Change For You, By You
Welcome to 'Change For You, By You' – the podcast for bold unapologetic women seeking real strategies for transforming their lives and careers. We offer no BS dialogue that empowers you to take all things to the next level.
Change For You, By You
Episode 5: Community Creates Opportunity - NATALIE STONES
Buckle up, because this episode of "Change For You, By You" is taking you on a ride with the one and only Natalie Stones, the brains and brawn behind Talent Collective and Talent Refinery. She is not just any founder; she's a visionary who decided playing by the rules was overrated. With a career spanning two decades that zigzags through the glitz of Silicon Valley's startups to the grind of executive recruiting, she's sculpted a legacy that's all about shaking up the talent game.
Step into Natalie's universe where community isn't just a buzzword—it's the secret sauce to forging opportunities out of thin air. Learn how Talent Collective isn't merely a gathering; it's a powerhouse for women in talent acquisition craving connection, growth, and a chance to rewrite their own scripts. This episode is packed with juicy insights on building your empire, the art of the pivot, and why having a tribe that's as fierce and fearless as you is non-negotiable. Natalie's candid share on navigating life's curveballs, crafting opportunities from layoffs, and the relentless pursuit of what sets your soul on fire is nothing short of inspirational.
Don't just stand there; leap into action! Share this episode with the go-getters, the dreamers, and the doers in your life. Because in the world of "Change For You, By You," playing it safe is not in our playbook. Join us, share the love, and let Natalie's story ignite that spark within you to chase after what you truly deserve. Now, go on and conquer the world Ready. Set. Pivot. Ladies we're all rooting for you!
This podcast is brought to you by Crane Podcasts. Produced by Britta Newly.
Welcome to change for you buy you, the podcast for bold, unapologetic women seeking real strategies for transforming their lives and careers. We offer no BS dialogue that empowers you to take all things to the next level. With us today is Miss amazing Natalie stones, founder of talent collective and talent refinery.
Natalie Stones:Welcome. Thank you so much excited to be here. No thanks, symbol.
Wendy Wiesman:We're excited to hear your story are running off the thing with doing all the things? Yes, share with us. Bring us right there. Share with us a little bit about the chair that you sit in today.
Natalie Stones:Oh, gosh, the chair, the hats, all the things that I do is. So yes, I co found and lead Tao collective, which is our community for women plus in talent acquisition. And so we're very busy with creating programming in person experiences and launching in different cities, gosh, so many events every month, and we're launching in a bunch of new cities this year. So we're going to be on the road very, very busy. The second thing is talent refinery, which is our fractional recruiting firm. But so we embed in as interim ta leaders to help set up strategy, audit their infrastructure set up for scale, run full cycle searches, all on retainer. So that's what I do. And then my side third job is being a single mom and keeping it all together.
Wendy Wiesman:You know, in your free time you just do all those things. Natalie, you're just not one of us. You're one of I know. I'm like octopus with arm Exactly. A lot. That's a lot of RSP women sleeping. You know, we talk a lot about good sleep. It's really important. So are you sleeping? Yeah, I'm
Natalie Stones:Kid free on this trip. Sorry. I got you got to sleep last night. All right, excellent.
Wendy Wiesman:So let's dig in a little bit more. We're always interested to talk about that moment in time where you may have felt what we like to call and what most women articulate to us as their little moment of restlessness. So you know, before Tamlin collective and talent refinery, you were doing other things, you did something in there wasn't working for you, or I don't know, Natalie, you tell us what was the moment.
Natalie Stones:So one of my co founders, Krista and I worked together for half of our careers at an agency and we had always thought about, you know, how cool would it be to create a committee specifically for candidates in this case, but we never evolved it because we were full time employed and, you know, doing other things. Fast forward to November of last year, I got laid off as many ta professionals did. And that was the second time in two ish years. So I finally said, Fuck it, I'm tired of, you know, being kind of just at disposal or and or, I also find that I love going in and like being the fixer of recruiting functions. And then I find myself like, okay, it's in a good spot. And I get a little restless and or bored is not the right word. But I just don't feel like I'm providing additional value. And I always felt guilty. Of course, women always do about, can you really good salary, and everything's just how humming along and yeah, does this make sense? So all of those things combined, I decided going correctional is the best of all worlds. One, I can create my own destiny in my career, I can pick and choose the clients that I want. I can work on retainer. And so I set my own compensation aspirations. I can be flexible when I want to work, how I want to work where I want to work. And I was creating that financial stability for myself. So if I lost one client, it's not the end of the world doesn't totally deplete my salary and contribution to my single income home. And so, and it was perfect for me because it created that variety that I wanted without feeling like okay, eventually I'm going to be a Job Hopper. And as recruiters we know, that's not right, look. So that was how talent refinery came to be. But then, of course, as a restless person, I am six months in, Krista was getting restless in her role. And I said, Well, let's create this community that we always wanted. And there was plenty of women that we knew and more and more of them were getting laid off laid off. And so it just ended up being a perfect time to create a space to not only help empower and like develop these women for future opportunities, but also create the connection that people were craving because they've lost connection from being at work or with their teams. And so it just kind of made sense and like, who starts to businesses in the middle of like, bad economy, but
Britta Newly:hey, I hear that girl. I hear that.
Unknown:so we had it and they're going great. Yeah, it was last night.
Wendy Wiesman:We did it and they're going great.
Natalie Stones:They are preach. I love it. Right.
Britta Newly:I think I love that you have this story that out of, you know struggle and and issues with your job and issues with layoffs that you really chose to bird something that's like something that you wanted and needed for yourself. And you heard the needs of those people around you tell us a little bit more about how you had that intuition for what was the next step for you.
Natalie Stones:I'll focus mostly on talent collective, the way that the community ended up evolving was based out of the things that a three founders wanted that we couldn't find somewhere else. So it was kind of a no brainer that I was seeking more connection, and I was job searching at the time. Well, not really, it was searching for more fractional opportunities. I wanted to get out there. I loved networking, I loved meeting people. So I wanted as part of the community those networking events, though speaker events, Krista, she loves mentorship, she loves development. She's an ops gal at heart. So we created an opportunity where she could build out that pillar. And then we wanted other opportunities to like, really build out partners and sponsorships and bringing more innovation to the community so that, you know, we didn't, us and our members didn't ever feel like we didn't know about all the cutting edge tools and resources and processes and ways of working as a recruiter. So I guess my intuition in that case was create what we felt we needed, and there was a void in the market for it. So it's ended up performing well, and the ladies love what's offered. And there's something for everybody. So not everybody likes the events. Maybe they're more introverted, but they love the virtual experiences. So that's what we sought to do is make sure that it was inclusive of everybody's learning styles and desires and passions.
Wendy Wiesman:One of the things that the collective makes me think about and what you were saying Britta is this piece of belonging not in many ways is missing to some extent, since we all aren't in an office in the same way we use a. And I don't know about you, but in the Twin Cities area, we're seeing a lot of different groups, communities, cohort and new organizations are fine. Yeah, to create that sort of belonging Are you seeing other groups like talent collective here in the San Francisco Bay area, or in your areas
Natalie Stones:nice, actually, and we never really realized, some of them are well established. They've been around for a while, but and they're great organizations and communities. But this, the reason I think I didn't know much about them was because again, it wasn't meeting the niche that I needed, which was something hyper tailored to talent acquisition, and hyper concentrated on women. So there are many of other great organizations that are, you know, mixed gender, mixed disciplines. But it just didn't feel like there were a right fit. So I didn't seek after them. But there are plenty of communities that are fulfilling needs for other people. And I love the concept, even some product base organizations are popping up communities. So I think it's a really cool concept. And it's an innovative way to recreate like traditional ways to get referrals or traditional ways to get jobs, traditional ways to find clients vendors. So it brings us more cohesiveness into one place is creating an ecosystem. So us, right, less just disjointed and finding that next, right? You need.
Wendy Wiesman:Oh, and one more in the workplace achieving as the achievers that we are, we're often at a level where we are solo. And so I remember the time when I looked around and said, you know, who is my community there within the workplace. And to be honest with you, I feel like there there wasn't one and in many ways, you just created that space in place for people to have that camaraderie now and to have that sense of belonging among them. Among that discipline.
Natalie Stones:how there always used to be this adage, like, your work is your family, your co workers or your family. Says who? I may not like all my co workers.
Britta Newly:My family is dysfunctional... No, thank you.
Natalie Stones:There were plenty of past co workers that I loved hanging out with we hung out all the time, but now at this stage of my life. Some of my prior workers wouldn't have been like the right, quote unquote, family for me, because of the stage that I'm in or the level of position or whatever. So the community really creates an opportunity for people to find the right community or you know, their people. It doesn't have to feel like a family. You're just seeking to find people that are the right connection for you based on where you're at in your life, right.
Wendy Wiesman:And the collective has been around for you just under a year,
Natalie Stones:seven months.
Wendy Wiesman:And what are you hearing from people in the collective today in terms of what's resonating with them?
Natalie Stones:Its a hit. Oddly enough, it's the in person experiences. Aha. I mean, we knew that it would be, you know, right, popular, people were kind of seeking to get out. But these ladies love it. They love coming. So we originally started with just monthly networking events. And we would see more of the attendees were a little more of like our junior members, they have more flexibility to, you know, go out after work, no commitments, kids, family, whatnot. But now we are hosting with our partners ta leadership, dinners, or lunches, which is what we had last night at ta week. And oh, my gosh, those leaders love it, because it's just bringing them in a room with other peers at the leadership level, that, especially in a corporate environment, like you might be the only one, ya know, your peers are the CMO or the CRO or whatnot, but you don't have another head of talent here. Maybe you have ahead of people. But this type of experience has just opened up their eyes like how much they've been craving to be around other women in leadership in the same discipline, same role that they've been in. So to answer your question, the in person experiences have been wildly successful. But our virtual ones are amazing, too. They like the professional development. We're starting to do more partner webinars. Or, for example, this coming month, we're gonna do a partner webinar with Jim and so people know, Jim, they know the product, they want to hear about it. So we're creating these experiences where we're co hosting things with partners, and our members love hearing about what these other companies are doing. And we're bringing those experiences to them.
Wendy Wiesman:You're broadening their perspective? Yeah. Yeah. Kudos to you. Thank you. Thank you.
Britta Newly:Well, I think there's two things that I wanted to point out just about what you've what you've been doing in your community. But first of all, how have women been responding to all of the services that you've been offering? What has been the general sentiment,
Natalie Stones:they are really, really appreciate and enjoy that it's just for women, women, plus we define it. So women, those who identify or non binary. We debated for several weeks to include non women.
Wendy Wiesman:We have to we have to.
Natalie Stones:Yeah and, you know, because we have some amazing male allies or other recruiters that are men that we've worked with that are phenomenal,
Wendy Wiesman:and they have a lot of the same problems
Natalie Stones:they do. And so we just felt like, okay, for starters, let's just start with women, we can always add on to it. But let's create a very, very niche space. So that at least for those that really are desiring something that's a little bit less inclusive, if I can say it that way, where everybody around the room kind of looks like them, or has a similar experience as a woman as them or as a mother, as a parent or working parent. So a Fast forward seven months, and we've started to probe around with our members. Well, what if we, you know, host some events with men, or we do some fundraising events with men or, you know, just variety of experiences, and they're like, no, like, we love that this is kind of just a safe space where everybody just kind of gets being a woman. And, frankly, in recruiting most of the senior most leaders are men, while the industry is dominated by women at the actual, like, Doer level. And so why not just create a space for us, so that we can really hyper focus on empowering women to become more confident to advocate for themselves to get to those seats that are right now overly dominated by our our counterparts.
Wendy Wiesman:Why not create a space for us? Why not? There's so much power and in all of that, there's so much power and just being able to say what I want to say and I think for RSP, our decision not to go beyond love women plus, in his statement, was really comes down to that ability to be vulnerable, and to have trust, even when we're in our virtual Happy Hour forums. I don't know about you bet. We talk about how this is Vegas. What side here stays here. If y'all work together in the past, that's cool. We don't need to talk about it or bring up old shit movies where I'm moving forward and positively forward.
Natalie Stones:Yes, yeah. I have a great example of that on our launch event, we had a speaker, who's a woman. And one of the questions she asked, or that was asked of her, was around her decision to like, leave her prior job or something like that. And she said, Well, what was holding me back for so long was, you know, the marriage that I was in and I felt, you know, obligated, and so on and so forth. She had a much deeper response. But at the end of that, we realized she wouldn't have spoke up about how asking for a divorce really then empowered her career, she may have never felt comfortable or not like it was the right setting if there was a room with men. Yeah. And then like, how uncomfortable would that possibly have been for the right, I don't know. But, you know, it just created an opportunity for that to be a real life experience for her.
Wendy Wiesman:Wow. Well, and you are doing powerful, powerful stuff. Kudos to you. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of that story and the value that your women are already seen in such a short amount of time girl.
Britta Newly:Like what the heck?
Natalie Stones:Yeah, we have 270 members now globally, and most of them are California, us. We have five other cities that we're okay. Scheduled right now to launch. Austin, New York, Chicago, Denver, Orange County, and then some more that are TBD. I won't spill the beans on those. Yeah. Wow.
Wendy Wiesman:In true RRSP spirit, let us know how we can help you. Yes, maybe we'll come into Twin Cities as you should. And we welcome you all the time. Thank you.
Natalie Stones:Thanks for having me.
Britta Newly:Well, we like to close out with a signature question. And we've talked about this a little bit before. But our question is really, what is that billboard that motto that's guided you in a lot of ways in your career and in your life? So what is that for you?
Natalie Stones:Seize the opportunity. No one's going to give it to you hand it to you. Yeah, it's spin so relevant in personal and professional. And so I created my own opportunity in two different businesses.
Britta Newly:Yes, ma'am. Love it. I feel you there.
Wendy Wiesman:Well, Wendy, kind of now I'm just coming back. I'm just coming to the town collective. I'm probably don't qualify, but not that's your warning.
Natalie Stones:Yes, no, you can come you want to speak. You can be on a panel.
Wendy Wiesman:Hands down.
Natalie Stones:Great, We'll make it happen.
Wendy Wiesman:I will sponsor your event about that.
Britta Newly:Yeah, yes, please.
Wendy Wiesman:Yeah, ours. All right. We have work to do. Let's go have a meeting. Just kidding. at happy hour. Thank you.
Britta Newly:Well, thank you, they and thank you to every one of our listeners who joined us and I know you found some valuable information as I as I did. If you know that anybody else who would benefit from this information, please share it with them and like and share on all social media channels and follow us on all podcasting channels. And join us again for more No BS dialogue,
Wendy Wiesman:that empowers you to take our things to the next level.