the bossbabe podcast - 368. How To Make Sales, Mental Health + Cracking Organic Growth - Backstage Pass to Chris Harder’s Private Mastermind

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

We’ve got your backstage pass into Chris Harder’s private mastermind where Natalie Ellis spoke to a room full of 7+ figure founders + CEOs. From the story of building Bossbabe + buying out her co-founder, to maintaining her mental health throughout the entrepreneurial ups and downs, sales strategies + everything in between. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or in the thick of it with your business, this episode is for you! HIGHLIGHTS How Natalie turned Bossbabe into a profitable + sustainable company that’s making more profit in the first 2 months of 2024 than the entire year of 2023 (all w/o stress or overwhelm from the team) All things mental health along the entrepreneurial journey through the ups and downs + how to truly value your time The secrets behind Bossbabe’s 95% organic growth + how to leverage different platforms to help you grow WITHOUT needing paid ads or a big team Thoughts + tactics on how to handle letting team members go while maintaining culture and performance RESOURCES + LINKS Join The Société: The Place to Build A Freedom-Based Business Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Chris Harder: @chriswharder 

A lot of people are surprised to hear that I hit my first seven figures with one $29 product. That's it. And I just focused, focused, focused to get it right and make it work. The mistakes that I made was getting distracted. Anytime I got distracted, anytime when someone says you're leaving money on the table, I'm like, great, keep it there because there's so much more money on the table you're at. Welcome back to the Boss Babe Podcast. I'm Natalie Ellis, your host for this episode. And this one is a slightly different one. So a couple of weeks ago, I flew to Arizona to speak at my friend Chris Harder's Mastermind. He had a room of incredible seven plus figure founders and we did a Q&A session and it was such a good session. There were so many really

great questions that I thought I want to take this out of this room and put this on the podcast for you all to get some value from hopefully. So it's a Q&A format that Chris was hosting. And I hope you enjoy it. We kind of go everywhere from being bored out of Boss Babe to growing your social media. I feel like there was nothing we didn't talk about. So hopefully it adds some value and you enjoy it. Let's dive in. All right, guys, you ready to start learning? I want to first read the paper bio, and then I want to give a true heartfelt introduction because those are the ones

that matter the most. But the next speaker that you're about to learn from, Natalie Ellis, is a mom, CEO, and serial entrepreneur. She lives by the belief that we can build wildly successful freedom-based businesses that support versus sacrifice the things that you most care about in life. Most notably, she founded Boss Babe, a community of over 4 million women. She's the host of the chart-topping Boss Babe podcast, writer of a weekly entrepreneurial newsletter read by over 400,000 women, and an angel investor. Not only an angel investor in any portfolio,

but also a fellow investor. Well, then it says in mostly female-founded companies. Yeah, I'm mostly. I'm mostly. She's the founder of CEO Mama, a private network for entrepreneurial mamas. Natalie's expertise lies in online marketing, social media, community building, and systems for running your life and business with harmony. Now, you guys get to see the social media version of her, but Lori and I are lucky enough to call her and Stephen dear friends, and we get to see what I call the pajama version of them. And that is when you're just sitting around and there's no false pretense and there's no reason to be anybody other than who you are. I want to tell you that they are two of the greatest, kindest human beings on the entire planet. And that's what matters most. I also want to tell you that I think that Natalie is probably the smartest strategist and the just the most technically sound entrepreneur that I might know,

period, period, of all the people that we know. And her brilliance for building community is not an accident. She's very strategic in everything she does. She's so detailed in laying out a path to something. I don't think anybody does that any better. And so without any delay, if you guys would give the warmest welcome you possibly can for our dear friend, Natalie Ellis. I want to first start by thanking you before I kind of frame this up. You guys, last night, Natalie got on an airplane at what time? Seven, eight. Seven or eight o'clock at night, just to fly here from Austin. And then she's going to fly out right

afterward for no other agenda than to serve you guys. Will you give her a round of applause? And I think the first question I want to ask related to that is you had a very specific reason why you booked at that type. And I think it exemplifies the way that you build your business elegantly. Would you share that reason? I didn't want to miss bedtime with my baby. I really wanted to come here. I love the work that you do. And every time I get to be in a room with anyone you've brought together, it's really, really powerful. And I wanted to be here, but I didn't want to miss bedtime and I don't want to miss bedtime tonight. So I was like, yep, I'll come, but I have to come at very specific times and I'm in and out.

And it just comes back to a huge change that I made in my life where I prioritize my priorities. And I used to be the person that had like 10 priorities, aka none. And now I know what my priorities are. And I build my life around those versus the other way around. And it's so much more fulfilling and makes me so much happier. So we're going to get a little bit deeper into navigating entrepreneurship and parenting and marriage and all that fun stuff. But I want to start more high level. And I want to start with the brands that you have built and that you are building just so

that they can have context. How would you describe Boss Babe? How would you describe CEO Mama? And where are you taking them over the next, let's say, three years? So Boss Babe is a community for female entrepreneurs, and we exist to support them in building freedom-based businesses. So we are the place you'll come to whether you want to join our membership or funnel fast track, a place where you can actually build a business that supports your priorities in life. We're not the kind of place that someone would come to if they've got a VC backed business or they're just not in that stage of life. It's very, very specific built around freedom. Where we're taking Boss Babe in the next three years, I have had a lot of transition with Boss Babe, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but I'm in a space where I'm just going to let it get as good as it's going to get. Every year I welcome it to feel great and see what unfolds. And I just want

to keep doubling down on what's working. I don't have major plans to do any brand new things or, you know, I feel like I've already built the community that I, that I love. I want to keep serving them in deeper ways through the products I've already got. We're going to be doing live events and more things, bringing them together, but I don't see us building out this huge product suite. I really love, I mean, I've had one product for the longest time. I love doubling down on what's working and it allows me to keep things simple, but allows me to deliver with excellence. And that's really, really important to me. So that's Boss Babe. It's incredible. And we have a very simple scorecard,

which we're tracking, you know, every single week, every single month. How can we continue doubling down with excellence? And then CEO Mama, this was a business that I started unintentionally. When I became a mom, I was so, is there any of the moms in the room? Great.

So you'll all get what I'm about to say. I was so attached to my identity. I was like, I already know exactly who I am. I know what my goals are. I know what my priorities are. And then I became a mother and I completely lost my identity. I had no idea who I was. And well, that's what I thought anyway. And I navigated about a year of postpartum anxiety and depression. It was really challenging. And in that time, I felt like I didn't know who I was, but actually I was finding out who I was, who I'd always been. And I found the truest identity of myself. But in that time, it was really, really challenging, especially running a really big business alongside that. And so I decided very selfishly, I want to start a mastermind like this, but of entrepreneurial

mothers who got it that I could literally cry to. And so I put together a list of like my friends and people I really wanted to be in it. I DM'd everyone. I was like, Hey, can we do this? They said yes. And we've just kept it going since we re-enroll new moms every kind of three to four months now and put together amazing groups of women who are in those stages and navigating those things and where that's going to go I feel like it will kind of become like boss babe but for entrepreneurial moms and I'm open to it I love that and I love that with boss babe you're saying hey we're just gonna basically keep the same but continue to find ways to over-serve and having that one product in your product suite and just going deep on that is better than adding lots of new things. And then

where you get to express your freedom of creation of new product suite, et cetera, is probably CEO mama. Is that right? Kind of, but I learned a long time ago that I can express my creativity in the business, in the same things that I'm doing. So every month when I release new content in the membership, I like really go out all out on that or with my podcast. I pull everything I've got into that. And that feels like it scratches the itch of like newness and shiny objects without having to change my product suite. Because in the past, every time I had a new idea, I was like, it's a new product. It's a new thing. And it wasn't sustainable. It had me on this hamster wheel. Whereas now I feel like when I have that new idea, I'm like, well, what if I just put it in the membership? My team's like, that's insane. We could have this law. I'm like, no, I think this is actually a good idea. And

we'll put it in the membership or we'll pour it into the podcast. And actually it amplifies the business without kind of burning the whole thing down. I love that. That's so good. Okay, so what's the most important changes or implementations that you have made to either one of those businesses in the last 12 months? Okay, how long do we have? So... As long as you want. Okay, so last year was a very challenging year in the business.

So I bought the company, I bought my co-founder out in February, March time. And the business just wasn't in a good place. Simply from the fact of when you're going through a co-founder buyout, you're not focused on the business. You're focused on the buyout, right? And so the business was just not in a good place. And that was because we had this huge team. We had huge payroll and expenses, and the money was continuously coming out. But because

we were focused elsewhere, our energy was not focused on the business. The revenue was decreasing. My expenses were staying the same. The bottom line was not looking great. So when I bought the business, I was like, shit, what am I going to do? And so I spent a lot of last year reshuffling and changing everything. And the best thing that I did was because in that time, there's a lot of uncertainty. And even my team, they wanted answers. What does this mean? Where are we going? And my natural nature would have been to fix, to give answers, to show up with solutions. And I didn't have solutions at that time. I didn't know. And I realized the best thing that I could do is be really honest about that and take my time and

go at my pace, not the pace everyone else wants from me. That was very, very hard to do, but it was the best thing that I did in that time. And it didn't take one month, three months, six months. It took almost all of last year. And so the first things first is I looked at the P&L. It goes back to basics. I looked at the P&L. Where are we spending money? Where are we wasting money? Immediately, I cut about $80,000 worth of software costs. It's like the little hidden things. I cut software. I looked at my team. Okay, there's a bunch of people on the team that actually aren't at capacity because I'm not giving them direction, but they're working on things I don't know if I want to keep. So it was a lot of challenging conversations and a lot of

restructuring, my least favorite thing to do. But also I was like, I also have a lot of other jobs that I get to protect. So I made some changes. I cut my entire team down to a four-day work week over the summer. And I said, let's see if we can just break even. That would be a really big achievement. And over that time, I stepped back creatively to think about what I wanted to do. And ultimately, it was the membership. But the membership wasn't aligned with anything I'd learned over the past couple of years. It was what I knew from when I started this business seven years ago. So I reimagined the entire membership. I got rid of every single other product in there and I relaunched it in

September. And so it took from buying the business in Feb, March to relaunching anything, which was September. And then, you know, we didn't do the normal launch, the webinar, the fancy stuff, none of it, because I was so busy building the product. I didn't even think about the marketing of it, but we just relaunched to our hot leads. Like I always talk about that's the easiest way to launch is just tell people that actually care what you're doing. That's all we did last year. And it worked really, really well. And we actually ended last year with a higher profit than the year prior, which is insane given I didn't do the launches. I didn't do the things, but I did a lot of the business-y stuff, the unsexy stuff, but slowing down was incredible. This year we have rebuilt

our product suite to have three products, which includes CEO Mama. And we're getting back into the swing of launches. We just closed the best launch we've ever had. And yeah, we're back in it, but I took time. Love that. Congrats. Thank you. Yeah. Clap for that. I love that. Let's talk about your product suite, but more importantly, let's kind of work backwards and then talk about your top of funnel. Yeah. Because whether someone has a brick and mortar, I mean, all the businesses in here are very diverse, right?

So whether someone has a brick and mortar, whether someone does courses, whether someone does memberships, whether somebody has a publishing company, all that matters is you getting people through the door. So describe your product suite real quick again, and then describe your top of funnel and what's working. Okay. So the product suite, I kind of describe it in a graph. So I feel like every product suite should have a through line. What's the one sentence through line that your business does? So mine is help you build freedom-based businesses. So that's the through line of everything that we do. And then on the top bar, it's level of support. So the through line is the same of what we do,

but the level of support changes. That's how I build my product suite. So I actually class my newsletter and podcast as two products in the product suite because they get them the same amount of attention. So they're kind of the first two entryways, the newsletter, then the podcast. My core product is the Society, our membership. It's $9.97 a year. The next product is called Freedom Fast Track, and it helps you build a funnel in your business in eight weeks. That's $2.997. And then I have CEO Mama, which is at the top end. That's $27,000. That's it. That's the whole product suite. And then in terms of top of funnel. So whenever I think about top of funnel and community building, I always think in terms of short form content and long form content. I feel like short form content is the perfect place to bring in new eyeballs,

to introduce people to your brand, and just to have those quick touch points. The long form is the real place that you fill your top of funnel. It's the place that you nurture people, you know, building the know, like, and trust factor. So I believe every single business should have short form platform and a long form platform. And you just need to pick one of the, one of the other. I have a few now just because I've been doing this and focused on it for so long, but even in my first three years of business, I just had one of each. So my short form platform is

Instagram and my long form platform that I focus on is my podcast. We do have a newsletter too, but I would say the real nurturer is the podcast. And we can talk about all of this in detail, but that's the whole ascension. This is interesting. If I heard you correctly, you said, well, my first two products are my podcast and my newsletter.

And I think probably other than Liz, who I know absolutely sees her podcast as a product, right, a monetizing product. I think everybody else in here probably sees your email list, aka your newsletter, and your podcast as more of part of your funnel than you do see it as a product. Is that a fair assessment? And when you see it as a product, I think that absolutely changes what you expect to get out of it. It's no longer just attaining and entertaining eyeballs and ears. Now it's something monetizable. What has been the single greatest way or what's working right now to grow your podcast or to grow your newsletter? Or a couple. It doesn't

have to be just the single. It just sounds more dramatic when I say it that way. Okay, so talking about newsletter first, I really prefer converting people into PDFs and lead magnets versus just a newsletter because that means I can get out to an even cooler audience. And I know that once I deliver that quick bit of value, they're on the newsletter, they're going to be way more engaged. The best way that I fill this, and I also fill my funnels in the exact same way, is viral reels. It is irreplaceable. It converts way better for me even than my ads, and I will take what works and put it on my ads. But what I mean by this is I know the recipe for making something get a lot of attention. And just because you have a big audience, by the way, doesn't mean your reels get attention. It doesn't really matter the size of your audience. Yes, it helps, but you can make a reel go viral no matter the size of your audience.

And so whenever I'm going to promote a lead magnet or top of funnel, anything, I craft a viral reel and it always follows the same kind of structure. It has a hook, a bit of intrigue, and then a call to action. And then I mix it with a viral element of like, am I opening visual hooks? There's so many things I can get into. So viral reels with a call to action. And I always make the call to action straight to ManyChat, straight to then my funnel. So ManyChat, probably most of you will know, but it's something you can use in conjunction with Instagram. When you post a reel that says comment playbook for my freedom based business playbook, ManyChat is the tool that automatically sends you the link for that. So I post a viral reel with a word commented through ManyChat and then ManyChat is the tool that automatically sends you the link for that. So I post a viral

reel with a word commented through ManyChat and then ManyChat gets them on my list. I mean, crushes it. Absolutely crushes it. And I can guarantee how many leads I'm going to get based on PayReel. I just know it to a recipe now. That really, really works for us when it comes to newsletter. And I recommend just having a super short welcome sequence, like deliver amazing value on the PDF, then just an email or two telling them who you are and what to expect from you, then drop them into your newsletter. And if your newsletter is regular and they know what to expect, you've got a really, really good open rate and click-through rate. So that's really worked when it comes to newsletter. And then podcasts, I don't think you can beat getting on other people's podcasts. I know it's so simple, but what I have learned having a really big audience is that people

rarely platform jump, which is so frustrating. People rarely see you post on Instagram, your podcast, and they jump straight from Instagram to your podcast. Yes, your really warm, hot audience will, but majority of people won't. They'll consume on Instagram and they'll get on with their day. Same with YouTube, same with whatever platform. If you want to grow on podcast, do more on podcast. If you want to grow on Instagram, do more on Instagram. If you want to grow on YouTube, do more on YouTube. It's simple, but it's the best thing that works. That's really good advice. And it's spot on. I think people think, well, if I just post more about my podcast and people will go to say, and you're right, they don't platform jump.

And you said something I want to make sure everybody caught because I've been just kind of pounding this drum. Those of you that have been here for multiple years, nothing replaces putting yourself on a podcast tour if you're trying to grow your own podcast. It's why? Because the very people that are hearing you on somebody else's show, they're already on the very platform that you're trying to grow. So I couldn't second that more. So here's where I want to take this next. You are the best at building community and really just like getting a community to buy into everything that you're doing. It's tough because there's a lot of noise out there right now. Everybody's trying to build a community. If you had to start from scratch right now, how would you build a viral community? Oh, I love this question because I challenge myself

with this all the time. I would first just be super clear on who I'm targeting. Like, I just wouldn't be vague about it. I'd be super clear on who I'm targeting. So let's say I was going to build, I'd probably start on Instagram just because that's the platform I know. And I'm a big fan of just learning one platform really, really well. People will tell you you're leaving money on the table by not learning them all. Great, let that money sit there. Focus on one platform.

So I have this challenge called the 10 by 10 challenge. And I guarantee you'll go viral if you actually follow this challenge. Like it's an actual guarantee. I would go and specifically on the niche, which I'm gonna start building a page for CEO Mamas. I'm gonna follow my own advice. Say I started a niche and it was for entrepreneurial mothers. I would then go and find 10 people who have audiences similar to the people that I want to attract. And I would go and

find 10 of their most viral reels or viral pieces of content in the last six to 12 months. And I'm a spreadsheet person, so I'd put it all on a spreadsheet. And then I would think about, can I reimagine this content as my own? Can I repurpose it somehow? Or can I simply repost it? It's that simple. 10 by 10, those three things. And I would post one every single day. And I guarantee you will grow. You will go viral. You will find out what works in your space. You will get a very, very good understanding of what your audience actually want to see. So that's how I would grow the actual Instagram. And then I would plug many chat into this to be growing my email list simultaneously. So freaking good. I mean, 10 people that you aspire to have a brand like they're 10 best viral viral reels. And then just reimagining or literally

reposting and giving them credit is the simplest thing on the planet for those of you that get starved for content ideas. And it's all, like you said, it's already proven to work because you can see that people responded to it. That's absolutely genius. I want to, it's going to feel like we're bouncing around, but I want to make sure that I ask you this one question based on something you were talking about before. You mentioned your ads and now you talked about reels and virality and social media. What percentage of your ears and eyeballs come from unpaid traffic and what percentage comes from paid traffic? In the whole history of Boss Babe, I would say 90 to 95% has been organic. Wow. Let that sink in. 90 to 95% of an epic amount of traffic and community and sales have come from unpaid traffic. And the reason why that's so significant is

it means there's no excuse not to succeed. If you don't have the budget for it, that's okay. All you have to do is have the will and the time and give a shit enough to go do the 10 by 10 and start to generate that traffic organically. And is there still a space for that? I mean, I know people are saying the algorithm's changing. This is changing. Does it work today? Like it worked yesterday? A hundred percent. I mean, it's different, right is changing. Does it work today like it worked yesterday? A hundred percent. I mean, it's different, right? Like when I first started on Instagram, it was like the heyday of Instagram, but it was also a different kind of numbers game. Like when I first started, if you've got 10,000 followers, you are mega famous. Like the numbers have changed. The principles have always stayed the same. The algorithm has changed. The principles

have always stayed the same. We helped a client last year grow from zero followers to 500,000 in six months. And that was just last year. She's called Evita Social on Instagram. You'll check her out, but just following exactly what I told you just here. There's no extra stuff. That's it. That is wild. Okay. Rhonda, will you please do the 10 by 10 for me and for Lori? All right. Perfect. Okay. That's brilliant. Before we start to ask, let them ask questions. I want to talk about something that I think is most important and something we're always working on here. And that is making sure you're living a good life while you build a good business. And I feel like you and Steven do this so well. And for context, I want to line it up this way. I already teed it up as behind the scenes, you're the real deal, as happy as anybody I know, and as healthy as anyone I know,

and as kind as anyone I know. But then in addition to that, you guys still get to take the trips to Europe that you want to take. You still get to spend the time together that you want to take. You both stay well above average healthy. And you guys are just living a life that I think a lot of people would aspire to live while building big businesses. And you guys probably may or may not know, but Steven is the founder of two different businesses as well. One of them, a very large tech company. To be in a house divided with two different, well, multiple different businesses, similar to Lori and I, but to still pull off a great marriage and being great parents. What are some of your tips? What are some of the boundaries? What are some of the things that you do to accomplish that? Oh, I could talk about this all day. I want to talk a little bit about

the idea of golden handcuffs, because I think every single one of us will relate to this. When you're really good at what you do, like every single one of you is, when you have so much potential, it is very, very challenging to intentionally slow yourself down. To know you could launch next month and make that million. You could say yes to that opportunity and double your business. You could take on those extra 10 clients very easily

and like we all could do this. And I call it the golden handcuffs right it is almost it's for a lot of people they might think well I'd love to be good at something right you're all very very good at something and you you can see your potential you all even this morning I was listening you're all writing your roadmaps of exactly what it'll take to build your businesses to scale to do all of those things. That's amazing. But I think one of the hardest things to do as entrepreneurs in our position

is to intentionally slow down and to scale intentionally or choose not to scale. So talking about this, you know, previously for me, I was just on this constant next, next, next, bigger, bigger, bigger. There was always another opportunity. There was always another launch. I could always be growing my team. Like there was always a thing. There was always an invitation, another room I could be in. There was always something. And I felt like if I say no, maybe I'll become irrelevant. Maybe no one will invite me to things anymore.

Maybe my business will just disappear overnight and I'll have nothing, right? All of that inner talk that really, realistically is very unlikely to happen. But we tell ourselves those stories. Oh, I have to say yes to the dinner. I have to get in the room. I have to hit my goals this quarter, right? That's all our inner voice. No one is actually telling us we need to do those things. And when I realized that, everything changed

because I realized what was important to me was to be really happy. And I realized I was already happy. The next goal, the next million, the next this, the next that, this room, this person, this instruction, this network wasn't going to make me any happier than I already was. In fact, it was probably going to make me feel more stretched, therefore letting people down, more guilty. And I really intentionally decided that I'm going to put my priorities first and I'm

going to scale very intentionally. And it is a practice that I have to reel in almost every single month because there's always a new thing.'s always a new invitation there's always a new idea that you get in the shower always always and that's never going to stop but my work has been to intentionally say yes to the things that fully feel like a yes and know what is important to me and it's changed everything for me and I know what's important to me is the family that I'm building, my marriage, my health and my fulfillment but my business doesn't come above any of those things and when you start to say no it's like a muscle, it's really uncomfortable and it doesn't always get easier but when when you start to do it, you start to feel so much more in alignment with your happiness and what feels good for you.

You've got a great no muscle. Lori has developed a great no muscle. I have not developed my no muscle well enough yet. And so I see right in my own household, the friction it causes because I'll say yes to things and sometimes loop Lori in and she's like, I want to say yes to that. And so you've really got to be aligned in your household or in your business partnership with both of you building a appropriate no muscle. How have you and Stephen

dialed that in? Lots of coming back to thinking in decades. So I remember getting the chance to interview Tony Robbins. And this was when I was thinking about having a baby. And I was like, Tony, when do I know it's the right time? Like, you know, I've got all these things on and like, I just don't know when I'd fit in the window. And he said, the big mistake you're making is you're thinking in terms of like months and years, you should be thinking in terms of decades. And he said, you've just turned 30. Is your 30s the decade that you want to build a family? I was like, well, yes. And he said, so why does it matter whether it's now or next year? It's like, yep, that makes sense. And so that's how me and Stephen think about it. We think about

this in decades and we think about our 30s being the time that we are focused on family. And yes, we love building businesses. It's always going to be part of us, but we know what comes first in this decade. And our 40s, our kids are off to school and we've got a bit more time and we we thought about what that looks like and we try to hold each other accountable to that and of course it's not always perfect it doesn't always look perfect but we lean on each other we have jesse itzler has this thing called a big ass calendar it's freak it's so ugly oh my god it's the best it's so ugly though you have put it somewhere that you kind of hide in in your house. We sit down and we do this big ass calendar and we map out and we try to make sure that our stuff doesn't overlap, you know, and he'll cancel conferences if it,

if it conflicts with something I've got and I'll cancel retreats if it conflicts with something he's got. And we try to work in tandem like that. And that really helps too, but we're not perfect for sure, but decades really helps. That's awesome. Thank you for that. And that really helps too, but we're not perfect for sure, but decades really helps. That's awesome. Thank you for that. That even helped me like thinking in decades. That's really cool. All right, guys, I don't want to dominate the whole time. I want to make sure you're getting what you need out of this. All right. So who's got the first one. I want you to go back to, um, last summer. My question is having your team, they were in a state of burnout. You were in a state of burnout and you had them

go back to the four day work week. Could you break that down a little bit more for me? What did you do and how did you write the ship so that the results were, you blow the doors off on the profitability and everything? Yeah. Oh, I love this question. So I decided I was doing a Euro summer last year. Like I don't want to work all week. So we're going to cut everyone's hours down. And it really was just, you get the work done that you need to get done. And you know, if it's less than four days a week, great. If it's four days, great. What we did was we had these funnels already built in our business.

One for an influencer school program we have, and one for a program called Online Launch School. These are just 997 courses that are great. The content's great. And we decided, okay, all we're going to do this summer is just think about where we're going. And we're going to spend time thinking, and we're also just going to keep the ship going, right? So we're going to keep the podcast coming out weekly. We're going to make sure the newsletter goes out somewhat weekly. We'll honor the spots that we've assigned to our partners. Like things just have to

run in a rhythm. That was like the bare minimum. And then in terms of revenue, what we decided to do was, and this was a game changer if any of you have got funnels built. So let's say I was running my influencer school funnel. I would have people sign up for my webinar. They would attend and either buy or not attend, not buy, right? So I had people that signed up, I had people that had bought and then I had a good chunk of people, maybe 90% of people that didn't buy. That summer I decided, well, I've got this 90% of people

who told me at some point they were interested in growing their Instagram, but they didn't buy. So what I did was I dropped them all back into the funnel from the beginning. I didn't change a single email. It literally said, thanks for signing up for the webinar. Here's the webinar. And then it took them through the whole deadline sequence that generated multiple six figures of revenue with literally just a single drop in the automation. We did the same thing for online launch school. We didn't

change any emails, which to my previous self would have been like, this is ridiculous. Like it needs to be relevant. It needs to be fresh. Like I'm sure Danielle's name's still in there and she's not with the company anymore. And I let go of all of it. And I was like, done is better than perfect. And keeping this business going and keeping our sanity is way more important than things looking polished and perfect. It worked so well. So really what I was doing there, I was thinking about what have I already done that can serve where I'm going? How can I do the bare minimum from a revenue perspective so that I can actually free time up to think and to have my team think?

And it was really powerful. So drop people into that funnel. They probably won't forget and won't remember them being in a first time. And it really, really works. That's so simple. And you know what I think that speaks to? It's always a timing thing when someone buys, right? We think we've got to reconfigure the sales copy. No, it's really just comes down to, is it the right time or not?

I love that. All right. Next question. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about retention in the society and just any kind of strategies you have for membership retention that have worked really well. 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. Yes, so with retention, I still see it as a sales thing. In my membership, yes, it's recurring revenue, but I believe my job is to sell to my members every single month. And so we put together a simple newsletter that every single month we'll share all of the new content. And we won't just say this has dropped. We'll make a really big deal of it as if we're like launching to people that don't know what the society is and we share testimonials so

we share what people are actually getting out of the society when they're paying attention to it and so that's a really really simple thing that we do that really really helps another thing that we did to increase ltv was we started doing more annual than monthly so we used to allow people to join monthly and it was great but I had to be so dialed into my numbers all the time last year I wasn't in the space for that so we decided let's do annual only and we made so many of the bonuses for an example annuals get 50 plus templates unlocked right away. Monthlies get one template unlocked per month. So it's a no brainer for people to upgrade to annual. So even if someone joins monthly,

the first thing I do is I try and upsell them into annual and all throughout the program, I'm having them be upsold into it. So those are the main things that I do. The simplest thing you can do is a newsletter and really resell to your audience. And also anytime I'm doing a launch, you would think it might be wise to exclude people that are already members.

I actually love including them because I want them to remember why they signed up in the first place. When people are in that launch energy, they're so excited and it reignites that fire to jump into something. And so I keep them all on the list. I love it when they come to the webinars and I love at the end being like, oh, by the way, anyone in society, can you please just tell everyone how amazing it is? You've already got access to this. And then I also do surprise and delights every, every six months, I would say. One of the things

is raising the price significantly and then emailing all my current members saying surprise, your price will never, ever go up. Like adding things that they never thought was possible, just like surprising and delighting every now and then really helps. Love that. Can I piggyback on this one? If you're trying to grow a membership, get more bodies in, what would you say is the smartest way to do that? Is it what you explained before, just having great viral reels and using ManyChat or? Well, for membership growth, I love webinars because on a webinar, you can pitch the annual subscription probably way easier than you can pitch a monthly and you're going to get that strong LTV and that's what I really care about. So from the beginning, I've

always sold through a really great webinar funnel and the best way that I've done this, I believe every single membership should have a framework. We shouldn't have people joining something that's just like this infinite game. We want people to join and see a framework and they often will repeat through the framework, but there should be a structure. What I've seen with memberships is the best way to enroll people into the membership

is a webinar where you explain the framework and then at the end you say, okay, it's done for you in the membership. It's's super simple but it means that every time someone then enrolls into the membership they already understand the framework they understand why they're there and your onboarding process can be a little easier in terms of ongoing monthly membership I mean just mentioning it constantly on your podcasts and newsletters and viral reels, but it'll never move the needle as much as something like a big conversion event where you can get the annual members in will. So good. Next question. My question is about team. When you were going through the really hard stuff, I think you probably knew who you wanted or needed to get rid of. It doesn't make it any easier. But how long was the process for you to

decide to make those cuts? And how did you do that? Because I have a similar situation. I have a much smaller team, but I feel like I've given ample opportunities. I've talked to somebody in the room that works with teams. She's a team whisperer and I'm going to be talking more about that, but I just don't like the idea of getting rid of people, but I also don't like feeling taken advantage of. So any other thoughts around that would be great. And then also when you cut to four days a week, did you cut the pay too? Or did it stay the same? That was the other like little mini question I had. Okay okay I have two ways that I want to answer your question so the first thing that I did and anyone that's team

whisperer might be like this is really terrible advice I don't know but this is just what I did so so take this how you want to take this it was a really challenging time in the business I will say that very very challenging and a buyout's not an easy process to go through either. So everyone on the team felt it. Everyone knew not like things weren't okay. Right. The first thing that I did was I got on a team call and I basically said, this is going to be a really hard year. If you're in for that, cool. If you're not, please leave. And I was very, very direct about that. And I said, listen, we're going to make a lot of changes. There's a lot of answers you're going to want from me that I don't have for you. If you don't want to work with me, please leave. And I just very directly said that. And I was very

honest about how hard it was. And I was honest about needing to do what it took to protect everyone's jobs and how much I cared about my team, how much I cared about my community, the reason that we did all of that. But I said that first. Second to that was, and this is also a very honest answer, almost immediately my gut told me who I needed on the team and who I didn't. Based on where I wanted to go, based on state of the business, I pretty much knew. And my coach at the time was like, this is going to be really hard, but it would be easier if you just do it all in one go, because you can get it out the way. It's not too jarring for the rest of the team. And then you can move on. The people pleaser in me was like, I think I can just cut half of these people. And so I did that. And then I realized

I needed to do a second round of layoffs and I should have done it in the first place and I really wish I just sat down and got really clear on what that would look like and just did it all at once because then I can have a conversation with the rest of my team and say listen we've made the changes we need to make based on where we're going to go there are no more layoffs this is it we're now moving into the next chapter. But I kind of had two segments of that. I was like hoping and praying that a couple of people were going to work out. And I deep down knew that they weren't. And it was really, really hard. So like, I still almost cry almost every single time I let someone go. I don't know if that ever goes away. Second thing, pay. No, we didn't

change pay at all. Yeah. And I think we're going to, I've just set my team a goal. If we hit a certain goal this month, we're going to just cut down to a four day work week endlessly because I love it. So if my team, I know my team's listening on zoom. If you hit that goal, we're all going four days, but no, I didn't change the pay at all. I'm just a big believer that listen, if someone gets the job done that I'm paying them to get done, then I want to pay them for that. And it just has built a really great culture in my company of flexibility and of people knowing that they're valued and it's not necessarily about because you know 80% of my team I think are mothers too and I know that they value flexibility because I know I value flexibility and I want them

to feel like it's not the hours that they sit in front of the screen but it's actually the output that they have and I was able to kind of walk my talk with the four day work week by not changing pay by saying, no, you guys, I truly care about you having flexibility, just get your job done. And I would love to be able to do it ongoing and cut down to four days because I think it would just change everyone's quality of life so much. I totally agree. Is that the Europe in you where in America, we just work ourselves to death to no end. And in Europe, it's way more elegant. It's life first. Yeah. Is that, I think it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like expand on that a little bit. No, please. You have a beautiful perspective on this.

You know, you know, Lori and I are so close to Robin Kim Murgatroy and same thing. Like they're expats. They live over there. And they're like, we didn't realize how crazy we were. Would you expand on that? So crazy. Oh my God. Here's the thing. Whenever I'm back in America, because I've been here a decade now, I switch on my American, my inner American, you know, the one that eats lunch at the desk and like is walking while taking a meeting and like, everything's a multitask. I switch into my inner American while I'm here. And I have to really remind myself to slow down, but I'll tell you a story. I dated this French guy one time and he was amazing. And his dad was the CEO of one of the largest companies in Europe. And I was like, Oh my goodness. I want to know about your dad. Like, what does he do? And so I started getting really curious. He's like, do you want to date my dad?

I'm like, no, but I'm curious. And I started asking tons of questions about wait, but he's always home for dinner and he's always so present and he seems really calm. And I started asking tons of questions about, wait, but he's always home for dinner and he's always so present and he seems really calm. And I knew the size of the company that he was in charge of. And that changed my, and I was maybe 19 or 20, that changed everything that I thought I knew about business because he was managing to do it. And he had such a laid back approach to it. And I knew when he was at work, he was probably so laser focused. There was zero time for bullshit. I'm sure his no muscle was very, very strong, but he was always home for dinner. You always switched off on the weekends. He was very cool, calm and collected. And he wasn't on his phone 24 seven. And I just thought,

what an interesting perspective that there is another way to do it. And I'm such a big believer that we can do things differently and it's not do it. And I'm such a big believer that we can do things differently and it's not always easy. And I do think it requires building a lot of muscles, but it is possible and there is a different way. But when you're in the energy of other people working 24 seven, it's very hard to keep yourself grounded in it because you get texts all hours of the day, like so early in the morning, so late at night, on weekends, voice notes about business on a Sunday. I'm like, oh my goodness, it's a lot. And you need to not judge them or get angry at them for sending that to you. Your responsibility is whether you answer

or not. Your responsibility is whether you're on your phone or not. It's nothing to do with anyone else and you get to allow them to be in their energy and work on their flow, but you need to strengthen those boundaries in yourself. So good. So good. Great answers. I wanted to get more tactical about your real strategy for lead magnets in particular, and also to hear about the welcome funnel. You said you dropped them into a brief welcome funnel. I'm also curious if you're adjusting that like based on the different lead magnet. So right now my main strategy is a PDF with a webinar on the thank you page. So I post my money chat reel and then I have them comment a word, they get a PDF and on the thank you page, once they've signed up, they sign up to a webinar. Ideally they sign up and that's the funnel that

they go into. If they don't, we would just drop them into, hi, I'm Natalie. This is what we do. This is what you can expect from us. And then there's a newsletter. But that's the main strategy. I also then, if they sign up for the PDF and they don't sign up for the webinar on the thank you page,

I'll email them again to get them to sign up for the webinar. That works really, really well for us. So typically on my reels, I'll have, say, four PDFs and a webinar. Those are the five entry points into the funnel. They're all around the same topic, but it's different entry points based on where people are at in their journey. And whether, so if someone doesn't know me well enough to hop on a 90 minute training with me, they're probably still happy to download a quick viral reels guide or something like that. So that really, really works. So I have a two-prong question. When you are podcast convert podcast, you said that that's sort of like the general philosophy. I'm curious if there's anything you do when you guest on

podcasts to make sure you're converting as many people as possible to your podcast. And then my second prong of the question is if there's any podcasts you've gone on that you felt like had an outsized conversion based on what you would have expected. So one thing that I try and do when I'm on podcasts is instead of at the end, be like, okay, if you like this, go to my podcast. I try and just seed it into conversation. Oh my God. I love that you asked me that. I actually just did a full episode on my podcast. I think this is the name of it. I really seed it very naturally into the conversation that really, really helps in terms of podcasts that had an outsize, honestly, I'm not that great at tracking the data. I just

say, yes, the ones I actually want to go on. So I couldn't say, I mean, Laurie's podcast crushes every single time we do swap. We do add swaps on each other's podcasts and that's amazing. I think that really moves the needle, but I couldn't say, yeah. I think if I could just add to that, I think the best thing you could do is get together with a group of peers. So meaning similar audience and similar style podcast and just do bumpers for each other's show on the podcast. I think nothing else moves the needle better than that. I completely agree. And it can be that simple. Lori actually told me something. She had this idea and it was amazing. Was we hopped on a zoom for 20 minutes. My idea. Oh, is it yours? Okay. Your idea then have you, have you told them this idea? Okay.

Okay. So, um, we hopped on a zoom for 20 minutes, Lori's idea. Um, and she was like, I'm so grateful that you just hopped into the show. Can you just share one bit of wisdom that you think my audience would really like before I get into the show? And I shared something, and then I did the same thing for her episode. And we aired that at the beginning of one of our episodes. And it basically was instead of Lori just saying, hey, go follow the Bossay podcast. It was, here's my friend Natalie. Here's a bit of wisdom from her. And then if anyone resonated with that, they would come to my podcast. So it was a very good idea. My question is more personal than tactical. We have four kids.

We spent our first decade in our 20s having kids. And now I feel like we're doing everything backwards, right? Like most people do their business and then have kids. So I love everything you're saying about like saying no, you know, all that. We do a lot of that. I feel like we naturally have a four day work week. However, our business is not where we want it to be or even need it to be really to like fully support the lifestyle that we want to live. So what would you, what advice would you give? I guess like I'm having, we have this struggle with balance of

like, oh yeah, we need to say no, we need to prioritize things that are important. However, we also need to grow our business. What is your business? We do corporate video for small business. And how do you get clients? Mainly referral, word of mouth, but also through marketing, Instagram, social network. Do you do like any direct reach out or anything like that? Is there anything like you can see a direct, oh, if I do this, I get this? Yeah, we do a lot of reach out or anything like that? Is there anything like you can see a direct, or if I do this, I get this? Yeah, we do a lot of reach out through LinkedIn and stuff like that. Okay. Networking events are really big. Um, so my husband is here too. He, he's the one that mainly goes to those. So we like do a lot of divide and conquer, but yeah. Firstly, I applaud that you guys are running a business with four kids. That must be a whole experience. I'll be coming to you for advice. Okay. So one

thing that I often tell anyone that asked me this question is there's normally one number in your business that if you focus on it, you get results. And the reason I was asking about your business is I normally like to reverse engineer to cause and effect. So for me, for my business, I know that if I get webinar registrants, my business grows. Like I know if I get X amount of webinar registrants, I make money. And so if I'm speaking on podcasts, if I'm doing certain things, there's no direct correlation to how much money I'm going to make, how much my business grows. If I was in the stage where my business wasn't where I wanted it to be and it was a revenue

thing, I would only do things that move that one lever for me, that one number. And I I wanted it to be. And it was a revenue thing. I would only do things that, that moved that one lever for me, that one number. And I would say no to everything else. And then when you were at a place where you're like, okay, business is great. I can afford to do other things and kind of play and see what works and see what doesn't, then I would do those other things. So with you, with the reason I was asking about your business is every single one of you will have one number that it's it's like I know if I hit my KPI on that one number I make sales and my business is where I need it to be if it was for you for example DM reach out and you're like okay for every 15 people I reach out to I get five sales calls I get three clients if you had that full algorithm going then I would just spend my time on that one number because you're

busy and I'm sure you're like, okay, this is my one window. That's the one thing I would be doing. And this is often people like, don't expect me to say this because I'm like the one that's like, I love Instagram. I love social media. Often if your business isn't where you want it to be, that can be a distraction. And so I would focus on getting your business and your revenue to where you want it, where you want it to be so that you can focus on the nice to haves, which is often social strategy and things like that. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's excellent advice.

Super helpful. Thank you. Go back to the very beginning, because I love what you said, prioritize priorities and build around what's most important. In the very beginning at 30,000, 36,000 feet, how did you do that? Did you go through a specific process? I have a book that I journal. I have more ideas coming out of the last two days. Now I'm frozen. Was there one or two mistakes that you wouldn't repeat in prioritizing the priorities? Oh, that's a really good question.

A lot of people are surprised to hear that I hit my first seven figures with one $29 product. Oh, that's a really good question. A lot of people are surprised to hear that I hit my first seven figures with one $29 product. That's it. And I just focused, focused, focused to get it right and make it work. The mistakes that I made was getting distracted. Anytime I got distracted, anytime when someone says you're leaving money on the table, I'm like, great, keep it there. Cause there's so much more money on the table you're at. And so I love being able to leave events with tons of ideas. I absolutely love it. The one thing that I always do whenever I leave an event is I get ruthless about all my ideas because all ideas are great, but not every idea is meant for you right now. And I maybe pick one or two and I star them and like, that's what I'd

focus on. But everything else I close the book and I'm like I'm so grateful for that experience I'm going to come back to it when it's when it's time for this and focus on your one thing and so the best thing that I ever did was I was like okay I know I want to create a membership that's the thing that I want to do so I had the idea for the membership I built it out and I'm like okay now I know I need to sell it so let me figure out how to sell it and it wasn't like an overnight thing like I knew I should do webinars and I know I need to sell it. So let me figure out how to sell it. And it wasn't like an overnight thing. Like I knew I should do webinars and I knew I should do it like this. It was a lot of trying and testing and seeing what worked. But as soon as I found a system that got me clients

and was predictable, I was like, that's it. I'm going to go all in on that because if it's predictable, it's scalable and I can get it where I want it to be. And I just stayed so laser focused. And, you know, people would say, can you create this? I would so join this if you did it. All of the things, it was just no, no, no, no. I'm just going to go all in on this. So yeah, distraction is a huge

mistake. Great question. Great answer. Who's got the next one? Curious for you, like when you were building your community, like your boss babe community community and there's like create and cultivate, like there's all these different things going on that are similar. How did you like balance that and kind of stay in your lane? Like, and kind of like maintain momentum. I know for myself, like I'm building a, like a female community in Canada. We don't have a lot of like these types of things out there. And, um, I, you know, there's other things that pop up and I'm like, oh shit, then maybe I shouldn't do this. Like if someone else is doing this, like, how did you maintain such like posture in that? So the first thing I did was I found traction. So I found traction in what worked for me in terms of tone of voice, messaging, content format, all of that. I found

traction. And a lot of that was seeing what other people were doing. How are other people growing communities? What does that look like? I really looked around for inspiration and I started to try my own things and see what got traction. As soon as I started to get traction, blinders went on. And a lot of people have copied me, continue to copy me. I mean, I see it every day. And I look at that and I, and I wish I could message them saying, this is going to hold you back because if they are copying, they are going to be behind. If they are copying, they're always looking for what's next. I never did that. And yes, it's great to take inspiration from what other people are doing. And if something's not

working for you and you're not getting traction yet, go and take inspiration because success leaves clue. And none of us invented the game. None of us invented webinars, marketing, virality. None of us invented any of that. We all took inspiration from somewhere. But when you find traction on what works for you, I truly believe that's the time to put blinders on because you start to think more in first principles. You start to think a little bit differently in my space specifically there was a route that a lot of people followed I'll get super honest with you guys that was like I was seeing the girl girl boss was like our biggest competitor at the time and they were signing these huge partnership deals with these huge brands and I was like oh my god that's the direction they're going and I would I would look at their website traffic

compared to mine and it was so much higher and they had all this SEO stuff and all this stuff that I didn't understand and I thought okay well I need to build an editorial team because that's what they're doing I need to build a partnerships team because that's what they're doing and I went and did that and I got distracted from the thing that I know best and the thing that I'm best at I got a rude awakening when COVID hit and Girlboss went under because Sophia came on my podcast and was very open about this. She had a $10 million contract sitting on her desk, ready to be executed. COVID hit and the partner pulled out. Her entire business went under. That was a huge awakening for me of just because someone has more experience

than me doesn't mean I should follow in their footsteps and copy what they're doing. And I thought I was leaving money on the table. When I say these things, I'm like, oh no, I literally have been down all these paths. And I thought that I should have been doing that. But actually what I was really, really good at was organic social media content, building community, online marketing. That's what I should have been focused on. And I allowed myself to get distracted and I was stretched so thin because I was doing the thing I was really good at to pay the bills for everything else to fund everything else that I thought I should be doing now I just do the thing that I want to be doing and it's so simple but it's so much more scalable I hope that helps

you can speak to this um hopefully I'm in the infancy stages of maybe dissolving a partnership. I spoke with Chris about this. And having gone through that, how would you start that process or how would you navigate it in a way to hopefully go through the process without causing turmoil or even more stress than I know that probably will happen. Like, how can you make that process smooth or give me some tips to kind of make it an easier process? Just for clarity, are you, you're like dissolving a business or your partnership's going in a different direction? I feel like our goals are not aligned anymore. Right. And so. I can't give you more context. They have an incredible

high-end luxury med spa in Tampa and now multiple locations. But the gentleman that helped back her when she started, they both put in equal amounts of money, may not be the right person to keep growing with. Okay. I could answer this in so many different ways. What I think is most important throughout this whole process, and it might get really hard, you know, this was one of the hardest things that I've ever been through, it might get really, really hard, do your own work behind the scenes. Whenever you show up to a call, be calm, be kind, be respectful, and hold yourself in a way that when all of this is said and done, you can be really proud of the way that you showed up. And by no means does that mean you become a doormat and

you allow yourself to get walked over. What it means is before every negotiation call, you are clear on what matters to you and what outcome is going to work for you and what outcome isn't going to work for you. And what can happen in negotiations like this is when emotions get heightened, you can kind of get off track, right? It can become a tit for tat or you get so annoyed that it goes down a completely different path and you forget what you really wanted out of the conversation. What really works is doing your own nervous system works that when you show up to a call, no matter what gets thrown at you, you remain calm. You can do whatever you want when the call ends. If you want to go crazy, you go crazy, but you remain calm. You hear what's being said, you reflect back so you fully understand, and then you proceed knowing what you want your

outcome to be. You know, if you keep getting pushed in a certain direction that doesn't feel good for you, you pause. No one needs a response from you right away and you certainly don't need to give a response on the call. You say, I don't know if that's going to work for me. Let me think about it. You come back, you do your own work. All of this is going to be your own stuff, your own nervous system regulation,

your ability to stay calm in those rooms. And ultimately, if you can go into this really respecting that other person, being grateful for what they have supported you in this journey so far and wanting a great outcome for them, you'll land in a good place. And even when it's hard seeing that person

for the good person that they are, even when their emotions are heightened, wanting, they say in conscious leadership, in negotiations, if you can go in looking for a win for all, it's a really good mindset to go in with. But it's not easy. And there's going to,

you probably are going to need to get a lot of support outside of those calls. So lean on and get as much support as you possibly can. That's great advice for any kind of negotiation that you guys go through. That's really good strategic advice.

I'll piggyback to that. What would you say is more important? The number that you settle on finally, or the way in which you settle on it? And the speed in which you settle on it? I don't know if it's like, if either one of them is more important to me. I think it's going to be a mix of all. I think you have to fully understand what you want, because if you just want it done fast, you have to be willing to settle for something lower than

you're happy to settle for. If you want it to be done easy, you're going to have to settle for a number less. But if that matters to you more than the number, then that's what you should care about. But if this number, for whatever reason, is really important to you, then that's what you should care about. But if this number, for whatever reason, is really important to you, then that's what's important to you. But you have to be willing to go through the length and go through the emotions that come with it. I think it would be great if it felt really good and it was fast and you got the outcome you wanted. So going there with kind of a scale of like, here's my absolute bottom, right? And that bottom still feels good. I'll feel like, you know what, that's fair.

And here's the top. Go in like that, but you have to know what matters to you first. So good. All right. Last couple of questions here. In the respect of you being such a well-rounded CEO from emotionally intelligent to financially intelligent to negotiation and marketing and kind of all of the suite of skills that you need to be really good at that role. What are you doing to grow that part of yourself? Because so much of that happens when nobody's looking, right? Like all of it happens really when nobody's looking. Are there like podcasts or books or a therapist or a coach or like what are the things that you do to create a well-rounded version of you all of the above firstly thank you I really appreciate you saying

that all of the above yes but what I realized early on was there are a lot of things that I didn't fully understand and were uncomfortable to me and it would be very easy to outsource to get someone who could answer the questions for me, who could jump in, who could handle it. And then I wasn't learning about the process. I used to have that with legal. Like my brain doesn't work in a way that like really can read contracts.

And so I let that be an excuse for a long time that I get a lot of help reading contracts. And I had to stop doing that because reading contracts is really important. And so it's things like that, that I just have to allow myself to get really, really comfortable with, be really open and honest with people that I'm going to ask for support from. I'm not good at this. Can you, can you help me? And asking a lot of silly questions. Like I would ask for help with contracts and they would say, well, you need to look at this and do the, why, what does that mean? I don't fully understand that.

And like, even on calls with my lawyer, I'll ask really silly questions because I want to understand enough that I could do it again. I could replicate it. So that really, really helps me. I'm like always willing to look silly. Even with my team, I learned so much from my team and I'll ask questions that maybe they expect that I know the answer to, but I don't. And I'm leaning on them to help me. I ask those questions. Also, I do love to read. I really, really do. I try. And every single morning, even if it's, I mean, you know, with toddlers, it's chaos, but even if I can get 15 minutes in on a morning, reading something that helps me up level really, really supports me. I like to think about it. And then I also like to think like, I love to have time on my calendar where I'm actually just thinking and putting space in.

All of that wrapped up in a bow of, I take full responsibility for myself. I don't expect that I should be good at something just because I have the experience in it. I don't put the responsibility on other people for anything else. Like even when we're talking about negotiations, like if I lose my shit on a call, that's's on me that's not anything anyone did to make me lose my shit I take full responsibility for everything and that then pushes me to the books and the podcasts and the coaches and the therapists of which I have many thankfully that makes sense the Sean yesterday said uh uh he wants a team of people that are experts of becoming experts and it kind of sounds like you became an expert of becoming an expert so love that thank you i think i saw a hand or two over here i am curious uh i'm really interested in your sort of like viral reel formula for filling your

funnel i was curious if you might be open to giving an example of like okay so like this is one of the top like this is one of the pdf topics so like here's how i thought about structuring a specific reel to kind of meet that formula and maybe if you have one in mind and they could pull it up and you'd be like here was my hook here was my this not to put you on the spot or anything if i can grab my phone okay so i'm gonna there's this one reel in particular that i'll go to if you go to my page at I am Natalie it is the reel it looks like I actually have a reel with your wife in Mike like that what that I use my launchpad is great so this is one reel and it is me sitting at a table and it says it looks like

this this one tool has consistently generated me $2,739 per day for the last six years. You can see, see this reel. It's a great hook. So I did two things in this reel firstly that really, really worked. The first thing is I opened a visual hook. What a visual hook is, is someone wants to keep watching to see what happens, right? So it can be as simple as you start pouring your coffee and you're making a latte. Like we want to close the loop as human beings. So I want to see you finish making your coffee. What this was, as I was sitting at the table at my company retreat and someone filmed me and then panned around the room, this opens a visual hook because people want to see what the room looks like. Like if you open that hook right away, they want to finish it off. So that was the first thing that I did. The second thing, I just had a really, really good

verbal hook. And that was this one tool that is creating intrigue has consistently generated me. And I separated that from the below text, because if I put this all together, that would be overwhelming. This one tool has consistently generated me. That's that on its own. And then underneath $2,739 per day for the last six years, I kept that really clear. And then towards the end of the reel, I think it was a six second reel. That's a really good sweet spot for this kind of reel. At the five second mark, I put a word, I put read caption. So this is the reel. So what that did was I already knew the visual hook was going to have people watching it to the end, which tells Instagram this is relevant content. Read caption means they're going to watch all the way to the end to get the information.

Then I click read caption. They're going to engage with it. They're going to read the caption. So when they click on that caption, I pull in the hook. I give a little bit and then I give the call to action, which is comment playbook for the playbook. This one has 7,246 comments. A couple of things I did with that. On ManyChat, when you're setting up these reels, one of the features you can activate is that when someone comments playbook, yes, you will

automatically send them the playbook and the DMs, but you can automatically comment back to them and it can say something like, check your DMs, sending your way now, all of those things. What that does is let's say 100 people comment on it because I automatically comment back instantly 100 comments turns into 200 comments. That tells Instagram this is relevant information. So all I'm doing with every reel that I'm creating is this is relevant information, this is relevant information so it gets shown to more and more people. So this reel in particular was going to a webinar. So you comment the word playbook and it would get you signed up for a webinar. On the webinar, I sold a $3,000 product. This one in particular, I got 7,246 comments. Half of those was how many

leads I got. So this reel made tens of thousands of dollars and it was completely free and that's all I did and I'll share one more just to like give an example of another hook and something that worked really really well for us so I did this one I was just sitting doing writing b-roll like this is really really powerful because people like to just see what you're doing in your day-to-day lives like we resonate with really organic content and then the hook was what was the secret to unlocking seven figures and I quickly said under that it's not what you think again I just open a hook for someone that they have to close and I give a little bit of value in the reel and And then I have them directed to the caption. That also worked really, really well.

Guys, round of applause for Natalie.