Hello you, and welcome back to The New C-Suite Gives Good Advice. This is the spot where a member of the very accomplished class of New C-Suite honorees (a group of innovators we selected with digitaundivided) delivers you corner-office career counsel on a silver platter. Thankfully, these executives—who are changing the way the top rungs of the corporate ladder look, feel, and operate—are willing to offer up high-level insights that require zero awkward LinkedIn DMs or cold emails from you.
Today, your trusty mentor is Natasha Bansgopaul. She’s the cofounder and COO of VegaX Holdings (a digital asset management firm for crypto investors—yeah, she’s hard-core). But before she was a BFD, she was an intern just trying to survive embarrassing office moments. Read on to learn Natasha’s clever negotiation tactics, her office-etiquette philosophy, and her tips for staying balanced when work chaos gets nerve-racking.
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning, unfortunately, is look at my phone. I’m looking at it for alerts, red flags, or anything that may have caught on fire while I was asleep. Part of my business is in Asia, and crypto is a 24/7 market. So when I sleep, things happen.
There’s also a lot happening in the news, in the general market world, the fintech world, and the digital asset world. It actually calms me down to be able to catch up when I wake up versus triggering me to start my day in a tizzy. (That only happens if it’s really bad news!) WhatsApp is also one of the first things I check for any family messages that may have come in and then my Instagram. Instagram is my calm-down after I’ve wound myself up.
Are you maintaining a healthy work-life balance these days? If yes, how?
I’m getting there! This year I made a very specific effort to get a better work-life balance. I don’t think I’m at 100 percent yet. I’m also not sure if it is completely attainable. But what I would say is that we all need to be better about doing more personal things and doing more things for our health outside of work.
I’ve made some strides: I’ve incorporated working out into my days on a regular basis, and I’m using apps to track my water intake to make sure that I’m staying hydrated and not drinking too much coffee (which I have the tendency to drink a lot of). I’m also carving out time to spend with family and friends. I’m being more focused about how I spend any of my extra time, which makes me feel like I’m doing more for myself versus doing everything for the business or for my career.
What has been your scariest career hurdle, and what did you learn once you made it to the other side?
I have two! My biggest one was leaving my corporate job at PepsiCo. I was there for about six and a half years, and I almost jumped ship about three to five times before I actually did it. Whenever I thought about leaving, I got another wonderful opportunity that kept me staying. I was able to work on some pretty amazing things, including Beyoncé’s Super Bowl and the MLB partnership. Leaving a place that is so secure, where you’re getting those opportunities, is very scary, and leaving it to go do my company full-time was also very scary.
I think that there’s a lot to be learned in times of both uncertainty and risk. Being uncomfortable pushed me to be a better entrepreneur. I realized that being able to work for myself, make decisions, and not have 80 levels of bureaucracy around any of those decisions was a way that I enjoyed working. I haven’t looked back since.
Let’s talk money. What tips do you have for negotiating a base salary or a raise?
The interesting thing about advocating yourself in corporate spaces is that there’s an element of managing up, down, and across. You have to socialize your wins and why you’re so great with everyone, not just your boss. You need it to be to the point where everyone is able to identify all the things you’ve done well whenever your name comes up in conversation at lunch or happy hour and also during the discussions about promotions and reviews. You want somebody in that room who’s not necessarily your boss to say, “Oh, yeah, she did this and she managed this” or “I remember she really solved this issue.” So it isn’t a question of what it is that you did and if you deserve the promotion or the raise.
You also have to ask for a high number—higher than you would think—and be prepared for negotiation. That’s why the first part about knowing your wins is really important. You need to be able to justify what you’re asking for based on what you were able to bring to the table. Be very real about yourself in terms of your contributions and then play the strategy game. If you go with the low number, you’re either going to get that low number or lower, and that isn’t a win. So go with the higher number in the hopes that you can end up at a place where you really feel like it’s a reflection of the wins and the contributions that you’ve brought to the organization.
Who is your career idol and why?
That would have to be Melody Hobson, for so many reasons. She’s a Black woman in finance so already she’s at unicorn status based on her experience and where she sits at her company. She’s also a huge proponent for both wealth creation/wealth generation for Black communities and women of color. One of her initiatives is to close the wealth gap by funding over $1 billion to minority-owned businesses and businesses focused on the wealth gap. It’s really putting your money where your mouth is. A lot of the programs for communities of color either end up being a lot of talk, or they end up being really small dollars, so they don’t necessarily make the impact that needs to happen. Over $1 billion is really huge.
Who’s the first person you call when you get exciting career news/updates, and why?
The first person I call is my sister, because she is my #1 hype man and has always been the president of my fan club. Anytime I have good news, she does two things: (1) she makes me feel like it’s the biggest, bestest news in the world. (2) Because she is who she is and she can’t keep her mouth shut, she becomes the person who tells my entire family and everyone else. It’s better because I don’t have to do it, which is easier for me!
Could you walk us through any embarrassing professional moments that make you laugh when you look back on them now?
I interned at a company called Pitney Bowes, and I probably interned there every summer through high school and college. One day, I had a meeting with one of the biggest women executives in the company, and I was super excited but super nervous and really young, with no idea what was going on—just trying to put my best corporate foot forward. I sat down in her chair, we started talking, and my contact popped out and sat on my eyelash! For the next 20 minutes, she said nothing to me about this. I’d also just started wearing contacts so I had no idea what to do—I just knew you aren’t supposed to touch them with your hands! I was trying not to panic while this contact was sitting on my eyelid and we continued the entire conversation as if there was nothing there.
I happened to be friendly with her admin, and later that afternoon, I saw her just giggling at me, and I was like, “What happened?” And she’s like, “You just let the contact sit there the whole time?”
We wanna talk splurges! What’s your philosophy on “treat yourself” purchases? As you’ve made your way up the corporate ladder, what’s one way you’ve rewarded yourself?
I think treating yourself is really important, and it’s also a great motivator. I try to do things where I say, “Alright, you can buy that if you do 1-2-3.” Kind of like what your parents would do with your chores and allowance. I also do the same thing with spa services. I like to bulk up and do a big spa day where it’s a whole day versus, like, just trying to do a massage or facial. I recently did that after we made it through a certain product sprint, and we were finally able to breathe.
The next thing on my big splurge list is a classic Gucci watch.
What’s something you wish more people knew about achieving business success?
It always takes longer than you anticipate—even when you think you’ve got a solid plan and “guaranteed” things. So you should build and plan for a world where you can’t control everything. For example, right now the market is crazy. A lot of businesses that dealt with finance and loans blew up because they just could not support what was happening in the economy. You can plan as much as you want, but you can’t necessarily control everything in business.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Annabel Iwegbue is an associate editor at Cosmopolitan where she primarily covers entertainment and lifestyle. Before joining Cosmo, she covered entertainment at Harper's Bazaar, The Knockturnal, and Black Film. She's originally from Charleston, South Carolina, and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and Cinema Studies from New York University. You can check out some of Annabel’s work here and also find her on Instagram and Twitter.
