An Interview with Kash Shaikh, BSB Group International Founder and CEO: ‘We’ve Shattered the Line Between Consulting and Creative, and Reimagined the Bounds of Strategic Partnership and Shared Stewardship’

The Silicon Review

BSB Group International is a business innovation firm providing end-to-end services - including consulting, creative, and culture - that enable fast-growing startups and Fortune 500 companies to reach their growth goals.

Kash Shaikh, BSB Group International Founder and CEO, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Q. Explain your services in brief.

At BSB Group International, we help companies achieve strong and sustained growth. We do this by taking an end-to-end approach that drives both efficiencies and results for our partners. Our work always starts with a deep-dive into the business - its leadership, objectives, teams, and strategies. We go well beyond the surface to truly understand what is propelling the business forward, and what may be holding it back. From there, we create strategies and plans that tie back to the growth metrics we collectively embrace. And finally, we execute. Our end-to-end approach means we are able to see our work through from plan creation to plan execution, continuing to learn, grow, and adapt along the way. We become a fully embedded, fully invested partner to the companies we support.

Q. What drove you to start BSB Group International?

During my time at Procter and Gamble, I often managed a dozen or more agencies that were supporting a single brand, and I saw firsthand how a multi-agency environment can counteract business growth. This happened for a few reasons - first, the agencies were often competitive, which hurt collaboration and hampered sharing of ideas and information. Secondly, agencies were often interested in expanding their specific lane of services without being able to look holistically at the needs of the business and evaluate the most advantageous use of resources. And finally, this environment lacked a strong, cohesive sense of ownership over the businesses’ success. With metrics sliced and diced across service areas, it was difficult for the various groups to coalesce around a single metric of growth, and for the business to hold each partner accountable. I decided to create a new model, a new animal, that redefined agency partnership and reframed those ways of working.

Q. How is your firm different from traditional agencies?

Stemming from our ethos of redefining the client/agency relationship, we handle pricing, partnership, and plan execution differently. We don’t work on an hourly basis. From my experience on the client side, I saw how this model encouraged slowness, limited buy-in, and created a hesitancy to dive deeper into partnership, especially when plans or strategies hit rough waters. We work on a performance-based, growth-focused model. We’ve developed a proprietary pricing matrix that takes into account everything from the amount of internal inertia required to execute the plans to the shared metrics of growth we align upon, all framed around a yearly retainer. And during this period, we are all-in. No extra hours, no overtime. Just partnership and ownership at the deepest level. And we don’t just deliver ideas and walk away. Once we’ve understood the challenges and set the strategies to tackle them, we are able to actually execute. We have everything that’s needed under our roof - creative, content, media, digital, social. And if our plans include something else, we expand to meet that need, too.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

In 2020, BSB Group began offering business-to-business and external sales capabilities to a select group of clients. We plan to fully launch that service across our full client base in 2021, during what is likely to be another year of uncharted business challenges. In addition, our sister company, Besomebody, Inc. will be expanding its flagship product, The Besomebody Podcast. The Besomebody Podcast is a top-rated business podcast focused on leadership, entrepreneurship, and culture, ranking in over a dozen countries on Apple Podcasts, including India, Pakistan, The Philippines, Mexico, and the United States. In 2021, the podcast will focus specifically on supporting black and brown entrepreneurs in the healthcare, retail, hospitality, sports, and entertainment spaces.

Q. What are your trajectories for the next five years?

We hope to continue embracing change, expanding our client base, and maintaining double-digit growth, year over year.

The Leader at the Helm of BSB Group International

Kash Shaikh, founder, serves as the Chief Executive Officer of BSB Group International and Besomebody, Inc. Kash is an award-winning entrepreneur, brand builder, and public speaker who has successfully built businesses in corporate, private, and startup settings. A former leader at Procter & Gamble and GoPro before creating his own companies, Kash has received many prominent accolades, including BrandWeek ‘Marketer of the Year’, Google’s ‘Rising Star for Entrepreneurship,’ and several 40 under 40 recognitions. He’s a 3x TEDx speaker and has spoken at over 200 schools and corporations worldwide on topics ranging from personal passion and leadership development to social marketing and brand purpose.

Kash has traveled to 51 countries and worked internationally across five continents, including Buenos Aires, Geneva, Singapore, Manila, and Dubai. He’s a multi-marathoner, a recreational pilot, and appeared on the hit Reality TV series, ‘Shark Tank.’

Today, Kash oversees two multi-million dollar companies — Besomebody, Inc. and BSB Group International — with Besomebody named to the Entrepreneur360 List of ‘Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America’ and ranked #49 on the prestigious “Inc5000” list of America’s fastest growing companies by Inc. Magazine. Both companies have also received several ‘Best Places to Work’ awards.