  21:50

Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that is so true when you find those right people who just fit the role well, and when you figure out how to manage and delegate effectively, it is a liberating. I remember, like, I started outsourcing writing this year for the first time in 14 years. And it took so much off my plate. And I just, I couldn’t believe it. I was like, wow, I could start a whole other business right now. I didn’t know what to do with my time. It was amazing. 

Natasha Zolotareva  22:17

Yeah, well, the way I see it is like, especially like now, since the maternity leave, and I made babies 20 months right now. So it’s still kind of half and half out. So the way I see it is yeah, the business though, there is a portion of the business that already kind of runs, I don’t know, if you like to use the word automated, because usually people imagine, you know, some savvy tech and so on, when you say automate it, no, it’s automated through the, you know, clear distributions of roles in the team. And then the, the role that I see for myself and the company like, okay, now I get to innovate. Now I get to think of you know, what other products we’re going to offer, what I get to spend time, basically, whatever, whatever is like founders always have an idea of what is going to be the next cool thing. And I haven’t yet gotten to this point, I know, there are some founders as well, who know how to hire for basically, innovate innovation, and like research and develop those kind of things. In my case, this is my role at the moment is to think of what do I think is the next is the next cool direction, and start building the pieces around that. Alright, so it’s almost like I see there is kind of a solid structure going on over there. And here I am, you know, building another and doing another experimentation, right? We’ll do another side hustle seeing what sticks. And I’m like, Okay, this was a good model. Now I can take it back to the team, build some processes, maybe hire some other people around it. And now my, my now my core structure is bigger.

Megan Porta  23:53

Right. And it just keeps growing and growing. So, okay, so you have this amazing team that you fostered and supported and just loved on it sounds like, how does that play into your maternity leave? Because I know you wanted to take some time off, right? So you had to do probably a little bit of extra planning and thinking how 

Natasha Zolotareva  24:11

There was a lot of extra planning! There is a lot of extra planning a lot of things I found out when I was like, Okay, I want to be off like off off for at least at the very least, like one month before birth three months after. That was like my, my bare minimum where I don’t didn’t want to get involved into anything. Like okay, so I started out very simple. I just sat out with my team manager wrote down and for, you know, for a couple of weeks, I literally as I was working on my laptop, whatever I was doing, I took a side note and I’m like, writing emails. Next one, giving feedback to the team about their writing. Next one, scheduling social media posts. Next one, I want to call this quiet. Next one, I’m talking to some potential client that I just got introduced to. So I wrote everything down. And then one thing that I really discovered there is, it was nearly impossible to find one person who was going to kind of have all the skills a combination, not because of some sort of a unique genius and so on. But you know, we all have our different combinations of skills, right? You have cooking and writing, right? This is, you know, probably some other things which are, you know, which are, which are uniquely yours. So we all have our different combination of skill. And we quickly gave up the idea of just finding one person who’s going to replace me in all of it, we broke it down. And at the end, some of the tasks were distributed among the team. So we kind of already knew the team, and we looked at who’s going to be better at some some of the tasks for something like, for example, like taking the incoming calls from potential clients, we had to hire a whole new person, so we had to hire kind of like a sales salesperson sales rep. And I spent some time training them, we hired a copywriter to cover for her to power for my writing. So we ended up distributing actually among five people. So that took first like writing it down, breaking it in, and then each task that was on that list, I had to match up with some names of like, okay, who does? Whose place does it go to? For what period of time and then I had to go back into, you know, the process that we just talked about? This is written down your tasks. This is what, Let’s talk it back to me. What do you think is implied? Okay, that’s what I actually do. Sit down shadow me Look, look at how I do it.

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Megan Porta  27:45

I always tell people to kind of log their time if they’re ever wanting to take time off, or if they’re just wanting to kind of get clarity on what the heck do I spend my time on? Because I think we all get to that point where we’re like, oh my gosh, I just had this crazy, busy, busy week. I’m so overwhelmed. And so overworked. I don’t even know what I did this week. So just write the simple act of writing down exactly what you do, I think is so powerful.

Natasha Zolotareva  28:10

Yes. But I don’t think I ever really got so detailed with that. You know, only the situation or kind of planning to be completely absent for four months? That was the only situation that forced me to do

Megan Porta  28:24

You’re highly motivated, because you wanted to take time off? Yeah, otherwise,

Natasha Zolotareva  28:28

otherwise, you know, I’m like here saying like, Oh, you’re not the smartest person in the room. There are people who can do it better than you. But you know, when it comes to that, I’m like, That’s my business. Let me do I know, how do

Megan Porta  28:40

I know that there’s something about taking time off, especially around maternity leave when there’s a precious baby involved? That really motivates you to like, I want to set everything down. I’m like that with vacations in the summer. I just, I don’t want to work. I just don’t I want to be present with my family. My boys are getting older. I just want this time. And that motivates me so highly. I do exactly what you do. I’m like, Okay, who can do this? Who can do this? Who can do this? Okay, take it. I’m so much better now. Do you feel like you get better over time? Like at first? It’s really hard to release control. And then yeah, well, it’s like, I got really care.

Natasha Zolotareva  29:21

Yes, this spring. So baby was about maybe 17-18 months, about year and a half. I might put a lot of things about my family, we travel a lot. My husband was intrapreneur he like speaks all around the world and so on. I also like connect a lot with different people around the world. So we travel a lot and not just for vacation, or, you know, for kind of semi truck, semi business semi vacation. And I remember preparing for that trip Latin America for two months. And I remember kind of like just listing the number of people who make who helped me make my life easier. I had an assistant, my husband has an assistant. I had like a sleep coach for my daughter and had the money. I had a cleaner. I had a team manager, I had someone who’s helping me with social media and not like posting but more like strategy wise. And I had the business coach. So it’s like, what is the seven eight people? And that’s not even including my actual team, you know? And I’m like, Whoa, how did they get from the, you know, hiring years back from, you know, hiring someone for like, part time, a few hours a day, to support, you know, to just take off one of my clients, so I can take another client to my agency to like having eight people who are not even in my team, but they are like, supporting, supporting the lifestyle, you know, definitely get better that and I definitely feel like, you know, we have opened up more space in opens up more space and in what you can achieve. Like, there is a little bit of a mind Twister on this, right. So I’m like, I’m often thinking about my parents, right? And how hiring and you know, getting help was really not a part of a culture where I grew up, people kind of take pride on recruiting a means of I’m gonna, what do you mean that someone’s gonna come take care of your daughter? What do you mean, someone’s gonna come help you to, you know, to whatever to, to watch the force, the carpets, where’s the floor, and so on, like, people took pride and doing everything themselves. And I’m really, you know, and I’m also really proud of my parents for everything that they did and grateful for them for everything they did for me. But I’m also thinking, you know, also, they had a regular jobs, they were not responsible for, let’s say, incomes of like, five households as I am. And just just by that I see, you know, I see the responsibility, and that kind of, like, allows me in my head, that helps me to allow myself like, okay, it’s fine that I get more help, it’s fine. If once a week someone helps, comes to help me to, you know, to clean my apartment, because, you know, alongside was more, you know, more, when I get more help I get to, you know, I get to also give more of, you know, what’s my actual gift back into the world, right? You know, I kind of build the whole system to, you know, make it more efficient, bringing what I’m best at into the world. Right? And I’m not the best in washing dishes. Yeah.

Megan Porta  32:08

Me there, I’ll clean that one, too. I love this. Okay, so I feel like your exercise of writing down all the people who make your life easier is so powerful, and excluding your team. So not people you pay, but just people well maybe like your coach and things like that.

Natasha Zolotareva  32:26

They’re also they also tip people I pay, but yeah, I see them, like, you know, like, I hire them for a specific purpose. Because I see, like, I see a particular gap in whatever I need to achieve. And like, Okay, so that’s, that’s this person, I’m going to help help me solve that gap. So I kinda, I kind of that for me that all of this falls into the same list, both my business coach and the cleaner, and the person, every person on my team is like, they helped me to build this vision that I have more efficiently.

Megan Porta  32:56

And by doing that, you’re able to get clarity on what you offer to the world, correct?

Natasha Zolotareva  33:03

Yeah, I think that clarity on what I want to offer came first, okay. Yes, definitely. is just as I told you about the sector orientation period, I wanted to tell the I wanted to tell the people stories and then you know, further deeper I go into it more possibilities. I see to do it more kind of demand I see for it. I see, you know, more ways I can help people. So I go go deeper on it. And yeah, and there’s, you know, I can be I can be helping people doing it myself, but I can definitely reach more and support more entrepreneurs have in an agency.

Megan Porta  33:36

I think there’s a lot of things that can come out of just asking yourself that question, like, who helps me who makes my life easier? It just opens up the door for like, for you to give to others. And there’s so much power there. I love that. Yeah, today. So, when you took your maternity leave, I know that social media is something that entrepreneurs are very closely tied to. And they tend to hold on to really tightly for client work and brand work and sponsored work. And I don’t know, we just feel like closely tied to our social media accounts. How did you handle that portion of it?

Natasha Zolotareva  34:16

I was super Instagram junkie. I go back to the days before my daughter was born. And I like I was on the stories every day. Just posting and posting and posting, then it gone to a year probably of a complete silence and then maybe hear into a start, like somehow stepping back in and then but overall it was maybe the 18 month of being absent from social media. So that was a big pause. And there was also really interesting insight because yeah, I didn’t… With social media that’s, that’s me my face. You know, my life. So when I did the exercise of writing down all the tasks, this is the one that no And good to go. Right? No one could take over, no one could, you know, instead, I didn’t want to just switch to kind of for posting generic things I wanted to, if I’m gonna do social media, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do, I get to do it about me and about my life, right and about my insights. So that was not a portion that I thought was possible to really to really switch. So I chose to take pause, and then there are a few things that are, first of all, is as gaining the clients. All right, maintaining the agency afloat, and that was a little bit scary. I’ll be honest, because I was totally hooked on the idea that social media, that’s what brings me clients. And I’m like, Okay, I have five people to pay every month, or whatever it is, and I really didn’t want to be like, Okay, I’m going to be a mom. So you guys don’t have job anymore. I felt a lot of responsibility to my team and to everything that we’ve done together. So I wanted to kind of do good to them. And also, you know, for them to maintain the an agency running. And that’s something actually discovered through the maternity leave is that most of my clients, I’m also like, I’ve been in this world for a long time, I discovered yes, there is a portion of people getting reminded about my work and people getting you know, kind of reappointed was a through the social media. But in our case, a lot of clients come from one on one, from referrals from a network that I built over the years. 

Natasha Zolotareva  36:34

And then I was kind of thinking about it. And I realized that even if I were to continue, if I were to not come back to social media, every now and then there will be like, a couple times a month, there would be a message dropping into my Whatsapp say from someone who I know saying, hey, Natasha, I know this person, and we need a PR, can you help them? It happens, it happens kind of thanks to the network that I built over the years. And in my case, it’s a lot of offline networking. But some people do an online network, instead, people do it offline, or networking, or referrals, and so on. And this kind of became a big portion of one of the concepts that I teach right now to my to my class called the five levels of visibility. And it’s about building the foundations for us to where every expert, every every person in the expert economy coach himself, and etc. The first rely on their network before they start selling to strangers, right. So if you got this portion of selling to the network, or you know, or talking to the network, really closely, if you got this portion setup, it’s also going to be much easier to then convert people online who never heard about you. Does this make sense? Yes, no, I love that. I’m gonna give an example of like, my therapist, he’s not a public person. He’s not online, he doesn’t have a blog, he doesn’t have social media or anything, yet, he still keeps on increasing the prices on me. Why? Because there is demand, you know, because just from the referral, just from people going to his session and attending it and saying and recommending it to each other. He has demand. So you know, for anyone who’s like very hooked on social media, and like, this is very important to build that referral bit first, that is it online networking, is it offline networking, that’s, you know, that’s your style, and that’s your choice, whatever is more comfortable for you. But that’s really crucial. And that’s also what gives you the, you know, the stability in case by the car capability to then sell online, right? So, I don’t believe that selling online is like, you know, the number one stepping stone as this referral based business is number one set in stone, after which it’s much easier to build the to build system.

Megan Porta  38:53

That’s such a great reminder just to focus on just showing up and delivering value and serving people. And that really does pay off when you do a good job at that. I feel like the word of mouth and the networking, that word of mouth. Yeah, it just like takes care of your business, as opposed to selling to people that you don’t know.

Natasha Zolotareva  39:14

It’s always a question. And it’s always a question like the word of mouth. And if this challenge was that this, it’s not something that you can control, right? You are not sure if it’s going to be enough volumes, etc. So I had a lot of referrals in the last two months, and none in the previous four. Right? It’s not consistent. It’s nothing system suddenly right now their demand from the word of mouth is it’s a lot and it’s like becoming really hard for my team to handle. But then in maybe January, February, a little bit worried or like whatever. There’s always there’s always that element. So yeah, yeah, but you’re right that the part of creating value and deliver and but also deliberately networking with people in your industry. Online and offline, this is a portion that you can control, right? Building relationship or with people online and offline. Like, I go to this event every year for the last seven years. And like there’s a lot of entrepreneurs people in personal growth, etc. And I know that just the relationship I build from there is gonna last, it’s gonna sustain my business for for many, many years like I can I can quit social media.

Megan Porta  40:27

Yeah. So after your 18 month hiatus, yes. When you came back, what were your thoughts? How did you feel? How are things going on Instagram? 

Natasha Zolotareva  40:36

Oh, my God. Everything is different. 

Megan Porta  40:39

Yeah, that’s a long time.

Natasha Zolotareva  40:42

Everything has to change. I need to figure it out all from scratch. So I challenged myself to do 100 reels? Oh, no, yeah, I can’t, I came back with a lot of motivation, and a lot of a lot of inspiration to be working on business again, and the best place to start it from so I thought, Okay, well, let’s figure out the Instagram stuff once and once again, and see how things are going here. So I just paid it off with time first. So I did actual 100 reels. That was a lot for a new mom. That’s impressive. And that was a lot as a new mom. But it was a, you know, great learning possibilities. And after that, I started to seeing you know, from pretty much losing followers from every new post that I do to now, seeing followers grow to now see if posts showing to new people, I’d have like a post get to like over half a million views and 1000 followers just from that one post. So like, I basically, yeah, I guess this is a little bit of a theme, right? Experimentation is, is how I approach things. So like, Okay, I want to figure out Instagram again, what am I going to do? I’m going to experiment and I’m going to give me a test myself a testing ground of the 100 reels, to test different hypothesis and to conclude, to make some conclusions. So that was really a scientific approach there.

Megan Porta  42:07

No, I love that. So the lesson there is that you can take a long break and come back and you’re still fine. Your business is running. I think we’re we get so afraid to take breaks from social media, but it really can’t, you can do it. 

Natasha Zolotareva  42:22

Yes, I think there is so important, the bit of the network is important, right? If social media is the only place that you rely on, I don’t know how, you know, I don’t know how that would really fly. Alright, because it all worked out the end. Thanks. In my case, thanks to the network. And thanks to all so like little bit of a brand that I built myself, you know, writing for different publications, like I write for entrepreneur, and I write for some other magazine. So, and I interview on podcasts. So my name is out there, even when I’m not popping out people’s feed every day. But yeah, the there are there ways, I guess you could go through that there are other ways other than social media. And yet, if you become a slave to it, feel like I have to get followers. And it’s not that fun anymore.

Megan Porta  43:12

it doesn’t feel good. Okay, so talking about the whole topic of delegating, which is huge for food bloggers, like, definitely start delegating, and just do it. Are there some like issues that we might run into do you foresee, once we start doing it? 

Natasha Zolotareva  43:30

Once you start delegating, so the issues that I see people run into the most is that you’re getting disappointing in delegating altogether. Alright, getting some frustration with, like, I do it better. Yeah, kind of a situation. Right? Over controlling is also it’s also a thing, right? It can be a personality trait, but it also doesn’t have to really lock you in, right? When you when you give a task, and then you come back and you like check in, and then you come back and you give something more. And then you’re like, but I also want this done. And I also I also want this happening at the same time. No one person or you start with one person, one task, learn the process. See if that works. See if they can you know and task really simple, you know, arrange this videos or whatever arrange arrange this, this cooking videos, make raw cuts on those cooking videos or something like this, right? And then and then writing the guides for whatever it is like how you want it, how you want it to look like, right? Not the, not the not the process, but the outcome. How do I want the outcome to look like, right? What is the good video for the food blog? What does it look like? What is the timing on it? What is the sort of cuts we use there? What is the sort of a transition? How much do we show the you know, the cooking process versus the talking head, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right. What is the you know, what is example to follow. And then of course, quite fun topic that we haven’t even touched on is hiring process altogether and finding those people. 

Megan Porta  45:10

That can be overwhelming in itself. 

Natasha Zolotareva  45:11

That can be because that’s, you know, that’s also like a task on its own right. It’s also it could be to have a job or to, to write those tasks to publish those to public use jobs, which are positioned somewhere to then select people to interview them, etc. So that also can be daunting. And that you can also be, I can totally see people just pushing it to the back of the burner list, right? And be like, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Yeah. Especially if you haven’t done it before. It’s like you’re resisting? Because you think that you’re going to do it better than them? You’re also resisting? Because it’s like a whole extra thing to your to do list that you also haven’t done it ever before. So, so finding, finding the people to trust, that’s a big question.

Megan Porta  45:57

Yeah. And then if somebody is like, Okay, this sounds great, Natasha. Yes. I want to delegate. Yes, I want more time. Yes, I want to streamline business. But where do I start? Is it just as simple as finding that one thing? And then, you know, doing going through the whole hiring process? And just focusing on one simple thing? Or where do we start with it?

Natasha Zolotareva  46:18

You’ll have to start by finding one person that you’re comfortable with having in your team, right? And what I would really look for is, what are the kinds of you know, rather than necessarily the skills, what are the kinds of qualities that you look for? So like, for example, I always look for people who are very self motivated, and self driven. And that’s super important thing for me, I teach all the skills that we do, of course, they need to be kind of fluent in writing, and so on. But then after that, I teach, you know, how do we talk to clients? How do we talk to how do we talk to media, etc. So I teach that, but the self motivation is like one thing that I’m really looking for, like, proactivity, proactive approach, because I don’t want to be chasing people, I want to hire people who chase me, that’s one thing that I do when I’m hiring, when I’m hiring, even in that job application, I will put something really specific, I’d say, reply to this application, and by to this email and make this hte subject line, you know half the people not gonna do that, half people going to overlook that. And just gonna, you know, just gonna hit reply, and just gonna write it some generic thing. And they would like missed that line of how I want it to be a replied. Right? So that’s already, like, that’s already a test, you know, to those who didn’t really follow the process. And then I wouldn’t be like, Okay, so for example, okay, you maybe I want to talk to you, you schedule, the interview. Here is, you know, here’s my calendar link, do you find a way to do it so that I also check, you know, how urgent it is for them, how motivated they are, how proactive they are, I don’t want to be working around and saying, like, oh, here are the times. So let’s, you know, tell me what you’re available and so on. I give the initiative, I leave the ball in their field to be making it happen. Basically, I hire through the recruitment process. I’m like, Okay, through  this recruitment process? Can you chase me? I decided this process in the way. Yeah, so if you’re about to start. Yeah, that’s, that’s a process that you have to go through.

Megan Porta  48:16

Yeah, I like that you bake into the hiring process, a little test? Like, are you going to go to a few lengths to get the job.

Natasha Zolotareva  48:26

And that’s, and that’s easy. That’s not like a dictator. That’s really right, this subject line, send an email to this email to this address. And right, this is the subject line that I want to. And it’s also easy for me to filter, there is a reason for it. It’s not I’m just coming up with some random test. And I test how people are it’s, you know, am I following written tasks.

Megan Porta  48:46

Yes. Love that. Is there anything we’ve forgotten, Natasha? This is such I mean, I feel like we could go on and on and on about so many things. But is there anything that you want to be sure we mentioned before we get to your I know, you have a freebie I want to talk about but anything before we get to that?

Natasha Zolotareva  49:04

Well, there is a lot of freedom in automating your business. And you know, I know we started the business because we love doing what we would we do? Hopefully that’s that’s a that’s a reason we take the whole leap of entrepreneurship. But what I want to say is that on the other side of building a team and automating there is more of doing what you love rather than less because each business has an aspects that you would love to skip doing.

Megan Porta  49:37

Yeah, yeah. And it doesn’t have to be a maternity leave that propels you to start doing this. You can do this now today, just as a means to get to those things that you love more. I think that’s kind of your message.

Natasha Zolotareva  49:51

The fact that I started doing it before my maternity leave, allowed me to kind of toss it around so easily. I hired that team manager…I wanted someone to be a team manager when I was not planning to get pregnant in three months after I promoted her, I get pregnant, universe I was like, Okay, you have some time now. You have to put it to some good use. 

Megan Porta  50:17

Yeah. And once you find that freedom once you feel it, it’s so like, I think use the word liberating before it’s so liberating. It’s almost like, Okay, now what can I do? It’s like this never ending process of finding tasks to delegate and streamlining even more and more. I love that feeling of like, okay, a year ago, I felt like I was streamlined. But now I’m really streamlined.

Natasha Zolotareva  50:43

Yeah, creating you create, streamlining once you’re done streamlining you get to create you.

Megan Porta  50:50

Oh, yes. I’m writing that down. Streamlining. Yep. I love that. Okay, this has been so great. Thank you so much, Natasha. What an awesome conversation. I know you have a freebie. So why don’t you tell us about that offer.

Natasha Zolotareva  51:03

So freebie is something that we really briefly touched on, you know, how I was talking about about generating clients, while not using social media, and about how I teach a little bit more now about all levels of visibility, and how to be making your business work at each and every level, there are total of five levels of visibility that I teach, which goes from inner circle where you like, my therapist just making business from referrals to a household name, or you’re pretty much like a Tony Robbins, broken stage. So it’s very useful to others to grow your business, it’s very useful to look into which level are you at right now. And for each level, there are tools which are applicable to that level. So to learn about the concept of five levels of visibility concept, you can go to my Instagram, and you can just DM me the word level. Level one, I think you just DM me the word level one in like a one word, level one with a number and then we’ll send you we’ll send you a little guide on five level serviceability. And we’ll send you the assessment too. So you can self assess where you are right now. And then as a result, you’ll see some replies, okay, what are the strategies that you need to take with this level in order to grow to the next level?

Megan Porta  52:21

Awesome. Yes, I hope people take you up on that. That sounds super helpful and valuable. Again, thanks so much for being here. Do you have a favorite quote or words of inspiration to end on Natasha?

Natasha Zolotareva  52:32

It’s kind of aligns to what we talked about. This is a quote I’ve been very much living by. It’s a first rule of leadership. everything is your fault. So even when you do hire and delegate and automate, when things is not working, when the person that you hired is wrong when they messed it up. Unfortunately, you’re the business owner you are the person who put them in that role it is your fault, but it also means that it is a possibility for you to fix it. So you take this home ownership or whatever you whatever you create. 

Megan Porta  53:07

I love that such a great way to end super powerful. Well put together show notes page for you Natasha, if you want to peek at those head to eatblogtalk.com/NatashaZo. That’s just ZO, tell everyone where they can find you?

Natasha Zolotareva  53:21

Instagram. That’s where I hang out nowadays. Natasha Zo, Natasha ZO_. From there say hi. I’m starting started on threads as well couple of weeks ago seems like a fun way to connect with people easily so Instagram or threads, that would be the best place. 

Megan Porta  53:38

Awesome. Thanks again, Natasha for being here. And thank you for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

Outro  53:46

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you posted it to your social media feed and stories. I will see you next time.