the bossbabe podcast - 281. Natalie: I'm Back! A Life Update + What's Next

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Do you ever feel like you're constantly chasing after opportunities and saying yes to everything, only to find yourself feeling drained, overstimulated, and disconnected from yourself? As co-founder and CEO of bossbabe, Natalie has been there too. In this episode, she shares her journey towards finding clarity on her vision and purpose, and how she prioritized getting intentional about what she wants to create. Natalie emphasizes the importance of slowing down and not feeling the need to take on every opportunity. She shares insights on prioritizing self-care, setting boundaries, and creating systems that align with our values and support our well-being. You can achieve your goals without sacrificing everything else. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a busy professional, or someone looking to find more meaning in your life, Natalie's insights and personal story will inspire you to take a step back and get clear on your vision without losing momentum toward your goals.  Stay tuned for more episodes as Natalie shares the systems she personally implemented to achieve a more energized and authentic state of being. Highlights: The real behind-the-scenes of Natalie's journey towards self-discovery and finding her happiest, best self. The importance of prioritizing self-care, setting boundaries, and creating systems to support your goals. Finding community and a support system that aligns with your values can be a game changer. Follow: bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Mentioned in this episode: This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try and get 10% off your first month of therapy at betterhelp.com/bossbabe and get on your way to being your best self. Join our private, online community of female entrepreneurs where you can connect, build and grow.

A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome back to the Boss Babe podcast. This is Natalie and I thought I'd just drop in with a solo episode, a little life update and just share a little bit about where I'm at. You guys might have noticed I haven't been so active on the podcast, or just generally. I've really been taking a step back and assessing what I want moving forward. I've shared a bit of this on social,

but definitely, you know, becoming a mum and going back to work a little bit too soon after Noemi got here really gave me, let's call it, a big shock. And it just really showed me that I needed to step back and slow down so I could get really intentional about what I wanted to create. I think as entrepreneurs, it can be really easy almost to get caught up on this magic carpet ride of entrepreneurship. We can start these businesses and if we're not careful, they can kind of take us anywhere. The business can really dictate where we go, especially if we get a lot of momentum. And being quite honest, you know, I do think that happened to me.

I've been an entrepreneur, well well really since I was 13 but seriously for the last 10 11 years and with Boss Babe specifically for seven years and I feel like with Boss Babe it's just been so much momentum you know I think there's a really good sign of product market fit when when I had the idea for the society the membership kind of the minute we launched that it was just okay we're off to the races now and the amount of women that wanted to join us was so far beyond what we ever imagined and our social following just kept growing and growing and growing and I think when you're in a place of so much momentum you almost don't want to slow down and stop out of fear, or at least I didn't want to slow down and stop out of fear that the momentum would stop.

I felt like if I slowed down, then I would lose momentum and I'd miss out on the true you know stepping back and just I wouldn't say stepping back but really slowing down and getting intentional over this past year has actually shown me that the reason we get momentum is because we slowed down and we got really intentional we slowed down to listen to our ideas we slowed down enough to get creative and that's then what created the momentum because when I started get back getting back into work a couple of months ago I came back with so much energy and I felt so invigorated and I had so many ideas and the momentum really started again and I realized okay if I keep going the way that I used to I'll lose this momentum because I'll burn out and I'll not be allowing myself to have the space that actually got me to this really

creative intentional space that I'm in now and I'm sure a lot of you can relate with that where you maybe slow down you maybe take a minute to think about what you actually want or you give yourself space to create and you get so many ideas and you get so motivated and then you start executing on them and before you know it those ideas aren't flowing as much anymore and so when I decided that I was going to really come back and you know start kicking it up a notch I decided I was going to do it my own way and I was going to do it my own way. And I was going to do it differently. Because if I kept going the way I was, there would be no more creativity, there would be no more ideas. I think a big struggle I had was being CEO of a really fast growing company, and being the face, being the talent, the creative, and being the revenue driver. It was just so many roles

rolled up into one. And it was really difficult to get any space to think, to have some white space to decide, okay, what do I intentionally want to do next? How is this going to serve my big vision? How does this feel? How is this going to really serve our community? It was just kind of putting one foot in front of the other and almost being led by what I thought our community wanted or a team wanted or what I thought I should do versus really intentionally listening. So that's the space that I've been in. I think it's such a lesson for us all, isn't it? Of we can get so creative. We can have so many good ideas if we're just willing to slow down. And a reminder that the't need to be at everything it's not going to be that we miss out on huge opportunities by doing so it means that we're going to allow ourselves to really lean into what

feels most authentic and good for us so that's what I've really learned I would say over the past couple of months so kind of taking it back I haven't shared a lot about my birth story with Noemi and I don't know that I will, but it was like, I know a lot of birth stories. It was quite traumatic and it took a lot more recovering from that than I thought it actually would. And I went back to work just a couple months

after having Noemi and it was way too soon. It was really way too soon. And I think I knew it was too soon but I didn't want to let anyone down which is really not a good reason to do something I was not prioritizing myself and I went back to work and I was trying to give 100% to work to motherhood to my marriage to absolutely everything and I think I was hoping that just by throwing myself into the busyness that I was used to, I would start to feel a little bit more like myself. And the truth was, I just kept getting further and further away

from myself. I was experiencing postpartum anxiety and depression. I had a little bit of PTSD sprinkled in there from what happened while I was in hospital. it just didn't work it was like trying to push a boulder uphill and at the end of every single day I would close my laptop I would you know spend time with Noemi and do the bath time and bedtime routines and spend time with Stephen and I would just sit there on the sofa so drained so exhausted I I go to bed just feeling so much insomnia. My mind was racing a million miles an hour, even though I was exhausted, I couldn't sleep. And I just lay there thinking, this is not what I envisioned it would be like. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately

because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data creating pages collecting payment all the things so much simpler one of our mottos at boss babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course, I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out kajabi yet now is the

perfect time to do so because they are offering boss babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe and i think i kind of i think i felt a lot of pressure to do it in a certain way and no one put that pressure on me but I feel like I followed a lot of amazing women online that it just seemed so effortless for them to balance motherhood and business and I kind of felt like okay I've got a really good system I've got good routines I can just slot back in where I left out and I think where I left off and I think I put a lot of pressure on myself which really didn't pay off but it did not work for me and I was not feeling so good I was super overstimulated I was really drained I was feeling a lot of depression and I was really really lonely I you know I was the first

of my close friends to have a baby and for any of you who have been there you'll know that's challenging and people really want to be there for you they do but it's very difficult for them to when they don't fully understand what you're going through and I just felt so lonely I felt like there was no one I could speak to you know as much as Stephen was incredible and was there for me as best he could be he just didn't fully get it and he kept saying you know you just need to like you just need to snap out of it you just need to get back to yourself and I'd be like I if I could I would and it was crazy to me because I'd look around I'd be like wait Natalie you have everything you've ever ever dreamed of you you have the most beautiful marriage you have the healthiest most incredible baby girl

you have more success than you've ever imagined you do not have to worry about finances like what do you really have to be sad about and I just felt so sad and I could not snap out of it and so I decided I was gonna take a step back I was gonna stop trying to push so hard I was gonna take a step back and really just assess what I wanted out of the harmony between my business life and my, you know, general life. I don't even want to call it like home life, just general life because I didn't want to be this robot that was, you know, working and then taking care of my baby and then dropping in with my husband and back to working and not having any time for myself, any time to recharge my own batteries

so that I could show up as the mom, the wife, the CEO, the friend that I wanted to be. And so I did, I took a step back. I just took a breath. I told my team, listen, I just need a bit of time. I need to figure out what I'm doing, where I'm going, what I want. And it was the best thing I did.

And it took a lot longer than I thought it would. And I didn't rush it, but I really, really leaned into community and I found an amazing community near me where we have babies of similar age we're all super ambitious I also curated my own group of mums who are also CEOs it's a group called CEO Mama and I just really really leaned into that I leaned into creating community being really open and honest about how I was feeling sitting a lot with what I wanted creating my vision intentionally and it's really made the biggest difference and it's meant that when I've came back I just feel so clear on what my vision is, what I'm working towards,

what it really looks like for me to be my happiest, healthiest, best self, you know, what kind of next steps I want to take in business, how I want the harmony between my life and business to play out. And that's a lot of the stuff that I want to be sharing on the podcast is my systems, my routines, my rhythms, you know, the nitty gritty to what my mornings look like, how my calendars laid out, how I prioritize, what my evening wind downs look like, really all of it. I want to get into the nitty gritty because I feel like if I'd heard this stuff, it would have helped me so much. But that's kind of where I've been. That's what I've been working on and it's been the most incredible

journey I could ever tell you I'm almost 11 months postpartum now and I haven't rushed any of this I have not rushed back to work I have not been wearing busy as a badge of honor I have not been letting myself feel guilty about working when I want to work or being with my baby when I want to be with my baby or being on my own when I want to be on my own and it feels great. I can honestly say I have never in my entire life felt more in my full purpose, in my authentic self. I've never felt more energetic, more healthy, more happy, more wealthy, more in love than ever. I have never felt this way before. I thought I was happy. I thought I was healthy. I really thought I was thriving.

And the level that I feel like I'm at now, if you told me I'd been here even six months ago, I would have said you were crazy. I honestly couldn't see out of the fog that I was in. And to be here now, it just feels freaking incredible. And I just want to shout from the rooftops, all of the things that have gotten me here, from the biohacking, to the inner work, to the coaching, to the therapy, to the honest conversations that I've had, really all of it. There's so many things to how I found community, made community, how I organized my days, my calendar, the help, the support that I've outsourced, all of it. So if there's anything that you'd be specifically interested in, please drop me a note on Instagram or in the review section here and let me know what you're

thinking about this new direction because I just want to share all the details that's really supported me in the hope that it will support you and it doesn't mean that it's only relevant to women who are mums it's relevant to women that are busy women that have goals women that don't want to sacrifice absolutely everything just to achieve their goals or their business vision women who actually do want that harmony who want to feel like they're not just constantly chasing their tail and taking off to do's and never really catching up because it is freaking exhausting. And take it from me, if you just keep going in that direction and don't really stop to take a beat and acknowledge where you are, it might not feel good in a few months or a few

years time. It's been a decade of me just pushing and pushing to finally stop and say, you know what, this isn't working for me anymore. And I haven't lost any momentum. I have not had FOMO of absolutely everything I've declined. I have not, you know, slowed down on my goals. My revenue hasn't changed. My profits haven't changed my team are

not less motivated none of those things that I was really fearful about happening have happened I mean of course things look different I have leaned into certain relationships and there's certain relationships that I just haven't been able to lean into I think that's very natural as you evolve that's going to happen and you know certain ways of doing business I'm no longer doing and I'm transitioning the way that we work as a company different meeting cadences different ways of communicating like those things are changing the specifics the details but none of that high level big picture stuff has changed our social growth hasn't slowed down and so it's just proof that you really can do things in your own way and you really can decide how you want things to look so yeah I'm back I'm feeling better than ever and I'm very grateful

for your patience with me and I'm so grateful to Danielle for all of the incredible interviews that she's been doing to keep this podcast going when I haven't necessarily felt like dropping in too much. She's done such an incredible job. I know you will feel exactly the same way. And another thing that I'm thinking is, you know, I'm not sure that I want to continue doing too many interviews. I feel like solos can be really valuable. I know there are a lot more work, but I feel like they can be really valuable I know they're a lot more work but I feel like they can be really valuable I personally love doing solos I love sharing the realness where I'm at life updates all of those things so I just want to hear from you whether it's in the reviews below which by the way really help the podcast or whether it's dming or emailing whatever it is I really

want to hear from you and make sure this podcast is as valuable as it can be so thanks for bearing with me if you've made it all the way to this rambly life update then I'm very very grateful and I can't wait to connect with you in a whole new way thank you so much for listening and if you enjoyed this episode on the boss babe podcast then I'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you, we'll send you our side hustle success kit, your simple no BS guide to keeping track of everything that you need to do to start and grow your business. To access this freebie, all you need to do is leave us a review, then share a screenshot of your review with contact at bossbabe.com and we'll send this must-have kit straight to your inbox. you