the bossbabe podcast - 301. Advice From My Coach + The Mindset Shift That Changed My Life

Episode Date: June 29, 2023

If you’ve ever struggled with missing the present moment because you’re so focused on what’s coming next + your future plans, this episode is for you. Natalie’s sharing some of the most powerful mindset shifts she’s made (+ that you can immediately implement too) to create greater levels of happiness and peace along the journey - all while releasing anxiety + stress. You’ll also hear about a conversation she had with her personal coach that completely transformed her perspective on chasing + gripping a certain outcome. This episode is truly one we can ALL relate to!  HIGHLIGHTS The exact advice Natalie’s personal coach gave her that helped her release anxiety + stress about the future and truly live in the present moment How losing her Visa/ability to work led to brand new opportunities + completely changed the trajectory of where Bossbabe is today Knowing how to spot the right (even life changing) opportunities as they come your way Strategies to release the need to control future outcomes (this one instantly lifts the “weight” off your shoulders!)  LINKS Join Growth Day - GrowthDay.com/bossbabe FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

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. I am leaving for Europe in a couple of days and I'm going for two months. I cannot even believe it. I'm not kidding. About 10 days ago, me and Stephen were sitting down with our team and we were having like a house meeting, a family meeting, just talking about all the things that's going on, our nanny. And Stephen was like, yeah, so, you know, we are going to be leaving in 10 days. And I'm not kidding. I thought I had about a month before we were leaving. Like for some reason in my head, I didn't process it was 10 days. We didn't even have Noemi's passport because we had like a whole

situation with birth certificate and just learning all the American ways of doing things, which I think is amazing that she's got an American passport. That is incredible. Anyway, I did not realize it was 10 days away. So I had to really rally. And so the last, I would say, week has been crazy of me just trying to make sure I have everything ready to leave for two months. This is something Stephen and I always had in our minds when we moved to Austin was we would leave every summer for a couple months because Austin is really, really hot. Texas is really hot during the summer. It is not a desirable place to be. I mean, right now, I think it's like 114 degrees. Like, it's just not, it's not ideal. So we always knew this was what we wanted to do. But last year is when we had Noemi. And so that is not the time we wanted to be leaving. We just kind of stayed indoors the whole summer. But this year, we're traveling all over Europe. We're going back home to the UK as well and just really living out our dream summer. And it feels incredible. I cannot wait. I'm so, so excited and nervous to leave for that month, but I'm so

excited. Anyway, today's episode is one that I know I really needed to hear throughout my journey growing Boss Babe and stepping into the CEO role of this size company. And I know so many of you probably need to hear this as well. This episode is all about cultivating a mindset when it comes to your business and your journey overall as a CEO, founder, business owner, that will be one of resilience and flexibility because it can be really challenging. And sometimes mindset is one of the only things you can control. So today we're diving into that topic and I'm actually sharing a snippet from a talk I recently did on the Growth Day Network, all about process flexibility and how I've really used this in my

own journey to get where I am today. So if you've been feeling stuck or you've been coming up against any roadblocks along the way, this episode is for you. Like I said, this was taken from a talk I did at Growth Day. And if you're interested in joining Growth Day, I'll put the link below. With that, let's dive straight in. We've talked about, you know, A to B, B being being the dream a being where you are now you know you're letting go of the tight grip you've got on b being flexible that that's going to evolve and we're not playing a finite game we're playing an infinite game and we get to hold it loosely we still get to keep an eye on it because when you let go it didn't go anywhere did it you still got an eye on

it but you're holding it a little bit loosely and you're being willing to be in the present and be joyful. So that's where process flexibility comes on because I don't know about you, but I want to enjoy my life now, not in six months when the thing has happened, not in five years when the thing has happened. And I'm not saying that the situation we're in right now might feel good. I was recently in a session with my coach and he identified for me where I was kind of placing my happiness on a certain outcome. And he was like, listen, the outcome might happen. It might not happen, but we probably won't know whether it's happened for another three months from now, right?

Can you acknowledge that? And I said, yep, you're totally right. I have no idea whether this outcome is going to happen in three months from now. I really want it to, but I have no idea if it will. And he said to me, so you can spend this three months being really sad that this thing hasn't happened and being really, you know, mopey and out of the present. And then if the outcome happens, great, you'll probably shift right away and you'll feel great. But you've wasted three months feeling sad. You've wasted three months not being present.

You've wasted three months being disappointed about an outcome that didn't even happen yet. And that really, really stuck with me because I realized we have to be flexible on how the process is going to go. And I want to feel really good about the process. I want to feel really good about where I'm at in the present while knowing I've got my eye on where I'm going. And there's a story here that always comes to mind whenever I talk about the process flexibility and the destination flexibility. And you might've heard this story before, but I'm going to tell it again. So once upon a time, there was this poor farmer who owned a really small piece of land, but he had the most beautiful white horse. His neighbors were all so

jealous of him. And there'd be tons of rich people coming through the town. And every single time they offered so much money to buy this horse and the farmer just couldn't part with the horse. And he just kept saying no. And then one day an emperor with a huge army happened to camp near the village where the farmer had some land and the horse. The emperor saw the horse, this beautiful horse, immediately sent some of his soldiers to make an offer and he wanted the horse, right? And the farmer's neighbors were saying, oh my goodness, how lucky are you? The emperor wants to buy your horse? And the farmer said, good, bad, who knows? But he refused to sell the horse

and all of his neighbors said, what have you done? The emperor's just going to come and take the horse anyway. He's probably going to kill you for saying no, right? It's going to bring so much bad luck to your family. Why would you do this? And the farmer said, good, bad, who knows? And the next day the horse went missing. And so all of the neighbors actually assumed that the emperor had stolen the horse. And they said, what bad luck. You could have had the money that the emperor was going to give you for the horse. Instead, you said no, and the emperor's taken the horse anyway. And the farmer said, good, bad, who knows? The following day,

the horse came running back and it actually brought five beautiful horses with it. And the neighbors just looked on in absolute disbelief. This is wonderful. You are so fortunate. You were so right not to sell the horse. Now you've got eight amazing, strong horses instead of just one. The horses just kept coming in. And the farmer relaxed and got really calm. And he shrugged his shoulders and he said, well, fortunate, unfortunate, good, bad, who knows? And the farmer's son who helped his father work on the farm, he started taming the wild horses that this other horse had brought. And one of them actually threw him over and he had a bad accident and he broke his leg. So because of this accident, the son was to be in bed for months and months.

The neighbors jumped in. Oh, this is awful. Very judgmental neighbors. This is awful. This is such bad luck. And the farmer who was helping his son just said, listen, good luck or bad luck. I don't know. Who can say?

A few weeks later, a war broke out and the army came to the village and was forcing all able-bodied men to join the military and fight the invaders. The farmer's son, because of his broken leg, was left at home and didn't have to go to war. The neighbors were so devastated that their sons were sent off and not knowing would they ever see them again. And they said to the farmer, you're so lucky that your son had that accident. Your son is safe. That's amazing. And the farmer said, good, bad. How do we know? Right. And the reason that I share this story with you is so many of us would have stopped at step one. Oh my goodness. Yes. I'm going to sell the horse. I'm going to ship the horse off. Why would I not sell the horse? And what's really interesting is as we go through the story more and more and we get more perspective, we keep thinking, oh,

I see how that turned out even better. Okay. I see how that turned out even better. And so there wasn't this fixed destination place that turned out even better. And so there wasn't this, you know, fixed destination place that I needed to get to. And there wasn't a rigid process that needed to be followed the whole time. And having that good, bad, who knows, holding everything very lightly, really, really supported him in everything that then unfolded, right? 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 to claim your 30 day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe. And so I wanted to share that around the process because we as very ambitious people, which I know you are, we can get so caught up in things needing to go a certain way and we can often block what could be an even better outcome. So we could be on this rigid process, blinders on, and opportunities pop in our way. But we're so rigid. No, this is the process I need to follow. This is the dream. This is the goal that I need to get to.

So stay back. Stay out of my way. We could be so committed to that path that we're not actually allowing better outcomes to come in, right? We're so rigid and we're holding on to things so tightly that nothing else can get in. And so again, if we hold things lightly, there's space for other outcomes, other opportunities to come in. And so whenever you're presented with something that feels like a block or bad news in your journey, I really, really want you to remember

that. For me, like I shared with Boss Babe, I started an Instagram account. I didn't know that it was going to turn into what it is today. And one thing that I share a lot is I've always been willing and open to say yes to the right opportunities, the opportunities that felt right, even if they might not have made sense on paper, or even if it seemed like it was taking me away from where I'd committed to going. And I really do believe that's why I ended up, you know, building what we have today. And there's, you know, tons of examples of this. So, you know, Boss Babe was this Instagram account and we'd started this membership and we were really starting to bring in teachers

and really enjoy this scaling process and taking Boss Babe to be this educational destination. Like we had something there. We weren't fully sure what we had. We had something there, all right? And I'm saying we, there wasn't really a we, but I had something there. We were going in a good direction. We were starting to make some money. We had this

Instagram account. We're starting to monetize it. We're starting to kind of see, okay, this is going to turn into a business. This is going to be something. And what ended up happening was I lost my visa that I actually had committed for the next two or three years in America. I actually lost and got told that I needed to leave the country. Now I was able to petition that and I was able to stay in the country after so many back and forths with lawyers, but there was one rule. You can stay in the country, but you cannot work. Now at the time I'd started growing Boss Babe into something that was monetizing. And I already had another business that I'd started back in the UK, which was doing really well. It was an online supplement company.

It was in over 200 stores. It was doing really, really well. So here I was with this business that was doing really well and Boss Babe that was just getting started. We were putting on these masterclasses. We were getting some momentum and I got told I couldn't work. And in that moment, I remember feeling so sorry for myself. Oh my goodness. This is just going to tarnish absolutely everything. This is going to ruin my businesses. This is going to ruin the trajectory of my life that I was on. And, you know, this was a long process. I think it was going to be about nine months that I couldn't work for. And luckily I'd been able to build some savings because of my previous business that was, you know, going to run out within that timeframe, but I'd been able to build something.

And so I made the decision that, you know, what staying in America is more important, is more important to me than continuing the business as they are now. I'm going to step back. I'm going to trust the process. And upon doing that, something really interesting happened. So I'd been, you know, not able to work for a few months at this point. I was feeling so depressed. I almost didn't want to get out of bed because I just felt like I didn't have a purpose. It was all well and good having these dreams and goals, but not actively being able to work on things was very challenging. And one of my best friends, she called me up and she said, I've booked you a flight. You're coming to San Diego. You're going to come to a Brandon Burchard conference with me.

And I was in all the reasons that I didn't want to go. I can't afford the hotel. You know, I can't be working, right? And there's all these reasons. And she was like, listen, I booked and paid for the flight. You're going to share a hotel room with me. So you don't need to pay anything. Just come, just come along. And so, okay, I decided I'm going to go along kind of kicking and screaming. And I turned up and I mean, you all know how incredible Brendan is. So I don't even need to tell you how life-changing the event was for me. If you ever get a chance to go to one, I can't recommend it enough. Really brought back all that motivation that I knew was in me. Something else really interesting happened. I was introduced to my now co-founder, Danielle, at that event. And the two of us, once I got my

work visa, ended up making the decision to come together and run and scale Boss Babe together. And I share that because there were so many things that happened along the way that would have looked like, you know, things are going to end right now. You cannot get there. You know, this isn't meant to be. There were so many blocks put in my way, but actually holding onto things very lightly and keeping my North star in my mind lightly really, really paid off for me because I was able to join forces with Danielle and we created what you see as Boss Babe today. And it's very different to what Boss Babe was, right? And so I really, really want to emphasize that destination of process flexibility. There's not one set way of doing this. There's not one set way of getting

there. And there's not one set thing that you need to achieve in order to feel the way you want to feel, right? And so that has been incredibly, incredibly powerful in my journey of being able to navigate where I'm going. And one thing that I generally say I do is I'll put in the GPS, the location where I'm going, and I'll take a few turns along the way. Because when you do that, the GPS just corrects. And it might add a bit of time on, it might take you around some dodgy back streets, sure. But you're still going to get there. And so that's something that I do.

And when I get there, I might decide, you know what? This doesn't look as good as I thought it would look. Let me put in a new destination. I don't want to eat here. Let me put in a new destination and go there instead, right? We've all done that. We all do that. And so whenever you are thinking about where you're going to go, where you want to get to, really, really remember that idea of flexibility.