Redefining Success and Growth with Meena Das (Re-published)

I don't want it to be forced that I have to grow higher, bigger, better this way. I want the definition of growth where I can place and center my joy every day. - Meena Das

Redefining Success and Growth with Meena Das

Building a thriving consulting business can be a challenge, but what if the key to success lies in embracing joy and redefining growth? Meena Das, CEO of Namaste Data, shares her refreshing "anti-capitalistic" approach to building a thriving consulting practice. She emphasizes the importance of finding joy in your work, redefining growth on your own terms, and utilizing AI tools strategically. 

If you're ready to break free from the traditional consulting mold and create a business that truly lights you up, tune in to this episode. Get ready to redefine success, embrace joy, and build a business that aligns with your values.

Key Highlights:

• Embrace joy as a driving force in your business, infusing your offerings with authentic passion to connect meaningfully with your audience.

• Redefine "growth" through an anti-capitalist lens, measuring success by your ability to sustain your desired lifestyle while centering fulfillment.

• Strategically leverage AI as a supportive tool for content ideation, social media planning, and as a logical "thought partner" voice.

• Nurture an abundance mindset by reflecting on past successes and tracking personal wins, cultivating self-trust during entrepreneurial ebbs and flows.

00:05:01 Building Awareness and Trust in the Sector

Meena discusses her strategy of building awareness and trust in her consulting practice on data and AI equity by speaking at conferences, conducting workshops, and offering advisory services, highlighting the evolution of her business over two and a half years.

00:07:37 Structuring Payment and Business Evolution

Meena elaborates on how she structures payment for her services, including speaking engagements, workshops, and advisory work, showcasing a funnel approach in her business model and discussing future opportunities for growth and expansion.

00:08:05 The Structure and Values of Paid Workshops

Paid workshops are structured with a focus on anti-capitalism, social equity discounts, and serving organizations and nonprofits. Workshops serve as entry points to consulting projects, with advisory services offered at accessible rates.

00:12:27 Client Diversity and Marketing Strategies

Clients vary in size and budget, with most referrals coming from foundations for AI-related workshops. Marketing strategy revolves around personal joy and constant communication through newsletters.

00:15:52 Joy-Centered Business Approach

Prioritizing joy and serving others leads to business growth and client engagement. Finding joy in business activities and relationships is emphasized for sustainable success in consulting.

00:16:50 Embracing Business Development Downtime

Utilizing downtime for creative activities and self-reflection fosters confidence in the ebb and flow of consulting work. Trusting the process and focusing on joy-driven activities during slow periods ensures a positive outlook.

00:19:11 Rapid Fire Questions: Stage Aspirations and TV Favorites

Meena discusses aspirations to speak on diverse stages and shares a love for TV shows, highlighting the inclusivity of the nonprofit sector in providing speaking opportunities.

00:19:57 The Nostalgia of Favorite TV Shows

Discussion on favorite TV shows like The IT Crowd and Zoolander, highlighting humorous tech-related scenes and nostalgic memories.

00:20:55 Vision for Namaste Data

The speaker envisions Namaste Data as a happy company with collaborators, emphasizing spreading joy and demystifying data and algorithms for all.

00:21:56 Finding Answers Within Your Story

Encouragement to seek answers within personal stories, shift from scarcity to abundance mindset, and practice self-acknowledgment and resilience building.

00:26:15 Acknowledging Wisdom and AI Exploration

Acknowledgment of the speaker's proactive resilience practice, transitioning to discussing AI deployment for productivity and relationship-building in business.

00:27:45 Finding Comfort in Chat GPT for Business Support

Using Chat GPT as a safe space for business decisions and seeking logical steps for rejections and social media content creation.

00:31:37 Exploring Growth Philosophy and Business Values

Discussing personal values, success indicators, pricing strategies, and a joy-centric approach to business growth.

00:33:11 Future Vision of Business Growth and Sustainability

Embracing a non-traditional approach to growth inspired by street food vendors, focusing on joy and sustainability in business endeavors.

00:37:41 Praise for Wisdom and Joy-Centric Business Approach

Acknowledgment of wisdom shared, joy-centric approach, and the impact of holding onto joy and passion in the business.

00:38:49 The Struggles of Business Ownership

The speaker shares the emotional challenges of running a business, including anxiety and depression, but emphasizes that staying true to unique business models can lead to survival and success.

00:40:50 Future Conversations on Anti-Capitalist Business

Hinting at future discussions, the host expresses interest in exploring the guest's innovative business model of 'contract now, pay later,' indicating a potential return for a deeper conversation on anti-capitalist business ownership.

00:41:14 Connect with the Guest

Listeners are invited to connect with the guest on LinkedIn or their website, emphasizing open communication channels and a playful invitation to reach out even via unconventional means like carrier pigeons.

00:41:48 Gratitude and Support

The host expresses gratitude to the guest, encourages audience engagement through social media sharing and reviews, and invites collaboration and questions from fellow nonprofit coaches and consultants.

00:42:40 Closing Remarks

A reminder to subscribe for upcoming episodes, a call to engage with the podcast community, and an open invitation for business-related inquiries among nonprofit coaching and consulting peers.

Find Us Online:  https://www.confessionswithjessandcindy.com

Connect with Meena:

LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/meenadas 

Website: https://www.namastedata.org/ 

Connect with Cindy:

Cindy Wagman Coaching: cindywagman.com

Fractional Fundraising Network: fractionalfundraising.co/

LinkedIn: ca.linkedin.com/in/cindywagman

Connect with Jess:

Out In the Boons: outintheboons.me

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jesscampbelloutintheboons/

Transcript:

[00:00:00 - 00:00:03]
Welcome to the Confessions podcast. I'm Cindy Wagman.

[00:00:03 - 00:00:11]
And I'm Jess Campbell. Where two former in house nonprofit pros turn coaches and consultants to purpose driven organizations.

[00:00:11 - 00:00:20]
After years of building up our separate six figure businesses from scratch, we've thrown a lot of spaghetti at the wall and lived to see what sticks.

[00:00:20 - 00:00:30]
We're on a mission to help other nonprofit coaches and consultants looking to start or scale their own businesses past the six figure mark by pulling back the curtain.

[00:00:30 - 00:00:51]
Whether you're still working inside a nonprofit and thinking of one day going out on your own or you've been running your consulting business for years, you understand that working with nonprofits is just different. We're giving you access to the business leaders who serve nonprofits as their clients. You know, the people who truly get it.

[00:00:51 - 00:01:10]
No more gatekeeping, no more secrets. This podcast is going to give you an inside look at what running a successful nonprofit coaching and consulting business looks like. We're asking people how much money they make, how they get paid, and what has and hasn't worked in their businesses.

[00:01:11 - 00:01:27]
Listen in as these leaders share their insights, their numbers, and the good, the bad, and the ugly. When it comes to building a nonprofit coaching or consulting business, we're going to empower you to make the power moves that give you the income and freedom you set out to create from day one.

[00:01:28 - 00:01:32]
You ready? Let's go. Hello, Cindy.

[00:01:32 - 00:01:33]
Hey, Jess.

[00:01:34 - 00:01:42]
Hello. Whenever we do these back to back recordings, the intro is always slightly awkward.

[00:01:42 - 00:01:45]
What else do we say to each other?

[00:01:45 - 00:02:06]
Yeah, but we were just talking off recording, and we're very excited because to know her is to love her. The one and only Meena Das, CEO of Namaste Data. I feel like everyone is friends with you, and I'm excited to dive into our conversation.

[00:02:07 - 00:02:08]
Me, too.

[00:02:08 - 00:02:09]
Welcome.

[00:02:09 - 00:02:47]
Thank you. I'm surprised you both don't have a fun dance. You know, kind of like something like doing this or something on the screen. Hello. I would have probably by now. And thank you so much for having me. I have been a fan of your, all of your work. The people who have been on this show before, all of their work. And I was telling this to my friend yesterday, I'm going to be on that podcast, and this is the first podcast. I'm actually nervous. I have been on podcasts before. This is what I'm nervous. So I'm excited. I'm nervous, I'm grateful. A lot of good feelings, but mostly we're in good company. So be as awkward and rambly as we can be today.

[00:02:49 - 00:03:11]
Amazing. I love like when you said you admire all, like all these people who've been on our podcast, we all admire you. I mean, I don't think it's a secret. You know, we invited you, I think, well over a year ago to be on the podcast. So I'm so glad it finally worked out. For those people who don't know you, tell us a little bit about what you do. How do you get paid?

[00:03:12 - 00:04:09]
Absolutely. So I have a consulting practice on Namaste data. I started this practice two and a half years ago. I'm a data and AI equity consultant, which I kind of understand. It's a lot of words. What I really do is I do consulting training and advising on how to do good with data. From some nonprofits, it's about donor surveys and member surveys and community surveys and for some other platforms, it's about, or nonprofits, it's about AI. How do you get started with AI? What do you do with AI? It involves a lot of space for dreaming. How do we do that? So that's kind of my work. I get paid for that. And I'm actually excited about talking about how do I do that business. Most of my conversations in the sector are about questions around data and AI. This conversation is the background of that. How do I approach those questions? So I know we'll get into that.

[00:04:09 - 00:05:00]
Yeah. Okay, so let's get into it, because especially AI has just exploded over the last two years and you've been running your business for two and a half. So can you walk us through, like, are you just like, trying to keep up? Are you finding yourself having to heavily market your business? I see you speaking everywhere. Is that a result of you being, like, niche and people say AI or people say data and their brains just go to Meena? I'm just so curious because so many people really struggle to get on the on ramp and you seem to be, like, doing laps around people. So I'm, I don't know if that's, like, luck in timing, if that's by design. I'm just really curious about what it's been like these last kind of two, two and a half years.

[00:05:01 - 00:07:37]
Okay, first of all, I need clips of this interview because there's so much love going on. I need that as my love reminders. So two and a half years ago, when I started, I had worked for 17 years in the tech, I had worked in the consulting, worked before, but this was the first time I was starting my business, my own practice, and I only had so much network. You know, I'm a first gen immigrant. I moved to this part of the world seven years ago. Our businesses work on referrals. We all know this. And I realized I need to work on building awareness and trust. That's like issue with, that's the thing about every business. But the topics that I pick and talk about data equity and AI equity, that's like talking to a market that knows about burgers, how to drink kale juice, for lack of a better, different example. And to do that, I need to put a lot of trust in my work and also allow other people to make their own choices and how they want to engage in this topic, or what do they want to do with the word AI and data equities. I started to noMeenate myself for as many conferences as possible, as many speaking engagements as possible. Every time I have butterflies in my stomach, every time I have them. But I'm sure I hope those butterflies are pretty enough because I get to do all my conferences in the way I want them to be. And those conferences have opened up a new, I would say over after the end of the first year. I realized that after speaking for data equity a bunch of different times in different conferences, there is an appetite for that. So those workshop, those conferences turned into workshops. I started doing workshops one on one workshops, one to nonprofit workshops. As I was doing those workshops again on the same topics, there was some interest, some awareness, some questions, like what do I do next with it? Which led me to build a new service in my work for the last, I would say one and a half year. I have a service called data and AI equity advisor, which is basically 10 hours of my time. I do the advising for people around any questions they have around data and AI equity. And these three things, like conference to workshops to this advisory work, all three things pay my bills. But then they also opened up a channel for me to listen from the community and nonprofits. What do they need? Where are they stuck? What are the challenges? What are the barriers? Where are they doing good things? Where can I be a champion and where can I be an ally in this work for them? And I think that is how it evolved for me. When people hear about AI, okay, talk.

[00:07:37 - 00:08:03]
To us a little bit about, a little bit more about the sort of containers of how you get paid. So speaking, I'm assuming is a little hit and miss, because just in our sector, sometimes it's paid, sometimes it's not. Are your workshops paid? Like, how do you structure that? And then the end, the advisor, obviously, and then what's next? Like, you talk about those as kind of almost like a. Is it fair to say it's kind of like a funnel. And then what are the other sort of containers?

[00:08:05 - 00:12:10]
So workshops. Workshops. And so everything except some of the conferences are paid. Some conferences are like, you know, they don't have budget. They're not including paying speakers, which I'm trying to change and pushing back on. Workshops are paid, and how they are structured is, I used to have, I have. I have six values and five ways. I am trying to build my business in an anti capitalistic way. Workshops that includes two things. One is the duration of how long I do the workshops, and two, our social equity discounts. I do offer discounts based on whether you are nationality, immigration, do you have credit card bills, do you have own home, rented homes? All those complex questions of who we are, but they are paid. And the workshops are done in two ways. Either they are done with a small cohort of people who are coming from their own organizations and nonprofits to learn, and two, they are done for the entire nonprofit as a staff workshop or entire foundation as a staff workshop. The reason I moved to started with the workshops is I realized early on in my business, I don't have an entrepreneurial degree. I am not a salesperson. I have been the person who spent 17 years talking to excel spreadsheets behind a bunch of data. People would get work, and then they would give it to me to do it. This was the first time I had to talk to people to convince them to work with me. And in that case, my workshops became this safe space where I could shine and convince them to do consulting with me. Consulting is the highest place where I make the most money about every consulting project. I know you guys love numbers and numbers. Consulting of every project involves around ten to twelve k. But that's not exactly where I can go straight. I wish I would, but then that's where I'm going eventually. So, workshop was a place where I would open up what I do in three hour workshops and four hour workshops, hobby workshops, and it would be paid, and it would go to this consulting board, advisory. That's also a paid thing. But I spent years working with different coaches, different people. Advisory for most people has been the most expensive, expensive thing I have seen in the market, in my market research, you know, working with coaches and life coaches. And I wanted to flip that script. So my coaching or my advisory is the cheapest option. I would say it's $2,000 for 9 hours of work, or three and a half months. And I like that because it builds so much accessibility for people to say yes immediately. Oh, okay, this is not too much. I can, I can talk to you about AI. It adds two things. One, I get paid for that. Two, I open up a space for people to bring their messy questions that then I can turn into workshop ideas and blog ideas and new services ideas. And then conferences. Yes, I get paid for those. It depends between nothing to 5000. It's a very wide range. But conference is something because again, two benefits. If I don't get paid for that I started asking for, what do I have it in get in return? Can I get the list of people or can I share my freebies directly in a QR code? Can I get people to sign up right there? Or if I'm getting paid honorariums, that's fine too. That's the paid bar. But I have been thinking about, and what I do now with conferences is how do you build collaborations at the conferences, at the sessions, as opposed to if I'm not, even if I'm getting paid or not getting paid, how do we build collaborations when we are on that stage with the people, whether it's through asking polls and then following up on the polls during the conferences or giving a QR poll to do an exercise at the end of a session and then say that, hey, do that, solve it, come back to me. Answer that. I've been thinking of those lines very long answer. Not sure if it answers completely what you asked, but it is what I do.

[00:12:11 - 00:12:25]
No, that's really super duper helpful. Who would you say is your typical client, your most common client? Is it an organization of a certain size, budget, geographical location?

[00:12:27 - 00:13:16]
Actually, there isn't any specific trend or data in that sense. My donor surveys, member surveys, community surveys, they're done with nonprofits of all sizes. It's really when they realize, okay, now we have a budget and we can do this. Let's talk to her. Now they know about me. Most of my work comes through referrals or social media, and they would ask, okay, this is, we have a survey. We want to do this AI related things, whether it's workshops or trainings or speaking engagements, that's mostly coming through foundations across the country who want to pay because nonprofits, they don't, they have, it's mostly a webinar, one or two, but it's a half day workshop that's coming from foundations, I would say. But other than that, there is nothing really restricting or constrained open to both countries, all countries and any kind of organizations.

[00:13:17 - 00:13:17]
Yeah.

[00:13:17 - 00:13:38]
The reason why I was asking was just about like marketing, right? Because how you speak to a certain audience about your evaluation style products versus your workshops on I, on AI is like totally different. And I'm just wondering like how you, how you navigate that.

[00:13:39 - 00:15:51]
Can I respond to that? This is an interesting question, because every business owner has to start with this question, who's my audience? How do I communicate it to them? First day of the business, you start thinking that and it never goes out of your head. Who's your audience and how do you communicate it to them? I don't think I ever had a perfect answer in the beginning. So when I realized that, I'm struggling so much to figure out who's that one perfect, ideal golden goose, you know, my, my audience, I turn from focusing on that question to so much as who am I? What does joy means to me? How do I communicate people what joy means to me? And so I have a newsletter, for example, which is one of my marketing channels, both an email newsletter and a LinkedIn newsletter. And I realized that one of the things that gives me joy is writing as much as I can. My email newsletters goes out twice a month. It's about thousand to 1500 words. So nothing in one paragraph or one, two lines. It has a bunch of infographics, it has context, it has history, it has how can you make best advantage of it? And I finally realized I'm seeing the newsletters. People come back and sign up on the paid workshop through those newsletters and a lot of success attributes. I can want to attribute both of you because you both keep saying in your different places, it's a muscle to do the email marketing. But that's where I've learned that if I want to communicate the value of the work that I am doing, I don't segment a lot. My newsletters, this is coming from a person who comes from the data world and AI world. I wanted to keep things simple as long as I want, and I want to communicate constantly, continuously, my joy, my purpose, my intention, which is what I do in every newsletter. And I think it's speaking to people. And I started to collect evidence of that. And I think that's how I shifted from the question, who's my audience, the other nonprofits who should be caring about data? We have a relationship with data to how do I help them build that relationship with joyous?

[00:15:52 - 00:16:50]
I friggin love that. I just think there's such beauty in the way you describe that. I often talk about we're in business to serve. And I think that coming from that place of joy and sharing and uplifting is, it's this sort of reciprocity of, like, all of that will come back. All of that will come back and bring the right people back. Right. The people who want to share in that joy and all of that. So I love that. And one of the biggest things I see with consultants where they really struggle around business development is they actually lose that joy. They get so focused on the sale that they lose the relationships, the stuff that lights us up and gets us excited, that we could talk about forever. I think clearly it's working, right? Clearly you're, your business is growing. Looks like you're doing well. I'd love you.

[00:16:50 - 00:17:53]
I'm sorry. Chantra, can I something which I hear so much in my Zoom conversations and friendly consultant conversations. Our consulting businesses have ups and downs. Right. There are high times when we have a lot of consulting work and there are times when we don't have consulting work. Right. And I have been in conversations where consultants have said, what do I do with this time? It's making me nervous that I don't have a pipeline or I don't have compliance. I enjoy that time so much. If I have two months or that I don't have a consulting paying client, I know that time how I want to invest it. I'm going to open up a new sheet of page. I draw a bunch of things I want to do, I want to create, and then I place them on different weeks that, how do I want to approach it? What do I want to pick out of that? It opens up a lot of room to, again, come back, bring back your joy. In those two months. Work would come back, clients would come. All our goal is to just keep enjoying the work we do. It's very simple.

[00:17:53 - 00:18:56]
I love that. And I think it takes a lot of self confidence to know and trust the work will come back. And I'd love to have you dissect that a little bit of what I agree. And I think for a lot of people listening, they're going to be like, but how do you like, how do you know that work is going to come back? How can you trust that? And I see that's when people start to make not good decisions around business development because they panic. So how do you keep your faith and really take advantage of that time? Because I think that the activities you're describing are business development activities, but they're ones that are aligned and fun and bring, deepen your connection to the work and your community. But I think it's really hard for people to trust that process. So where does that come from? Where does your trust come from?

[00:19:02 - 00:19:07]
Okay, Meena, we're back for another round of rapid fire questions. You ready to play?

[00:19:08 - 00:19:10]
Okay. I'm hesitant, but okay.

[00:19:11 - 00:19:23]
I promise they'll be painless. You've spoken on so many incredible, amazing stages. What is one stage you have yet and want to speak on?

[00:19:25 - 00:19:44]
That's a great question. I don't know. I speak almost every stage. I probably want to go to some of the Hollywood, like, episodes where I can go and talk to those people. But other than that, like, nonprofit sector is very kind to include me in a lot of spaces.

[00:19:44 - 00:19:56]
Oh, my gosh. I love that. Okay, you mentioned in the episode that you're a big fan of tv. You said one show that you really like, but what is your all time favorite tv show series?

[00:19:57 - 00:20:18]
It crowd BBC nineties show. I love that because it's a group of standard nerds working with a project manager who doesn't know how to talk to the standard nerds. And they are talking about one day from sandals to broken computers and saying, have you restarted that computer again? And trying to hit the computer with a hammer. So I love that show.

[00:20:19 - 00:20:38]
Okay, I heard of it before. Your next one that just brought up for me. We watched Zoolander with the kids. Do you all know the movie Zoolander? There's this. Anyways, it hasn't aged the best. But there's one scene where they're like, the files are in the computer, and they start hitting the computer and then throw it.

[00:20:39 - 00:20:40]
I just love it.

[00:20:41 - 00:20:43]
Anyway, different languages.

[00:20:45 - 00:20:54]
Okay, my last question is, if you could vision forward five years from now, where do you see namaste data?

[00:20:55 - 00:21:49]
Probably being a happy company with a bunch of collaborators who are also happy. I can see myself, hopefully with more hair because I have fallen hair. So I have more hair. But really having more speaking conferences and talking more, like just traveling more and doing this with more people, spreading that joy. I have really enjoyed working with data and algorithms for 17 years in different places. I want people to feel that same joy without having to go through six years of school. But having the same joy when you think about the words like algorithms, not to be intimidated, that's my one life motto. Not to be intimated with data and AI for anybody we are. There are residents of it already. I want people to feel that same joy I have felt for years. So five years from now, I want to be happier working with happy people on this one model that I have.

[00:21:50 - 00:21:52]
Amazing. Thank you for playing.

[00:21:56 - 00:25:21]
Okay, so I am a big believer that you know the most questions that we have and we are looking for answers. The answers are in your own story. We don't look into our stories. If we were a book, we don't pick that book as often. All we do, most of our life is try to look for answers outside of us in different books, in different places. So I'll give an example. I used to work for different companies, tech companies and consulting companies. All those jobs were amazing on paper. They had amazing job description. They used to pay amazing for data scientists, but they never, they didn't open up a space how I wanted to be. I feel like they did not allow me to explore who I could be. And so for that I realized, okay, at some point I need to leave these jobs. These jobs are not working out for me. I don't want to look for another job at this point in my life. But that was a big decision, right? That's an example where scarcity mindset can immediately make me feel like, okay, I can't leave my job. This is a habit. It's a good job. I have a good title, it's paying well. Why should I? So what I started to do to shift from this into kind of a, you know, look into my own story for answers, abundance mindset is I started to find the days I still remember and I still do it. I started to find the days in a week, in the week when I feel the best. Saturday mornings for me are the best times when I feel most happy. For some reason, since kids. And Saturday morning, I decided, I remember the weeks when I was deciding I want to leave my job. Saturday morning I would sit down with a pen and paper and list down all the times that I survived something. I survived bad bosses, I survived bad jobs, I survived some projects, I survived my accident, I survived moving to different countries and feeling like I'm a new person always. You survive a lot of things. All of us have had those success moments in our lives. Small, little, big, we have those, but we forget those. And our bodies are not used to remembering how resilient we are. Our bodies are not used to remembering and celebrating our own accomplishments. And I wanted to teach myself that. So I picked a day when I feel joy and I reminded myself I even have, I don't know if you can see there are like some jars behind me on the shelf. Those jars are called community jar, proud of me jar in collaboration jar or something like that. And I put like a little post it note the moment I'm proud of myself. So I can see that jar filling up right there. That's how I'm training myself to focus to the abundance mindset. So the days when you don't have paid work and you know youre there are going to be months where you don't have that consulting job that you wanted. That's okay. That's my time to dream kind of projects. I want to do something that I want to learn things that I never picked, the webinars I never attended, but I have recordings and recordings of those of learning, which I can now go and pull some gems out of those. Every opportunity has something to teach. And so all we need to just look into our own story and pull some evidence of abundance mindset that is helping me push him through.

[00:25:22 - 00:26:15]
This is why I know that you are and only you will only continue to be successful. Because while a lot of people would wait for that resiliency to just fall upon them, you make it a practice. You are actively seeking out the practice of reminding yourself the self talk you do to yourself, the recognition of the jars on your bookshelf. That really is. I just want to acknowledge the difference between 80% of business owners who will just wait for that to happen. I'm here to break the news like it's never coming. You have to, you have to do the work, which is what you're doing. And I just want to acknowledge you for that because as a two and a half year, you know, business, you're still relatively new to the game.

[00:26:15 - 00:26:15]
Right.

[00:26:15 - 00:27:43]
And so that you already have that wisdom is just, I just really want to acknowledge you for that. I'd love to switch directions a little bit and talk about AI. Before we were doing this conversation, I was talking to Cindy and a different guest about how my husband has, like, discovered chat GTP and he's blown away by it. And, and I was saying how in my business, it's still, at least for the writing part, is. It's still not a helpful tool for me. It's just the amount of prompts I have to feed it to get it to output a quality piece of content. It's just faster for me to write the thing. But I'm also like a trained copywriter, so that makes sense. I'm curious to talk a little bit about how you deploy AI for good in your business and if there's anything that you do to help you, whether that save time, earn money. But it's also like, I don't know, maybe it's something on the productivity or the organization scale, or maybe it's on the relationship building scale or something like that. I feel very novice when it comes to all things AI, but I'm really open to it. It's just one of those things. I feel like if you don't know, you don't know, and you are so much farther down as far as being in the know. So I'd love to hear from you a bit on that front.

[00:27:45 - 00:31:37]
Not for me. I mean, I come. I do come from a world where, you know, I was in the tech, so trying new tools is sort of my happy thing. I've spent years talking to Excel spreadsheets and data sets and different tools, so just trying chat GPT for what it is. A lot of programmers and testers have this, try to break it. So I'm not trying to break chat GPT because I don't think Sam Altman would be very forgiving if I try to do that. But I have explored it in different ways for my business, though. I'm a one person team, and as much as I love talking to people, I also enjoy my own space, which means some days I want another human being sitting next to me whom I can show off my Amazon new top that I bought and say, hey, this is what I bought. I want that person to say, this looks really good, or, I want to walk up to someone and, you know, have them tell me, oh, you are doing a great job, and I see you every day. Those things don't happen. So chat GPD became that safe. I wouldn't say safe, but it became a space for me where, you know, if I would hear a rejection and I need a separate voice, and it's becoming hard for me to pull my own voice to say, it's okay, dust it off, go back, go to the next thing. I asked Chad GBD first, giving me some logical steps. I applied for this RFP. This was the RFP. I did this and this and this rep. I went to this round, and then I heard a no. I feel this in this way. What do I should. What should I be doing? Almost like, you know, talking to a stranger, which might feel weird, but I do think, please know, that I do come from a country which I grew up in, a country which has a lot of people. I grew up in India, and growing up, I used to. I was. I was a kid, we used to talk to a lot of strangers. Talking to strangers is not hard for me. And chad GPT, for me, became that stranger who could probably would have those wisdom, full nuggets that I can take from it. And so I would ask these questions in the beginning to end. It has been a consistent practice to use chat gbd when I need some logical next steps. And chat gbd, if anybody has used it, knows that it gives these point wise answers. Step one, step two, step three, step four. Like a very methodical ant who would tell, you, just do these four things and you are settled. Sometimes you need that kind of an assurance, and so that's helpful. The other way I use tag a little bit is I use LinkedIn as my primary social media account. And while I don't give in to the algorithm, gain that, how do we do that and the likes, because it's a rabbit hole. But you do need the consistency to post on those social media channels. And when I feel like, oh, I can't come up with another idea, I don't want to go back to that post that I already have used. What do I do now? Or if I want to reuse my old post, I don't know how to reuse it, whether just to change a graphic or should I change the whole, like the idea. So I would use chat GBD more as a thought partner to say, okay, this is who I am, this is my audience, this is this. Frequently I use this social platform, create some blog post ideas on these, these topics. I have seen that it doesn't create, it doesn't do a really good job of taking my voice and creating the exact post, but it does give me really good content calendar. It has made me content calendar. So this is how you can post and you can keep tweaking the response until you get the best response. The first version, I would say, okay, revise that to include dates. Revise that version to make it a six month calendar or a three month calendar for week wise posts. And I would use that report to make stuff I do.

[00:31:37 - 00:33:11]
Wait, I love that you talk about it as like that aunt who's just gonna say what to do and you're like, okay, got it. My mom's like that. So I'm gonna picture that next time I use. Although I have discovered Claude, which I like a lot better than chat GPT, but that is an aside. Okay, I want to go back to something you mentioned a while ago when we first started that I made a note of to come back to because I was really intrigued. So you talked about the advisor, your pricing for your advisor offer as intentionally on like the lower scale of what or reversed how other people might charge that one for one access to your time typically has a high premium you've intentionally kept it lower than your other consulting offer, which kind of led me to think about scale, because I feel like we always talk about scale, which I don't know, I don't think we always need to be scaling. But I'm curious, as you think about the future of your business, how do you see, what do you want? Are you happy with the size? Do you want to grow? What areas do you see that growth coming from, if at all? Or where are you like, I don't want to work that much. These are the things that are going to bring me to my capacity and make me feel really fulfilled, and that's that. So what does the future of your business look like today?

[00:33:11 - 00:37:41]
Cindy, you asked so many good questions in that one statement. There were like three questions in there. Okay, I'll try to respond to it in a not a very articulated way. So growth, right? All of us think about growth, where to grow, what to do next. And when I started my business, I had worked in consulting companies before across the world. And these consulting companies had a very specific way and idea of growth, tracking certain very specific metrics of attributing to my success, to group success, to consulting business success. I wanted to do things differently. So my approach, my philosophy to my business is every six months I do a little bit of like self retreat work. And I start with the values I check for. What are my values today? And right now I have six which have been with me for quite a bit of time. Now I have my values. From there I go to what am I tracking for my success? I literally have for my success. And this might sound silly, but it hurts for me, is I have three things that I track for my success, which is can I put food on my table, can I pay my mortgage? And can I have, do I have money for my growth experiments that I want to do in my life? And basically all these three things together, can I sustain my lifestyle that I want to have with my vacations, meeting family, doing things that I want to? If I can, I'm okay using those success indicators. I then backtrack to see, okay, do I have space for projects? What kind of projects do I want to have? Where do I want to scale? So this advisory work at 2000, I would say something interesting happened. I started that business, that service at $900 a year ago. In a year I moved it from 900 to 2000, which gave me two things. One, a learning opportunity on what the sector needs in terms of data and AI. And two, it gave me a positive affirmation and indication that I can increase my prices and see how it goes. Keep pushing and see how it goes. Where does it go? Right. And that is to your one part of your question that, you know, how does it affect my success indicators and how do I approach scaling it in terms of the growth? I would say I watch a lot of tv shows, and so there's one show on Netflix called I don't know if you've seen street food, and there are three versions to that. Street food Mexico, street food us, and street food Asia. I love this free food Mexico version. There are six episodes. Every episode tells you some. It teaches you something. I love it. I won't make this episode about the Street Food episode. It's still about AI data and meme. But I learned the idea of growth maybe two years ago through that show. So what happens to that show is basically there are street vendors every, there are six episodes. Every episode has a woman street vendor who's showing how in the last 30, 40 years, they have been cooking the same meals every day. They wake up at 04:00 a.m. and then they, you know, they cook, they find happiness and feeding people. I want that definition of growth. I don't want it to be forced that I have to grow higher, bigger, better this way. I want the definition of growth where I can place and center my joy every day. Maybe for the next 30 years, I would be doing the same thing. As long as I'm doing, you know, putting food on my table, paying bills, having vacations, meeting family, I want that same thing. My growth is my joy. Placing it for as many years I'm doing it. And so I feel like my ideas of what my next service, my next workshop, my next blog, my next work is going to become. As long as it's. Maybe it sounds like I'm using the word joy a lot, but it truly is just figuring instead of figuring out what do I do more, my question is, how do I find more happiness in this work that I'm doing? And just changing that question, it opens up a lot of avenues of collaboration. Finding your community, talking about yourself with more affirmation and confidence in the rest of the world, I think that changes the idea of growth for me. That's how I see growth.

[00:37:41 - 00:38:47]
Okay. The one thing that I'm thinking to myself as you're talking is, why did it take us so long to get you on this podcast? Because you are just a fountain of wisdom. I love your approach. I just wish more, like people have had the opportunity to hear this earlier because it's so amazing. Thank you for just sharing all of that. I think it's such a good reframe and your joy. And yes, we can say that word. I just think it's a perfect word because it comes across in how you talk about your business and especially like, we've all talked about 2024 as being a little bit of a harder year. And I think that you've been able to hold on like all these things you're talking about give you the tools to hold on to that joy and passion and like, it radiates. And I just am so grateful. Which also brings me, because we're running out of time and we have to ask our favorite question, which is for confession. So, Meena, what do you want to confess?

[00:38:49 - 00:40:49]
That's an interesting question. Hard one. Well, I suppose this is more of a confession that I'm sharing with a lot of people who have their businesses. They're definitely days, regardless of whether you are, you know, a startup of a two and a half year old company or a one year old company or early or mid, there are definitely days when you feel like, I don't know where this business is going, you know, I don't know if it was survived. This is a hard year, this is a hard one. This is a hard quarter. I don't know if this survive or not. And as much as I so appreciate, I'm grateful. Cindy, you said, you know, fountain of wisdom. Like I said, I need those moments and love. Please give me those clips so that I have stored them. But there are definitely days when I have felt it hard. Like I'm a person who has anxieties and I don't hesitate to share that. I have depression at times and they, you know, they exaggerate in these days. And so that's there. I want people to know that that's true. It happens. You are going to feel those things. But I never thought that running and building a business differently in any definition of yours, which is different than how the, everything at rest in the rest of the world is for me, it's, you know, having my four or five ways of building anti capitalistic things. I literally started a new way of pricing model called contract now, pay later. So they can contract it now, pay it in a year, which is something interesting. I never thought that using these, I can survive a business. I can keep a business running for two and a half years, but you can. That's my confession. You can. There are days when everything would say the opposite, go have an ice cream go sleep, watch a tv. Because tomorrow you are going to feel different. And you would be reminded why you were doing this. And you would be reminded that your business can survive doing things differently in your way as long as it's true to who you are. I guess that would be my confession.

[00:40:50 - 00:41:13]
Okay, we're going to have to have you back on. We've had conversations about anti capitalist business ownership before, but I feel like that's another conversation that I want to have with you because that contract now, pay later is something I'm so curious about. But that will have to be for another time. Until then, where can our listeners connect with you?

[00:41:14 - 00:41:47]
LinkedIn. They can find me on LinkedIn. So meenadas m e e n a d a s or you can find me on my website, which is namaste dash dash.org, namaste data.org. everything is there on the from LinkedIn to my website. So connect me on anything you got. You're welcome to send a pigeon to Vancouver, BC. I also promise I'll answer through that. I'm a bit hardcore on saying hi, sending love, sending hugs. Choose your medium. I'm here to say hi.

[00:41:48 - 00:42:07]
Thank you. Thank you Meena thank you so much for having me. Thank you again for listening to the Confessions podcast for nonprofit coaches and consultants. If you enjoyed today's episode, which I sure hope you did, you can show your support in one of three ways.

[00:42:07 - 00:42:15]
Number one, post a screenshot of this episode to your Instagram Stories or LinkedIn profile and Tag Cindy and I so we can repost you.

[00:42:15 - 00:42:19]
Number two, share this podcast with a fellow nonprofit coach or consultant.

[00:42:19 - 00:42:25]
And number three, leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts that we can continue to grow and reach new listeners.

[00:42:26 - 00:42:32]
And of course, make sure you subscribe so you can get the latest and greatest interviews as they drop every Thursday.

[00:42:32 - 00:42:40]
And to our fellow nonprofit coaching and consulting friends. Remember, we're an open book and here to answer your burning biz questions.

[00:42:40 - 00:42:41]
See you next time.