Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sera Deva. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Sera thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear you experience with and lessons learned from recruiting and team building.

I started off by myself working a PT job on the side of running my consulting business. I wanted to get my feet wet with many different types of clients and coaching in general, getting familiar with the work and process so that I could get more familiar with what I wanted to delegate.

During those first few years, as I helped many other companies scale, I learned about outsourcing with VA staffing services abroad (namely in the Philippines). A lot of folks familiar with remote work in the Philippines have been trained in Customer Service and many other tech aspects of what many businesses need to scale; they generally have worked for large companies for not very good pay; and, some of them are hungry for more values alignment with their work and personal connection with their teams. By being able to offer (even relatively) higher pay than what the majority of similar types of positions offer, along with the work-from-home element, remote jobs with small-scale companies are pretty appealing to these VAs abroad.

Naturally, my first hires became two Filipino VAs, one of which is still with me a year later full-time. Since then, I developed the general recommendation to first try outsourcing things you know how to do super spectacularly well – because you can’t teach what you don’t know. As managers, first and foremost it’s our job to empower people with the tools that they need in order to meet our expectations of excellence. For me, I know administrative work like the back of my hand and know exactly what good admin support looks like – so it was the first thing I outsourced and perfected being able to pass off.

After those first few hires, I have scaled with two other remote hires abroad, committing to pay each of them wages that keep them motivated to work with me and paid well relative to where they live. It also means I get the benefit of leading a global team with a whole bunch of varied experiences, which adds to the insights and experiences I can offer to my clients. Overall, it’s a win win for all of us!

Sera, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hey y’all! I’m Sera Deva, Founder & Consultant at Triple Creeks Consulting (http://www.triplecreeks.org), a small remote operational consulting firm, where we empower small businesses and nonprofits with practical solutions aiming towards growth and adaptability. I like to say I get paid to be a Virgo (Triple Virgo, in fact!) – I’m super duper hyper organized and LOVE a color coded calendar and spreadsheet. True to Virgoean nature, I also love systems, both big and small, and seeing everything as it relates to each other (https://triplecreeks.org/thinking-in-systems-embodying-the-change-we-wish-to-see/).

I spent many years managing & directing nonprofits & businesses who struggled with operational barriers to achieving their goals. Throughout this process, I found mentors who guided me to use critical thinking and practical solutions in solving common problems that apply to every business and nonprofit on the planet.

I also learned the only work I want to do is work that is aligned with my values and brings me joy; and that’s all I would ever want for anyone. I work with my clients a lot on work/life balance, making sure they are using defined operational processes to delegate, rest, and resist the urgency and perfectionism of white supremacy culture.

Our focus on what I like to call ‘systemically excluded’ business professionals (https://triplecreeks.org/working-with-changemakers-our-focus-on-systemically-excluded-professionals/) comes from creating the world I want to see – with more equitable distributions of leadership opportunities. As all good consultants, I do what I do because of my clients and their work in the world – their dreams are what will help reshape a better reality for us all to live in. I’m most proud that my work naturally cascades outwards to making a large impact; I think it’s all a beautiful, cyclical metaphor for what we do here at Triple Creeks.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I was always a big ‘yes’ person when it came to work. I really would dive into my work with all my energy. If I was asked to do something, my response was 90% of the time ‘yes’. I think those of us who are most inclined to become entrepreneurs have this issue. We’re self motivated, and so we make REALLY GREAT employees; but unfortunately those asks snowball and quickly we’re over our head in commitments.

Predictably, fast forward after even just 10 years generally saying yes, I was quite burned out. US culture is very hyper-capitalistic in a way that it actually relies on your burnout (and general zombie-ness) post a normalized 40-hour workweek (ew, gross, how is this legal even without children?!) So living here and trying to fight that is a cultural challenge for sure.

Thankfully, I found myself with a boss/mentor (who eventually became business partner/good friend) who told me the singularly most important thing I could have heard which was: “When you tell me no I can trust your yes.” From that mantra that she would regularly tell me, I slowly became normalized to the idea that saying ‘no’ was not only okay, but also beneficial for me but also the people I worked with. Work/life balance and boundaries were suddenly a gift. Now, I’m known from my colleagues not only as someone who will say ‘yes’ and really mean it (by showing up all the way), but also as someone who has strong boundaries. I like to think it makes people comfortable in asking me to support them, knowing that if it’s out of my capacity I’ll say no and it will never turn into resentment.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Referrals. I’ve actually sustained and grown my business over the past 3 years entirely off of referrals. I think when people really believe in what you do they are really the best advocates, especially if what you do is really tailored/specific (which definitely applies to my services). My best recommendation here is making it easy for them to refer you – make sure you have a 1 stop process that someone can easily do to book with you; sending them an email template to send out to their friends with all of the appropriate links and information about what you do so they can copy/paste; follow up regularly with all referrals and keeping the client who referred you in the loop about that process!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.triplecreeks.org
• Instagram: @triplecreeks
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TripleCreekConsulting
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/88278535

Image Credits
Evelyn Block