Speaker 1: When I started Boss Babe, it grew very, very quickly and we were one of the first in the industry. And we had all these eyes on us on Instagram and these female empowerment quotes and I, without realizing it, jumped into playing a status game. I felt like I couldn't really show the realness behind the scenes because there was this Boss Babe facade.
Speaker 2: I've got a great episode for you today. It's with Natalie Ellis, the founder of Boss Babe, who has created over a $100,000,000 in revenue and serves a community of over 5,000,000. She really knows what she's doing when it comes to business, and we do talk about that. However, we talk about something that I think, and I think she would agree, is a lot more important. And that is the inner game of freedom.
Because no amount of financial freedom, no amount of time freedom really matters if you don't have the inner freedom to fully be present with it and enjoy it. We talk about the behind the scenes of her marriage and how they have created fair play, mothering her background from a difficult upbringing to creating a level of freedom and abundance that most would only ever dream of. And I especially love the part where we got into why it is that she was able to do that, and what it was about her personally that's different. So I think you're gonna absolutely love this episode with Natalie Ellis. Welcome to Plenty, a weekly recalibration of power, money, and safety for high capacity humans.
I'm Kate Northrup, best selling author and creator of Relaxed Money, and this is where neuroscience meets ancient wisdom meets real wealth strategy. This is the sacred conversation at the intersection of money, the body, and the life you're truly here to live. If you're ready to reimagine what's possible for yourself and for the world, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hi, Natalie.
Hi. Thanks for coming.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited that we're doing this.
Speaker 2: We actually did I mean, it's not really part one of this episode, but it was earlier this year that it came out Mhmm. Actually, because I had sat on that recording for a really long time. So you're back, and I'm so happy to have you. You've got this brand new book out. Well, actually, it's in preorder the day this comes out, but it's it's out.
The Freedom Based Business Method, Reset, Systemize, and Realign Your Business to Live a Life of Harmony. And here's what I love about you. Many things. But one of them is you are one of the few people who I consume content from who really feels like you are telling I mean, of course, we're not always gonna tell all the things, but a lot more of the truth than other folks are. You don't seem to be as much selling some sort of illusion of perfection, and I really appreciate that.
So that's number one. You. And I'm curious, was there a moment along the way since you started Boss Babe? Obviously, it's had many iterations, and I think we got into quite a bit of that in the first episode. And and I know you also tell some of that story in your book.
Was there a moment where it could be recent, could be longer ago, I don't know, where you started to give yourself permission to talk about the things that you thought might make people uncomfortable or come after you or even possibly deflect sales? Or you know what I mean? Like, was there a moment?
Speaker 1: So interesting because I haven't talked about this, but there was actually more of an intentional switch into this. Because when I started Boss Babe, it grew very, very quickly, and we were one of the first in the industry. And we had all these eyes on us on Instagram and these female empowerment quotes, and I, without realizing it, jumped into playing a status game because it it was I was young when we started this, and I didn't expect it would take off as much as it did, and all of a sudden, there's so many eyeballs watching. I felt like I couldn't really show the realness behind the scenes because there was this Boss Babe facade, you know? Everyone will remember the iconic pink quotes, just very tongue in cheek, very sassy, very direct, and it was like an alter ego.
I could write from that place, no problem, and I put that alter ego on, and it really worked for me. It got me those results, but I never really showed the me behind the brand. I didn't even think about my own personal brand for a really, really long time. It was all boss babe, boss babe, boss babe. And I think I was quite worried that if I got a bit too real, I would lose the potency of the brand.
And a few years ago when I ended up, you know, I burned the whole business down, fully bought out the whole thing myself and decided to do it very differently, I was at a point in my career where truthfully, I didn't really need to work. It was very much a choice. And that's, for me, was a hard choice having a baby at home and still in that season. It felt like if I was gonna choose to work, it had to really mean something and be worth it and feel really authentic to me, and I just decided, you know, fuck it. If I'm not gonna enjoy it, I'm not gonna do it, So I started to be more honest, and I really think people relate to that so much more.
And I I had this fear that I would dilute the brand, and what I see is I actually think we have strengthened the brand. Our open rates are even better than they've ever been. I feel like I have more connection with my community than ever. I know the people that email in, I recognise their names, I know who they are, I know why it resonates with them, and so it just feels a lot more freeing to me than playing this status game. When I lived in LA, we had this big office and this huge team, and everything always had to look a certain way.
And also, I had a partner too, so it wasn't like I was the only person saying what goes with the brand. There were certain things I wanted to talk about way back when I remember on my own personal account certain things that weren't deemed brand appropriate, like plant medicine and things like that, and so I never did, I never got the chance to, whereas fully owning it, I can do that, and so there's really been no excuse, but it's been an interesting journey because a lot of people reflect that back to me now of, wow, you're very honest.
Speaker 2: It's the best. Is there an email that you've written recently, like over the last six months or so, that you were worried to press send on? There was one,
Speaker 1: the trad wife one. I wrote an email where I admitted that for a while, I got swept up in this. I don't know how it happened, this trad wife algorithm that almost had me believing that to be happy, I needed land and chickens, and I needed to make everything from scratch. And what's so funny is I've been on social media for a really long time, and I still got fully swept up in the highlight reel thinking, oh, yeah, maybe I do just need more grounding. The kids need more outdoor time.
It's really good for them to have chicken. Like, all of this, I was just inundated by this algorithm, and I wrote an email about it as I sat with that whole concept. Know, me and my husband, we looked at tonnes of land. We were replaying. What about this lifestyle, this lifestyle, trying a bunch of different things on?
And I found it really hard to figure out what I wanted. When I became a mom, I feel like it tipped my whole identity on its head. I had been chasing success for such a long time. I reached quote unquote where I wanted to go, then become a mom. Everything turned on its head.
I didn't know who I was, what I wanted, where I wanted to live, how I wanted to spend my time, anything, and I kinda let other people's ideas of idealism become mine. And I wrote an email about that. I actually got really swept up in that, and when I looked at it, I realized I've got no business tending to chickens. That would be I'd be terrible at it. I'd I'm terrified of bugs and snakes.
I have allergies. Right? I'm not the one to be out there in a chicken coop. Yeah. I'm not the one.
And that was an interesting email to write because it was very much an honest I got fully swept up in this to a point of I started believing everyone else's ideas were my own, and here's where I've landed. And it was this thing of I don't know what the how to describe it. I'm definitely interested in tradwifing, and I'm also not interested in girl bossing my way to the sun. There's somewhere in between where I'm really learning to balance my ambition and growth with presence and being in the season that I'm in, which is not easy, and I don't have an answer as to what that looks like. And it felt really illuminating and vulnerable to to admit that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you're at a point, and you've written about this and you did just say it, where you don't need to work. Right? You and your family could chill. And that's an unusual thing being, I think, you're in your early to mid thirties?
Yeah.
Speaker 1: Day
Speaker 2: four. Okay. Great. Like, I'm guessing. I don't know.
And so I would have
Speaker 1: been really upset if you were like, your early forties?
Speaker 2: No. I knew you were like a decade younger than me. That was yeah. I feel like a like a like a little bit of an older sister in terms of like the mom journey. Not so much in terms of the business journey, just the mom journey.
Speaker 1: Great. I need all the help
Speaker 2: I can Just being like a girl mom with two girls about the same age difference, it's yeah. It's a whole thing. Straight up, why do you work when you don't need to, especially when you have these two little girls? And I know you've made some really beautiful choices or that's a judgment, but they're I think they're beautiful choices around intentionality with how much time you're with them. You know, here on this podcast interview, your baby's here.
I mean, none in the studio with us, although if she was, that would be great. The number of things I've done, like, wall nursing or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm just curious. Why why do you keep going? What's in there?
Speaker 1: The truth is I am not completely fulfilled full time mothering, and that's just it for me. I tried it, and it wasn't for me. I really love my work. I love to write. I absolutely writing my emails is my highlight of my week, in a work sense.
I absolutely love to work. I love to grow. I love to learn. I love to earn money. I love to challenge myself creatively.
That all feels like a really big part of my identity, and that doesn't mean that I don't love motherhood. I absolutely adore being a mom, but I'm not fulfilled by sitting on the floor playing for eight hours. I'm really that's not for me. And so I feel like a better mom when I give myself time to play at work. That feels really good and then pour into the kids outside of work.
When I have been all in on mothering and really full time there, I just noticed there's always this itch of, like, wanting to learn, wanting to even, you know, when I'm was sitting with Romy in the early postpartum days, I fully took off of work, and I still have that itch to, like, listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos and journal on ideas. It's just a really big part of me, so I feel like I need it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you did give yourself a chunk where there was nothing you had to do Yeah.
Speaker 1: Work wise. I was off completely for twelve weeks. I didn't didn't do a single thing. I paused my podcast for seven months. It just came back two weeks ago, and we just got a nanny, a part time nanny for Romy two weeks ago as well.
Okay. So I've given myself a lot of time to ease back into it. I had a lot of choice there, and the more that I've eased back into it, the more that I realize I just absolutely love it, and I'm figuring out what that looks like for us.
Speaker 2: For so many people, for so many women entrepreneurs, I'll say the make or break is who you decide to marry if you're gonna marry. That's not the choice everyone has to make. But if you decide to get married or be in long term partnership with somebody, the make or break is who you choose. So I'm curious. Can you talk to me about your family constellation at home in terms of the the parenting and the working and how you two do that dance and some of your agreements around it?
Speaker 1: Oh, we've lived many seasons in our marriage.
Speaker 2: Yes. We'll continue to do so.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll give you a little bit of context on my So when Steven was 19, he became a professional video game player. He was one of the best players in the entire world, and he did that for a few years, ended up going to Meta to build out gaming, was one of their first hires there, and had this really, really big career before I even met him. So we met when I was 24, he was 25, he was working with Meta still. We got married four months after we met.
It was very, very fast. Yeah. And I had put together a bunch of savings. I had a company before Boss Baby put together all my savings, and things were going really well for me. Was really starting to get steady, and when we got married, I was on a student visa at the time, and I didn't realize that was illegal.
So I got told you have to let go of all your businesses, all of your content creation, everything. You cannot work until your green card came in, which took about a year and a half. So I blew through all of my savings, went back to absolutely having nothing, and Steven said, I really think so the Boss Babe Instagram account was started by someone called Alex. She's incredible. I had ended up taking over running it as a business for her, and Steven had said to me, think you should just buy Boss Babe.
Alex doesn't wanna do it. You really wanna do it. Here's the money, go buy it. And so he really helped me get started in that, and I went all in with Boss Babe within the first year of doing that. My green card came through the next day.
I pressed launch on a membership, and we did 1,200,000 that first year. We were growing at about 90,000 followers a month. It was so fast. He then seen my entrepreneurial journey and decided he wanted to try it. He went a different route into a VC backed company, and I was doing my Bootstrap company.
That became a very challenging dynamic for us because all of a sudden, our entire relationship had flipped. He was used to being the breadwinner. I was very supportive of him in his career. I'd pack all his suitcases. I was very, very supportive, and all of a sudden, everything flipped because my business was growing so much and demanding so much, and his was growing a lot slower, but he had all of these investors that were demanding a lot for him.
That was a really challenging point in our relationship where we didn't know how we fitted anymore, and I needed him to be the support. He did not wanna be the support, so we we danced that dance for a while. His company started really growing, and then we had our first baby. And I really struggled with you know, recovering from a very traumatic birth, breastfeeding around the clock, being the breadwinner of our family. My company was very demanding at the time, hence why I walked away from it.
Doing all of that, and he wasn't stepping in to do extra support. He will admit himself, he found that first year of becoming a dad very challenging. He didn't know where he fit. He wasn't used to supporting around the house. His business was very demanding because he had these investors, and that was a real challenging point in our relationship.
I would say that's probably the hardest point. We didn't have any structure, so we kind of kept going and fitting into where things could. He made a couple of acquisitions in his company, got it to a certain point where it was really it had grown to a certain point. He had offices in The UK. It would require him to travel there a lot, whereas with Boss Babe, I still felt like I had such a big opportunity, but I put the brakes on when I had Noemi, bought the company, slowed it all down, put the brakes on again when I got pregnant with Romy, and I just said to Steven, in a very honest conversation, we were in The UK because we were, you know, looking after Noemi on my own, heavily pregnant.
He's in the office dealing with tons of fires in The UK. We ended up having coffee one day, and I just said to him, this isn't working for me. This doesn't feel fair, and there'll be a lot of opinions hearing this, but it didn't feel fair. I had this amazing opportunity, and this business had provided so much for our family, yet here I was honestly feeling like I was holding everything, and I wasn't. He's always held a lot in the relationship, but that's how it felt to me, and it just felt unfair that I couldn't go at it because I was supporting his career still, and he sat with that, and he came to me a couple months later and he said, I've decided I'm gonna go all in on you.
This is this is the time for us to do this. I know I can bring a lot to your company. He is the most one of the best operators I've ever met in a company, and he said, I'm gonna go all on on you. I'm putting a pin in everything I'm doing. Let's do this.
I don't want you to have to slow down every time you're growing our family. I want you to do the creative stuff that you love, like writing the book, and you've built a business I can run. So he stepped in to do that. Wow. It's been the best thing that ever happened to our relationship.
And I hear a lot of advice about being the breadwinner, and it's not all about the money and all that, and it's not. It was never about the money, but it's about I want an equal partner in my relationship, and I didn't feel like I had it. It was really tricky to to feel that way because it felt like whenever the kids were sick, I wanna be there, but my business is the one that's demanding the most? That's not an easy position to be in. And I just kept saying to him, this doesn't feel fair.
It does not feel fair, and it was I was really, really happy when he said, let's let's do this, and it's been amazing because he's found his lane in the business, and he is growing and crushing and just running things in the way that I my brain doesn't. Yeah. And I'm getting a chance to be with the baby more, travel, talk about the book, podcast, do the creative stuff. Amazing. It feels like we're in a really good rhythm, but it hasn't been an easy journey.
And I I I was never able to find a lot of peace with things feeling unequal. That's just me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wasn't. I had no idea you two were working together. That's amazing. So now it's a family business.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's been since a little bit after Remi About was ten months now. Okay. So a little bit before she
Speaker 1: was born. Yeah. Amazing. Mhmm.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: And it feels really, really good to be a team in all things.
Speaker 2: It's you know, I tell a lot of people that I run my company with my husband as my business partner. We basically have since day one of our relationship, and many people are like, oh my gosh. I have no idea how you do that. I could never work with my spouse. And for when it's right, I cannot ever imagine not.
I don't I literally I'm like, how could we be do I would feel so disconnected and like, we'd have a lot of explaining to do about autism, but we are just we always know what's going on. We have this give and take. We're able to really have all this baked in understanding of seasons in the business, seasons in our family, and we ebb and flow together. And I think in in so many I was talking to a a really high level entrepreneur, and she was having some challenges because in her relationship, her partner just doesn't have the ambition and doesn't understand why there are these periods of time where she just has to, like, go hard. And anybody who listens to this show knows that I'm not, like, hustle, hustle, hustle, grind.
But there are seasons. You know, you're in a book launch
Speaker 1: There are seasons.
Speaker 2: Your foot is on the gas. It just is. Yeah. And to not need to explain that to your husband and not to need to have that, like, these layers of resentment built up. I mean, there's gonna be layers of resentment about whatever anyway, but like No.
At least not in that. So I love that for you guys. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's amazing. You're so right. It's like I always felt like I had to explain myself so much and say, well, I have to work late this night, and it was always a set of trade offs. Or we'd go on vacation, and he could never take a vacation because his company demanded so much, and it was really challenging.
Two entrepreneurs that are mega ambitious raising a family together, it's a lot of work. And if he hadn't have gone all in with me, I would have probably gone all in with him. I just felt like I was really desiring that partnership. It was also killing me because I was seeing the way he operates is the exact opposite to me, and that was a gap I've had in the business from day one. So to have that gap filled
Speaker 2: It's incredible. It's the most amazing Incredible. If you have a brain that works completely differently than your partner So different. It's such a blessing because there is no, like I don't know how it is with you guys, but with us, there's no nobody's stepping on each other's toes. Like, it's so obvious where our lanes are.
We would never get it confused. It's so obvious. I'm curious. Was this ever a conscious desire of yours? Or when you had that conversation of this is unfair, did Steven just come to this on his own?
Like, how did that transpire? It's always been a desire of mine.
Speaker 1: Okay. For a long time, it wasn't possible because I did have a partner, but since since I took the business on myself a few years ago, it's always been a desire, but I always knew it would have to be his idea because I never wanted him to to resent it. I always wanted it to be his idea. And so I'd say here and there, you know, I'm trying to hire this person. That feels impossible to hire because they are you, and I would make the jokes.
Settle. Yeah. But even when I said to him, and I'd said this feels unfair, and I'd said what is true for me is I feel like I want to scale a business right down so it feels really doable, because I don't want to feel like I'm carrying all this extra load in parenthood and the relationship, and it feels like such a shame because I love what I do, and he really sat with it. Because he had a big business, and it was a really Yeah. Big decision to do that, but it was his decision.
So, yes, I feel like I've planted seeds for many years, but it was always
Speaker 2: his decision.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Which it just had to be. I knew.
Speaker 2: It's so great. It's so great. I wanna talk to you about an email you wrote recently. This is the episode about your emails. Thanks for reading them.
I there's a few people that I really read most of their emails, and you're one of them. And there was a moment where you maybe it was just me, I don't know. But I feel like it was around January this year, you just started I felt like in many ways you were talking directly to me, and it has continued on, so I'm into it. Thank
Speaker 1: you. I have a picture of you up on my desk for my
Speaker 2: personal. And like,
Speaker 1: I think this is what Kate needs to But
Speaker 2: you talked about one about with this book launch, and you're out here, and I know you're making a lot of choices of things you are not doing. Because when it comes to book launch season, it feels like or it can feel like it's the only time that you have to say yes to everything because it's this one moment and can be so much pressure. And I know you're really diligent and discerning, and you say no to a lot of things, so we're gonna come back to that. But for now, I wanna talk about this email. And you said in it something along the lines of please correct the language, something along the lines of you've built this freedom based business, which is very true.
Maybe we can back up in a minute and come around to, like, what are some of those elements that have allowed that allowed for that. And then you also said you realize there's a part that's been running where you've been wanting to grow this grow these different accolades to feel chosen.
Speaker 1: Mhmm.
Speaker 2: And I that felt like the part where you said the quiet part out loud. I think that's running the show, I don't know, for everyone, but for, like, for mostly most of everyone. Mhmm. Yeah. What happened to make you aware of that pattern, and what had you feel courageous enough to say it out loud?
And how are you feeling with that today?
Speaker 1: Yeah. What had me say it out loud was when I was thinking about the book launch and thinking about my goals, there was one goal that I wasn't saying out loud to anybody, and that was I would love to hit the New York Times list. And I was so scared to say it out loud to anybody because I know there's a huge chance it won't happen. Like, there's such a small chance it might happen and a huge chance it might not, and it's For me, personally, it feels really scary to say a goal out loud to people that I care about and to people in my community to then publicly not hit it, And so I'd kept it quiet, and whenever I'm doing that, that's something that I need to pay attention to. I'm like, okay, Natalie, this is a growth moment.
Why are you hiding this goal? So as I started to say it, I started to explore with myself, where is that part coming from? Like, why would you like to hit the list? And I realized, oh, interesting. There's a part of me that subconsciously is still feeling like she's, like, not good enough or hasn't, quote, unquote, made it to this certain, you know, imaginary destination that we all are are walking toward, and hitting the list would be some external person saying, good job.
You did it. And I think I've chased that a lot of my life. I think, you know, I've chased the approval of so many people my entire life, and I've really wanted to feel that. And when I distilled that down, I realized I just wanted to feel like I've done a good job, and I wanted someone else to say I've done a good job. And I have I have been working on really trying to get to a place where I feel happy either way.
If it happens, amazing. I'm not gonna say I don't want it, and if it doesn't happen, amazing. With my next week, I'll take another shot. But I wanted to say the quiet part out loud because I feel like surely I'm not the only one that feels that way. Like, we're all chasing something.
We all are chasing the followers, the revenue numbers. We are all chasing the accolades, somebody else telling us that we're doing a good job. We're all chasing the invitation to that fancy thing. We're all chasing something, and think that's a beautiful thing to have that ambition, and I think it's really amazing to want to achieve things, and I don't want to let go of that part myself, but I want to know where it's coming from. Mhmm.
And I want to give that part of me a voice to speak up and be like, you know what? Great. I still feel like I've made it whether I hit the list or not, but keep chasing that. That would be awesome. But so many of us are chasing it, and I think it just it does feel scary to say it out loud if you don't know you're gonna do it.
It's so much easier to say, oh, look what I did. Not this is what I'd really like to do. And then you do or don't hit it, and you're like, oh, okay. Well Yeah.
Speaker 2: Here we go. Yeah. It's very vulnerable. It's very vulnerable, and it's beautiful to say it out loud. I love that.
You've talked about growing up in an environment with alcoholism and abuse of a variety of sorts and one of eight children and not a lot of resources. Many people in that kind of environment, of course, they don't have data on this or anything. Right? There's a lot of different ways folks can go. And one of them is to repeat ancestral patterns, repeat things, and then one of them is the way you have gone, which is for better or for worse, largely for better, I think we could argue, you decided you wanted something really different.
What do you think it is about you that's allowed you to create something so wildly different for your kids and your life when not everybody is able to do that?
Speaker 1: One thing I have in common with my mom is we both wanted very different for our own kids. And so she was just over at my house a couple months ago when I got the chance to really talk to her about her childhood, which was probably the first time that I did that, and hearing what she went through and was able to create differently showed me how similar we are because I've then done the same thing, and we're all we're breaking these cycles of the and I can't even imagine of the women that came before her too, the way we're doing it. And the way she was describing growing up, I actually really related to in that I never felt like I fitted in to where I I felt like I was born into an area and that I just wasn't meant to be in. I was like, wait. And I think that's when I wrote that email about wanting to feel chosen, I think it really comes to that part of me, you know, I'm the eldest daughter, and I was I I was born into just a place where I felt like I didn't fit in.
I was always very different, and I was made fun of for that. The way that I carried myself was very different. The things that I wanted for my life were very different.
Speaker 2: You were made fun of by your family and community Yeah. Members where you
Speaker 1: Yeah. Was made fun of a lot because I was very different.
Speaker 2: Or would they say like, who do you think you are? Exactly. Uh-huh.
Speaker 1: Uh-huh. Yeah. Who who do you think you are? Oh, you're such a snob. You're fill in the blank.
All of those things because I wanted different. I like to keep my room a certain way. I just like things to be a certain way, I like to present myself a certain way. I always did really well academically, I really applied myself, I wanted different. And yeah, I felt like I was always up against so much judgment because of that, and at the same time, I knew I still wanted that, and so the first chance I got, I mean, I moved out of of home when I was 13 and with my grandparents, and then as soon as I went to university, I moved out.
As soon as I graduated university, I moved country. I was always ready to just go and explore and find the place that I did belong. I came to America right after university, I was like a thousand dollars in my overdraft, all this student debt, I had nothing, but I just felt this calling of maybe I would fit in better there. Maybe there's a different mindset, and there was, and I really loved it, and it's been amazing for me, but I think a lot of that, oh, don't feel chosen came from that. So when we talk about nature versus nurture, I think it was such a nature thing, I just felt like I didn't belong, and I am very lucky to have had family members who did nurture that part of me and who did tell me I was very capable of things and who are really proud of me.
They probably don't understand what I'm doing but are really proud and mentors along the way, teachers at school who could kinda see something in me, and that was always really helpful just to have someone say like, I believe in you. Yeah. Always makes a huge difference.
Speaker 2: I was curious. I was gonna ask you, was there a key person or a few key people along the way? Because I think the data is very clear that it's something along the lines of a kid growing up having one person that they know believes in them makes all the difference in terms of their, longitudinal success, and we can break down what success even means. But So who were those people for you?
Speaker 1: So many. I mean, my grandparents from an early age have definitely been that person for me. My mom always wanted better for me, and I think she knew that I wanted that too and pushed me. My cousin, we both had difficult childhoods. She actually has always worked with me in the business too.
She's worked with me for over a decade. Wow. She was my older cousin. She was always that person for me and gave me that reprieve from home. I had a teacher at school who I found out about the word entrepreneurship.
I found out, wait, there's a word for wanting to do your own thing. It had to be your own boss called entrepreneurship, and I went to him and I petitioned him to start entrepreneurship classes. And he was like, okay, Natalie, I'll stay back after school if you can find enough people that'll stay back with you. And so I rallied friends in school to stay back with me, and they were like, what are we doing here? I'm like, it'd be fun.
You can do your own thing, but please, I wanna learn this stuff. Wow. And there was other mentors at university. There was one lecturer I had, and she was lecturing on entrepreneurship. She'd had her own business, and I went up to her after the lecture, and I just told her how inspiring she was and how I really want to get into that, and she said, cool.
Come work with me. I'll teach you. And so just along the way, I've had a lot of really amazing people in my life that have just said, come along with us. We'll take you under our wing, and I've worked really hard and took every single opportunity. I've worked for free every single opportunity I can to be around people like that, I think that's a big reason that I do what I do because I really think if you can be that one person that just pours confidence I've heard someone describe it as confidence transference.
If you can transfer your confidence onto them, you have no idea what that can do for them. If you let them work for free, if you let them witness, if you let them shadow, if you let them tell you what their idea is and you just back it up, you have no idea what that can do for someone.
Speaker 2: Powerful. There's a lot choices that you have made, and I know you're in a new season with a baby and, you know, your your four year old and a new book out. And they're pretty bold choices, unexpected choices in terms of how you protect your time. Can you talk about how what happens inside of you when shiny opportunities come your way, which I know they land on your desk all day every day? And how do you walk yourself through your own decision matrix so that you protect your most valuable asset, which is time for yourself, time for your family?
Speaker 1: Two things. You've gotta know what your vision is. What is your big vision? What are you working towards, and what are your priorities? And they change in every single season, but, okay, you're working towards this one thing and you've got these priorities, and they can be seen as constraints, elements to it.
You know, for me, I've got my big vision in terms of how I want my life and my business to look and my priorities. Right now, I have a young baby, so my priorities are being at home with my kids, trying to take care of myself, I'm not doing the best job of that, pouring into my marriage, being creative, giving this book the best shot it's got at getting out there in as many people's hands. So I have my priorities. So when something lands on my desk, it's very much, does this align with my vision? Cool.
Does it fit with my priorities in this season? And it has to do both. And there's been so many fun things came forward that would have aligned with my vision but do not fit with my priorities. You know, I have chosen to breastfeed, and I I always think, you know, kids come with their own lessons. My littlest, she completely refuses to take a bottle.
She refuses to sleep anywhere than completely attached to my body, and I can fight that all the way because it's exhausting, and I'm not gonna say it's easy. What's so much easier is when I stop resisting it and I just let it be, and really see it for the short season that it is and the beauty that it is and go with it. It's so much easier. You know, even last night, I knew I wasn't gonna get a lot of sleep. I know I'm traveling, I know it's a lot.
I could have sat there in the anxiety, you know, the countdown, if I go to bed now, I'm gonna get this Bad thing.
Speaker 2: Face torture. I could
Speaker 1: have done that, and I just chose to be with it. How beautiful that I get to bring my baby on a work trip. Oh, I get extra snuggles at night because I'm not gonna see her as much in the day, and it's hard to do that with your mindset. I am not gonna be the woman that gaslights you into every part of motherhood is beautiful, it's hard. And if I choose to switch my mindset and see some positive things in the hard parts of it, it's so much easier.
So much easier. And so some of the bold choices I've made and a lot, you know, it's just naturally occurring, and I'm in that season. I and I whenever I speak to a lot of parents that are a lot further ahead, they're like, you won't you won't remember all the sleepless nights. Like, it is a blur. It goes really fast, and so I try and remember that.
And you know, there's sometimes when I'm like, will you just go to sleep? Or the other day I locked myself in my closet and I was like, if you bring these kids into me, I'm going to kill you, to my husband. Yeah. And then those are the moments where I'm like, you got this, you got this, change your mindset. I do it all.
Sometimes I throw a screen in front of my toddler and I'm like, mommy's just gonna read her book for ten minutes. Please just watch TV while the baby's not being like, I will do whatever I need to do. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things you talked about in your book is that nervous system patterns, which you know I'm obsessed with. That is my that is my language and how we're so often in the personal development world diluted into thinking that if we were to just change our mindset, we would be able to behave in a different way, and then we would be able to have a different result, which can be the case, but not on those deeper neural patterns. And you and I work with the same woman, Anne Davin, and she has helped me tremendously in that regard. I've done some EMDR. We've I've worked with Anne since, actually, since I was pregnant with Ruby, so since 2017.
And I'm curious for you, what has been one of your deepest neural patterns that you've worked on from a nervous system perspective that mindset alone could have never touched?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great question. There's two that come to mind, two in different seasons. The first one is I grew up in chaos, and I didn't realize what chaos felt very safe to me, and in business, I kept creating chaos. And it was not something that I could just affirm myself out of or system myself out of. I would create constant complexity or say yes to way too much to make myself indispensable in so many different areas, be the one that is responsible for so much.
I created so much of that chaos from a very dysregulated nervous system that equated chaos to safety. That one was a very, very hard one to repattern. It took many, many, many years, and if I don't take care of myself, it still creeps up. It's one of those that I really have to stay on top of. So I would say that one, and then when I became a mom, and I only have become aware of this in the last couple of years, I would say, is my nervous system clearly remembered a lot of dysregulation in the early years, and I was really fearful that anything I do would fuck up my kids.
Mhmm. Anything I would do would would ruin the attachment that I have with my girls. Like, I was so worried and second guessing. So it became hypervigilant. Hypervigilant in every single sense.
And I know, way before I was even pregnant, I have OCD. I'm I I So OCD showed up a lot for me in postpartum when I was more dysregulated. I went through postpartum depression and anxiety with my first, plus hypervigilance. I just wasn't enjoying motherhood at all because I was so worried about everything. Or if I'm away from her for two hours, is that gonna be, oh, I can't miss a day, oh, I can't miss a bedtime?
And it wasn't coming from a place of I don't want to miss a bedtime, it was coming from a place of I feel like I can't miss a bedtime because I wasn't able to hold her upset. If she was upset, I took that on. My own nervous system took that on, and it was from this place, I think, of remembering my own dysregulation and wanting so badly to do a good job, but in that so badly wanting to do a good job, I was completely missing the ability to enjoy it. And I think that's one I've made huge strides on and I haven't had that show up so much with my second, which is amazing, And again, I have to stay on top of this stuff because I do notice when I'm not slept and I'm not, I'm not even gonna say working out, but moving my body, eating appropriately. It's lot harder.
Yeah. Getting fresh air, seeing friends, doing things that actually feel regulating to me. If I'm not doing the absolute basics, my nervous system can become dysregulated, and I'll start to feel those things again, and so I have to stay like that. You know, when Naomi was a bit older before I had Romy, could get back into all my nervous system practices. I could do all of that.
I'm in a season of the bare minimum to be feeling good right now, which is working. Think in these seasons, your body kinda requires less from you, which is a blessing.
Speaker 2: It is a blessing.
Speaker 1: But it can creep back. It's not one and done. I think that's a myth that we think we do it once,
Speaker 2: and it's done. It's it's very hardwired. It is hardwired. Yeah. And so I wanna highlight what you're saying in the mechanisms there because it's really important for people to understand this.
Number one, having a regulated nervous system is not the same thing as feeling calm. For a lot of people who grew up in chaos, actually being calm can be a sign of dissociation and a functional freeze. So I want to highlight that. You can be regulated actually with a screaming baby and a toddler who's clinging to you and the fire alarm going off. You actually can.
So just saying that. And then the other thing that you're saying, there's two things. One is it's not one and done because in times when our stress and threat bucket gets overloaded, new baby, book tour, yada yada yada. Right.
Speaker 1: Fill in
Speaker 2: the blank. Sleeping. We will default to all our old patterns. But once you have gotten years on board like you have of putting in the time for those practices, especially between Noemi and Romy, what's so cool is there is a compounding effect. Three years ago, that is now no, sorry.
That ceiling is now your floor. And so it's it's cool to hear you articulate that in real time because this is all those mechanics are how it works, and I think people misunderstand. They think like, oh, regulating my nervous system is like sitting and deep breathing. Sure. Like, yeah.
Take some deep breaths. But it's actually a lot more complex than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It is, and I think what's really important is when you're doing nervous system work is to really find your reference point of what it feels like to be regulated. And, you know, for me, when I first started doing this work, when I got that reference point, I realized I'd never been there. I was so dysregulated, but having that reference point, first it's information because you can then, you can distinguish, okay, what state am I in? Am I disassociated?
Am I in fight or flight? Where am I? And when you have that reference point, it's also easier to come back to it. If you've never had that reference point, you're kind of looking in the dark for it.
Speaker 2: How did you get that reference point if you've never felt it? If you had now you have. If you had not felt it before.
Speaker 1: The first time I remember feeling it was after the Hoffman process. Yes. That was a really beautiful experience. And I had done a lot of therapy before that, and I don't think it really it didn't scratch the surface so much. The Hoffman process, it's where you go, you put your phone away for a week and you really do a lot of deep work, that was really, really powerful for me.
That was the start of a reference point, and then I started getting into deeper somatic work where I could find more reference points and go layers deeper, talk therapy for me just wasn't cutting it. It wasn't helping me get there because again, I I could do very well in a functional freeze. I built an entire business out of functional freeze. So when that works for you, it's very hard to change it, and it's also, I think it's quite scary to think about changing it because I remember for me, I thought, well, look, I've created an empire out of functional freeze. Why would I wanna go change it?
What if I lose everything? What if it breaks? What if I'm not as driven? What if I'm not as motivated? And one, I think you have to experience that yourself to know that it won't, but two, I think it then comes from a different place.
100%. And you can be a lot more selective in what you do and don't do, and it's really nice to have the reference point. And like you say, it then keeps going deeper and deeper so the floor the ceiling does become the floor, and I can if I have a few hours sleep and a good coffee, I'm like, I am good to go this morning. I've had that reference point, but a few years ago, it would have been a different story. One of
Speaker 2: the things I hear you talking about a lot in this conversation and then, you know, just in your emails and on social is, you're not saying it out loud, but what what's actually in there is a felt sense of agency. You have made really conscious choices. So you could obviously have a night nurse. Like, you could have a full time nanny. You could actually be completely well rested if you wanted to, right?
Maybe not while being the kind of mother you want to be, but right? Because there are trade offs. And so because there's that felt sense of agency, I don't think we talk about it enough, but having that real sense of I chose this actually is one of the most healing ingredients that we have. Even if it doesn't change the circumstances, it changes how we relate to the circumstances. And that ultimately is what freedom is.
That's what your book is about. So when you are afraid of, oh my gosh, if I actually heal my nerve, like I've built an empire from dysregulation. What if it all collapses if I'm healthy, essentially? Yeah. Right?
Can you talk to us about dismantling the chaotic, dysregulated version of your business and how you put into place an actual freedom based business where I know you truly do have the choice. You could do it or you could not do it. And that is absolute goals for most people listening to this. So what are some of the elements?
Speaker 1: And I will caveat, I did have a night nurse in the early days for me, and I have a full time nanny for Noemi. Great. So I just want people to hear that I definitely do have support. Otherwise, I would not would be frazzled right now. So that's a really good question because when I actually made the decision to buy out my partner, it started way before that.
It started just a few months after having known me. I actually stepped down as CEO and asked to be bought out of the company, and I decided to fully walk away from it. And so I had nine months where I had walked away from the business and I wasn't working in the business. And that was a nine month ego death because I didn't realize for so long I had my whole identity tied to Boss Babe. Like I said, I didn't even work on my personal brand.
Was just Boss Babe, Natalie, Boss Babe, Natalie was so intertwined, and stepping back from that, I feel like I had to really meet the part of myself that was, oh, what if you never get invited to those cool events anymore because you don't have the big following? What if you become irrelevant? All of these questions that I was afraid to say out loud, and I had to face off with that because I fully did step away. I was ready to just start again from scratch or not start again, I didn't know. And that was a beautiful thing because it meant when basically the tables turned, I was the face of the company.
There was really nothing to buy if I wasn't in it, and so I ended up buying up my partner because we had very different visions of where we wanted to take the company, but I'd already had my ego death by that point. So if I was to build this differently and it didn't work, guess what? I've already done the work to survive it so I know I'm gonna be okay. That was a really great place to build from, and I don't know that if I If things hadn't worked out that way, I don't know that I would've had that hindsight, and I might have clung to it and white knuckled it and just tried to push through, whereas I remember saying to Steven, if I do this, if I make this decision to take it on, it has to be different. It really does, and so I'm gonna do things very, very differently.
In that first year, that first buyout year, it was not our greatest revenue year at all. I let go of a lot of different things, and I was not willing to say yes to short term revenue it was sacrificing the long term vision, and I made a lot of conscious choices there, and I just had to be okay with things not working. And I think that was it. It was you have to go through that separation of your identity and your worth and your business. It's so easy to pour it all in, and if I get invited to the fancy dinner, then I'm worthy.
If I'm invited on this podcast, then I'm good enough. Or if my business hits a million dollars, then I've made it. We attach so much to that, and I had, whereas here I was without any of the business, any of the social followers, I mean, really, I lost 3,300,000 followers overnight, and I was okay. I was still standing. I was happy.
It's a really great exercise without burning your business down to really think about who you are outside of the business. What are you excited about outside of the business? Who would you hang out with if it was not to do with your follow account? Where would you spend your time? Would those people still be your friends if you weren't as fancy online?
All really great questions to ask yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it translates to any industry, and it translates to any status marker. For a lot of people, it's a very real thing of living an overinflated lifestyle to look a certain way, to fit in with a certain group of people. And the terror isn't so much about follower count. It's about what if I don't go to my country club?
What if I'm driving the wrong kind of car? What if I'm not going to the right hairstylist anymore? What if I can't buy the bag? Right? And I know that these things I'm saying may sound ridiculous to some people listening, but it is fill in the blank with your version of whatever that status marker is, and then ask these questions of if it all went away overnight, who would I be?
And could I be happy with whoever that is? And who would be the people who would still be just a phone call away who would come over no matter what? Because you have to build your life on something real, and the rest of it could vanish overnight.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I talk about that in the book, the inner freedom piece. What are you chasing and at what cost and when is good good enough? Because if you constantly play these status games and you're stuck in that and you're living this overinflated lifestyle, there is no freedom in that. There is no freedom in constantly being on this hamster wheel where you're barely able to survive because everything is going into the fancy house, the cars, this fill in the blank, whereas if you can build from a place of, okay, I'm living well within my means, I have more than enough, or I'm working towards more than enough, or I know what my enough number is, when I hit that, I'm not then gonna get swept into it all because then you will always feel you might feel just as behind after having hit that revenue marker because of the lifestyle you're living.
I think we see it a lot. I think this overinflated lifestyle is very common.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this. So when I came on your podcast, you asked me a ton of questions about my mom, which is not a conversation I have all the time, and about growing up with a mom who is in the public eye and, like, really ambitious and doing a lot of big career things. And I was thinking about her today, actually, or yesterday because we're thinking about doing a kitchen renovation. And now we're thinking about it. At some point, we need to do a kitchen renovation.
We bought a house that it needs some love, and it's a fun project. Yeah. But I was thinking about my kitchen growing up. So I grew up in a kitchen in a house with houses that are like with rooms that are like a dollhouse. Like, all the rooms are teeny tiny.
It's a New England house, and everything is miniature. And so this tiny kitchen with orange Formica countertops. And that was my, you know, that was my childhood and, like, you know, pretend wood cabinetry. Yeah. And my mom had her first New York Times bestseller in 1994.
This, I am getting to a point. But how old were you
Speaker 1: when she had her New York Times bestseller? 11. So interesting.
Speaker 2: It is interesting. And so she did not renovate her kitchen until 2005. So what is that? Eleven years later. I was thinking about how much social media has impacted our consumerism and our obsession with how things needing things to look a certain way.
No one on TV, no one on Oprah ever saw my mom's kitchen. Like, that wasn't a she just doesn't like, that's not really her thing. But I was just thinking about that and, like, Instagramable and social media and the way it's impacted what we chase and coming back full circle to your trad wife algorithm moment. Now I think we underestimate how influenceable we are by the content we consume. So that was a long story about Formica countertops, but it's really different for us comparatively speaking to generations before in terms of status.
And even really smart people like you who are very discerning, working on themselves all the time can get swept up into thinking they need to buy chickens. Mhmm. So I'm curious. What do you do to put guardrails around what you are consuming while still being informed? Because you do need to sort of keep up on what's going on for women in business, especially with AI and, you know, just right.
You have to kind of have your finger on the pulse.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, firstly, I will say I think the luck that Steven and I had growing up is that we didn't grow up with anything. And so we have never really chased that. Both of us were so unimpressed by the big fancy houses and the big fancy cars and all of that stuff. We live in a house that costs less than $900,000 which is still a lot of money, especially compared to where we grew up.
But when I think about our respective net worth that we've built with the business, so I'm being completely honest
Speaker 2: with you, you know? It's a small percentage.
Speaker 1: Yes. And I've had a lot of people say, oh, your house is different to what I thought. Like, I love my house. I absolutely love it. Beautiful.
Yes. Great countertops. Great countertops. But I never I never understood you know, when Steven and I were buying this house, I never understood when we were talking to realtors and being shown around, they kept asking us, well, how much can you get approved for? And we kept saying, what do you mean how much can Doesn't matter.
And they're like, well and they would try and get us to look at houses on this huge end, and we were like, but that's the house we want. We do not ever want to be on the hook every month for this money that we have to work our tails off for. If we have built financial freedom, why can't we just enjoy it? And that's a very intentional decision we made. We made we moved to Austin because we felt like LA was very much a status game.
We moved to Austin, which we've loved for this season of life. We live well below our means. We don't buy fancy stuff. We spend most of our money on getting support to buy back our time, which we love. So I will say that is the one benefit of coming from nothing is we're not scared to go back to it.
We're not trying to impress anyone and also I think we are both the kind of people where we don't really want a friend that is only gonna be our friend because of what we have. I would rather have no friends than have fake friends. So there's that part of it. The second part with the algorithm, that part's really, really interesting because it I found myself getting swept up by when I'm in a really busy season and I felt like I'm on all the time, and I think this is why the trad wife is so interesting. I think we equate the trad wife lifestyle to a simpler lifestyle where people need less from us.
We don't need to be on our phones, we don't need to be doing x y zed, or we can be in the kitchen baking and playing with our kids, and that's all that's needed from us. But did you read Yesteryear, that book? No. K. You have to read it.
An amazing book. It just came out. It is all about this tradwife influencer who showed a certain image online, and it was completely different behind the scenes. Then she wakes up in a real tradwife lifestyle, and it couldn't be further from the picture she's painting. She doesn't have any staff on the farm.
There's actually a lot of in marriage violence. The kids are parentified children. It's a hard life. It is a hard life to look after animals, to feed yourself off of the land. Oh, yeah.
It is not the highlight reel that is being shown on social media. She shows the realness around what all of that looks like. It's a phenomenal book. I could not put it down. An awful.
It's a novel. Yeah. It's fiction. It's absolutely incredible. And I think the reason that we are all fascinated by their lifestyle is because it looks like ease, and so many of us come to social media looking for ease, looking for an easier life, a slower paced life when things feel busy for us.
Speaker 2: I mean, the truth is if someone is actually having that level of ease, they're probably not posting about it. So you won't find it on Instagram. I find the more relaxed I am, the less I want to pick up my phone. So no one would ever know. Right?
And that's the bigger question is if no one ever knows about the joy you're experiencing, the freedom you're experiencing, like, is that okay? And that's obviously, that's not a question for you to answer. That's a, what's that word that starts with a p? Rhetorical, which starts with an r. Anyway
Speaker 1: Rhetorical question. Rhetorical
Speaker 2: question. For you. Okay. So I'm curious. Someone's listening.
They've not had the high levels of numbers that you have achieved. They're more starting out. Right? What would you tell someone who's newer in the game around building a freedom based business? Because it's one thing to burn something wildly successful down and regrow from scratch, which obviously you did not do, because there is no such thing from scratch once you've already built.
But it's a whole other thing to be early days. So what would be your piece of advice for someone who's earlier in the game?
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to know when good is good enough for you and to really assess the situation that you're in. So I know of one person in particular. She's a mom of young kids, and she started a business because she wants to spend more time with her kids. That's the reason she started the business. So she wanted to leave corporate where she was required to put the kids into daycare.
She wanted to start her own business where she could make around the same amount that she made in corporate and be home with the kids. So she started that business, and it took off. And she started making five times what she was making at corporate, and she was spending less time with the kids than when she was working in corporate. Not right or wrong, but that wasn't what she said she wanted. That's the freedom based business part is let's pull it back.
Let's really understand what do we want in this season of life, and it's very different for every single person. Like I said, I don't wanna be with my kids full time. My idea of freedom based business is I make a really abundant living. I make a huge impact. I work with people that I absolutely love, and I have control over my calendar.
That feels really freedom giving to me. When I looked at her business, I said to her, would you be okay reducing your revenue? We can increase your profit for sure. Your take home can still be the same as, if not more than corporate America, but spending more time with your kids, and she really wanted that, but she got swept up in, well, I'm being presented with the opportunities, it's hard to say no, and it is hard to say no. It is hard to turn that down, but you have to really understand what you want.
I don't think there's one size fits all business for anyone, and I'm sure, you know, five years from now when my kids are probably in school, I'll have a different lease on life, And I'll be going balls to the walls with my content. Right?
Speaker 2: I'll be Or maybe you'll be lying around
Speaker 1: reading novels. True. Don't know. Who knows? Every season, maybe I'm like, this is my self care season.
I'm gonna be in the best shape of my life and play tennis. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Play tennis.
Speaker 1: I think about my best self while he plays tennis.
Speaker 2: That's hilarious. I love that. Maybe she does.
Speaker 1: I think she I think she wants to play.
Speaker 2: With you. I'm a ridiculous tennis player, but I have a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Great. Let's do it. But that's the thing you just don't know, and the beauty about a freedom based business, a freedom based business is very different. You're not bringing on investors and a board. You are not answering to anyone.
A freedom based business is, guess what, it's a lifestyle business that is a vehicle to the lifestyle you wanna live. I believe you can create anything you want with business. I love entrepreneurship as a vehicle, but bring intention to it and be willing to be flexible and change it in each season. For me, last year was a way more growth season than this year, so it's just very different for everyone. But if we do not stop to ask ourselves, is this what I want?
Then we will never build something that feels fulfilling.
Speaker 2: Amen. Thank you, Natalie. Everyone listening, go get yourself a copy of the freedom based business method anywhere in particular they should
Speaker 1: go for that. You can go to bossy.com/buythebook, and I've got a list of all the places you can buy it. But you'll unlock a full vault of freedom based business resources that are amazing, so I recommend doing that.
Speaker 2: Thank.com/buythebook. Yes. And that link is in the show notes. Yes. You're the best.
Thanks for coming on today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: If this episode sparks something for you, don't leave it as just an insight. The recalibration field guide is where you turn what you heard into movement. Inside, you'll map your current money ecosystem state, audit what's supporting you and what's leaking, and identify the next upgrade that will actually change how money moves in your life. The listeners who download it and use it are the very same ones who will come back and tell me that everything shifted. You can download it for free at katenorthrup.com/fieldguide, and the link is also in the show notes.
I'll see you
Speaker 1: in the next episode.