Debunking Myths About Social Media, AI, and Hustle Culture

0:00Fora is the modern travel agency for people who want to turn their love of travel planning into a real business. Become a Fora advisor today at foratravel.com slash boss babe. That's f-o-r-a travel.com slash boss babe and make sure you tell them we sent you foratravel.com slash boss babe. Welcome back to the boss babe podcast. Okay, this episode is different and this is you getting to listen in on the biggest pinch me moment that maybe I've actually ever had. So in June I got to sit down at the godmother's bookstore in Montecito. It is an iconic little bookstore where so many of the women I have looked up to four years have stood like Oprah in front of a live audience. I was sitting in the seat that Oprah has sat in and Jamie Kernleema the founder of it cosmetics interviewed me. Now again this was such a pinch me moment. It was in the middle of so many

1:05crazy book events and I flew up to Montecito for the day and I got to go to Jamie's home and she walked me around to her home which firstly that in itself was a pinch me moment. She's very private so I won't say too much about that but getting to spend that time with her I just constantly kept pinching myself like is this real life is this real life and then we get to godmother's and I get the tour and I so I initially walk in and all of my books are sitting there on the table. I get emotional thinking about this and above the table there are these pictures of the most iconic women in history, women who have truly changed the world and there was a little light above it and wow I'm really getting emotional here and so I walked in and I can still feel this moment and the woman hosting me at godmother's the whole bookstore was closed at this point I walked in and she said your book's there take a look at who is surrounding it because you are one of these

2:06women who is having the way and lighting the way for other women too and I just stood there and I really took it in and burst into tears I have it on video because it was just one of those moments where again I've been busy I've been in the thick of it and I hadn't really stopped to think about the impact that work like this does and we all do this every single one of you that are listening to this podcast you are having such an impact in so many ways that you might not stop to think about and it was just such a visual representation of that so that's how the day started and then we went up to the green room and Jamie passed me the guest book and said well you're here you need to sign this and the first person to sign this was Oprah and then I flick through the pages of all the other authors who I look up to and just adore and I'm so grateful that I got to even sign the same book as them I got to read through and read their messages and then I got to sign it and then we sat

3:07there and we had a tea and we talked and then I went downstairs and Jamie interviewed me and it was one of the single more special nights of my life really it was such a pinching moment and it felt so well-deserved and that's a thing I don't often say but I remember sitting there and Jamie was kind of pointing out just what I'd overcome to get here and it was just this moment of like really padding myself on the back like Natalie you did this you actually did this you created this and again maybe you're listening to this realizing you never gave yourself that part on the back it's so hard for a self-inner's women to admit that we're doing a good job and we really deserve something it's easier to feel like an imposter so it was a really powerful moment for me and I wanted to share this conversation for that reason and if you didn't already know my book is out the Freedon Base Business Method is officially out and it became an instant New York Times bestseller and the only

4:08reason that that happened is you every single order every reshare every person who came out to support the launch thank you and I mean that from the bottom of my heart because you made the launch happen you made the New York Times when happen and you also made me sitting at Godmother's with Jamie Ken Lima happen and I'm really really grateful for that so this conversation is a bit more candid a bit more real because how can you not sit in a seat like that and just tell the truth so here is a conversation and I really hope you feel like you were in that room with us. Hello good evening I'm Riley Reid head of storytelling here at Gone Brothers and on behalf of our entire family welcome to our living room this is going to be a remarkable chat are you excited? Me too better be our conversation partner this evening who I am personally delighted to introduce Jamie Kern Lima is a two time New York Times bestselling author entrepreneur and founder of

5:09IT Cosmetics which she started in her living room and later sold to L'Oreal in a billion dollar becoming the first female CEO of a brand in the company's 100 year history. She is the host of the Jamie Kern Lima show one of the top self-improvement podcasts in the country and a guest shark on season 16 of Shark Tank. Jamie's work centers on building self-worth and resilience she is a mother and investor of philanthropist who has supported leadership programs in over 100 prisons and shelters and donated more than 40 million dollars to help women facing cancer. Our featured author this evening Natalie Ellis is a mom seat yeah you can say that again. Is a mom CEO in serial entrepreneur she's the founder of Boss Babe the Global Education platform for women entrepreneurs with a community of over four million a chart topping podcast in over 100,000 students after navigating burnout and a near business collapse inside her own multi-eight

6:11figure company she wrote the freedom based business method her five part framework for building a profitable business with real freedom and revenue predictability minus the burnout please join me and welcoming Jamie and Natalie to the stage. Thank you everyone for being here hi so many friends wow so many people excited how are you feeling in Manacito this is like a dream come true thank you this is amazing it hasn't some good yet so it's amazing how godmother has just grown and notoriety in the past couple years with the events and the founders and just the team that's here and I knew you're familiar with godmother is in the past few years and then you flew out to be here today and it was fun to be

7:13with you when you walked in the front door and can you just share with everyone how you felt when you saw your book there the light you saw all these women up on the wall and your book right there. I couldn't hold it together just walking in and seeing the women that have just paved the way for so many of us to dream and to see my own book there was the most surreal moment ever to even think about one woman reading this book and choosing to go off to her dreams in a way that feels really good just I could cry over it it was it was one of the most surreal moments in my entire life it was really special yeah and I think those of us that are local it never gets old walking in the front door and seeing it so I see a lot of entrepreneurs in the room I see people who I have celebrated from afar who've built building dollar businesses I see friends in here that are starting companies that are super busy with their families but launching an idea on the side I see icons in the room who for whatever reason can never stop working and are trying to figure out how to enjoy

8:19their life also in addition in addition to working and a lot of people in here too who I know are interested in learning more about even just what does AI look like in their life right now and social media and how do you how do you sort of incorporate that in ways that that work and so I'm really grateful to share your genius and to celebrate you and your book and we have a lot of questions tonight that we're going to dive into and then we're going to open it up to Q&A so Natalie loves by the way to talk about all things AI and and she's known for so many things but building an eight-figure business with millions of millions of followers almost no team and almost no money from her living room how do you do it how do you burn out or not burn out what does that look like what does that look like now with AI and also how do you actually do something you love and not burn out like can you do both can you do both so just to kind of kick this off can you

9:23guys raise your hand if you've ever felt burnt out in your job in your career in your life while also maybe feeling like you're still not doing enough and okay 98% of the room okay so I just want to open it up Natalie just off the top we heard Riley share some of your incredible accomplishments and can you just share a little bit with everyone in this room about you know what inspired you to write the freedom based business method and sort of how your view of success started in your journey and how it's evolved because I think we're all in that pursuit of fulfillment and we'll also not wanting to miss our calling and everything else so I've been stalking businesses since I was 13 so I grew up in a very tabernacle household I moved out when I was 13 and I remember going to Korea's day and there was many people coming in and out that room and I was telling myself a story you know there was nurses doctors

10:28physiotherapist real jobs and I just had this story people like me don't accomplish things like them coming from where I came from and there was you know the last Korea's day of the day the last woman came in and I heard her high heels come in and she put the most beautiful handbag down it was a mulberry-based water brown and I was like okay I'm listening water what is she doing and she started telling her story and she said you know I was crying on the stairs until glass of wine going through a really difficult divorce and I was 13 at the time and where I come from everything was behind closed doors and it talked about things that were going on at home so I immediately was really interested because I could see my mum in parts of her story and she explained that she ended up starting a business and it changed her entire life and created a lot of financial freedom for her and for me I told myself a story that my mum stayed in really difficult situations because she couldn't afford to leave and hearing that there was a way out I just equated entrepreneurship to freedom and a different life for myself so I've been an entrepreneur since I was 13 and when I got into it I just wanted to have enough money to have the choice it really was

11:33about financial freedom for me and I just got on this magic carpet ride of entrepreneurship and building and built and I didn't really ever stop to look around to assess what I'd built I never had the feeling of you know I'm successful or I've finally hit financial freedom I always had this fear that it might go away any day and it just kept me running and chasing and when I had my first daughter I went through a really traumatic delivery with her which kind of brought me to my knees in a identity crisis I started to question who I was what I was doing I felt like my body was stuck in fight a flight I wasn't functioning the way that I always had I was so used to no matter what was going on in my life I'd wake up and I could get it done like that was my badge of honor I could always get it done no matter what was going on and I couldn't at that point in time and it had me assess every area of my life and it was like this out of body experience where I could see the

12:36situation I was in it was like I could see everything and and the dynamics I created and the places that I was just chasing chasing chasing more and never feeling like I had enough and in that moment I got to really see you have a home you have the freedom of choice you have a healthy child you have great marriage what more do you want and was that moment that changed a lot for me where I realized that actually did have enough I I was good enough what I had built was good enough I had security and from that moment it changed the way I looked at my relationship to work and my relationship to my ambition and four four years now from that point my relationship to all of that looks different and that's what the book is about it's about that that building phase after when you actually realize this is good enough and and building from a different place a different level of ambition a different type of ambition there's a moment in your book where you talk about how everything looked

13:38incredible on the outside right you had built boss babe an online platform with millions and millions and millions of followers and so many women and people that were taking courses and part of your community that you had built and you were getting invited to every event on the planet and you were I mean all of it right and everything and then all of a sudden now you have the marriage and the kids and the and it's like every single thing looked right and you talked about it being one of the most difficult like feeling the worst in that moment and also feeling burnt out can you talk about what how you navigated that feeling of like okay my whole life I've thought if I have all of this that would be it and then you get it and you're like oh this isn't it and then and then and then going from that place to going okay how do I actually you know create freedom in my life still do the things I want to do and not feel like I'm

14:41compromising or giving up or quitting or throwing in the towel or gonna lower my own bar for my life I just felt like I wasn't present in any of it I would be in the rooms or I'd be doing the launches I'd be doing the things and I wasn't present to any of it because I was always feeling like I'm onto the next thing you know I can do better next time or wow they're doing that I should raise the bar for what's possible for me it just always felt like I was looking outside of myself and when I really started to look at what I'd built so much was built from what I thought I should be doing I felt like you know I should have this size business I should be going to these rooms I should be taking this on because everyone else has it like I just kept building from the place of should and I don't think I'd really stop to ask myself what do I want you know what would I want if I wasn't you know in front of followers what would I want if I wasn't introducing myself to a room what would I want if I didn't really care what anyone thought of me because I felt like

15:45everyone was judging me based on my success and that was just my own bias but I started to ask myself what would I want if nobody could see any of this and then I started to build from a very different place and it was not an overnight thing this was a long long process of unwinding you know feeling like if I walk away from everything will I have any friends have I built friends based on my success so much of that I just had so much of my identity wrapped up in my ambition and success or what I thought I should have and it's interesting because I went through a phase during this of I don't want to run a business I don't want to be an entrepreneur anymore I just want to let it all go and it was so deeply unfulfilling I thought I want to be a state homeer this is just too much I'm so exhausted I can't see myself ever getting through postpartum depression like I just couldn't see a way out I'm going to stop it all and it was really deeply unfulfilling to not have that purpose and drive and it's been a really interesting journey being able to pair

16:50alignment and ambition together and my ambition is a really big part of me it brings me so much joy to build something to impact people and that has to be part of my life but I want to do in a way that doesn't sacrifice every other area of my life that I really deeply care about what you just said I think summarizes so many of the great takeaways in this book so I know a lot of you are just getting your copy today it just came out what two days ago so congratulations on your launch week it's already a bestseller already a bestseller on Amazon no surprise no surprise at all but what you said about like your ambition and your alignment and bringing those together because I know for most of my life they were not I don't even know what it meant to be aligned I was just driving just like you know and and and it was never enough and no matter what happened it was always like okay that huge milestone happened but I don't even think I felt it I don't even think we celebrated and it was like I look back and there's

17:50there's just so much I would do maybe a little differently and and I love so much that it such your early age in your life and career you're really um figuring this out and this isn't a book that's like oh work-life balance you talk about how you don't like that word in the book but it's like okay how do you not miss out on everything that matters to you and still do the things you really want to pursue and I think that's a delicate balance I'm actually curious um for everyone in this room because one of the things we were talking about is how do you know you're living your dream versus someone else's dream for you versus your parents dream for you versus all that I'm curious in this room um raise your hand and and I think this is something you could discover in your 90s it doesn't matter what age you are but raise your hand if you feel like you're super super clear in your life right now about what you want in your career and in your life raise your hand if that's you about 30% of the room and raise your hand if you're sort of in that space of being open in the

18:55pursuit of that or in the becoming of that two thirds of the room okay okay that's good so how do you know from your experience and just everything you've gone through and Natalie coaches by the way well gosh if you really do the math on how many people take your courses and take your things it's countless tens of thousands of people but how do you know if if you're on the right track in in in your own calling and in the dream that's really the dream your creator has for you or the universe has for you or the dream of who you're going to be most fulfilled becoming versus society's dream or something else one I would say I think it changes in so many different seasons I think that just that purpose that desire to do something that calling can change in so many different seasons and I think it's really important not to resist that but the second thing I think we all know that feeling of when you wake up so excited you cannot wait to jump out of bed to work on the thing or to

19:56do the thing that is like every entrepreneur knows that feeling and it's you could work on it you know 24-7 and you still have that excitement it's by no means easy but it's that life force energy that you get I think there's a big difference between that and that dread and it doesn't mean to say when you're doing something really aligned you don't wake up and you think I don't want to do that part today but there's always that big vision I think you can still tap into that life force energy and I think it's how entrepreneurs create thing that create things that people couldn't even imagine could be created because the amount of energy it takes it just comes from somewhere else and I think that feeling is very palpable do you know what I mean did you have that I've had it at times yeah I have it sitting with you right now actually just like the I love when other people are sharing their stories and we can all come together and and I think that's good to use that feeling is like okay I'm on the right track this is what I'm supposed to do and if you're not having that feeling you're not on the right track is that what you'd say I do yes and I think having

20:59absolute clarity is a myth I think we have been sold this idea that every single one of us has a purpose and I think our purpose changes as we go through life in every season and every decade you've learned something new the way you want to approach life the impact you want to have it continues to change and I think if we believe that we just have one sole passion or purpose or we need to be so singular focused we'll always feel like we're on the right track I recently me my husband recently just put an offer in on a house to move state and I would say we were 70% sure on the house and we both had said this is amazing we could really see ourselves bringing our kids up in the house this is not quote unquote our absolute dream house because for us we hadn't spent a long time fantasizing about what that would look like or feel like we just knew it would be all of us together in a certain location and we'd make it what it is and I sometimes look at that with work and purpose when I'm trying to make a decision if I sit and wait to have 100%

22:03yes all in this is me for the next 10 years I think I'll be waiting a little bit too long I like to get in the game and I think it will leave clues and footsteps towards the thing and maybe 30 years from now I'll say oh this is my absolute purpose or I could be doing something completely different and I hope I'm led in that direction and very open to hearing and receiving what that is we all have that one friend who loves to plan hi it's me I'm the friend she's booked the restaurant she's built the whole trip itinerary and she does it for free for fun and if that friend is also you listen up forer is the modern travel agency for people who want to turn their love of travel planning into a real business as a travel advisor with forer your subscription unlocks best in class training booking in payments technology industry leading AI tools and a global community of insiders and with a network of over 5,000 preferred partners you can offer your clients VIP perks upgrades resort credits late checkout you actually in commission on hotels cruises and

23:09experiences I talk constantly about building a business that gives you freedom instead of taking it and that's what a forer advisor gets your clients your hours built around your life in fact one of the women in our freedom fast track program is a forer advisor that's how this actually landed on my radar right now planning trips is an expensive hobby this is how it becomes a business become a forer advisor today at forer travel dot com slash boss babe that's f or a travel dot com slash boss babe and make sure you tell them we sent you forer travel dot com slash boss babe hmm one of the things I've learned over the years is a lot of people when they see somebody doing amazing things they somehow think that they don't have what it takes or that they're defective in some way or they don't know the right people or have the right connections or come from the right family or x y and z when people see um you on the outside right it's easy especially when they see

24:10everything online and everything on instagram and everything out there it's easy to think like oh did it was it just handed to her did it just come easy and it's interesting in my journey i would say probably the biggest thing people write in about is they're like you're a denny's waitress and i waitress at koko's and now i start and they get so excited you know what i mean and it's like it's that like it's that relatability and the thing one of the things of many that i love about your book is you really open up a bit about about you know your childhood about things that you come can you share a little bit with everyone here because i think i think it's a universal i see everyone's eyes i think it's a universal thing where we all think like do i have what it takes to do the thing that i would want to do if i had no fear or you know could could this thing that i dream about really happened for me or could i could i really you know share all of who i am with the world and when my friends still love me and my clients still love me and we we have all these thoughts right and so can you talk about um you know the the the things maybe from your childhood that maybe

25:13people would be surprised to know but that maybe have contributed to to who you are today in a surprising way yeah i mean i grew up with very little in the northeast of england you know there was weeks we didn't have food to put on the table we would we didn't grow up with a lot and there was substance abuse in my home it was a very violent home it wasn't a safe place to land by any means and i just always wanted different there's no other way to describe it but i grew up around that just knowing and feeling like this wasn't my forever and i always wanted different i didn't grow up around entrepreneurs or seeing entrepreneurs but i wanted different and i really tried to make a point of finding examples of people that had built something had done something different and i didn't know what it would look like for me the goal was really how can i be in a situation where i'll always have choice over the way my home looks i'll always have choice over the way

26:14over the things i allow into my life and don't and i think the fear never goes away you know that the part of me that always wonders you know can i do it i am i you know i was telling Jamie i was leaving having nightmares normal turn up tonight like there's still that part of me that's so curious and and and wondering can i do it will i be able to to speak will i be in all of this and i don't think that ever goes away i really think it's a decision and you know we were just talking about the substAs and i was asking you when you put your mind to something how do you how do you plan it out because you take such big swings and it really works out but we all know behind the scenes what goes into that and yes it's a decision and i think it's also a decision when we talk about work life balance you have to really decide what you want and to what level you want it and you have to get so comfortable with that feeling within yourself that you're going to be put in really uncomfortable situations that you're going to be in situations where some people might not get what

27:15you're doing some people might not like what you're doing some people that you hope to support you might not support what you're doing do you want it enough and i don't think there is a thing that separates anyone anyone that i know that has built something incredible i can't say there's one specific thing that they had that they were born with i think it's just a resourcefulness and i really think every single person has the ability to be resourceful and that's what i see being the thing that helps you create amazing things so you know you talk a lot about all right now at this moment in time there's a lot of sort of backlash toward hustle culture and burnout culture and can you talk about your views on that because you've worked really really hard and but you're also of course giving giving a whole plan in here really with granularity i love one of the things you guys that's another thing that's great about this book is there's a lot of tools in it there's like tools there's takeaways there's actual like have you ever read a book or

28:19heard someone give a talk and you're like that's great but how and you're like huh and then you leave enough like Natalie actually takes you through how like there's like i mean it's yeah and a lot of extra resources in there but can you talk about and your views on on hustle culture burnout culture uh hard work have people then last touch with hard work what's i all of it yeah yeah there's a lot of backlash i feel right now on the hustle culture and the burnout memoir the soft life kind of soft ambition it's it goes viral because it sounds really good to our nervous systems especially for those of us that have experienced burnout or that often do wonder if we should have less of an ambitious life we see it and i think it can feel like that nervous system bomb but at the end of the day i don't know anyone that has built something really incredible that hasn't worked really really hard for it i think that is a place for quote unquote hustle and i think it's really important you

29:19just understand what season you're in we all know what our priorities are we all know what our top priorities are and if you want to build an incredible business there are going to be many seasons where you don't have balance there are going to be many seasons where you let go of some of the things that are actually really important to you you know right now i'm in book launch and i generally like to think of myself as someone who works out a lot sees my friends a lot right now i am a mum and i'm launching a book because it is taking everything that i have and i want to do a really good job and i want to make myself proud and making myself proud means i go all in on it and between that and being a mum to my two girls there is not a lot of me left and i remember even coming into the book launch having that conversation with my husband and saying we're not going to be having the date nights and the things until this book is out and i feel like we move into a new season and that was really important for me firstly to communicate but then be okay with within myself because i think if i have the acceptance of the season i'm in i don't feel the guilt so much but i think to think that you can

30:25either do it the soft way or the hustle way is very black or white thinking and i think it's selling people a lie i think the the content we see around building something in a couple of hours a week you might build something that feels good to you in a couple hours a week but at the end of the day you're not going to build the thing that's your highest vision that with this huge ambition in a couple hours a week and i just think it is selling a lie to say that we all know how important hard work is we all know the seasons it takes when we're in that build phase and when you've built something and you've reached a certain point and you can maybe take your foot off the gas and and find a little bit of balance again great and then i'm going to guess there's another level you want to go to and so you'll you rearrange your priorities and i think the way to do it without the consistent burnout is seasons it's understanding what season you're in being very present to that letting go of the guilt of not being able to pull into all 10 buckets in life but then coming back to that coming back to what's really important to you and making sure that hustle isn't your entire

31:26life if that's not aligned with your values if you have other priorities making sure they actually do get a look in one thing too that i loved in your book and you and i've talked on not only and i've been friends for a few years and we've talked at length about the topic of momentum and what happens if you pause for a few years can you are you just done can you lose momentum or are you actually the generator of momentum are you the creator of momentum are you are the momentum and i think i'm excited for everyone to read that part i know there's people in this room actually that have had different seasons in their life and then they're like okay well i'm i think i'm ready to start again on this idea i'm not sure though and i don't want to burn out this time uh and then there's other people it's like have i lost too much momentum because i've been in a different season for a long time and i'm a firm believer that you're never too old it's never too late you're the generator of your own momentum uh one of my best friends always says uh uh you know you get that feeling i've got to strike all the irons hot i've got to strike all the irons hot

32:29she has very strong faith in her life and she's like the irons always hot with god like if you'd see you know what i mean and it's like yeah that's true and i love that you talk about that in the book one thing before we dive into social media how do you build it what if you got no money and you don't want to hire a team what do you do how do you uh uh uh use AI now what how is that change in the game we're gonna dive into that but i want to ask you about one thing you talk a lot about in here that i think a lot of people in this room will identify with you talk about your journey going to Hoffman you talk about a lot of things that you've been through and you talk about in a business book the power of actually healing your nervous system can you share a little bit about that with everyone in the room yeah i feel really really strongly that is entrepreneurs on nervous system is one of our biggest assets for a lot of entrepreneurs what i have noticed is they have grown up in or feel very familiar in chaotic situations and i think for a lot of entrepreneurs it's the super

33:33power because it makes you the the person that is very resourceful that can always take on more that can be the person that shows up and comes through in a really stressful situation so one thing's anything wrong with it but i don't think we can let a dysfunctional chaotic nervous system run the show or you will always face burn out and i think it's a real super power to understand how to move yourself into functional dysfunction and into a functional nervous system state into a regulated nervous system state and make sure that you're building from a place of both i found healing my nervous system from a place of being very dysregulated many many times has been one of the best things i've ever done for myself i think it shows up in my relationships it shows up in the way that i lead my team it shows up in the way that i put specific systems and processes in in place and it allows me we have we talk about a window of tolerance when you think about the nervous system

34:34a window of tolerance where you can really feel like you're still regulated but taking on a lot and what is that window of tolerance that you have before you move into dysfunction but before things feel a bit chaotic and your body starts to shut down and go into fight or flight and i think as entrepreneurs learning how to widen that window of tolerance is really really important because it allows you to really go for the things and to be in really high situations all low lows and still feel very regulated and i don't think nervous system is something that you need to go and take a two week retreat to learn how to tap into and regulate i think it's one of those things that if you do a little bit of of of a somatic experience if you allow yourself to actually come into your body versus just operating from the neck up the body can tell you a lot and just tapping into it and bringing awareness to it i think is really powerful and for me i know i didn't have any awareness of my nervous system i didn't have any awareness of what was going on in my body and when i was building my businesses that showed up in every area of my life and specifically my health

35:38i remember being told by three gynecologists i would never get pregnant naturally you know i didn't have a cycle for 10 years i was just in constant stress mode and healing my nervous system is one of the i would say root cause things i did to completely change my health outcome and i just don't think entrepreneurs talk about it enough i think it's incredibly incredibly important can you talk about and you you share some of this in your book and can you talk about some of the modalities that you brought into your life and some of the practices and some of the tools that you've woven in to your life to get to where you are now nervous system wise yeah i mean i i feel like i threw the kitchen sink at it i did every type of therapy that you can imagine and i did the retreats and the things but if i had to distill it down into one thing that i think has really moved the needle for me it would be quiet time i had no idea how little space i was actually giving myself to regulate if i was going on a walk i was always listening to a podcast

36:43if i was going to the bathroom i always had my phone right i was in the endless scroll and it's embarrassing to admit but i was so scared to be alone with myself and my thoughts and my body and that one shift has changed everything i have innate modalities always screaming and needing something from me and that and the business and all of the things i notice right now in this season i don't have time for the meditation every day but if i can go into the gym and do a small workout where i have nothing going on in just my thoughts or i can take a walk for 10 minutes and just be by myself that can be the biggest nervous system regulator to just go out and notice your breath and it's not fancy and it's not a tool and it's not the vagus nerve it's just being by myself has made the world of difference and i think everyone entrepreneur or not should allow themselves that time in a day even if it's five minutes and you sit with a cup of tea i'm british that's how we do it just sit five minutes with no podcast no book no phone no scrolling and just sit

37:47and you'll be so surprised what your body can do you'll be so surprised how much regulation is already sitting there and ready for you but i just wasn't allowing it in i felt like i had to habit stack a five things going at once you know the red light that this that and the other and just stopping doing that has changed everything for me so i want to switch um to social media AI all the things right now it were in such a state of uncertainty i think no matter what industry anyone's in no matter uh if they're using AI or not actually raise your hand if you're using any form of AI in your life right now wow that's 90% of the room i know there's people in this room that have already outsourced their entire i mean all their email inboxes everything they have a i mean their whole everything and the way their businesses run everything and then there's other people are sort of dipping their toe in it and a lot of people regardless of people that were in industries that felt you know certain forever like rock solid forever and now everything sort of

38:51being slipped on its head so i want to dive into both um because you have uh you know here's the thing i always say there's a lot of people out there that like they're really good at talking about something but they've never actually like done the thing they talk about right they're just really good at talking about it and there's a lot of the sort of those kind of experts online why i was excited to one of many reasons i was excited to uh to chat with you today is because you've actually done it you've actually uh figured out how do you grow social media how do you you incorporate AI into all different things how do you um you know grow and eat figure business um literally through social media and through and through doing all of this and you have figured out from a digital marketing perspective and a technology perspective and AI how do you actually build what you want to build um without wasting money on things that you don't need and and a bloated team and bloated payroll and all that how do you do it lean and smart so first question i want to start with social

39:56media for there's a lot of people in this room who are solo pernouers um uh who want to grow their social media or their podcast or their online business or their meal delivery business or whatever it might be that they're passionate about are gain awareness to their personal brand as a physician um and they're trying to figure out you know how do i do this because i don't want to go hire a big agency or a team so just just to start there what are some of your tips for people on how do they build their social media right now we all have that one friend who loves to plan hi it's me i'm the friend she's booked the restaurant she's built the whole trip itinerary and she does it for free for fun and if that friend is also you listen up fora is the modern travel agency for people who want to turn their love of travel planning into a real business as a travel advisor with fora your subscription unlocks best in class training booking in payments technology industry leading AI

40:57tools and a global community of insiders and with a network of over 5,000 preferred partners you can offer your clients VIP perks upgrades result credits late checkout you actually in commission on hotels cruises and experiences i talked constantly about building a business that gives you freedom instead of taking it and that's what a fora advisor gets your clients your hours built around your life in fact one of the women in our freedom fast track program is a fora advisor that's how they're actually landed on my radar right now planning trips is an expensive hobby this is how it becomes a business become a fora advisor today at fora travel dot com slash boss that's f or a travel dot com slash boss babe and make sure you tell them we sent you fora travel dot com slash boss babe so the first thing i would say is anyone can build a big audience on social media a community that actually know like and trust you and and that can be a phenomenal vehicle for

42:01building a business so there's only three types of content that you ever need to be aware of it's content that grows your audience content that builds your brand and content that converts and so content that grows your audience that's your follow account content that builds your brand that's the community that's building no like and trust so that when you put an offer out there people actually buy and then this content that converts and it's getting people off of your social media platform onto a longer platform platform onto your website it's actually driving that traffic to so when it comes to actually growing on social media it's actually so much simpler than anyone thinks it's not about the format it's not about what's trending every single person that is growing on social media has figured out one thing and that is their growth content so the way that you do this is first you try you test and if you're completely brand new to social media i have a process called the 10 by 10 i talk about it in the book it is you go and find 10 people who have big audiences of your ideal follower client your ideal demographic base and you find their 10 most

43:06viral pieces of content now i'm a spreadsheet girl you can also have AI help you do this now you can have AI help you create the spreadsheet you go and put those 10 pieces for every person in that spreadsheet and you go in and study because success leaves clues and by the end of seeing those 100 pieces of content you should have a pretty good idea of what your demographic really resonate with and what goes viral in that niche and what i mean by viral is not when you see someone going on the morning news what it means is when you scroll their feed and you see a thousand likes a thousand likes 10 thousand likes something has really taken off for them and it's an outlier piece of content that's the kind of content that you want to study and you'll put all 100 pieces of content into this spreadsheet i wouldn't have AI outsource this entire process because the purpose of this is to learn now i have not had and i really mean is a single person fully complete this challenge and not gone viral i really really haven't and i have had many many many people go through this challenge

44:11you know i have and so what you'll do is you'll study the content and there's certain things you'll look for is it a sentiment that goes viral is it the format is it the way that they phrased it and i'll tell you for boss babe what it is there is one thing that we have done um that has had us completely go viral and it is we are able to sum up in one post something that someone feels but hasn't had the words to say themselves or hasn't wanted to say themselves but they will share our content because it sums it up or it will say it for them and that's been what we've done from the very beginning and that's still our growth content for most people it is that it is that thing where you sum something up and it's very shareable but again you look at those 100 pieces of content and you think about how can i repurpose this how can i reuse this how can i make this reflective of my niche and my expertise and what i do and you put it out there and you start to gather data AI can be amazing for helping you gather data now it doesn't

45:13need to be as manual as it used to be but you wait till you find your outlier and when you find your outlier that's it that's gold for you and you do that as many times as you can as often as you can and the two things that you're focusing on with with a social media account is quality and quantity the person that is going to create compounding content content that brings in audience the audience stays the audience um builds around you and then it turns buys from you it's high quality content the content that's the outlier content and then a high quality of it you know coming back to the hard work and the advice people don't want to hear i posted four times a day seven days a week and i've not taken a day off and that's always been the way that we've done it i posted when i was hungover when i hadn't slept when i had nothing to say when i didn't want to i posted and i stuck with it and i think that's really key but the first thing is find that kind of the the one piece of outlier content that's going to work for you and do as much of it as you can and i promise you

46:16whatever your goal is for whatever you want to grow that is an amazing amazing way to do it and it's almost you know impossible not to grow and then you start to bring another piece of content you bring in the content that builds you as a brand and it's your uniqueness and it's not maybe the thing that goes viral but it's the thing that people connect to and the reason that they want to be there the reason they want to stay and when you cycle those three types of content that's how you really build the audience and anyone can do it it's it's honestly a formula anyone can replicate i love too that you share in the book you know we have this idea of things going viral like oh millions of people saw it overnight and you kind of define viral as no anyone outside of your current followers that sees it yeah that's not gone viral right and so that's like such a great measurement because if you have maybe you have 50 people following your restaurant right now and if you do a post on you know a recipe or a secret or a technique whatever it might be and now all the sudden 200 saw that that's like okay that's huge that's huge and you just start

47:21doubling down on where you find that that's fine and you she gets very granular in this book which i love because honestly like i in the past few decades have worked with so many different social media agencies and well there's so many people that really don't know they're guessing and you like get granular with exactly what to do no matter where you're at with your journey no matter if you're just posting you know your personal brand or you're you know helping a kid build their company or whatever it might be and the tools that you give i think are are so specific one thing that you share is because a lot of people go okay i'm launching this and i need to be on every platform tiktok facebook instagram with everything and substack everywhere and you talk about how critical it is to get one platform right first before you're everywhere and i think that scares people because they're like oh well i might miss out and all that but can you share just your your views on that because you're very strong on that yes i think one short form platform is

48:22really important and i think one long form platform is really important so a short form platform is your social media account it's where you have followers in your content has a bit of a shorter shelf life and then a long form platform is something like a podcast or an email list it's where people actually come and join a community a more than owned audience and so i think it's incredibly important to focus on one social media account because it's very very difficult to have all of your attention fragmented on so many different channels and do it really well i think there's this this idea that repurposing is the way to be on all the platforms i'm yet to find someone who simply makes one piece of content and repurposes it for every single like every single platform and has done really really well on a platform from the beginning i focused on instagram and i had so many people telling me you're making such a mistake not getting on tiktok at this time you're making such a mistake not doing fill in the blank and i have grown an outsized social media account because i

49:28focused because i could see where i was getting momentum i got really good at that content format and i really doubled down and when i felt like and i talk a lot about this idea of playbooking in the book when i felt like i had a formula that i could hand off to someone else and the growth wouldn't drop the conversion wouldn't drop the sentiment wouldn't drop then i will turn my attention somewhere else but if i have to let go of something that's working really well to turn my attention to building something else that will have really detrimental effects on the business and it's just not worth it and i think if i started out trying to do everything i don't think i would have built the size a community that i actually have and you know boss babes the household name now we're in every single wall monster across the country we have moved off of instagram we've moved off of social media but i didn't need to be on every single social media account to make that happen i think it's just such a misconception that you'll miss out i truly truly believe if you compound and you focus

50:29the the results of that will be outsized and when now they're saying you know we think we just have to repurpose something on every platform she means just take the one thing you posted and post it everywhere in that format and that that doesn't typically work um and i think this takes a lot of pressure off people who feel like how am i going to be on everything everywhere with what i'm doing and you did 40 million in revenue through instagram uh uh uh just by doing it really well and figuring that out um so i want to ask you how right now in your life and in your business do you use AI exactly i use it in every area of my life except the actual content creation that comes from me and i tried it for that it it wasn't right for me i felt like it diluted a lot of the performance of the content so i use it everywhere so the biggest thing that i did was i graduated from AI being a chatbot i started to have it actually execute for me so AI runs a lot of competitor

51:33analysis on content and feeds me back reports um AI funnily analyzes you know our project management tools um all of our um team meetings slack to see what's being dropped what's not being hit it looks at all of our community and customer sentiment we have outsource 90% of our customer service to AI we have built a lot of platforms that help us to track our highest LTV customers so we can take care of them we can make sure that we know who they are what they're buying why they're buying it in my personal life i use it for a lot of life admin um it handles my emails to i don't have it actually send emails on my behalf but every morning it goes in and it triages and it puts lots of drafts in my email inbox um you know i have certain ones set up that just save me a lot of time i don't know about you but i am like a serial screen shudder i screenshots so many different things on instagram anyone else the serial screen shudder so what i built with Claude was um this workflow

52:37that when i screenshot something i immediately go put it into Claude in a certain skill and it takes it it it understands the context of what it is and it can't agrives it into a spreadsheet for me so you know say i screenshot someone that just tagged their glam i go put it in Claude Claude immediately knows oh this is screenshot where she's being recommended glam let me go put it into the correct spreadsheet and categorize their location or if i put a screenshot of a book into Claude it immediately knows oh let's put this on her reading list and so no longer all my screenshots just going to die in my screenshot folder but they actually have a shelf life so i try and use it for any kind of repeatable processes that i have in my life or business and what i'm trying to do is free myself up to do the thing that i really love which is content i absolutely love content and i love to work with clients and so i'm trying to make that my thing and systemize everything around that um but i're also using it to replace a lot of the

53:37software that we were using in the business that we felt like just we're a little bit janky um one thing inside this book is we actually put a QR code and a resource page and we were previously just gonna have it go to a bunch of downloadable resources and what we actually did was i used AI to build a really in-depth quiz where every single question in the quiz had logic so it would learn something about you and save that and so by the end of the quiz it actually has it takes you into your very own what we call boss babe hub where it knows everything about the way you're running your business the stage of business that you're at it recommends certain chapters and resources in the book it has an AI bot you can chat back and forward to that knows everything about the book in-depth that can coach you through some of the exercises and it basically has this reading list of all of the resources and so we're using it to in the past you know i would have just an aesthetic landing page with the resources on i really believe that the future of marketing is

54:38hyper personalization because of AI and so right now i'm constantly looking at okay my limitation previously with quiz software was i could only put logic on a couple of questions and it was very generic flow whereas now i can speak to my laptop i use whisper flow and cloud and reblet that's three tools that i love i can speak to my computer tell exactly what i'm envisioning have it come up with a plan for me and then build it and we built that entire platform start to finish in two weeks and we've stress tested it it's really really robust and it's very personal and so i'm going to see how i can roll that out in all areas of the business that client's touch i'm imagining you as a little girl and i'm just just marveling at you right now um and everything you've done and also the person who you are in your heart how you are as a friend but i want to ask you one granular thing about what you just shared so can you just talk for everyone in this room the three tools you just mentioned so so which

55:38ones do you use what do you what do you use them for and this is going to be this is going to be like a real person question how did you start using AI and how did you figure out how to get to where you are with those tools how did you figure it all out to where you're at now a great question okay so the three tools that i use these three tools you might want to write them down if you want to get into this the first is whisper flow and what this is basically means that you can just speak to your computer versus having to type and what's really cool about this is when you're working with AI you can have conversations with AI a lot faster than you can type back and forth i discovered this when i was very early postpartum with my second and i'm lying in bed holding here i have no free hands and my husband was like you know you can tell those those thing called whisper flow and you can speak to your laptop and that's where it completely changed my life so whisper flow is great you can use it with or without any AI tools the second tool i use the

56:41most is Claude code so i use Claude code for basically setting up any any kind of system i treat it as an employee anything i would normally ask someone else to do or want to do myself that's what i use it for now the biggest thing that i find is people hear the word code and think they need to be techie the number one thing you can do to learn AI i think is open up Claude code and pick one project one project that you have maybe has been sitting on your shelf so one thing for us in the company was we had all of this customer feedback and we done nothing with it and i you know to ask my team to do it it would have taken the months and they kept putting it off because it was a monotonous boring job and so i said okay i'm really going to learn how to use Claude code which means i'm really going to learn how to use this tool that can go and build things for me and so what i did is i put Claude code in what's called plan mode and it's just a little button at

57:44the bottom called plan mode and i spoke to it i said i have this project it's categorizing testimonials i have them in google drive i have them on my website i have them in all of these different places how can we work together on building a website with every single testimonial i have categorized and it present a plan back to me and i said cool let's go and that just one project like that can show you and teach you all you need to know about what AI can do because you can hear about it and it sounds really techy it sounds like you need to know what you're doing when i tell you i'm the least i was the least techy person was like finding a charger was challenging for me um so i was very intimidated going into this but just doing one project like this took my confidence from zero to a hundred because i realized it's just like speaking to a really smart person and you don't have to be embarrassed about the way you phrase it because it just understands and it asks you questions back and it presents plans to you and that just doing one project it's

58:46ripping the bandaid off and that muscle of building confidence in yourself with AI will be the thing that changes everything for you won't be a specific tool or anything so that's called code and the third tool is replete i love replete now the way i would see replete is as a web designer or developer you know it can build real like it can build a landing page or a website in minutes it built our entire quiz flow and so you can chat on the side with replete and it's like chatting to a real person sort of feels like but it's building in real time on this part of your screen and so the way that i work with it is i go to Claude and i have it come up with a project plan of what i want to build so i went to Claude and said i want to build this um AI platform for my book which you know if i was doing this a couple of years ago that's hundreds of thousands of dollars and months months of work and stress two weeks this platform so i had it come up with a plan and i took that plan and i put it inside a replete and i had a working prototype within an

59:50hour and you know i took then a bit of work on the back end to just to fix it but i didn't have to do anything i just kept saying how do i make this functional for if i want to have a hundred thousand people go through this what do i need to think about and it tells you what you need to know so those are three tools that's how i've learned how to use it and what i don't recommend is spending your time watching youtube videos listening to podcasts like listening to all of us talk about it i think it's it's a great way to have ideas for projects but you will still see the barrier in your mind because we're used to hearing techy things like this and they're being a learning curve and there is one but you'd be so surprised how much easier than you think like the way that you can talk to Claude you just say i don't understand say it again or my favorite line with Claude code it'll tell me to go do something and it sounds really complicated i don't understand a thing that it's saying because i don't understand that that tech thing it'll say now i need you to go in and connect this and do this and do this my favorite line this is the the techiest line you

1:00:55should all remember this three words you do it that's it that's my that's my secret weapon it will tell me that i need to go and do this thing that sounds really techy and complicated and i just say you do it guess what it does it it does it and so i keep saying you do it you do it you do it never gonna not say Natalie i'm promising you this is the one thing i can't do and it okay then i'll go do it but that happens very rarely that's if you need to get a certain thing to to paste into it like you need to log into account but it doesn't want to log into those the magic three words when you're working with AI so if any of you are interested and i could talk about AI for hours and i won't sorry but if any of you really do want to get into it my my challenge to you is pick one repeatable process what one thing you do in your life on a daily or weekly basis and think about doing this as a project in Claude code so you'll download Claude Claude onto your computer to use code and you'll just go tell it the the thing you want to do

1:01:57and just see what you create i promise you as someone that is not techy i promise you on the other side of that you will shock yourself at how capable and competent you are with it i tried you do it you do it in marriage doesn't work the same as that as AI but that is genius that is genius whatever it tells you to do you do it you do it and it does it it's the magic three words that is amazing um okay i want to open it up to q&a uh there's so much where i want to talk to you guys there is a whole chapter in this book called resentment and it is so powerful it is so powerful and it talks about even business partnerships and what happens if you let resentment fester and the power of resentment and there's so much in this book so much more about also social media and AI um so i want to ask you one more question then we're going to open it up for q&a and that's really for the person who's here right now going Natalie i've tried everything i've been posting online and i did this and i'm using AI and nothing selling and no one seeing my stuff and what would you tell them

1:03:00right now like what to do where to start what to do i would say for the person that is trying all the things and and you don't feel like you're getting momentum in any direction strip it back really strip it back to basics and first just look at what is my product do i have product market fit is this a product that people are willing to pay for and the easiest simplest way to figure that out is get in front of your idle clients and so one way of doing it is maybe you get into a facebook group where you know your idle clients are hanging out and you get on ten phone calls with people and you actually see if they're interested in would buy this thing and on the call maybe you tell them about it maybe you offer them a little bit of value in that space if it's wellness or beauty and you see if they want to buy it you get feedback you start to get that signal of whether this thing is valuable and actually works for people if that is true and you do have product market fit and you know you've got something that works then we've pulled back we start to think about what is the strategy we put in place because when we talk about momentum I really think when you look at people that create massive momentum it's very strategic they don't

1:04:04just just start and throw everything out there and just run themself in every single direction it's normally quite strategic okay I'm going to go on to this one platform and first my goal is going to be I'm going to build a community or I'm going to build an audience or maybe I don't desire to build something organically but I'm going to start using ads and I'm going to learn everything I can about ads and how to get this product in front of the right person on a continuous basis because that's all businesses it's it can be simple if you distill it I'm going to get my product in front of people in a regular basis and growing that is a way that we grow it so we just strip it back and think through that and so one product just think about one product that really has product market fit you get onto one platform and you really do that until it works you figure out what you need to do on that one platform to start seeing growth and you direct them toward one funnel and a funnel sounds fancy but it's basically your checkout page or it's your email list where

1:05:06you then invite them to buy something or it's a sales call or it's a meeting that's all a funnel is it's how do we take people from you know this wider audience to actually being ready to make the purchase and so you think about okay this one product that's got product market fit on this one platform and I'm really building a community and connecting with my idle clients and I take them into this one funnel and you get that working you figure out what that looks like for your product and if you have no idea go find 10 people that are doing it go and find 10 companies that are doing it and take a look at what they're doing and figure out which one of these things you want to do and really get that working and when you unlock momentum in that that's how you figure out what compounding looks like and you get to drive it hard and you get to make it bigger you get to think about whether you expand beyond that but if we try and do all the things I think that's just a recipe for feeling like when I cut out for this like we haven't got something people want to buy that will never make it work and we're exhausted and so I really really think simpler is better

1:06:11in the beginning when you're really trying to get something working simple is your super power and they're longer you can keep it simple and really hone in your expertise on that one thing as where I think you'll unlock that compounding thank you and really quick the three AI platforms under your three faves are you in the highest paid tier for all of them the highest paid level yes yep okay great we're going to open it up to q and a we've lots of lots of hands great Natalie and Jamie I know that you both have daughters I believe right so my question connects to the next generation and by the way I should tell you Natalie I have a brand called Boss Beauty's but it's for younger girls it's actually for kids and pre-teens so they're the future Boss Babes yes but I love here's my question so last fall I was brought in I went in to Hello Sunshine Reese Witherspin's event and I did this workshop that was so meaningful to me it was for teen girls that were attending the event with their moms and I did a talk about dreaming your most

1:07:16impossible dreams and after that all the girls wrote down their dreams in my book but what I noticed I went around and I was just having these conversations with these girls I said what's your dream what are you hoping to do and about 90% of them actually said that they wanted to build their own businesses someday and they wanted to be an entrepreneur right so when you're thinking Natalie about what you're teaching with your methods and what's in your book and just what you're teaching to your community through Boss Babes right how do you think about that and how it applies to the next generation I mean Girl Scouts is actually I don't know if you knew this the largest entrepreneurship program for girls and they're they're looking for things like that right so I'm curious your perspective on that I love that question so much and I think that for me the best thing I can do is be an example of what it looks like to really love what you do to not make your ambition wrong

1:08:16and to chase your dreams and I try to be that person that you know when I was younger when I was a teenager looking at other women I try and be that woman that really leads by that example and I hope that's something my girls you know see I don't try and push I'm not as they grow but I'm not gonna try and push them in a direction but one thing I always try and reiterate is just how much I love what I do and I think that's a really cool way to look at work and I'm curious what you'd say Jamie yeah I know I think that's perfect I know there's a lot of hand so I'm gonna make sure we get to them for you yeah yeah great hi I'm Kate I'm also an entrepreneur at a mom thank you both so much for beautiful conversation and everything you do I had a question about something you were talking about earlier with your purpose and kind of passions changing with the season of life which I 100% agree with and have felt and all of those things and curious how you reconcile that with focus and scaling

1:09:18a business particularly when you get past that like zero to one and you're in the scaling phase and sometimes it's not as fun and glamorous that lies there early stages so just curious how you think about balancing like passion purpose and focus if that makes sense yeah that's a really good question you know one of my membership that I've had we've had for 11 years now and there have been times where I've been really bored of doing the same thing day in day out what has really worked for me to not get distracted by the shiny things is to find the parts of my job that are really fun and creative for me where I feel like I get that that newness and that new sense of energy and I try and line that up with ways that compound the brand and so I love creating brands I love that I love the visual element I love the all of it the brand pillars everything and so instead of using that to create multiple different brands I try and do many launches where we come up with

1:10:21really fun campaigns and I throw my energy behind that but it all drives toward the membership so when example is we did a campaign last summer called Freedom High where we created this full virtual high school called Freedom High and we fully took our audience back to school which is so funny because they were mums ready to go back to into the school year with their kids and we made it 90s and nostalgic and it was a fun way for me to flex my creativity without starting something completely brand new and then we opened up the doors to our membership and so that's how I try and look at it because I notice if I just get distracted by every new idea and every shiny thing I don't think I'm really giving myself the best shot at building the business if that makes sense hi Natalie and Jamie thank you for sharing your stories I'm Natasha I wanted to ask a question about the generational healing that you did and how did you reconcile that old world I can relate

1:11:21without going into details but when you become successful and you move into another energy but you still have family and friends that maybe couldn't change their circumstances how did you reconcile that with grace and make peace with the past but maybe bring them all now that's a great question I don't know that I have the perfect answer for that but my answer is that I stopped trying to change other people and just focused on myself and my relationship with certain people became so much more enjoyable and joyful when I fully accepted them for who they are and I didn't try to make them come on the journey I'm on and I just could really accept that was where they are and trust if they do ever want to move into different spaces that I'd be there to support them but it wasn't just because I wanted it for myself doesn't mean everybody does and letting that be okay and just seeing them for who they are

1:12:21I'm Christy client of Natalie's and I can vouch for her process my business screw like over 100,000 followers I think in a month on social media and hundreds thousands revenue but as a therapist I'm really curious if you have a decision making or either you have a decision making process with AI because I find myself getting really excited by these conversations and also like okay what feels like it's taking me out of like you said with the content taking me out of my true like essence or my voice and what feels like okay this is a good use of it so do you have a process of like noticing intuitively you know what feels aligned in that way and then when you feel like okay baby this is taking me out of my at a zone of genius or my true like passion and purpose I love this question because I really think one of the harder things right now for founders is you can do absolutely

1:13:23anything and everything and it's very tempting to do everything and anything so a couple of things number one I have a set of things I ask myself when I'm thinking about what I'm going to do with AI is this going to drive more revenue drive better results or save time and if it's not going to do any of those three things I think about why I would be doing it and another question I found myself asking a lot is what I still do this if I wasn't using AI because a lot of times I was in the excitement of it and learning what AI can do I was just doing everything a system for this and a spreadsheet for this and it wasn't really moving the needle it was just very organized yet when I started asking myself would I do this without AI I started to focus on the things that actually would drive the business forward and so what I'm trying to do is the things that I know really moves the needle in the business and just making it more efficient or or making it bigger because of AI I think we have time for one more one more question Good Riley yeah great

1:14:26okay we'll do two more last two I know it's very kind of you so we can share is this thing on okay yes hi I'm Kara I started my business when I was 21 I'm 33 now and my experience was very DIY it was very fumbling through a lot of challenges struggles in post-Russian Drome but I really envision my next step to write a book I have a lot of silly stories and moments I want to share but also guidance and wisdom that I think could help us she kind of mentioned the boss beauties um what would you what's the one piece of advice that you give to someone who wants to write a book and what would that be for the next step for me personally if I was starting from scratch and I knew I want to write a book I would focus on building a community I think that's really important because at the end of the day you really want your book to be read you want it to have the impact that it has and you know you want to give it the best shot

1:15:30and so building a community I think opens up that door it's a great way to get feedback it's a great way to see what's resonating and it means when you launch it you actually have a community that was meant for so that's what I would do and it goes I say that a lot I think building a community today especially in the age of AI is your moat a lot of brands are now really scrambling to own their distribution so I think it's incredibly important and if you do that I think you really separate yourself so that will be my advice. Thank you by the way and thank you both for being here this is a great learning opportunity for me um so for those entrepreneurs who have a specifically maybe more like a his goal product or or just an area where they just they really need to um find investors do you touch on that in the book um what's your advice in seeking investment.

1:16:36I yeah the great question I don't that's not my area of expertise I'm curious what you would answer for that one it depends what stage the business is in. I would have another job bringing in revenue to fund the business and not give away any equity when it's that early on what so many people do is they give away way too much because it's not worth anything yet and then all the said in someone's controlling your decisions someone's all of that and it just it rarely ends well so I would try to self-fund it as long as I could um I if I were her and she wanted to bring in new blood I wouldn't do it through investment if she can hold off you could do it through an advisory board and maybe just give a tiny tiny tiny piece of the upside to bring in new people to kind of have fresh fresh look at it I would try to hold on to it as long as possible yeah well we um we brought in private equity four and a half years into it cosmetics and uh and by the time we sold our business we were still the largest shareholders and that made

1:17:36all the difference because if my gut told me one thing I could trust it I didn't have to launch a product or change a formula or something like that because I didn't have the control and I don't think that um I just think when it's when it's the early stages it's too soon if you can avoid it at all costs try to get new blood in their different ways um without bringing in their money just giving them a piece in the upside later is what I would do and one more thing to add to the book um if building your own community is not something that you want to do I 100% agree with what Natalie said by the way own your distribution and you can ensure the success of your book but you can also do that in other ways I would say that the thing that people don't tell authors there are there are millions I don't remember the number it's over a million new books in the US every year most people never know they exist so when you think about how many incredible stories and incredible just wisdom and and inspiration and talent and poetry and words that just exists out there no one knows it's there what I didn't realize until my first book is they said

1:18:40all of the marketing falls on the author all of it and the publisher no matter how big no matter how great they'll have them in house marketing department and they will help uh but pretty much it all falls on you so figuring out what does that marketing look like now and maybe it's not your own community it might be like oh you know what I'm going to figure out how to get my book in these communities that exist or I'm going to figure out I mean there's a lot of ways to do it also but it's through your distribution you almost have to own the marketing and the district it's all going to fall on you which feels daunting because a lot of people that write books are not marketers right yet it all exactly right yet it all falls on you so knowing that ahead of time um I think is important yeah yeah you guys Natalie Ellis yeah amazing congratulations for first ever book already a bestseller she's gonna stay and sign books for anyone who would like that and say hello to everyone um so what a gift she flew in here to be with you guys tonight and thank you for doing

1:19:45that coming and visiting Summerland and Monocito and all of us and for your precious time congratulations on your book and she is here to meet each one of you so thank you everyone thank you so much thank you Jamie