the bossbabe podcast - 300. Starting Over, Building A Content Machine + Growing Your Audience with Natalie Ellis + Jim Huffman

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

We’re sharing the exact steps to grow your audience on your Instagram, email list, and podcast at record speed – all WITHOUT burnout or overwhelm. In today’s episode, Natalie sits down with Jim Huffman to share exactly what she would do if she was starting her business all over again from scratch + how she would create the success she has in half the time.  Listen in for the specific action steps you can implement today to help you build a thriving audience, create products your community will be obsessed with + crack the code on making sales with ease! HIGHLIGHTS The specific things Natalie would do if she was starting from scratch today (+ how you can accelerate your success along the way) Tactical ways to grow your email list + podcast – all while building a strong, thriving and engaged community How to build a content machine + maximize your contents performance WITHOUT spending more time creating How to create products you KNOW your audience will love (+ that you’ll actually enjoy making) LINKS Check out Natalie’s plug + play operating system for her life and business: Life By Design - bossbabe.com/lifebydesign FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

We try and do so many things because we're looking at what everyone else is doing. We're looking at everyone else's grass and thinking that it's greener. But actually, it's not the truth. And if you are watching someone almost being a jack of all trades and you're tempted to copy, I really say slow down, think of the long-term game and decide what you want to master. 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. Okay, this is one on a topic that I haven't talked about in quite a while. We are talking about growing your audience, focusing on quality content and how to actually build systems around your content so you can make the most of the content you put out there and how to actually build a community versus just having, you know, passive followers. How do you build that community of raving fans? I love talking about this topic. Of course, I think it's like my bread and butter, I would say. And so this episode in particular, I was interviewed on my friend Jim Huffman's podcast called If I Was Starting Today. And I loved the interview. I felt like he asked me such interesting questions that I knew a lot of you would be really interested in hearing. So I asked him if I could also play

this on the Boss Babe podcast. And hopefully it delivers some value to you. We go in a lot of places and I also get his take on what it really looks like to grow audiences. So with that, let's dive straight in. I hope you love it. All right. Today on the podcast, I have someone that I was on her podcast and I had an amazing conversation. I was like, even halfway through, I'm like, I need to convince her to come on mine. One, but two, after she launched her podcast, I got all these people emailing me and hitting me up and leads came in. I was like, geez, she has an insane following. And she does. And so I've got Natalie Ellis here from Boss Babe. And Natalie, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me. And I'm glad that it was a success for you. Yeah, it was very cool. And I knew you had a big following, but just how engaged your audience was, was really cool to see. It's funny because I was talking to my friend, Tommy Griffiths, who was also on your podcast because he was on a podcast too. I'm like, you got to talk to Natalie, man. I was like, she has an insane user base.

He's like, oh, I've been there. He's like, yeah, they're amazing. So yeah, you've got a nice reputation. But we're just going to get into, you have an insane community with boss babe but i want to put you on the spot it's 2023 it's april you have to do it all over again to build a community and build this following what would you even do how would you start i've actually thought about this a lot because I'm often coaching people who are making big

transitions or starting from scratch and I often think what would I do differently so when I first started you know Instagram and social media was very very different and building audience was very different but it's still required just as much hustle back then as it does now so one thing that I would definitely do is I just pick one platform to go all in on. And to me, that would probably be my email list or a YouTube channel. I'd really think about what's the one platform that I want to grow and that I want to create consistently good content on. And that would be the channel that I create really good long form content on. And then I'd have a team take that content, repurpose it, create it, you know, a lot shorter

content and put that out on social. But I really wouldn't be so worried about those metrics on social. It would be very much about, do I have a presence? Am I nurturing the community that's already there? And I'd be really thinking about the growth metrics on just one channel. If I was starting again too, I'd probably allocate some budget to paid. Again, you can grow organically. You totally can. But for me, if I was starting all over again, I'd want to go faster. And I've been doing what I'm doing with Boss Babes for seven years now. And so what you see is the result of seven years of hard work. And if I was starting again and I wanted to take a shortcut to that, I'd be thinking

about putting some money into paid, creating really good content, giving so much value, not necessarily thinking about what my ROI is for quite a while. And I think, again, that's why Boss Dave is successful. But I'd be thinking about how am I giving so much value and how am I becoming known for this thing that I'm giving value on specifically. That's really good. So I want to get into choosing that category

that way you want to own. But I want to back up. You said something really smart, like focus on one thing and do it really good. So I want to get into choosing that category that way you want to own, but I want to back up. You said something really smart, like focus on one thing and do it really well. And you called out YouTube and you called out email. So would that be, I'm going to build a massive email list one or I'm going to build a great YouTube channel

and really build the subscriber base. It's choosing one of those, right? Yeah, exactly. Or even a podcast. And I generally choose one of those that have longer Yeah, exactly. Or even a podcast. And I generally choose one of those that have longer form pieces of content on there because it's a lot easier to then build other channels when you start with long form. So let's say I pick YouTube as my primary channel and I'm creating one 60 minute video per week. That's a great piece of content to then spin out onto Instagram or TikTok if I choose to

do those things. I might wait six months before deciding to get an Instagram. But when I do, that's six months worth of long-form videos I can send to an editing team, have that chopped up and probably another six months of content created for me. And so I'm thinking in terms of that, you know, when I first started my business, I wasn't necessarily thinking, how can I get the absolute most out of every minute of my time? But now I am like, even the conversation you and I had before the podcast, it was like, okay, let's create a completely different piece of content because I don't want to create a piece

of content that I've already created. It's not useful to me. It's not useful to you. It's not useful to my community or your community. I'd be thinking the exact same way starting from the beginning. How can I create one good piece of content that's different every single time and use that to then create other pieces of content

and spit it out? So I like the idea of YouTube, email list, or podcast being those main channels. I think they're very easy to grow. You get a chance to really connect with your community. One thing you called out at the beginning of this podcast is I have a really good connection with my community. And that's not by chance.

That's seven years of delivering value every single week, delivering what I say I'm going to deliver. That's a lot easier to do when you have long form pieces of content. You know, if someone read the long form email from you or watched you on video for 60 minutes, they're going to feel slightly different towards you than if they just see a quick post that you made on Instagram. And so that's generally how I think about building community, building audiences, starting all over again. And again, something I think I've done really well is focused on my community and never really taken those shortcuts to revenue. And it means now

I do have an amazing community that is monetized, but I didn't take shortcuts to get there. And I'd be thinking about the same thing because products come and go, but your community stays. And that's been really powerful for me as I've evolved, as my business has evolved, as my desires, interests, and their desires and interests have changed. They still remain and it's the products that change to serve all the different life stages that we're at. All right. You said like 10 things that I want to go deeper on. I'm trying to choose my own adventure here. I want to talk about, you said something like you were really intentional on focusing on your community, even in the early days.

And now what are some tactical things you could say? I'm like, okay, I'm going to go YouTube. I'm going to do a podcast. I love that point of long form. You're building this content. How do you then latch on this idea of community? Because I think there's a difference between having an audience versus a community, right? It's either like one-to-many versus one-to-one and a lot of engagement. What are some things people can think through when wanting to build that community?

This is very selfish as we're building our email list and podcast because I'm like, man, I'm not engaging as I should. What are some things people should do? Well, the start is I think people might be surprised to know I reply to every single email that I get as a response to my newsletter. And I reply to every single DM that I get on my Instagram. And it's not something that I outsource. You know, I generally if someone tells me, oh, such and such signed up to my program because they heard about me through you. I know who that person is. And that's the way that I've thought about community. It's not that I put out a piece

of content or I put out a product and I'm kind of putting it out there to a number of people. I'm putting it out there to specific people. And I feel like I have that real connection with them. And I know you sometimes hear people say that, but I really mean it. And I think the people that have strong communities also really mean it. There are certain things and principles that I've always stuck to, to make sure that I never ruin that relationship with my community. One of them, for example, is if I release a program, I release it at the lowest price it'll ever be. Because I know the people that buy it

right away are the people that know and trust me the most. You will never find me doing a Black Friday sale six months later and offering this program at a reduced price. That is going to make those fast movers, those loyal customers feel so unseen. I'd never do it. You'll never see me bring someone onto the podcast that I don't actually trust or believe in. And I will not have them share their knowledge with my audience because I believe that they're a conduit to like coming through me. And I feel like people who listen to me having conversations with them are going to trust them because I trust them. And I'll never compromise like that. I won't upload an interview if it wasn't very good. And, you know, on one side of things, does that lose

me money? Sure. On the other side of things, does that lose me money? Sure. On the other side of things, does it lose me relationships? Sure. It's actually lost me one relationship in particular and I don't really care. I'm not really doing it for the relationships and the money. I'm doing it because I really honor and value my community. And like I said, when you think like that, you're thinking long term. I'm thinking about being here 10 years from now. I'm not thinking about what does my profit look like one year from now. And I think that's the real difference between audience and community building. 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. That's cool. I think having that long view gives you an unfair advantage against those that just have kind of a short-term view because you're going to have totally different actions and motives. So as you're able to engage with community, that also tells me

you have a very impressive content machine that you've built to support all of this output. And there's a lot of things out there. And I love your point of long form because then you can turn to short form content. What are some other things you do that maybe people aren't doing or that aren't emphasized enough to run a good content machine because it's something everyone's trying to do, but not a lot of people are doing well. Systems are everything. Systems are absolutely everything. And so we have built out some really good content operating systems where when I create a long, long piece of content, just like this

podcast interview, it gets uploaded into a certain place in our ecosystem. And that will trigger a lot of automated task creation inside of Asana. And it will be delegated automatically to certain people on my team who will then know exactly what to do with the content. So let's say I finish recording a 60-minute piece of content. I upload it.

Automatically, a series of triggers will happen. I feel like I need to sell this operating system at some point. But it will automate a series of actions that will be delegated automatically and people know what to do. And so it's almost like you put a 60-minute video in the system and out pops 10 six-minute videos. And it's very automated. And it has taken a long time to get

here because it's not as simple as take this video and chop it into 10 small videos. There's a real formula to do it because, you know, if you just pick some random clips, sure, you might create the content, you might tick the box, but it's going to get no engagement. And so it's not necessarily about being efficient, but it's about being effective. And so while creating these systems, I've created a lot of playbooks and training on what a great piece of content really looks like. I love to have a gold standard example of taking a long form and turning it into short form. And that will explain certain things like here's what makes a really good hook. Here's what makes a really good standalone piece of content. Here's what makes a good piece of content that someone will actually want to click and take

the next action. So for example, you know, there's different types of content. There's a piece of content I might put out there to promote my podcast where I might not give all the tidbits away in that small piece of content. I might give one piece of value, but then I might create a cliffhanger and say, hey, go listen to the podcast for the rest. Or if I want to create a standalone piece of content for virality or growth, I'll make sure I close the loop and I give all the value in that. And so I'm training my team on all of this stuff. And I don't think it's something you can necessarily outsource from the get-go. I think you yourself as the content creator need to understand these things first, because firstly, you'll create content with that in mind.

You'll be able to deliver things in a certain way. You'll be able to get your point across in a better way and it'll make your team's job easier. But second to that, you'll be able to coach and train your team on being able to create content in the right way so that you're essentially duplic to coach and train your team on being able to create content in the right way so that you're essentially duplicating yourself and duplicating your time. I think if you outsource it too soon to people that don't fully understand it, they'll never hit the mark and you'll tell yourself a story of no one can do it as good as you can. But actually, you just haven't found a

way to teach it in a way that people can then duplicate and understand and it's so true delegation is everything but it's yeah and i ran into those mistakes too i start to delegate they do it wrong it's like nope i have the special sauce only i can do it and then you're like no you're not that special you just have you don't know how to do systems but that's that's such. Okay. Start with one thing. Long-term content. YouTube, email, podcast. You've talked about creating systems. You've talked about really nurturing that community in a one-to-one way.

I think I forgot to start with step one, which is how do you choose your thing? How do you choose the category you want to own, the thing you're known for? Because I think a lot of people can be a little too sporadic. So people are like, I don't really know what this person is about, so I'm out. What I love even about your name, it just says what it stands for and what it's about. Once you get to the content, it has the same connective tissue or theme. For someone that's trying to hone in on that and they're really struggling, what's some advice you would give? Or are there struggles that you had? Or was it always just easy breezy? Well, it's definitely not easy and it's also not a linear journey. So I would think about what is something that you are an expert on that you can talk about consistently without getting bored of. I think that's a really good place to start. But I'd also tell you that this is going to change as you change. So right now, I'm in a space of really thinking about what I want my brand to look like and what I want to be talking about, because honestly, it's changed. I used to love

talking about Instagram growth. Now I love talking about systems and everything really changes as you change. You know, we're not the same person for the rest of our lives. At least we want to hope we're not. And as we go and evolve and enter new life situations or enter new growth edges and we're in different places, we just want to talk about different things and that's okay. But you have to be willing to talk about something that you're an expert on consistently to be able to build that brand and I also think you know in that you need to choose the platform that you know you can create content on consistently so don't tell me you're going to do YouTube if you absolutely despise creating videos because you're probably not going to stick to it

consistently and if you're not willing to do something consistently you can forget about getting results it's not going to happen if you're a natural writer and you love that, don't feel like you need to be on a video platform in order to get your message across. Maybe newsletter is great for you. If you love to talk and you don't love being on video, you know, if your sweats on, headphones on and podcast feels like the right vehicle for you, great. There's no one size fits all for everyone, but you have to be willing to commit to something that you can do consistently. And I also think taking a step further, what one content format can you master? I don't see a lot of mastery these days. And I think it's really important personally.

When I first started, I decided I was going to do Instagram and I wasn't throwing everything at the wall and hoping it sticks. I was really good at writing. I didn't love being on camera and I decided, you know what, I'm going to get really, really good at writing viral quotes. And that's all I did. That's the one content piece that I mastered. I really honed that craft. I was posting at least four times a day, seven days a week, taking no breaks, honing that craft. I was posting at least four times a day, seven days a week, taking no breaks,

honing that craft. And then as my brand started to evolve, as I started to evolve, I thought about, okay, what's the next piece of content that I want to be able to hone in? I started a podcast way later than people would imagine. I'd been in business four years, I think, before I started my podcast, maybe five. And a lot of people were saying, you know, you should have started it so long ago. It could have been so big. And I I say I doubt it because I was already focused on mastering something else and so while I could have had a podcast on a certain size and an Instagram at a certain size you know I don't have almost four million followers by chance I have that because I focus there I focus my energy there from where you focus your results are and now that I'm really

interested in podcasts I'm focused on podcasts and And now that I'm really interested in podcasts, I'm focused on podcasts. And I know that I'm not straddling strategies. I've outsourced the boss of Instagram to one of our team. And I've focused on, okay, what does it look like to become a really good podcaster? What do I need to know to be able to master this content format? And I just see so often we spread ourselves so thin. We try and do so many things because we're looking at what everyone else is doing. We're looking at everyone else's grass and thinking that it's greener. But actually, it's not the truth. And if you are watching someone almost being a jack of all trades and you're tempted to copy,

I really say slow down, think of the long-term game and decide what you want to master. It's so true. And I think we're all guilty. I can be guilty. It's like, oh, that worked well for them on LinkedIn or Twitter. I'm going to do that for me, but I'll have a better hook or whatever. But it's like think differently as far as what's the thing that you can have your own unique spin on and really master. It's like doing less rather than more, but doing it really well. And I liked how you indirectly said, I had my sites on Instagram. I figured that out and I did it really well. And then you could

delegate and elevate somebody. And now it's like podcasts. Let's figure that out. Even just like comparing podcast nodes, what are you seeing that has had non-linear leaps in growth with podcasts or even like go back to Instagram? It sounds like you figured out that format that worked well that helped get like a non-linear lead. But what are some things that are working or some struggles that you have? Because I can even compare notes as well on my end. I think with podcasts, the biggest thing I'm seeing growth from is swapping ads on people's podcasts. You know, I learned this with Instagram. It's really hard to get your audience to jump platforms. So when I think about platform growth, I think about what can I do

on that specific platform to help grow. And so swapping ads with people that have podcasts of a similar audience to yours. It's how I grew my Instagram back in the day. You know, I would collaborate with other pages and we'd do shout outs for each other.

That was just what you did. You did a shout out swap. And if they had more followers, I would do more shout outs to them to kind of make it easy. And I think that's a really good podcast growth strategy. Again, it's like what I said in the beginning, you know, you have to hustle and you really have to put the work in, you know, not everyone just pulls out a microphone and all of a sudden become Alexandra Cooper, Joe Rogan. It doesn't happen like that. You know, you have to hustle. You have to put that work in.

Not every single person hits gold right away. And so thinking about, okay, how many people can I email today to get a podcast swap done? Or, you know, how can I be reverse engineering what this person did for growth? But having that laser focus, I think, pays off a lot. Yeah. No, that's really, really cool. It's funny, we haven't done as many of those, but they work really well.

And obviously if you can get like a rainmaker, like big time guests, that always helps. Easier said than done. As we started doing distribution on YouTube and TikTok, that actually had a nice lift. Actually, distribution's been a little tricky on that one,

but overall we've seen the growth since we've done that. And what's interesting, we found, I don't know about you, but specific content categories perform extremely well. When we do 10 startup ideas, you could start. And 24 hours or stuff like that works really well. And even roundups, I can't get Paul Graham or Sam Altman on the podcast yet, but we'll do like a roundup of like their quotes or best blog posts. Yeah, that's a great idea on the roundup. I haven't done that yet. So what are you doing? You're pulling from other content and putting it all into an episode? So what we do is we found like Paul Graham had this epic con or this post on like how to start

a startup from like the founder of YC. And it's a really long blog post. And we essentially did the Cliff Notes version of, okay, here's this awesome blog post. No one reads anymore. We're going to break it down for you. We did that. Sam Allman, he like turned 30. And he's like, 30 things I learned at 30.

And we did a breakdown of that. And it's kind of a fun way to switch it up. And we actually want to start doing it with books, like the four-hour work week. Here's our summary. And here's what it would look like today. Because it's a sneaky way to put Tim Ferris or someone iconic in your headline without interviewing them. That's so smart. Will you use ChatGPT to summarize anything or are you really doing your own thought process and evaluation of the content? I feel like you're on my browser. I was literally last night having it work on summaries because I always look for a blog post that'll summarize a book to get it.

But I was playing with that. I was even playing with chat GPT. I was like, take the top 10 nonfiction books on Amazon and rewrite a headline based off of those. So like think of like a book. I'm just trying to play with it. I was even like, not to go go to it wouldn't do this but adult fiction books are like the most sold book on em on amazon so i was like rewrite a title of an adult erotic book and give me a funny name of

an author so oh my god that is brilliant but it wouldn't it doesn't do erotic stuff so i was like okay i need to pump the brakes there but it gave gave me... Yeah, TPT's got boundaries. Yes, I need to have boundaries as well. But that's interesting. That's definitely getting me thinking of, okay, if we could pull some reason, and I think there's always our own thought leadership and opinions that we can infuse into it.

But if we're able to pull, you know, those cliff notes and then infuse our own stuff into it, I'm always interested in just playing around with different content formats and not necessarily always being interviews or solos, like what else could be really interesting. And again, like, okay, that's something my team could help with. Yeah, I agree. Because everyone does the interview podcast and there's times where it's great. Because even you, you're so kind. I was like, hey, here's some questions. And you're like, Jim, it's like, I've answered this question 9,443 times. Let's do something

different. I'm like, you know what? You are right. I hate that question too. We're switching it up. But yeah, ChowGBT, it's your virtual assistant. It gives you the cheat sheet to do this stuff. One thing that I really want to hit on because a lot of people also want to do something that you're doing, but they can't. You've found your niche, you've built your audience, you've built your community, but you've also been able to create amazing products, e-products, and different things that you're able to monetize. Whenever you're thinking of launching a new product, what is that process like on how you figure out, hey, this is something my audience would actually want? Is it like a validation process or you just kind of know?

And any advice for someone that's looking to launch e-products? Okay, don't do this, do that. Yeah, so for me, I have to be really excited about something to create it because a lot of our launching is organic. And so it requires me to create content around it. And I just will not create content that I'm not excited about and that I don't think will add value. So right now I'm thinking about the next product that we're going to create.

It's been a while. I'm really ready. It's been a couple of years since we've created something new. I'm feeling really ready to do it. And for me, I've been thinking about, what really excites me? What lights me up? And what phase of life am I in?

And so that the content could be really organic around this. And what I'm loving right now is my life operating system that I created a couple years ago. It's been helping me so much as I enter this new period of being a mom and a CEO and so many other things at the same time. And this operating system has been really powerful for helping me manage my life and not feeling like I'm constantly behind and being able to find that work-life harmony that we all talk about and desire. So that feels really exciting for me. And I know I can't do it prematurely. I have to make sure whatever I

create feels like it's complete. So that's kind of the period I'm in where I'm doing my own work around it. Okay, if I was to distill exactly how I created this and how I implement it, what would that look like? And that normally starts as a huge body of work. And then I simplify, simplify, simplify, so it's digestible. And then I already, you know, feel like I know what my audience would want and not want. So I kind of already have a sense of whether they'd be interested or not. But I will ask a lot of questions along the way of, okay, why would this serve you? Why would this be powerful? Because I feel like in order for them to buy it and have their lives changed, they have to have it speak to them and they have to have it speak to their situation and that their situation might be slightly different to mine. So there is research involved, but, you know, maybe not as much as if I was just starting out and I didn't feel like I

knew my community as well as I do. If I was advising someone that is new out to the space, I would say, you know, have you been working with these clients one-to-one? Have you really developed a methodology that's worked for them multiple times and you know that replicating you can get the same results? Are you able to tell me exactly why they need it, why they would buy it? I think all of that research generally is important. That's very cool. And like for listeners that are interested in some of the stuff that you offer, like what's the best way to get into whether it's like the membership program program or even just kind of list out all the things that you offer? Yeah, probably the best place to start would be going on bosswave.com and taking a look. We have our membership and we have a couple

of signature courses on there. If you're wanting to jump in with products, you can look there or you could go on there and join our email list. We have a really good newsletter that goes out twice a week. It's called the Boss Babe Edit. And it's making business and marketing fun. It's like Gossip Girl meets Harvard Business School. It's fun. That's a really good place to start. Obviously, our podcast, The Boss Babe Podcast, there's tons of free stuff out there. And we talk about what we do often enough that you'll generally be able to pick up whether something would be for you or not for you. Yeah, I mean, it's really impressive. You guys get a BossPay.com membership and what you get, I think it starts at 48 bucks,

which is very approachable. And just everyone I've spoken to out of the society is very, very impressive. And I think mentorship is great, but like having the right peers is everything just to compare notes. Do you at all speak to, or can you speak to the size of the company,

whether it's other members or like revenue or anything so people understand the scale? Yeah, I mean, we have thousands and thousands of members. I think ultimately we've had around 130,000 students through different programs and trainings and things that we've had. Hundreds of thousands of people on our email list who got our newsletter, multiple millions downloads on our podcast. So we're a pretty good size. We've been doing this for a while for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's really impressive. So I've got two more questions for you and then I'll let you get on with your... The first question is, we're both parents with young kids. Give me a parent hack. We're both running companies and trying to raise

these creatures. What is one of your go-to hacks for trying to juggle it all, right? Because there's the struggle and the juggle. I mean, for me, I'll give you some time here. It's making snacks ahead of time to have them in Ziploc bags to be prepared. A second is I'm kind of training my kids to like business podcasts because sometimes they'll say funny words, except they cussed in one. I was like, oh crap, that will backfire.

And my three-year-old dropped an F-bomb, but that's fine. But yeah, what about you? Give me your best parenting founder hack. Okay, well, one of them is very top of mind for me because the last few days my nanny has been off sick and i'm in a huge transition period in my business and my number one hack is being fully present with where you're at and so when she called in sick i was like okay well

i know exactly what my day looks like it looks like mothering and I'm gonna be you know with the whammy and I'm gonna be fully present and realistically almost everything can wait until tomorrow or the end of the week and if it can't do it during that time you know it might mean that your dishes get might not get done it might mean that your emails don't get done it might mean that your team feel like you're just ignoring whatever it means. If I am being fully present with her, I'm not stressed, right? Because I'm only stressed if I'm present with her, but my mind is in my emails, my mind is in my Slack, my mind is in my to-do list. Then I'm feeling overwhelmed and it almost feels like I'm not where I should be.

Whereas if I'm fully present and telling myself this is exactly where I need to be right now and everything else can wait and I'm not doing brain surgery and no one's going to die from me pushing this task out two days. It takes a lot of the pressure and a lot of the strain off and that really, really helps. And then another thing I do is I just time block my calendar a lot I'm nursing right now it's why I told you what one my hard stop is I'm still nursing and I made a commitment to myself that I wouldn't stop nursing just because my business needed me during hours that are overlapping with nursing time so I've been super clear on what my priorities are and I time block around that so that I'm not having to make those

sacrifices and I can do what's really important to me and then also get my other things done. I think it's always a balance. I don't think any of us feel like we're crushing it all the time. I definitely don't. Some weeks I'm like, whoa, I'm really feeling amazing. And other weeks I'm like, oh my God, I feel like I've been putting the washing machines and just hung out to dry. I think that's just parenting. Yeah. I like your first answer better than mine. So I'm going to edit this podcast so I have that one. You're a better parent than me after that. Well done. All right. So last question that I'd like to ask everybody, what is the nicest thing anyone's done for you in your professional career? One thing comes to mind specifically, and I have a mentor who has had so much belief in me, especially during the times

that I haven't. So a couple months after having my daughter, I went through some really difficult postpartum depression and anxiety. And I was in a really dark place and I was telling myself I just couldn't do it all. It wouldn't be possible to do it all. And I was letting everyone down and everything needed to change. And this mentor of mine, who is someone that I really, really look up to and respect. And I think when someone like that believes in you, it means a lot because you know what they've achieved and you look up to them so much and you know they've seen so many things. And so when that person was looking at me saying listen you're gonna make it through this period and it doesn't mean that your business needs to change completely

it doesn't mean that it needs to end it doesn't mean that you need to put like put things away or let go of things it just means you need to give yourself time and I really believe in you and I believe in where you're going and I want to be part of that journey with you. I would say that's one of the nicest things that anyone's done for me, especially because, you know, they had nothing to benefit or gain from supporting me in that way, especially when I was in a place where I'm like, I think I'm going to throw in the towel. And we had all these collaborations lined up and all these things. And for them just to see me as a human being and put that before anything else business-wise was really powerful. And for them to transfer the confidence

that they had in me onto me was really powerful. That's cool. Especially, it's one thing for people to help you out when times are good, but it's like when times are rough, it's like that's really when you need the support. It's like who shows up for you when it doesn't benefit them? Yes. Really, who shows up for you when it doesn't benefit them? Because you'll notice, like you said, when times are good or when someone's benefiting

from you or what you do, feels like everyone's your friend and everyone will show up for you. But when you're in a time when it's like, you know, you're not benefiting anyone, you might be making some decisions that really don't benefit people.

Do those people still stick with you and say, you know what? I love you as a person and what you're doing is not going to benefit me at all, but it's going to benefit you and that's what's important. Those are the people that you want to have around you. Yeah, that's such good advice. Very cool. Well, Natalie, thank you so much for coming on. Let's let you get back to your fam. But yeah, bossbabe.com. Where else can people check out? Obviously, the podcast, we'll put the link below if you want to get more. But yeah, bossbabe.com. Where else can people check out? Obviously, the podcast, we'll put the link below if you want to get more details on that. But

where can people get more? Yeah, the Boss Babe podcast is amazing. And then my Instagram is at IamNatalie.