Mash by Tash, Tash Menon Brand Innovator

Tash Menon Verheul is the visionary behind Mash, a Melbourne-based creative agency revolutionizing branding. Tash shares her unique approach to assembling freelance teams over traditional agencies, leveraging her international experience to offer fresh perspectives on engaging affluent Southeast Asian consumers and beyond.

Themes Covered in Episode

1. Innovative Branding Strategies
2. Creative Agency Leadership
3. Global Branding and Marketing
4. Freelancing and Independent Consulting
5. Entrepreneurial Journey and Challenges
6. Cultural Effectiveness in Branding
7. Creative Workforce Empowerment
8. Networking and Building Client Relationships

Connect With Tash Menon Verheul

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tash-menon/
Website https://thisismash.com/

Transcript

Nigel Rawlins: 0:29

My guest today is Tash Menon Verheul, a dynamic young Australian who broke through the traditional English reserve with bold ideas and innovative approaches in London's upmarket, event and hospitality sectors. While in London, Tash decided she preferred to assemble her own creative freelance teams for the branding projects she was managing instead of relying on advertising agencies. When she returned to Melbourne, she founded MASH, a creative agency redefining branding with lessons learned from her time abroad. At MASH, Tash curates teams of experienced and talented freelancers with advertising backgrounds to craft customized solutions for her branding projects. This strategy enables her clients to tap into the growing affluence in Southeast Asia, presenting luxury brands with fresh opportunities to engage with wealthy consumers. Join me to explore how Tash has applied her innovative thinking to create new industry benchmarks. Welcome, Tash, to the Wisepreneurs podcast. Can you tell our listeners something about yourself?

Tash Menon Verheul: 1:38

My name is Tash Menon Verheul. It's the first time I've actually said my full name in that manner, because I recently just got married. It's a fun fact. My mum, my dad and I born on the same day. There we go. You did not know that about me. That's probably the coolest all three of us. That's the coolest fact about me. It's all downhill from there.

Nigel Rawlins: 1:58

What happens on birthdays?

Tash Menon Verheul: 2:00

Well, they're now claiming it because whilst I was a kid, they made sure that they made me feel special. Now that they're a little bit older, it's definitely going no, no, it's no longer about you, it's about us now. But it's yeah, it was something that I didn't really acknowledge of how big a deal it was until I was an adult, but yes, I was on the front page of the Western Australian News when I was born, so that was a highlight then.

Nigel Rawlins: 2:31

So was that because of the dates?

Tash Menon Verheul: 2:33

Yeah, there wasn't a lot happening in the news that day, so they put that in, I guess. But no, it was because of the dates. I think my dad had a family friend who was working at the paper. Thought it was interesting. So there we go.

Nigel Rawlins: 2:45

Tess the way I've heard about you is because you run an interesting platform in Melbourne and Jon Younger was just raving about you and the agency. So tell us what is MASH?

Tash Menon Verheul: 3:00

That's very kind. John is a wonderful, wonderful man. Mash is a creative technology company, essentially for people who may be listening and who are familiar with marketing, advertising, communication services. Traditionally, if you go to a company that provides those services, it's a brick and mortar structure where there are full time headcount or full time employees working in there every day and projects come through the door and essentially those employees work on those projects. I spent close to about 14, 15 years of my career engaging a lot of those types of companies. So I never worked in one of those companies, but I was the customer of those companies and I saw there being a gap, or I believed there was a gap in their business model and I felt that there was a way to make it more effective.

Tash Menon Verheul: 3:58

So what MASH is is that over the course of the past now six years, we have cultivated a community of independent creative experts or consultants now working across 31 countries, and we custom build teams for every brand that we work with via that community.

Tash Menon Verheul: 4:24

So what that means is that for the brand that's engaging us, they've got a team of experts that have been hand selected to actually work on this project. They're not just the people who happen to be at work that day because they're being paid to be there the people that we handpick for every project. They can firstly say no if they don't want to do it, but something to preface is that every single person in our community has, on average, between 12 and 15 years experience. They have a CV that has demonstrated success in different areas in terms of what they do, which means that when they are cherry picked to work on a particular project if it was for a large multinational or a big hotel group, or for a private Lyon startup or scale up they actually have had proven success in working that sort of thing before. But also they're more motivated because they're actually choosing to do the work. They're not just being given the work to do so for us. Essentially, we curate teams out of creative experts to help produce culturally effective work for brands.

Nigel Rawlins: 5:38

Now, that's an interesting word you're using curate. I think People are becoming aware of freelance platforms where you might go to a freelance platform and you might hire a particular person. When did you start mesh and where did you start mesh?

Tash Menon Verheul: 5:54

The business will be six in July this year, so we're now five and a half years old. So I started the business five and a half years ago here in Melbourne. I had spent vast majority of my career living abroad. So you know, choosing to start a business in a city you've actually never worked in is an unusual decision to begin with. But I think what it does is it forces you to think bigger than where you're situated, because you don't know anybody. So the fact is, you're not limited by what you've got just in front of you. You're looking beyond those immediate boundaries to go. Well, where could I be most effective? And so I started the business. Within our first eight months we had our first international client. Within our first 18 months, about two thirds of our business was being driven out of Southeast Asia and now consistently, year on year, it's about equal in terms of still still more so internationally, and there's a number of reasons for that as to why that adoption rate has been in that manner.

Tash Menon Verheul: 7:03

But I think the business was started before the pandemic and this idea of Firstly working for yourself or working as an independent consultant or a freelancer. There's different levels of maturity in terms of understanding what that means, depending on what market you're in. And you know what I found when I first started the business in Australia the understanding and appreciation of a freelancer was far more limited, comparatively to when I was working with clients in the US or an agency, and I was working with clients in Asia or in the UK. But you know, what happened in 2020 was the pandemic, and there was this response and focused viewpoint of people looking to really start choosing work that fulfills them. This idea of being trapped in our houses for 6, 12, 18 months. There's a culturally across society and that pandemic response really accelerated the nature of our operating model and the values we have.

Tash Menon Verheul: 8:12

Following on from that, the year after that was the great resignation. Following after that, 2022, there was a talent shortage. Last year, there was a huge amount of, you know, economic uncertainty and the interesting thing with, I guess, the MASH model is that we can flex as different trends are happening in the market because we have quite a lean operating model. But one of the things that I'm hugely motivated by and I think, part of my job, that is, without doubt, one of the biggest challenges, but without doubt is why I do it every day is we work with such a huge variety of cultures, experiences and expertise and that understanding of how a model like this could or couldn't provide value is basically what I spend two thirds of my day trying to solve. And, you know, I think that's where it's never two days and never really the same, so tell me how does somebody who comes back to Melbourne find an international client?

Nigel Rawlins: 9:18

Did you know them beforehand or did you have sort of networks like that?

Tash Menon Verheul: 9:24

Yeah, I'm trying to think how, like I'm a firm believer when you and I learned this the hard way, because I think a lot of people aspire or appreciate this idea of being an entrepreneur. You know, there's there's this nicety or this kind of glitzy viewpoint I can work from wherever and be my own boss and I don't need to answer to the man upstairs. But it's actually really hard work, like it's really hard work and I'll be the first to say that I wouldn't have it any other way. But, my God, the personal growth and like how much you learn going through the process is extraordinary.

Tash Menon Verheul: 10:04

And I think getting that first international client it was like many things that are a conversation from a conversation, from a conversation with people that I met, and I was always very clear about the purpose, as to why we exist, and there was a huge level of authenticity in that, because I had found myself in a, in a role prior to starting mash where I really wasn't empowered at all in that role and I felt for any person that is motivated and, I guess, driven to do well and wanting to do well, whether that is professionally, personally or just you know, enjoy and have a good life and how you live.

Tash Menon Verheul: 10:47

You should be Given the opportunity, regardless of your circumstance, to be able to do well, and that was my, my fundamental goal. I wanted to start a business that inspires and empowers the creative workforce to work for themselves, because I, you know, I truly believed that if people of that nature had the freedom to choose work that fulfills them, then greater work and more effective work could be produced. That's still today how I talk about the business and getting my first international client. It was, again, it was through a client who knew somebody, who knew somebody and then introduced us to a global triathlon events company in Singapore, which then led to many other opportunities based out there. And yeah, I've been going back to Singapore other than during the period of the pandemic almost every six weeks for the last four years.

Nigel Rawlins: 11:44

I'd like to come back to Asia, because I think there's some very exciting things going on there, and I think you're obviously involved in that as well. So you find an international client through just networking in a way, which is pretty amazing, because we are a bit isolated in Australia and Melbourne, especially, is a long way away from Singapore. So how do you find your talent? So I guess you've got a briefing and then you had to curate a group to do that. So how did you go about that?

Tash Menon Verheul: 12:14

Ours is actually quite different to a traditional marketplace, and we made a very conscious decision during the pandemic, and particularly during that great resignation period where, unfortunately, the creative industries really did get hurt due to really a number of the inefficiencies Of those traditional operating models. A lot of people did lose their jobs, a lot of people were made redundant and we got inundated with CVs, and we were only a not even a two year old business at this point, so nobody really knew us. But we had a strong enough client pool that we had great word of mouth, and I remember we had a week where we would have had over 200 CVs sent to us and what we had done to that point, to grow where we were, was that we never advertised, and to this day, we still don't advertise. So to become a masher, as we, as we, call our amazing workforce but to become a masher, you first and foremost have to be referred in, and that was something when I started the business, and it was just me and I had six masher whom of which I'd worked with before. One of the simplest insights I quickly learned when starting this business is that the caliber of people that I was looking to cultivate when you're at that level, and I humbly say a lot of the people that I was bringing in, they should have been my boss two or three times over, or they should have at least been somebody that would have been working in a team that would have been far more senior than me but where I guess our superpower as a business slide was going well.

Tash Menon Verheul: 13:53

What is this person motivated by? Where is their experience? Demonstrated great value to a brand? Or who they're working with before? What are the type of people this type of person works best with? And, accordingly, how do you build a team, whether it's a team of two or a team of 15 to to help deliver on that?

Tash Menon Verheul: 14:14

And so, with mash, we don't advertise its referral only. Once you're referred into the business, you go through a two to two or three stage interview process, depending on the role within that, and that's usually with at least two members of the team or at least a masher within that, and then you go through an induction program, and so that induction program is essentially our starting point to help you, and we have a number of people in our community, some of which who have worked independently for 20 years, and then we've got others who have just left, having worked in like a corporate advertising environment their whole career, and have decided to go out on their own. So they have no idea how to write a scope of work, they have no idea how to, you know, charge themselves out, and they're all the things that we look to support and help with.

Nigel Rawlins: 15:07

That's very important. I think that's what a lot of people are very reluctant to go out into freelancing. They say what are we going to charge ourselves for? And the majority will always undercharge and they'll understate their ability. So you're seeing some very talented people. Does that make you excited? There are so many talented people and when you meet them you go wow.

Tash Menon Verheul: 15:28

Absolutely. I mean, I've got to be really honest. That for me is like the intangible but the most motivating part of what I get to do every day. I always kind of to balance my own brain because obviously when you do start or when you are scaling a business, it can be somewhat consuming. But it has been such a privilege to meet, work, collaborate and even become friends with so many of these people that I would never have cross paths had I not started this business. And when you've got this ability to refer and everyone feels like they've been a part of creating it, it's something quite magic. But at the same time it's something that you're quite protective of, because you want to ensure that's nurtured and looked after in the same way as it was when there was just a handful of you.

Nigel Rawlins: 16:27

I'm overwhelmed all the time. But the people I meet, I think these people are just so smart, and the younger ones like you too.

Tash Menon Verheul: 16:34

I'm just thinking wow, what are they going to be like when they get to?

Nigel Rawlins: 16:37

my age.

Tash Menon Verheul: 16:39

I always say naivety is a beauty and a curse. I think it is, and I think that's where it's like. I listened to a podcast the other day of a founder that I greatly respect in terms of the business they've built, and he says in there to be a good entrepreneur, you need a level of arrogance, but you need a significant amount of naivety. And I listened to that. I'm like that's interesting. But I thought it was a really interesting juxtaposition because the fact is you go through this sort of bell curve of being hugely naive and then you get to a particular point you're like, oh my God, this is amazing and that's the sort of high I think people strive for when they start a business. And then the highest there is as significant lows, and if you don't have that confidence in yourself to be able to pick yourself back up, the fact is, nobody will.

Tash Menon Verheul: 17:33

And I think when you're working in a really structured corporate environment and I think that's the biggest thing I see, particularly when I meet a lot of people who have the appetite to go work for themselves or a dabbling on this thought and I guess that's a lens I always look at is how comfy are you really with being quite uncomfortable Because without sudden cliche, but it's really true because you've got to establish ways to manage and look after yourself in that process and I definitely have not always got that right. I think I've definitely learned that the hard way, as I've sort of gone through that process.

Nigel Rawlins: 18:09

I think that's a really important thing about looking after yourself, because there will be times when you're out of work or the work's not there, or you're wondering when the money's going to come in, and I think that's where people have to price themselves well in the first place. So let's have a talk about some of the brands that you're attracting. Obviously, I'm assuming there's still advertising agencies in Melbourne. They probably be working with bigger clients on retainers, whereas you're still working with some big clients, but I'm assuming what they're doing is they want something done and they want you to get a team together and get it done. I know that sounds a bit simple, but I'm assuming in one of your branding jobs there's quite a lot of work involved. So tell us about what's involved in, say, you get a branding job. What do you do from there?

Tash Menon Verheul: 18:57

Yeah, so when we get a brief that comes through the door, we have briefs coming in from India, singapore, indonesia, dubai, australia and the US. So that's like just giving me, just ringing off the top of my head, what we've got right now that the team are working on. So we essentially look at what is the problem that the client is trying to solve from a business point of view, first and foremost, because a lot of times in creative industries there's this fine line, particularly when you're building teams, beautiful creative work doesn't necessarily always solve the challenge the business is trying to navigate. So for us it's kind of really trying to establish what and why is this client wanting to speak to us or why are they looking for these sort of services? And from there we sort of really fine line the brief and going well, to solve that problem what are the skills or the people that you need or the roles that you need? And based on that we have a sort of a curating system that allows us to search and assess what is the most effective people, and then that brief gets provided to that team. They can say yes, no, and if they are interested, we then actually do a live briefing like this and get them to ask questions, and then they actually have a chemistry meet with the client to basically from their go all right, I'll be an extension of your business to help deliver this. So it is very personalized. It's not just an off the shelf by a team go.

Tash Menon Verheul: 20:29

And I think in the world that we live in today talking about, if you're a founder, you need to scale, you need to grow, you need to become the next to do. I mean there's definitely a gap for that. But at the same time, for us, we've grown consistently close to 100% year on year for the last five years and we've been very choosy how we do that. But you know at the same time that there's been challenge. There's been months where we've had really quiet months, so there's been a point where we've had to relook at certain parts of the business because we needed to figure out how do we be more effective in how we deliver? What we do and I think that's again where I sort of spend my time is always looking at what can you cut the fat off a bit? What can you do a little bit more of here to make things better? But in short, when a brand comes to us and we're fortunate. We work with multinationals, but we also work with a number of really fast growing businesses that are scaling.

Nigel Rawlins: 21:28

One of the dangers I've seen out there is with businesses that want to grow too quickly. They can't deliver and they fall over very quickly, and I've seen that happen in Geelong. Once a person got a big contract, leased offices and ended up losing their house, which was very, very sad because they couldn't get to the point where they could actually deliver something. So the upfront cost killed them, and that's the biggest danger of growing too quickly. So I think you're fairly wise. So are these companies asking you hey, give us a quote, or can you put together a proposal, like they would ask, of a advertising agency?

Tash Menon Verheul: 22:04

Yeah, we essentially get treated the same in a lot of ways. We have a lot of sort of bottom of funnel referred clients. So we have clients that come to us and they've been referred to us and they're not speaking to anybody else, which, particularly in our early years like for the first four years, that was 98% of our business in terms of what we just relied on that and it was amazing. But over the last couple of years we've sort of got different ways that we're working now as well. So we've always been doing brand work, but we've just launched a production studio in India with a long-term advisor of ours, you know John Younger.

Tash Menon Verheul: 22:39

We have another advisor who sits alongside John, a gentleman of the name of Samir Pidawalla. I've known him longer than I've known my business partner and he is a very successful entrepreneur himself. He had sold one of India's largest digital media firms, probably about six years ago now, and he came on as a partner with us in India to launch a production studio. So that's going to be a new arm of the business that is quietly ticking over at the moment, but we're going to be talking more about that more publicly soon. But we just launched that two weeks ago, which is quite exciting.

Nigel Rawlins: 23:15

So what is a production studio?

Tash Menon Verheul: 23:16

So essentially, in terms of MASH studios, we do short, medium and long form productions. So whether that is movies, videos, content for social media platforms, documentaries within that so anything that is camera led is probably the best way to describe it. So, for brands and they've got some great brands that they're looking to work with over there- that sounds fabulous.

Nigel Rawlins: 23:42

So let's talk a little bit about Asia. What is going on in Asia? The danger of living in Australia is that we are remote from even Asia, apart from going over there for holidays. What's going on business wise in Asia? That's so exciting.

Tash Menon Verheul: 23:56

Oh gosh, I mean my perspective of this. Asia is a pure melting point of such a diverse range of cultures, geographies, industries, economies. It really cannot be packaged under one umbrella. And, you know, I think that fact alone is the reason where MASH has been able to really achieve a sort of first mover advantage in Asia, across the space, and we have four or five key markets that we work across there. But it is one of those places where it is a region, so to speak, where a number of global brands come into the market and they look to culturally translate a particular brand to multiple countries.

Tash Menon Verheul: 24:45

Now, the fact is, each country, even though they may only be a handful of kilometers away from one another, they are so culturally unique that you need to have different methods of how you actually engage and connect with them. To give some context, like just looking at the advertising industry as a whole, following North America, the region of Asia pack has a second highest spent worldwide and India, within that, is actually said to be going to be now the biggest over China in the next three years. And so within that there's this shifting change of this emerging middle class that have been educated abroad. They've come back, they've got a broader perspective. They've got the financials to actually be able to invest in things that were seen as to be a luxury in a previous life.

Tash Menon Verheul: 25:38

Again, it's just the diverse perspectives that you find between Singapore, thailand, indonesia, japan. It is so unique. No one place can be coupled or coupled together, and I think that's where even for us you know we've had the opportunity to work on projects in Japan and the Philippines, but our core markets that we work in are in Thailand, in Singapore, in India and Indonesia, so it just can't be coupled into one. But it is a fascinating place in terms of this uplift that is clearly happening in different places across it all.

Nigel Rawlins: 26:16

I think the danger of being an Australian is we might take a holiday up to Bali or something like that. We don't see some of what's going on. I was in Vietnam last early last year and I could not believe the energy that I felt. It was not like a tourist mecca or anything like that. There were people working there and I thought this is going to be a very exciting future. But I haven't been to Singapore for a long time. But I am hearing amazing things coming out of there and listening to some interesting castors there and people in the marketing area that I'm reading about and I'm like, wow, these people are smart and things you're doing are pretty smart. So let's go back a bit. How did you get into this advertising that you were doing before? It led you to doing MASH A?

Tash Menon Verheul: 27:00

bit of a random story. I've never really worked in advertising, so I've never stepped foot in an advertising agency. I never knew anyone in advertising. I went to London to finish my undergrad. I was meant to be there for six months and I was there for just over 10 years, and so when I was finishing uni, I was working at a bar and I didn't have a lot of money. But I thought, oh, maybe I can just get a full-time job somewhere that will pay me a bit more so I can save a bit more and travel. And I found this job that I didn't really know what it was, but it was paying significantly a lot more than working in a bar and it was a junior account executive role for what was one of the largest I didn't know this at the time, but was one of the largest events consultancies in London and I remember sending off my CV and I got into an interview and I was hearing about all the types of events, and I grew up in the country, here in Australia, so this sounded hugely glamorous to me to be able to work on the Brit Awards, work on London Fashion Week, work on the Queen's Garden parties, and it sounded incredible and I was like I need to get this job. And I got the job and I was only going to stay for six months.

Tash Menon Verheul: 28:17

I ended up staying working with them for seven years and basically was the first taste I got of having a level of empowerment and autonomy with how I manage myself. I was always very self-motivated but I had a boss and a CEO that kind of recognized that in me quite early and I think that was very fortunate because I was very driven. So they gave me sort of clarity on where the business was looking to go within our area. And in the first year of running I was a junior account exec but my one account that I had became the largest grossing revenue account in the UK. And then there was all of a sudden who's this 19 year old that's got a £2 million account in Central London and from there I basically wrote them a plan about a year and a half later about how I feel like I could restructure. And this is the thing naivety is a beauty and a curse. I thought I could restructure part of their business in Central London to make it more commercially effective and for whatever reason. They believed it and they gave a 21 year old opportunity to do that by the age of 26,. I had about 15, 16 people reporting to me. Essentially we used to do events consulting but also recruitment of event staff across the whole of Central London. We would have about 3000 people out every day so it was a wild hustle. But I kind of got this indoctrination of understanding how to manage different parts of business in this very I guess, not normal sort of way is probably the best way to describe it.

Tash Menon Verheul: 29:57

I got the opportunity to be promoted in this company into a regional director role. I would have been 27. And I just went oh no, I don't really want to. I enjoyed this part. I enjoy being on the tools of building these teams, working with the clients, finding growth opportunities and one of our areas of our business that we worked in.

Tash Menon Verheul: 30:16

So we had different verticals of big hotels and glamorous events, but the other one was fine dining restaurants and there was a lot of quite high profile chefs and stuff in that market. And I say it again, I grew up in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, so when we were working with three Michelin restaurants and going into these beautiful venues around London, this was not something I grew up with, but it was definitely something that was an incredible experience for someone who hadn't come from that, and I saw an opportunity with how chefs were marketing themselves. I thought it was quite beige. They were all doing the exact same thing to one another and I went, oh why are they doing that? So I didn't really know what marketing was, per se, like specifically, but I decided to write a letter to a few restaurant groups, one of them being Gordon Ramsay Holdings, and proposing that I could find a way to elevate how they get more people to come to their restaurants, and essentially what I had put together without realizing was kind of like a marketing business development plan for them. It was the same time where Facebook had just acquired MySpace, this whole idea of social communities online was starting to build, and I found myself, probably about a month after that, working with Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wearing with a job that didn't have a title, but essentially I came in and ended up being sort of the director of brand across their whole group and helped them set up all this infrastructure.

Tash Menon Verheul: 31:47

And it was during that period I met and I had the opportunity to engage with multiple creative agencies because we were doing some amazing campaign work and work with some incredible brands all across central London and their brand campaign agencies would come and meet me and I just went well, this person from this agency is very good. This person from this agency is very good. This person from this agency is very good. What if I just made my own team of all of them rather than engage four different people? And so I started doing that. And then I kept doing that for the next six, seven years. I started consulting and I just kept building my own creative teams and it got to a point where we did a campaign in Sydney across Asia Pacific and it got some amazing traction.

Tash Menon Verheul: 32:38

And I had a gentleman who is now a client of ours at Mash. He used to work for a very large tourism board here. Basically, actually, who's the agency that you're working with? And I said, oh well, I'm not. The planning director is X Cleminger, the art director. They used to work together when they were at MC Saatchi. The copywriter they actually all used to work together also when they were at Clems. So they're all independent. They've all had 10, 15 years experience, but we've just built our own teams. So it's a real Crazy, random story, but I guess it was what makes it interesting.

Nigel Rawlins: 33:12

Yeah, it sounds like it just evolved and obviously London was the key to all this. It was a big enough market and now would Australia be a big enough market for this? Is there enough branding work in Australia, or is it better to encompass the world for you?

Tash Menon Verheul: 33:28

Australia has a very strong marketing and advertising industry. I think the point of difference for us is that it's a slightly less competitive market when it comes to change in how things are done here. So I think there's a stronger resistance to change unless there's a significant requirement, which is fundamentally why we've always found that there'd been traditionally a stronger appreciation for what we were doing abroad, because I think there was a greater demand for having access to great talent in certain markets internationally, whereas Australia, if you've got a traditional agency structure that you've worked with for years, you know I've got friends who are marketing directors of some very large brands in Australia. Some of their agencies have been on retainer longer than these guys have actually been working. There's definitely always enough to go around, is probably what I'm going to say. But at the same time, I think our home we're proudly Australian founded, but I think Southeast Asia, singapore in particular, was always our kind of first home.

Nigel Rawlins: 34:36

I think it's going to be very, very exciting. I was going to say John Younger and Matthew Metola have been writing about freelancers and talent, and one of the issues in fairly big companies is, if they want to bring in talented people, it takes them several months to hire them. Then they've got to get them up to speed. So Matthew Metola and John Younger are both saying, well, put together a team, but you'll have to outsource them. Bring them in to get your project done, so it gets going. And that's the thing about freelancers and that's what you're doing too. I think there are companies out there doing this, but not so much in appetizing and branding. Yeah, what?

Nigel Rawlins: 35:16

are your thoughts on all that.

Tash Menon Verheul: 35:18

Oh, I couldn't agree more. Our product offerings as a business have evolved and become more sophisticated over time, but fundamentally, the way we've supported clients from the early days was this idea of not outsourcing but insourcing. So what I mean by that is, if you're leading a brand, you don't want to outsource it, so somebody else is sitting disconnected to your team. They don't need to be physically in the same room, but they're insourced as an extension of your team Because the fact is, the value adds. So what John and Matt would have been saying there is okay if I'm a brand leader and if I want to hire this whole team. Yes, it takes a lot of time and it's costly, etc. But the fact is, if I've got somebody on my team, they know my brand, they know how the business operates, they understand the cadence that the business works at, so they can move fast.

Tash Menon Verheul: 36:17

Now, pace is usually one of the reasons people sort of say I need to hire people internally because I need to have that pace to move things fast. But the fact is, if you have an in-source team, you still need to have a strong lead or, depending on the size of the project, key people, potentially working in a full-time capacity. But this is what with MASH does. If, say, you and I were the two leads going into the business, the value to the company is we have a tap that we can turn on and off. That basically allows us to dial up and down the resourcing support we need as and when we need it, which is as quickly as an official, without all the onboarding that's usually attached. So that for us is a really important part.

Nigel Rawlins: 37:09

I think that's the secret of it all. I have a number of freelancers for projects. Hopefully I'd give them as much work as I can, but hopefully they're getting other sources of income as well, because I would hate to think that they're just depending on me for a few hundred dollars here and there. But I can bring them in, but I generally keep them on for several years. It takes me a while to find the ones I like and by giving them regular work they're available.

Nigel Rawlins: 37:35

One of the benefits I think we've got in Australia and in talking to people in different parts of the world we've got a very good health system where if you're a freelancer in America, unless you've got health insurance or something like that, it's costly. If you get sick or you have to go to hospital In an emergency, here in Australia, you can go into hospital straight away and get looked after. We're very lucky in Australia that we've got that. We do have unemployment insurance, so things do get tough. There is some sort of money, so in many ways it is probably easier to be a freelancer in Australia, but it's still a bit scary because you need the money if you want to pay your rent and stuff like that.

Tash Menon Verheul: 38:17

I think cost of living pressures is a phrase that's thrown around a lot now. I think it's that, when people are toying with this idea of working for themselves, my first reason is why? What's the motivation behind why you want to do it? I really do challenge people on that question because I think, particularly when people are either a little bit burnt out or they've got this idea of what it's like to do, that you've got to be really honest with yourself in terms of how you want your life to be structured. Then, based on that, what part does work play in it? Actually, looking at, well, okay, how do I differentiate myself as a freelancer in a really saturated market? Just saying that you are a strategist, having worked at XYZ, may not necessarily be strong enough. It's actually being able to demonstrate. Okay, having worked at XYZ. This is how I helped a company or a brand drive impact. That's the thing we're seeing now. It's the same sort of idea like when you're being interviewed in a larger organization where you work plays one component of what you assess, but, to be honest, for us it's the least important. It's more so.

Tash Menon Verheul: 39:38

Looking at going wherever you have worked, what impact have you been able to drive? Can you explain to me how you went about that? That's a question I will always ask, because a lot of people can rattle off awards. They can rattle off big, glossy names of things, but yeah, but what did you actually do there?

Tash Menon Verheul: 40:00

Because the fact is, when you're out on your own, the only thing that results in you being sustainable in working for yourself is driving impact, and if you think that a logo or an award on your CV is going to carry you through to work for yourself for the next few years, well, you've got another thing coming. It's kind of one of those things where, if somebody was really thinking about going out on your own, it's understanding why you want to do that, but also be willing to do the homework on understanding what your value is and sometimes, when you have been sheltered in an environment that hasn't really allowed you to see you in what makes you awesome, that may take a bit of time and that's OK, but that's just a really important thing to acknowledge.

Nigel Rawlins: 40:53

Oh, I think that's really important. I think people understate themselves and maybe that's part of being Australian. It's got something where we don't like to big note ourselves in a way. But what you're saying is what are your capabilities, what have you delivered? And I guess people coming out of a job have got to learn to market themselves like that, in other words, sell the benefits of what they can do and what they've achieved. Maybe that's something that's probably emerging in Australia. Freelancing is coming across a whole range of areas. I spoke to Amanda on the podcast and she's an administration assistant. She did such a good job with one of her clients she mentioned to a friend in Switzerland who flew her over to Switzerland for two weeks to help work with her.

Nigel Rawlins: 41:39

Now, this is a lady who works in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, which is pretty amazing, so there is a lot of opportunity out there at the moment. Is there anything else that you want to mention? Because we're talking about time, is there something else we haven't spoken about?

Tash Menon Verheul: 41:58

What haven't we spoken?

Nigel Rawlins: 41:59

about.

Tash Menon Verheul: 41:59

I think you've asked me a lot of really good questions. Actually. How did you get interested in freelancing?

Nigel Rawlins: 42:05

How did I? Well, I've run a company now for 20 years, a marketing services company, so that means the one who gets stuff done. So if you need well, in the old days, if you needed 50,000 postcards delivered into an area, I could do that in a week. I got used to doing that and I used to spend 50,000 a year on printing. Don't do anything like that anymore. So I get things done. So I hire people to do that, but I hire them all over the world, but they're talented. And then I started thinking well, that's what I do in a sense, even though I run a company, there's only me, so I freelance myself out. And then I was seeing John stuff, but it must have been coming for the last few years and I guess it was to do with some of my clients.

Nigel Rawlins: 42:53

I've worked with women who are 50, 60, 70 years old believe it or not and they wanted to work for themselves and they didn't quite know what to do. So I helped them set up their websites and I talked about what they could do and I sort of encouraged them. One of them was a very senior Australian manager in a big hospital and said I gave her the confidence and I'm thinking, wow, you're smarter than me and I guess I'm meeting very smart people and, like I said, they don't always know how to get going and that's why I got involved in that. I still look after 18 clients. They're my old clients. The new ones are the ones I tend to work with with the Weisbrunners, which is where the podcast is set up to help. So I don't know if I answered that properly.

Tash Menon Verheul: 43:45

Yeah, no, I find talented people exciting. Love it?

Nigel Rawlins: 43:48

No, I just love to meet talented people, All right. So do you want people to connect with you on LinkedIn?

Tash Menon Verheul: 43:55

Yeah, I don't mind at all. I always love meeting interesting people. So yeah, absolutely.

Nigel Rawlins: 44:00

So you can find you on LinkedIn. There is the MASH website, so if anyone's listening to this, who's excited about this idea of branding, obviously that have to be a fairly big business, wouldn't they?

Tash Menon Verheul: 44:11

No, we work with founders that are a two week old startup all the way to some truly amazing brands.

Nigel Rawlins: 44:19

They could reach out to you at MASH, so I'll put the MASH website on the show nights. Thank you, tesh, for being a part of the Weisbrunners podcast.

Tash Menon Verheul: 44:29

Thank you so much. Lovely to meet you.

Nigel Rawlins: 44:31

I'm looking forward to continuing to provide you with engaging and informative episodes to help you level up in your entrepreneurial journey. Thank you for joining me on the Weisbrunners podcast.