From Rock Bottom to Rocktopus

What do a 3D printer, a surprise Rocktopus, and a business pivot have in common? Apparently… everything. In this episode, I'm taking you behind the scenes of what actually happened when my income tanked, my coaching business disappeared overnight, and I had to figure out what the heck was next.

We’re talking identity shifts, getting out of burnout, launching something totally new (hint: it's AI), and why this next season feels like the most me I’ve ever been.

If you’ve ever had to start over — or you’re in the thick of figuring it out — this one’s for you.

Body Confidence Academy- if you're looking to ditch the diets and lose the weight with a different approach.....this is for YOU! I've helped thousands of women lose weight- anywhere from 10lbs to 100 lbs! CLICK HERE for info.

Transcript

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You're listening to Real and Naturalish, the podcast where we evolve and own the glow up in real time. I'm your host, Natasha Pearson. Are we recording?

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We're on.

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We're back. We are recording. I wanted to start, so I want to start these episodes just like catching up with you guys. But I figured like we can start every episode just catching up on life. What is going on? What are things that I'm doing? I mean me catching you up, because you can't catch me up, sadly. Maybe one day. Which actually, yes, maybe one day. Because guess what? I'm so excited for this. So a couple of years ago, before I was pregnant with Alan, I was planning this women's retreat and everyone was so excited about it. I had the spots filled. I was really excited about it. We were gonna go to Costa Rica, but I then found out that I was pregnant and I had to cancel the trip because I wouldn't have been able to travel with how pregnant I was going to be, and I was really bummed about that. And then I had a newborn baby going through all the newborn stuff, still managing work and all of the things, and it just wasn't good timing. But now is the good timing. It is happening, and I'm so excited. You you probably actually already know this because I am pre-recording this podcast, but we decided today that we are going to go to drum roll. We're going to Bali, and I'm so pumped. So I have to say something about this because I know it can be really scary the idea of spending a lot of money to go on a vacation, travel all the way across the world to spend time with women that you have never met in real life. But that is the beauty of it. First of all, you have to think you're gonna have something in common with them because everyone who's going, I am the thing that is in common with you guys. So if you feel like we would be friends, heck, if you are listening to this podcast, imagine listening to me share all of the stories with you in real life in Bali on the beach. I mean, it's gonna be so fun. I am so excited. We're gonna do like fun touristy things, and then I think I also might want to do like a workshop or something, but trust me, it's gonna be very chill, very laid back. Bali is a bucketless destination. I actually studied abroad in Hong Kong when I was in college, and I was able, I was lucky enough to be able to travel all around Southeast Asia, and it was so cool. I mean, I went to Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore. It's one of the coolest experiences of my life. Anyways, all this to say, the one place I wanted to go in Southeast Asia where I did not get to go was Bali. And I have just heard that the beaches are beautiful, the culture is amazing, the food is amazing. So if you want to join us on this trip to Bali, I'm gonna put all of the information in the show notes. It's a once-in-a-lifetime trip. We are gonna have so fun. And I have done a lot of these like trips with girls before, and I always come back just thinking, why do I not do this more often? It women need women. I have realized now more than ever in my life, is that I need a community of other women, of women who get it, other women that have kids, other women who are going through the same things as you, and there's just such a special bond that comes out of this, and I am so excited that we are finally doing this retreat. I'm actually more excited for Bali than I was for Costa Rica. It is going to be amazing. Okay, back to what we were actually talking about, the format of these episodes. We're gonna start with some closet ketchup. I am going to think of ketchup every single time I say that. I cannot say that. We need a better name. Tell me in the comments what do we call this segment of us chatting together? Then I want to get into like the bulk of the podcast. So having something more inspirational or motivational or just anything really that I want to talk about. I mean, I know I said in the very first episode there were so many topics that I just want to discuss, whether it's books or dance or business or mom life, I want to be able to have a platform where I can talk about all of that. And this is going to be the platform for that. So figuring it out as we go during season one, and for our catching up today, I have to tell you about Dave's most recent purchase. Now, if you have been following me for any amount of time, you probably know that my husband randomly buys the most useless junk. Like, let me just tell you a couple of these things. For example, this one was like a couple years ago. I got this package from Amazon and I open it up, and it's these little like two-inch tall cat figurines, and they're standing up, and their paws are suction cups. And I am like, what? What even is this? And I show it to Dave, I'm like, did you order this? He was like, oh yeah, it's a phone stand. The paws suction to the back of your phone, and then it just holds your phone up for you, and it looks like a cat is holding up your phone. These are the things that my husband buys. On today's episode of Random Crap That Dave buys, we are now the owners of a 3D printer. And you think that, oh, that's that's not that useless. Like you could do some really cool things. You could print some useful things with that 3D printer. Well, one of the very first things that Dave printed was, I don't even know if I should tell you the name of it or describe it first. He printed a Roctopus. Dwayne the Rock Johnson's head with eight tentacles. We have had this printer in our house for probably two weeks, and I have not heard it off. You can hear it on, and it's because a freaking Roctopus takes nine hours to print. I do think that he probably did buy this with me in mind because there is this thing that I have been wanting to actually like make and sell. Like, I have a really good business idea. We can make it come to life. We can make a prototype. So I actually had tap class today. So every Tuesday I have been taking private lessons, going to tap, and you all know by now that we are in a season of rediscovering and evolving and doing things that make us happy. And dance for me is one of those things I actually think it's because it forces me to shut my brain off, makes it so I don't think about anything else. You know, when people talk about self-care all the time, and they say, like, oh, take a bath, do this. I'm sorry, but when I am relaxing in the bath, I cannot stop thinking about the things on my to-do list. It is not that relaxing for me. I mean, I think it is, but it's not actually. But when I dance and when I am learning things, it is so much focus on something else that I am forced to really shut my brain off and listen to the music. And it has been bringing me so much joy, and doing it as an adult is even better because I'm doing it because I'm choosing to and because I love it. So, season one, episode one, you got how this podcast came to be. And I was thinking about this, how I kind of want to shape this first season of the podcast to be about that evolution of Tasha. How am I changing? How am I showing up now? What are the things that I'm doing? And so I thought that it would be fun to actually take season one and structure it and have each episode be a little piece of me that you get to learn something about me, you get some of my life insights, you get some of my closet catch up, but you just get the real and natural-ish version. So for today's episode, we are gonna dive into the business side of Tasha. And I know I've already talked a little bit about that with social media and influencing, also kind of moving on from my previous job, coaching women with weight loss, although I still am coaching women and weight loss and actually doing it in a way that feels so much better and more fulfilling to me, which I love. And I want to talk about all those things today. So, this is gonna be a part of the show where I spill the tea on how my life actually works behind the scenes. I mean, influencing, weight loss coaching. I started in a business selling in AI course, which has been like crazy cool. Um, I do like affiliate marketing, all of that kind of stuff. We're gonna talk about what actually goes down because I get asked a lot of times, how do you do it all? And the answer to that question is simple is I have people that help me. I cannot do this alone. I have the most supportive family. My husband actually does a lot of business type stuff behind the scenes. He's like the money guy, he deals with our tax accountant, he does all like that finance stuff. And I just also have employees that help me with the Natasha Pearson side and my weight loss coaching. I could not do this alone. And almost every single day I'm like, I need I need even more help. But we're gonna get into all of the nitty-gritty. So, and before I can answer some of these burning questions that I know you have and spill all the tea, let me just kind of recap on all of the things I'm doing now because my life has drastically changed in the past year. I actually, the company that I was partnered with changed their business model, and pretty much overnight we lost about 75% of our income, which was very hard. I'm fortunate that I had other streams of income, but like I just said, I don't do this alone. So for me, losing that income was now thinking about all of the employees that I have and the people that I have to pay and the business expenses that I have and all of that overhead. I think people might look at my social media and think, oh, she just posts online. There's a lot that goes into running this business. So during that transition period, I still wanted to coach women in weight loss. It is something that has completely changed my entire life. It's something that I love. It is so rewarding to see someone change their life in such a drastic way. And I'm not talking about physical transformations. I mean some of the women that I have worked with telling me that, you know, I'm able to get on the floor and play with my kids now because you inspired me to get started. That is why I do what I do. I love it so much. And one thing that has been hard for me to navigate throughout all of this is on top of things ending with my previous work, I'm also at a place in my personal journey where I'm no longer losing weight, which has been very bizarre because as long as I can remember, I have been trying to lose weight. So at this point in time, I lost a huge source of income. I was no longer on my weight loss journey, and it was really hard for me to figure out how to show up, how to still inspire women to lose weight when I was completely changing everything. So I created my own weight loss program. It's called the Body Confidence Academy, and it is step by step how I was able to change my lifestyle, how I was able to create these healthy habits. What are the healthy habits that I created? And honestly, weight loss became a byproduct of me changing my lifestyle. So in the program, you don't get meal plans because honestly, I feel like that is a crutch. If you are going to rely on someone to tell you what to eat in order to lose weight, you're gonna have to do that for the rest of your life. But if you take the time to learn your body, to learn how to listen to your body, how to figure out when you're hungry, how to figure out when you're full, how to figure out how to nourish yourself properly, you will be able, I don't like to say intuitive eating because I feel like saying intuitive eating that's like, oh, I intuitively want to eat a cookie. Like, you probably shouldn't do that all the time. I think of it more as intentional eating, being intentional about what you are putting in your body. That doesn't mean that you can't have treats, but the way that I teach women is focus on giving your body what it needs before giving it what it wants. So we talk a lot about mindset, we talk a lot about emotional eating, and those honestly, that was what made the biggest difference for me in my weight loss journey. So I created the Body Confidence Academy. I have this weight loss program, I've helped so many women lose weight. It's such an incredible program. We have a community that goes along with it, and even though I'm not on my weight loss journey, I still get to coach women and help them change their lives, which is something that I am so passionate about and I love it. So while I was building body confidence, AI came out. I started using ChatGPT so much to help me with everything, you know, and I think actually why so many people struggle with AI is because they're not using it correctly. I really look at AI more as a collaborator rather than something that is replacing me. It's almost like, and I train my own custom GPT, so you know, she knows everything about me. So it's almost like I have a second me that I can bounce ideas off of with. I have a custom GPT that knows my exact voice, and I can give her ideas, and a lot of times it's like I know exactly what I want to say, but I don't have the time to type it all out and make it look good. That's what AI does for me. So I really started utilizing AI. I figured out how to actually get Chat GPT to sound exactly like you, how to train it in your voice, not a robot voice. It ended up saving me, I kid you not. I mean, my whole team uses my custom GPTs that I created. I would say collectively, between our whole team, it probably saves us over a hundred hours a month, would you say? Yeah. Like at least at a bare minimum, my our custom GPTs save us over a hundred hours a month and tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, I actually was able to replace an employee that left unexpectedly with AI. That is a$70,000 salary right there that AI replaced, which is crazy. And I know that there are some people thinking AI is taking over the world. What if instead you chose to think like I'm gonna learn how to utilize this to enhance what I'm already good at? And that's really what I've done. I trained AI to do those things as well as I do them, and now my team can use it, I can use it, and it's just like really incredible. And through creating this, I realized, you know, there are so many other women out there, women who are also entrepreneurs, who are trying to do it all, who have kids and have careers and want to be the best at everything, but they also want to have a life, they want to have activities and hobbies that they enjoy doing, and AI can help save so much time. So I took everything that I did and I packaged it together into a course. I call it that AI marketing system, and I teach you how to create a custom GPT for your business, whatever you are doing. So it's actually really funny. Anytime I talk about AI on Instagram, I will get messages like, you need to stop talking about this, like, talk about weight loss. I can talk about whatever I want to talk about. And why I talk about it is because this is actually just like weight loss completely changed my life. AI has been changing my life in business because it has allowed me to do 10 times as much in a fraction of the amount of time. And I think about how many other women out there this could help you. Like so many. And I have women who have taken this, they're literally like, I feel like an expert with AI. Like, I'm able to do so much in literally minutes. It's it's crazy. I feel like talking about all the things I'm doing in my head, I'm actually thinking about what are all of my different streams of income. About a decade ago, I learned the average millionaire has seven streams of income. So I am always thinking, what what are my seven streams of income? So now I have body confidence, I have AI, I do affiliate marketing, we have investments. Uh, if you actually want to get more into like real estate type investing, you've probably seen that influencing side. But I really want to get into what goes on behind the scenes because I don't think a lot of people know how some of that stuff works. And why I think that is because of some of the comments that I get from people. I honestly like I had to figure it out as I was going. It's so wild to think that I started posting my weight loss journey on Facebook back in 2015. I wasn't even really posting on Instagram back then. Influencing was not a thing. Like there was an influencer was not that was not a word back then. Started growing my following just by sharing my weight loss journey 10 years ago. And brands started to reach out to me. They started offering to like send me free products to post about it. Like that was really how I got started influencing. But again, that was before influencing was a thing. Now, you know, fast forward 10 years later, I actually have a manager. I have someone that like deals with all of my contracts with these brands and like helps me. Like, literally, I am obsessed with my manager, Ashley. I love her. I hope she never leaves me. Um, she keeps me so organized. I get texts from her every day, like, this is what you have to do today. Here's everything that's due. So my manager will like bring me offers and I get to look at it and I get to say, like, do I want to do this? Do I want to promote this brand? And I always this is something that I personally do. I don't know if I can't speak for every influencer. I will never agree to something unless I have actually tried it. There are so many times where I'm like, I don't know, like have them send me something. I need to try it because I do not want to lose that trust with my community. Like, I feel like we have a certain level of trust here, and I want every single thing that I talk about to be something that I actually use every day in my real life, and I would spend my own hard-earned money on it. I don't want, I don't want to sound like out of touch here, but like part of the reality of this job is so many brands and so many companies send me things all the time. I have packages at my house every single day. I actually turn down over half of them because they're just products I would never use. Anyways, um, my manager will like bring me offers, I can decide if I want to do it or not. And then with it, is like there's like contracts and everything. Luckily, there's terms of use and different brands want different things. So it's no two partnerships are exactly the same. And I think that confuses people a lot because what a brand wants from you also can determine how much you're getting paid. For example, like sometimes brands will want usage rights to your content so that they can use it to create ads. And sometimes they just want you to shout them out on stories, sometimes they want a reel, sometimes they want a reel in a TikTok, sometimes they want an email. Like, there's so many different ways that these contracts can work and then know this by now. Um, but a lot of times with most of my contracts, I actually have to record the content and I have to get it approved by the brands ahead of time. And depending on the brand, it can be a long time. Like I did a partnership with Disney and Haya, which I love Haya. That's like our kids' vitamins. We love those. We literally use them every day. Like it is part of our kids' routine, the nighttime vitamins and like their morning vitamins. But they did um, I don't even know how to say this right now. I guess this is not sponsored, so I can say it however I want. But they partnered with Disney to do like a Disney bottle, and I had like a whole page of things. Like, I don't even think I could say Disney is collaborating with Haya. Like, I could not say that phrase. Some of them are like very intense. And then every brand is also a little bit different. Like, I will get a brief which tells me exactly like what can I do, what can't I do? Most, like, I would actually say all of the time is share your personal experience, which I do like that. If you notice, when I promote things, I always share my personal experience because I think that's important. Like, that's why I'm sharing. It because I actually use it and love it. Like, I'm not just gonna promote something to make money. I just I do not feel right about that. Like the last thing about influencing, like it's it's really cool. Like, I feel really grateful that that's one of the things that I get to do and that my platform allows that. But you also have to think that in order to have that job, you also have to create content. That's why I prefer referring to myself as a content creator, not an influencer. But in order to build an audience and to have trust enough that someone will open their wallet and buy something, you have to create content. You can't just be posting ads all the time. And so a large part of my job is making sure that I'm consistently creating content. And this was another thing that I have been really struggling with over the past year because for so long, my content was about my journey and losing weight, and people were following me for my weight loss journey, and I just had got it in my head that people need weight loss content for me. And it almost felt kind of forced when I was no longer in that place. And that's what I'm really loving about this evolution because I'm still passionate about health and fitness. I mean, that is something that is going to be a part of my life forever. I mean, I struggle with my weight for so long, and I love helping women on their weight loss journey. Like it's just gonna be a part of what I'm doing forever, but it's not every day about weight loss. And I think that has been really hard because it didn't feel natural for me to be sharing about weight loss every day when I was no longer in that season. That doesn't mean that I can't coach women with what they are going through specifically, but talking about my own journey and especially something like weight loss, it's emotional and it can be draining. And what had been really hard, and I think actually one of the hardest parts about being a creator is you're always expected to be on. Like, really think about that. I mean, I have gotten better with creating boundaries. That has been my goal for this year. Balance and boundaries are the two things that I'm working on. But there was like, I want to say a seven-year period where I posted on my Instagram stories every single day. Every day. Like, really think about that. Never taking a single day off of your job. Because at that point, social media was my job. Posting is my job. And so I don't use social media the same way most people do because for me, it's work. And when I'm not working, I don't really want to be scrolling. Having to be quote unquote on all the time is really hard. Cause I mean, think about it. You are not happy every single day of your life. You are not in the mood to talk to people every single day of your life. Yet when you have a job on social media, you're pretty much expected to show up every single day. And for me, it was show up and be inspirational and be happy and help people lose weight. And it felt exhausting and it almost felt like when something becomes your job, it no longer becomes fun. And for me, it's something this is something that I've always loved. And I really wanted to take the pressure off of myself to have this be my main thing that I talk about all the time because for me, that's exhausting. Like it doesn't mean that I don't love helping people, but I didn't want 100% of the focus to be on my body anymore or my weight loss journey anymore. So one of the things I did for this podcast episode is I asked Maddie to give me a list of questions that you might want to know, like the juicy details about what I do, not like the boring stuff. And one of the questions she has is Have you ever had a client where you were like, girl, I can't help you? So talking about like weight loss coaching, and I will say, yes, you're gonna get a little bit of tough love, Tasha, right now, because there is a specific type of person that I truly feel like I can't help. And that is the person that is not taking accountability for where they are. For me, that was like the pivotal moment. The moment where I was like, the reason I am overweight is because of me. It's not because of anyone else. It's not because I didn't have the perfect meal plans, it's not because I didn't have a trainer, it's not because of McDonald's, it's because I couldn't handle myself at McDonald's. Actually, for me, it was Chick-fil-A and cookie dough and Ben and Jerry's. Those are like, those are my things, guys. But that was why I was overweight. It was because of me. And I feel like there are some people who are still almost stuck in that victim mentality that they're overweight because of all these other things. But once you take accountability for being where you are at because of you, you are actually getting all of your power back because you are at the same time telling yourself that you have the power to make a change and to do things differently and to get a different result. I can meet women where they're at. I can give them the tools, I can help them, I can coach them, but I can only do so much. You know that quote, you can lead a horse to its water, but you can't make it drink. I can't do the work for people. When people are expecting me to check in on them every single day or like be in their kitchen and slap cookies out of their hand, I can't do that. That's not realistic. You need to learn how to do this on your own, but that is so empowering. That's how you have the tools to be able to lose the weight and keep it off forever. Because unless you want to be counting calories forever, you should not lose weight that way. I feel like we're getting a little bit long. I just want to answer like one more question, and then maybe if you guys have more questions, we can do more episodes like this. I I should do a QA episode. But one thing I want to say about AI, because this again is like one of those things that I'm like reading a lot and studying about a lot. I know so many people are resistant to it, but you really have to think AI is not going away. And as much as it sucks, like as much as I actually sometimes wish that we did not have the internet, the internet's not going away. Social media is not going away. AI is not going away. And my opinion on it is instead of panicking or freaking out that it might be replacing you, learn how you can work with AI to have it enhance what you're doing. Like even if you're a copywriter, I have AI writing a lot of my content for me. But if you're a copywriter and you know how to train AI in different voices, you could write a hundred times the amount of things in a fraction of the time. But you're also still going to be the one collaborating. It's not gonna be perfect that first time, but it's giving you like a starting point where now you can just tweak things and it just makes it so much easier. Season one is all about the different parts of Tasha. You just got business, Tasha, today, and yes, I work a lot, but like I said, I'm working on having balance, and I could not do it without the team that I have. I have so many people that help me and people that support me in my everyday life, but I also have learned the importance of unplugging, which brings us in to our next segment, which we are gonna wrap up the show with today. And I kind of want to end each show with a short little segment, and we'll figure out the ones that you guys like the best and we'll just repeat those. So things that I do to unplug. I actually used to watch a lot of TV, but last year I started reading, and reading has replaced TV for me pretty much. So we're gonna do book club. What am I reading right now that I am loving? I actually just finished what I think is going to be my number one book of 2025, and it was Strange Sally Diamond by I think it's Liz Liz Nugent, I think is how you say her name. It was unexpectedly good. I went in blind to this book. I had no idea what it was gonna be about. The first page caught me so off guard that I had to read it twice. I literally read the first page and I was like, wait, did I read that correctly? Is that really what just happened? And I had to reread it. It was wild. I don't want to give away too much, but I will say if you are someone that gets triggered, make sure to read the trigger warnings. If you don't get triggered, go in blind. It was kind of a wild experience. The turns that this book took. You literally get inside the mind of a psychopath. And it's wild and very compelling and so layered, and so many like underlying themes about nature versus nurture and trauma, and it was it was phenomenal. And if you are a true crime girly, you definitely need to go like stop everything you're doing and go read this book immediately. Very good. The other thing that I have been reading, oh, I this summer, I cannot like looking back, I do not know how I did this in a month. I did it because we were road tripping, basically, and I had a lot of time in a car to read. I read the entire Throne of Glass series. So this is romantic. I would say it's more fantasy than romance. Um, the same author of A Court of Thorns and Roses. It was really good. I thought I'm gonna make so many people mad. I don't want to make them mad. I was in a group chat with uh my sister, my sister-in-law and her sister, who I guess she's kind of my sister-in-law too. But they had read this book and we were talking about a lot of it, and the story was good, and I was hooked the whole time. That's why I'm like, I feel like it's a five-star book. I or a five-star series. I didn't rate every book five stars. But there were like some weird parts of like the magic, like the fantasy part of it. I'm like, that does not make sense. But I am a big fan of Manon Blackbeak. She is like probably my favorite character from any book. I love her so much. And it's really funny because when you're reading it, you get to those chapters about the witches, and you're like, what the heck is this? Like, why am I reading this? This is so boring. Like, get back to the other story. But then by the end of the series, you're like, oh my gosh, you're the best character in the world. Like, I do not know how I could have done that book without Manon. She was amazing. Throne of Glass, I would read it. It is definitely a commitment. The whole series was over 5,000 pages, and I read it in one month. I was reading a lot. So I would say, like, my favorite genres. I kind of go back and forth between different genres. Like, I'll get into a romanticy phase, but I mean, after 5,000 pages, I'm like, I need something different than I did Strange Sally Diamond. I do like a lot of romance ones. Like, I read a lot of smut, which I don't like to publicize a lot. But those are just kind of like easy, mindless books that I like. But again, I can only read so many of them before I'm like, I need to read something that actually like makes me think more. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Like, don't get me wrong, I love a good romance book. Oh, best romance series, the Windy City series, uh, by Liz Tom Forty. So good. That the second book in that series, oh, I love it. Ryan Shea, he is my book boyfriend. What I am reading next, I don't know. I uh I just I just finished Strange Sally Diamond, and it's one of those books. This is how I know a book is five stars, and this is actually my rating system, which is good for you to know. I will only give a book five stars if I think I will be able to tell you a summary of the book a year from then. There are so many books that I read them and then I forget everything that it was about like two weeks later. The other time I will give a book five stars is if it is making me think so much that I cannot start another book because I'm still thinking about what I just read. That is how Strange Sally Diamond is for me. I finished reading it on Saturday. It is now Tuesday. I have not started anything else because I'm like still stuck in Strange Sally Diamond. Let's make this a regular segment because I love talking about my books. All right, we are going to end there. Thank you for listening to another episode of Real and Naturalish, and I will see you on the next one. You made it to the end, which means you're officially one of the real ones. Don't forget to follow, leave a five star review, and text this episode to your bestie. And if you want the unfiltered behind the scenes, make sure to get on the email list. The link is in the show notes.