The Talent — a podcast by Vela

The premise

You cannot judge the talent until you hear them work.

Most agency owners are skeptical of LATAM hiring for one reason: they have never sat across the table from a senior LATAM operator currently running a real book. A two-minute Loom sample tells you nothing. The résumé tells you less.

The Talent fixes that off your calendar. Each episode is a thirty to forty minute working conversation with a senior CSM or project manager actively running client books. They walk through their week, their reports, their escalations. They show the exact prompts and Claude, ChatGPT, n8n, and Zapier workflows they run daily. No theory.

Watch one. Decide for yourself whether the operators we headhunt, screen for AI aptitude, and train on AI are the bench your agency has been waiting on.

Clips

Pulls from the conversations. Forty seconds at a time.

Short cuts from each episode — workflows the operators actually run, results they actually shipped.

// 052

“One hundred percent retention across the assigned book, eight years running. The work is consistency. Eight years of consistency.”

Jenny · Senior CSM · Bogotá

The good operators are already employed at another agency, doing the exact role you are trying to fill. Reaching them is a different motion.

// On the premise of the show

// 056

“Single-thread accountability beats every tool I have ever tried. The PM who owns the timeline is the PM who hits it.”

Kieran · Senior Project Manager · San José

// 051

“QBRs anchored on data, not sentiment. Pull the model, surface the risk, walk the client through the number. Nobody leaves the room confused.”

Camila · Senior CSM · Medellín

Most agency owners hire CSMs who can talk to clients. The job is keeping the work healthy enough that the client never has to ask.

// Senior CSM, Cold Email · Medellín

// 054

“Trilingual delivery — EN, ES, PT — means one operator covers what most agencies split across two. The handoffs are the cost.”

Ingrid · Senior Account Lead · Bogotá

// 053

“Cleared sales targets by fifteen percent across three years while owning success on the same book. Retention and expansion live in one conversation.”

Nicolas · Senior CSM · Medellín

AI training that ends in four weeks is a curriculum. AI training that runs monthly is a residency.

// On the difference between placement and residency

// 055

“Coach to performance, not policy. The cadence that holds SLA and compliance without a separate QA seat.”

Jose · Senior PM · Bogotá

// 057

“One calendar across social, email, and content. One rhythm. The book stays in sync because one operator runs it.”

Laura · Senior PM · Medellín

Compensation anchors to the local senior tier. The rate is a fact, not a sales line.

// On how we anchor offers

// 052

“Self-built a ChatGPT-driven QBR prep flow. Pulls account history, drafts the narrative, flags retention risk before the call.”

Jenny · Senior CSM · Bogotá

Every senior CSM I have worked with has the same instinct: they answer the question the client has not asked yet. That is the entire seat. Everything else is meeting prep.
// On what the senior seat actually requires

The host

An operator interviewing other operators.

Jonathan Garces// Founder, Vela · 8 yrs in agencies

Eight years inside US agencies running CS and project management teams in New York and Miami. Rebuilt the entire CS operation around AI two years ago: Claude for reporting and QBR drafts, n8n for workflow automation, AI-scored churn signals. Has personally hired forty-plus LATAM operators across cold email, paid ads, SEO, and SMMA shops.

Runs The Talent because the most honest conversation a buyer can have about LATAM hiring is one that already happened, on the record, with someone doing the job.

// Based in Medellín, Colombia// EN · ES (native)

J

Jonathan Garces, founder · Medellín · Miami · New York.

The Talent.

You cannot judge the talent until you hear them work.

Pulls from the conversations. Forty seconds at a time.

An operator interviewing other operators.

Heard one you would hire? We can probably find their twin.