I Can Have It All—Just Not All At Once (with Natalie Bullen)

Natalie Bullen is a business coach who made multiple six figures helping small business owners build wealth. She's also someone who wakes up exhausted, goes to bed exhausted, and whose body treats the gym like a biological threat.

In this brutally honest conversation, Natalie shares why she scaled her business back to "minimally viable option" to prioritize her health—and why that decision has triggered so much pushback from the entrepreneurial community.

We dive deep into:

• Exercise intolerance and what happens when working out makes you feel worse for days
• How chronic inflammation and metabolic syndrome can plague you even when you're eating clean
• Why 9 months of "perfect discipline" left her healthier on paper but unable to function
• The toxic productivity culture that demands record-breaking years every single year
• Why growth at all costs is actually unhealthy (and sounds like cancer)
• How capacity works—and why admitting you have limits feels revolutionary
• The all-or-nothing mentality keeping high-achievers stuck and sick
• Why health and wellness was the only investment category where Natalie didn't get scammed

Natalie gets real about inflammation, choosing financial security over growth, looking for full-time employment while running her business, and finally admitting: "I can have it all. I just can't have it all at the same time."

This isn't about giving up. It's about being honest about what it actually costs to build a business—and making conscious choices about what you're willing to trade.

If you're a business owner who feels like you're slowly dying while "succeeding," this episode will give you permission to make different choices.

Connect with Natalie:

• Website: www.unapologeticwealth.com

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Ladylyricist06

To learn about The Million Dollar Body Method.

https://www.gregfearon.co.uk/

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Million Dollar Body Podcast with your host Greg Feheron, and today I have a special, special guest, the one and only Nat Bullen. Nat, welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Hey, I'm excited about it. I've been looking forward to having you on this podcast for a while. So before we go any further, just do a quick intro into who you are, what you do, and let's go from there.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Um, hey, I'm Nat Bullen. I own Unapologetic Wealth. I would argue that that is the least interesting thing about me. I uh am a very accidental entrepreneur, and I help small business owners make more money and build wealth using their companies.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

And this has been a bit of a shift over the last year or so, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Because about a year or two ago, you were deep in the sales and sales and sales and messaging, which I mean, here's the thing: depending on where you're at in business, you might need sales and messaging to make more money. But that's not always the case. Some people actually need better operational support and more team. Some people need like better programs and higher prices. So I think the good thing about working with someone that's got actual corporate experience and degrees is they can ascertain what kind of support you need instead of kind of plunking you down in a one-size-fits-all program.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Which is what people tend to do, right? They tend to just pick one thing and go, right, that's who I'm gonna work with and that's what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah, 100%. And and then they wonder why they get bad outcomes. And it's like, well, this person only has one mode. So if that's not the mode that's going to work for you, it's it's it's not, but like you wouldn't buy a hairdryer that only had one like temperature, you wouldn't buy you know what I mean. Like you wouldn't buy appliance, you wouldn't buy a range with one heat setting. So it's interesting when I meet people who are like, yeah, I was working with this coach, and he only gave me one piece of advice run webinars. I'm like, yeah, because he only has one mode. That's the only mode he knows. And um, it's good and bad, right? I think it's it's good to be multifaceted, but people who only do one thing tend to be able to market better. So it's I I think it's better for you to pick someone who is well versed, but I I understand that expert then has a bigger marketing burden. And I can understand why people would be averse to that from a sales perspective.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

I hear that in my industry a lot. Yeah, I can I can see the crossover into my industry.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

And this is why people in fitness tend to get really, really, really specific, like lift heavy, and that's all they teach people how to do is lift heavy, right? Or like the new one, the new niche is uh mobility.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

That's all the rage. So now it's the functional, you know, the people who are doing like the frog squats with kettlebells, and they're like hopping all over the gym, and they're doing like the ballet lunges, like the lateral from side to side, where they've got one foot on the bench and they've got one foot in a plie, and they've got a big kettlebell, and they've got on a tutu, like they like it's a it's a thing, right? And so now, yeah, so that's that's the niche. And so I I get it. I just I think um oversimplification harms us all. There is no simple health care for humans because we don't have a simple operating system. We literally have like a dozen systems in the body that are all working symbiotically. So that in and of itself, like what might be good for your cardiovascular system, might not be good for your digestive system, like the protein maxing that people are doing, which is really weird. You meet people who are like 200 grams of protein a day and it's like that's good for your digestive. That has to be like really hard on your stomach, it has to be like really difficult to accomplish in a day of regular eating, like they're eating like chickpea and seven eggs and like eight pieces of sausage for breakfast. And I'm like, that can't feel intuitive, like that can't feel good to you to sit down and eat, but someone has told them you have to eat, you know, 1.5 grams per pound of body weight in protein. So it's just I've been watching things from afar. Very glad that I am from afar.

SPEAKER_03 4:59

Yeah, listen, the things I see daily in the health and wellness space will drive you crazy. I'm sure you've seen some of craziness.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

I wouldn't be able to make it. No, I don't I talk too much, I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Okay. Do you want to do a swap? Like you come into my industry.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

I wouldn't be in it long. Like I I would piss everyone off. I wouldn't have any clients. Like, I just I I don't think I I mean look at how look at how I ruffle feathers in my industry. People don't like me now. What if it was something important like weight loss?

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Well, speaking of weight loss, like you've been on a bit of a journey over the last few months. So do you wanna tell me what's been going on and what's happening and share what's your what's been your experiences and what made you change?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Um, you know what? I can't really say that I have changed all that much. I know that sounds silly, but I feel like change happens like internally a long, long time before anyone sees a visual result. Not with any kind of transformation. Like I think by the time people like leave jobs, they've been thinking about leaving that job for like two years. I think before people like move to another state, they've been quietly unhappy with their state for like a year or two. Like, I think very few of the impulsive seeming things actually were that way. I think we are more likely to like mull it over and just not tell people we're mulling it over. And so for years, I have been fighting to get my health back. And I think the challenges I've been up against are insidious in that they're really easy to slip into for anybody, but also really frustrating because they're not major. Like, I don't have lupus, I don't have PCOS, I don't have the brachygene, I'm not in perimenopause, right? So, like it's frustrating when you are young and healthy and you have normal test results, but you know that you have metabolic syndrome, you know that your waist circumference is 45 inches when you're only five foot four inches tall, and that that anatomically doesn't make any sense. Like, you know that you feel sluggish. Like I wake up tired and I go to sleep tired. It wasn't until I was like 32 that I found out that that wasn't normal, that everybody was not actually operating in a system of exhaustion, that some people actually woke up with energy in the morning and it depleted throughout the day in a regular, predictable manner. I did not know that was I didn't know that was a thing. I thought everybody woke up tired because life was hard. So I'm meeting people with energy, like, where the hell did you get that from?

SPEAKER_03 7:58

And they're looking at you going, they're looking at you going, what's wrong with you then?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

If if right, and I'm looking at you like what do you, you know, and then I blamed it on caffeine. I don't ingest caffeine. Um, I've done genetic testing, and turns out I really can't digest caffeine at all. Like my body doesn't process it well, which explains why it makes me feel so bad in the few instances I've tried it. But I thought that everyone with energy was just a caffeine addict because that's normal in America, right? People wake up and then they drink energy drinks and they drink three, four things of coffee and they go to Starbucks, and when they get to work, they drink more, they pick up coffee on the way to work, and then when they get to work, they brew more coffee in the in the plate room, and they drink it all throughout the day. I mean, I'm not that far removed from corporate. We literally had a coffee fund, and they would be mad that I wouldn't contribute to it. I'm like, I don't drink coffee. Why do I have to pay for coffee pods for a curing machine that I don't even own? When I quit this job, I can't even take it home. Why would I help y'all fund coffee? But like it's so indoctrinated. And so I say that to say, um, in my mind, I am just finally getting a sliver of the results that I have always deserved from being really diligent with like what I eat. Like, I've always felt it was unfair to be fat, to be honest. I've always felt that way because I don't eat bread meat, I don't really like fried food, I don't eat late at night, I don't eat big plates of ham hock, I don't put bacon grease in things for no reason. Like, I'm not secretly hiding a stash of donuts under my desk. Like, by and large, I eat a pretty healthy, balanced pescatarian diet, and yet I've always been heavy because I've always had inflammation, and no one could explain where this inflammation comes from. So everybody can admit, you know what, you probably have inflammation, but no one could like, I don't smoke, I had stopped drinking. I'm like, where is the inflammation coming from? And I think I finally realized honestly, America just poisons its citizens. Like, that is the best solution that I have come to in my mind, that between what is allowed in our cleaning chemicals, what is allowed in our paints, what is allowed in the textiles that we wear, what is allowed in our um dishwashing detergent, what is allowed in our makeups, and what they actually let you put in the food, you're just being slowly poisoned, like just microdosed over time. And it accumulates in your body, and your body's like, I don't know what these chemicals are, I cannot process them, I can't get rid of them. And so I'm just gonna have to build around them, and that means you're gonna feel like crap. Yep. And I haven't figured out my long-term strategy for that, but in the short term, I've just become a lot more aware and try to focus on like what I can control, like added sugar that's within my control. I can read labels and choose things that have no additional sugar, like you know, cooking more whole foods, eating more things at home that have like simple ingredients, and um, you know, moving my body. I'm pretty much exercise intolerant again, more of the inflammation. So that that sucks. It sucks being one of the few people in the world who feels worse when they exercise than when they don't.

SPEAKER_03 11:30

So you don't get you don't get the high that some of us get.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

So, no, no, there's no, there's no high thing, alas. Yeah, that's uh that's um that's uh I'm not really sure that I believe anyone feels it, to be honest with you. I kind of think it's a placebo. I think I think we I think we tell people that they're supposed to feel at runner's high, and so that's why they experience it.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

You're giving away the secrets, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Okay, okay, that's the secret. I just really I just I wonder, I wonder because these same women who claim they experience runners highs also go on Facebook and admit that they've never had an orgasm. So I I I have to I have to question people's I mean and they they put like no one is like forcing them to say these things online, like no one has like a gun to their head, they're not like in a guillotine, like they admitted it on the internet where other people have eyes, like they go online and they say things like if women could only have babies if they had an orgasm, the world's population would go to zero, like and and there's tens of thousands of people who like, yeah, agreed. And so like yeah, that's what I'm saying. So, in a world where women have sex with people who don't make them orgasm, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm gobsmacked that the the GM is doing something for them.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

I think people forget what they write on social media. Like, I've seen people claim all the time.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

I I don't know what to think when I think things like that. I just think it's interesting that the treadmill is doing something for you that your man didn't, like that's shocking to me. And you told people like you went online and you laughed about it, like there was camaraderie. So I just don't know that I trust the runners high people because I don't think you know what you feel. I don't know. I'm not buying it.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

I I I think people go on the on the internet, they say things to fit in or to get a reaction from people.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Stand out, stand out, get in with something else. I don't believe your rudder's high, and I I think you I think you need to talk to a therapist as well. Like, I just feel like there's such a bizarre turn in the world, and yeah, I don't I don't know that I believe I I go to the gym and I watch people on treadmills, I'm right next to them on the stairmaster. They don't look high to me, they don't look happy, they look like they're gasping for air, they look tired as hell, they're dripping sweat. They're pretty miserable. So I I'm I'm still trying to find this this runner's high person in in the wild. Um, I'm not I'm not so convinced. But uh, you know, if if if such a person does exist, then uh they should be fit as hell, right? Like they should, I mean, if I felt better on the transmill, I'd never get off of it. So more power to them.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

I've had two clients who have done the the London marathon and they've gone back and done. I'm like, you lot are crazy.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, but see, I think that's an achievement high. I don't believe they actually feel better in their body when they run. I think that the extreme high of accomplishing something that is hard to get a ticket for, hard to train for, long training cycle, and to actually complete it, I think the adrenaline of the goal is what propels that person. I don't think they are feeling endorphins from the actual running.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

They don't look like it, they don't look like it.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

They don't look like it at 10 miles, they don't look like it. Iron Man, they are not looking good, and you watch those ultramarathoners, they admit it tears up their feet, it tears up their joints, like they admit it, you know, they're on collagen and supplements, and I I I whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

So you do make me laugh. So something that obviously, I know we had a conversation uh about uh maybe six months, a year ago, and you were making some changes into how you worked because you realized the way that you were working wasn't supporting you. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, yeah. No one's gonna like this. I just want to go on record. I'm gonna go on record saying three things. One, I am not advising you to do this because people think that Natalie's word is gospel. If you want gospel, read the Bible. I'm not Jesus. This is this is firsthand account that's only relevant for me. So if you don't agree, cool. Okay, that's one. Two, what I say is going to sound extreme. Unfortunately, I don't really have a middle ground. I'm kind of there or there. Okay. And three, this may not be a forever thing. I just don't know because I have no way of knowing what the future will hold. All right. With that said, I have scaled my business back to a minimally viable option because being inflamed, being overweight, being effectively clinically malnourished, having exercise intolerance, none of those things lead to the capacity to work a full-time business. They just don't. And when I exercise, I feel worse. It kicks up the inflammation. I'm in bed for three or four or five or six hours. Like I come home, I take a shower, and I lay in bed the rest of the day. Like I can't work on days where I have to exercise. Like I'm gonna exercise later because if I had done it before, we wouldn't be on this call. Yep. Okay. So my health shtick has effectively closed my business down for all intents and purposes. And I know that that feels extreme for people. That's why I'm not telling you to do it. I am saying, depending on what you are up against and the severity of it, and the amount of fed up you are with it, and the other constraints and demands on your life and your time, you may find that you might have to make a radical decision as well. It just comes with it. I have recognized that I cannot market and sell and be online and be responsive and be in the DMs and run two or three programs, fly all over the country trying to be a speaker, fly all over the world, trying to have social events and uh make curriculum and meet with my accountant and meet with my attorney and meet with my one-on-one clients and meet with my group clients and run quarterly webinars and try to figure out ads and run the cashmere club and and try to be any kind of spouse, try to have any kind of friends, keep the maintenance of my house and my life and my nails and my hair and and and try to keep everything going with laundry and dishes and meal prep and groceries. I Natalie Marie Bullen could not pull that shit off. Me. If you can, you superwoman ho and I don't care. I don't care. I don't want you in my DMs telling me you don't know what exercise intolerance is. I don't care. Okay, I don't want you to tell me that you got this quick, easy system that could restore my business to its former glory. I don't care. Part of why I have not even told this to anybody is because people are so dense when it comes to capacity. People do not want to accept if I were to tell you, if I were to come on this podcast and say, I have restored my health in just one hour a day, I have become fitter, lost 50 pounds, put on seven pounds of muscle, that I am training for the Boston Marathon, and that my business is doing record revenue. Everybody would clap for that shit and they would believe it. They would believe it, Greg. They would believe it unequivocally. No one would argue. They would go, that sounds like Natalie. I'm so excited. I can't wait to see her big cross the finish line. When I come online and admit, even on a GLP one, I am struggling to lose weight. Exercise has made me feel worse than I've ever felt in my life. That even though my statistics are better, my visceral fat is lower, and my body fat is lower, honestly, when I look in the mirror, I think that my body looks worse, and that I am not having a good time mentally having to trade my financial success for my health success, then people want to come with their unsolicited opinions and go, well, it does have to be that way. You're purposely making your life miserable. You could do all of these things. It's like, how can you tell me what my capacity is? How can you tell me what makes me happy and what makes me sad? How can you purport to know a solution to a problem that until you heard this podcast had never even heard of? Because I meet a lot of people who admit I've never heard of exercise intolerance, I've never met a person with chronic fatigue, I've never met a person with labs as low as yours. People don't understand the stress cycle. If your cortisol is high, let's back up because you know this, but people don't know this. Let's back up a step. We are all cave people, cavemen bodies, right? And our bodies still have the same stress responses as they did when we were prehistoric beings, and one of those main stress responses is fight or flight. Let's say I'm a cave person and I'm out in the wilderness and I hear a bear or a lion, a very large apex predator. My body is going to flood me with chemicals like adrenaline and endorphins and cortisol to get me up and out to run for my life from this apex predator. The difference between the kinds of stressors that we used to have is that they were finite. There's one bear, there's one lion, there's one herd, and once you get safe, that That's it. That's not to say that there weren't other threats, but there was no chronic stress. There wasn't, I have a boss who sexually harassed me and now I gotta keep going to work every day in a long skirt, hoping he doesn't hit on me some more because I got bills and can't afford to quit this job. Like that is a chronic, ongoing, complicated type of stress. And so our bodies are still adapting for lions, but we got eight Zoom calls today. Our body doesn't know how to how to deal with that. And so it floods us with chemicals all the time. So it thinks, well, I guess Zoom is equivalent to lions. So I guess I need to get you ready to run. And so we have people like myself who have elevated cortisol for a very long time, and that affects your gut absorption.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

That affects your sleep cycle, it affects everything. And when your gut absorption is low, even when you eat healthy food, you are not absorbing the nourishment from it that you are supposed to. So even though I eat salmon pretty much every day and I eat spinach and I eat cruciferous vegetables, my vitamin B12 is low, my vitamin D is low, my ferritin is low, my iron is low, my zinc is low, my selenium is low. And guess what? If your absorption is bad, supplements ain't gonna do nothing either. You just urinate them out. It's it's been a years-long process of having blood work and functional medicine doctors and different types of supplements and different types of intravenous things and shots and pills and creams and lotions and Chinese herbs, and it's been a mess trying to get my body back to a baseline of you are not sick, it's okay, there's no threat. Chill out, and honestly, you can't really say that in business because entrepreneurship is the biggest threat to your health that you could ever agree to.

unknown 24:00

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

And I'm gonna stand on that. Entrepreneurship I'm gonna stand on that because it is systemic in the way that we run online business because you have to switch your brain from delivery mode to thinking mode to protection mode, and until you can afford to hire a whole bunch of help, baby, it's just you. Now, are there other types of models that are easier to run? People might be listening to this, going, Natalie, you just ran the wrong business. Yeah, you're right. Now what? Okay, one-on-one coaching is not a scalable model. I knew that when I started it. Now what? But like it's the model I knew how to do, it's the model I had training for, it's the model I understood. I don't understand SaaS models, I don't understand monetization YouTube models. Like everyone's brain is different. My husband codes for a living. I could not write one line of code with a gun to my head. I don't even understand what code does. All of that shit's confusing to me. I go to a website, I type in www.whatever, and the site pops up. It's good enough for me. I don't need I don't understand the inner workings of the internet. That's very confusing. I don't know why you even need that anymore. Like, doesn't it like aren't the sites already coded? Like, what are you coding them again? Like, I just my brain is so confused. And like my husband's been working on a project for like three years. I swear to god, I try not to ask questions because it pisses him off. But like, what is going on?

SPEAKER_03 25:30

What are you doing? Yeah, what are you?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Yeah, I thought all the code was me. Like, like it's like I'm sitting in a house right now, and the house is built. We build it every day. Like, the house is built, you mean like it's built, it's it's solid, it's steady, it's on the foundation. The house already exists, so like when we build it some more, like when we're putting addition on the house, it's like a group. Or it's like, what is the reason? But like, I don't know, and so like I'm the furthest part, like I'm definitely not smart enough to understand SaaS, like as a like software as a service, software as a business, software as a need. I I would delete all the software for my life if I could. So I just ideed what I knew how to do, yeah. But I think we have to acknowledge finite capacity, and that is where I have admitted. And the truth is, I have diminished capacity while I am in this undernourished state, while my body is trying to regulate its its uh internal stress thermostat while my body is trying to do that. And if I'm going to stress my body in the gym and shock my body with my much less sugary diet, which you know, sugar and carbs give you energy, so I am more tired feeling because I'm not giving my body a cheat in the afternoon with sugar to keep it going, right? I'm like, look, I understand that you want this process refined sugar, but that's what's been getting you through today, but I'm not gonna give it to you. You're just gonna have to break down the quinoa we had earlier and just make it do. And my body's like, well, I'm really bad at breaking down quinoa. It's gonna take me a really long time because that's not something I'm used to. So you're gonna be in bed the rest of the day. And okay, I'll take that trade. And I think, you know, it's it's a privileged place to be able to say, thank God we have savings and I can kind of live on my savings. And if the business makes money, cool. And if it doesn't make money, cool. I fully understand that that is a privileged place to be. Um, and part of why I can do that is because I sold like hell when I had demand and when I wasn't a hundred percent into like fixing my health. I also think at some point something is going to turn, right? Like nothing is permanent. So, like at some point, either my inflammation will reduce. It's possible. It's possible. Um, or my body can be at a better homeostasis because there's less fat cells putting out less estrogen, which would make my hormones be more balanced and thus not have fibroids. My fibroids are growing back, and I have pretty severe like pelvic pain. So it's hard for me to even work through the day, even if I don't exercise, because I've got this like deep throbbing, constant stabbing pelvic pain again. And so, you know, it's been one of those things where I'm like, Nat, this this is a process, and you're probably learning something, and you're you get it, you're a smart person. Smart people want to solve. That's what we want to do. We want to solve what kind of okay, okay, doc. I got all these things. What pill do I need? What treatment do I need? What soldier do I need? We want a solution, but I've kind of been leaning into the idea that there's a process at play, and it's better for me to let that process play out than it is for me to try to rush into a solution that might appear to expedite this process just for the process to come back. And I think that's probably the best explanation for obesity that you've ever heard. People have this rebound obesity, I think, because they don't understand there is a process of ketosis. There is, there's there's processes in your body that are trying to be completed, and they can't because you keep trying to manage the symptoms and you keep trying to like circumvent the work. And so, yeah, you get short-term, I lost a little weight result, but like it's back. It's like rebound pigment. People will get like a chemical peel, yeah. And then like six months later, all of the pigment is back. It's called like rebound pigment. It didn't really go anywhere, and you just kind of shocked the skin into calming its melanocytes down for a little bit. But if you don't wear sunscreen and use advanced skincare, all of that pigment comes back. It's just like weight loss. Everybody from the biggest loser is fat again. Damn near every single one. I mean, there might be one or two people, but in the 15 years they've been running that show, by and large, three to five years all back and they're bigger. And I have decided that I don't want rebound weight. So if it takes me two or three years to get my visceral fat number normal, my body fat nor number, if that's so be it. So be it. And I would rather work a corporate job that lets me work six hours, eight hours, and clock out and go home and have my health than to attempt the very high stress online coaching model that many of us have been attempting and failing for years. Because at least I've had financial success in my model. I know a lot of people who are not having even financial success in their online coaching model. So they're stressed and they're broke and they're unhealthy.

SPEAKER_03 30:57

No, no way. You made a fantastic point because, like, even for me now, all of my programs are six to 12 months at least. Because I think everyone wants this 90-day fix, but those are the people that they go hard for that 90 days, and then they get what I call quick fix syndrome or quick fix trauma, where it just bounces back, and it's the same for business as well. I think everyone goes in, they sign up with a coach. I'm gonna get 10k months in six weeks, and it doesn't happen like that.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

And even if it does, we have to understand that things are cyclical. There was a period online where anyone could sell anything, which meant that anyone was buying anything, and a lot of our prospects have been burned, they've been in programs that are harmful. I'm gonna tell you something that will shock people. The only category of investment that I have made and not gotten scammed is health and wellness.

SPEAKER_03 32:09

That's a shock.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

It is the only area that has actually done what it said it would do. Working with you and working with Say Bickelson have been great experiences with no scam or bad side, or it didn't work at all, or they lied about what it was. Have I been in programs that may be like, oh, this wasn't great, man, but it wasn't like it was scammy, it was expensive, I felt like I got taken advantage of. It might have just been this isn't for me. Like, I have a physical trainer at the gym. I'm not fit enough for her, honestly. Like, she's one of those that's like, I want to push you to keep your heart rate up. And what people don't understand if your body is like not good with exercise. And people, I had somebody argue me online. They're like, exercise intolerance isn't real, you're just out of shape. And I'm like, here's the thing exercise intolerance means it's increasingly difficult for you to get in shape because as soon as your body starts realizing, hey, I'm exercising, it starts to push back.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Right?

SPEAKER_00 33:13

So, like a normal body becomes conditioned from progressive overload. Like the exercises feel easier, the soreness feels lessened, like their body gets more efficient. If that never happens, you've got exercise intolerance. That's not to say you can't keep exercising, it just means you're not getting the gains that would be predictable and like standard D, like a bell curve, right? I think there's a bell curve, and I think there are elite athlete types like Michael Phelps, people who can hold their breath a very long time, people who have very um strong, what is it, CO2 max, like have very max, yeah, right? VO2 max, they have the same, and then there are people on the other end of the bell curve, unfortunately, who expend a lot more energy, who recover a lot more slowly, and who get gains a lot less consistently, like both ends exist. You can't expect Michael Phelps of the worlds to exist, but then think there's not the there's there's not the opposite of that. Trust me, there if if there's someone two standard deviations to the left of normal, there's someone two standard deviations to the right of normal, and and you've met one of those people, right? Like they exist, however, you can still get out there and get it done. You just have to like be realistic. So, like your max heart rate, I think, is supposed to be like 220 minus your age. Yeah, I'm 37, and so I I really try not to go over 180, definitely not 190, definitely not 200, right? If I my gym is two stories, when I walk in the door, my heart rate is normally below 100. Yep. And by the time I get to the top of the stairs, it's around 140. It's one flight of stairs. And by the time I get on the stairmaster, it's around 150. And if I'm on level one for three minutes, it's around 180. Like it spikes the second, it recognizes there is some level of exertion going on here, and it's like, I don't like that. You need to get off this machine. So I have to do my cardio in pieces, literally. Be like, okay, I'm gonna do like four minutes, and if my heart rate gets to 190 or 200, I'm gonna step off. I'm gonna get this back down into the right zone, and then I'm gonna like get back on it. And my trainer is one of those continuous, I want your heart rate elevated type people. And like for me, that's just not like healthy. Like, I know my heart rate is not supposed to be that high for that long. And so, like, I think even learning to advocate for yourself is important. You know, a lot of us have been trained to give over all of our advocacy to other people. I think that's one thing I really respect about you, is that if someone tells you, I'm tired, you don't just go, oh, you're just not pushing hard enough, you're just not eating the right food, you're not this and that. You acknowledge that and you edit or update their plan or add a rest day in it. It's not performative. And I find that most people, especially like Instagram, it's very performative because they want a certain physique because that's what looks good on the internet. And a lot of these people are selling courses and they're selling workout clothes. You go find a fitness influencer, guaranteed she's got a 10% off toad for whatever athletic gear she's got on, and she does all of her roles and all of her RDLs with her like buttons. The cameras always behind her butt, and and and they're really selling a physique, they're not really selling health, as it were. And so I'm like looking at my you know, in body, which is like the the scan that they do here, and you know, I was 236, 236.8, might as well call it 237, and 117 pounds of that was fat, and I've now gotten my body fat number to 86 pounds. So I'm super excited that there's 30 pounds less adiposity on my body, that's 30 less pounds that's pumping out estrogen, that's 30 less pounds that's like around my organs, like getting my visceral fat down is important. And so I think I've shifted in what I feel like is success. Like I've I've changed my metrics of success, and I think that gives me a better chance. And I also think I'm admitting capacity, which admittedly is something I don't think I've ever actually done. I don't think ever in my life have I ever admitted to myself or any other person that there actually is a limit to the amount of things that I can do, nor have I ever actively tried to stay under that limit.

SPEAKER_03 38:03

So this has been um you told me, you told me.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

I well, we I knew something was kind of yeah, I don't really tell people that I don't really admit it, you know. Online is tough. People think I'm infallible, which is very frustrating. Um, people dehumanize me. Um, and I don't know if that's a socioeconomic, like once you make a certain amount of money, people think you aren't human. I don't know if it's because I I I'm confident and people think confident people must always win. Like, I don't know if people think there's a correlation between winning and people don't understand. Even when I lose, I'm confident because I think I'm the shit. But like, do people think that winners that confidence comes from winning? I just I don't know what it is about me that makes people think Natalie never loses. It's very strange.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

It's because they only see you showing up with confidence, they don't see when you may be stressed at uh at home, they don't they don't see that. So as far as they're concerned, that's all they've got.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

It has to, but it exists. There is no human that doesn't feel stress, that doesn't feel loss, that doesn't feel frustration, like that doesn't exist, and so I I just I don't but I think that's the problem with the with the online world, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:28

They they see you through the computer, so I get the same. Like, Greg, do you ever not feel motivated to work out or to eat properly? I'm like, yeah, and when they when I say to them, yeah, look, there are days when I do not want to train, I want to stay in my bed and relax. And they're shocked. I'm like, what do you mean? But so don't they don't see the lowlights? The lowlights don't matter, they just think that you just show up relentlessly in every area of your life, 24 hours a day, 365. That's what that's what people see.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

I mean, those things are true. I do show up and I do the work. I just I don't know. If an influencer didn't show them going to the bathroom every day, would you assume that they stopped having bowel movements? Like, I just it's confusing, it's just confusing that we would think that a human could somehow supersede basic human biological and mental processes just because they weren't recorded and put on the internet. Like I would assume that women are still using the bathroom, they're still having menstrual cycles. Like, I would just assume that, like, like maybe they're a hairdresser, but I would still assume that their hair is going through all the phases, it's going through the antigen phase, go. I would not just well, she didn't record with her hair shed, so it she must have figured out how to make that stop happening. So I just but maybe I'm smarter than the average person. I don't know. Like, I I don't know what I don't know what you have to remember.

SPEAKER_03 40:56

You have to remember there's very few people that show everything on the internet as well.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

So people they shouldn't show it, they shouldn't have to show it. Whether I show it or not, it it has to happen. There is no disappointment-free human being. That person doesn't exist, and so like I shouldn't have to chronicle myself crying on my couch for people to understand that sometimes I might feel sad. Like, I just this is what happens when you take critical thinking out of the curriculum.

SPEAKER_03 41:27

Well, is it the thing, though, isn't it? That people, and then you get these influencers who just do those videos where they literally put the phone up, run to the bed, and start crying, and you're like, What is going on here? This is crazy. So you get these extremes. There's some people who are just who they see as just perfect, there's some who they just see as sharing from their wounds and whatever. And then you got the sensible people like us who are like, Well, we we're human, we know we get injured, we hurt, we cry.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

Yeah, I just I don't know. I I don't think anyone wins all the time. I don't think anyone wins most of the time. Like the people that I follow, the people that I admire, um, billionaires that I want to be, like Rihanna or Mark Cuban, if you listen to what I call the lowlight reel, yep, because it's not the highlight reel. Like, if you listen to the lowlight of these people's lives, they've been through hell. I mean, they've they've been through lawsuits and loss and fires and problems and all kinds of stuff. So I just I don't believe there's a a lossless person. I don't believe there's a person who like has not experienced loss.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

But isn't that the problem with the internet as well, though, that people sell people the dream?

SPEAKER_00 42:47

So I don't care what they sell, why do people buy it? You are a human in a human body, you know that you get tired, you get discouraged, you get frustrated. What would make you believe that there is a human who has superseded those things? Like, why how could you let someone sell you something that you know is biologically, physiologically, and psychologically impossible?

SPEAKER_03 43:11

I don't know. I can't answer that one, but I've seen it happen. I've seen I've seen people I got scammed.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

No, but you scammed your damn self. Why would you let somebody convince you of some old foolishness like that?

SPEAKER_03 43:25

But there you go perfect. So what they do then is they go, Oh, it was Natalie or Greg that scammed me, not the fact that I didn't read that you had to do the work, that you had to show up in the program or you had to submit certain things. So that's it.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

And this is why I think it's so important for people to, as sellers, showcase how their work works. So, like, I'm in the market for a new Apple Watch, and I was able to go into an Apple store and try on an Apple. Watch in a few different sizes and a few different bands. I'm able to go on their website and see video of how the apps work and hear the clicks and see what my options are and know the prices. As coaches, consultants, service providers, if we don't make content or services or products around how our work works, the clients don't know. Like if you want to buy an expensive digital camera, you can go on YouTube and type in the name of it and find hundreds, maybe thousands of reviews. People who bought that camera, who liked it, what they didn't like, they used it, the photos from it. Where can people go to find in-depth information about what it's like to be in the Greg Fear and method? And yeah, referrals exist and word of mouth exists, but like how can people experience it firsthand? Most people do a very bad job of explaining or showcasing to any degree what it is like to actually be in the program. And most buyers, as a result, have stopped looking for that information. And they're trying to go just based on a gut feeling, on a vibe, on a vibe, because they have nothing else to go on. And so I think this is a great opportunity for people to really double down on what is that thing. Like I don't like the word freebie, but what is the low risk thing that a person can get involved in that will help people like get your mindset? Like for me, I'm launching a public podcast. It's called Richish. And it's going to talk about that kind of liminal space between like middle class and maybe a little bit more than that, right? Like my people don't feel rich, they don't consider themselves to be affluent or particularly wealthy, but admittedly, they haven't looked at how much gas costs in a long time. And they're, you know, having to deal with the shifts in socioeconomic status and class that come with it. You fly first class, do you know what to ask for? Do you even know what your options are? Right. Like now, and then I go to some kind of swanky or hotel. Now I know you can like call beforehand and you can make special requests, and they'll leave chocolate on your pillows. They'll like concierge will like make you reservations at like a nearby Michelin store hotel. Like, I didn't grow up having those kinds of choices or knowledge at all. And so that's gonna be a way for people to get involved with the Nat Bullying thought process without having to spend any money, having to get on sales calls. So, like, it's better for my capacity, but it's better for them too. I think that is the biggest mistake that people have made. People thought if I can get somebody who doesn't know me at all to buy from me, what a flex. And now they're realizing it's actually so dangerous to allow people into my business and allow people into my program who don't know shit about me or how I operate or what I do or what I'm about. It's so dangerous for me, or what is required to get a result with my program. It is so dangerous, and now they're having to go back and do all that work that should have been done from the beginning to be able to actually build trust with people.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

And that's why the market, that's why people have fallen out of the market place so fast. I'm seeing a lot of coaches just like, I can't do this no more, I'm done. And I'm like, Well, you didn't kind of do that stuff up front, which is why you're suffering now. But is doesn't that go back to the point that people don't want to do the work? Like, I get it. You could uh from uh people do that.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

That's that's really the but here's the thing nobody does, and I think what is so remarkable about me is I'll admit it. I think the only difference between me and the average person is that I can admit if I don't want to do something, I'm gonna do it anyway, but I don't want to. And I think we need to be more realistic about desire and just admit to people you might not want to. I don't want to go to the gym today. It's cold outside. I hate the cold, I hate, hate, hate the cold. My sports bra does not fit right now, and my new one has not come in. And I like I do not want to go to the gym. I would much rather not be sore and actually get some work done and check in with my team and go make some money. I would much, much, much, much, much, much rather, but I'm going to go. And I don't think that gets discussed enough that we don't really want to do it. We just are making it work.

SPEAKER_03 48:27

Yeah, and I I think that's the thing. We present this utopia of like I've always switched on. Yeah, it's not real. I I have days when I I just I want to have some chocolate, I want to have some some sweets. I have those days. I'm human. I might have some, but I'm gonna make sure the rest of my meals are fairly decent. Yeah, but I'll be willing to admit it, whereas I think a lot of people in my industry, especially, uh like every meal looks like a gourmet chef made it, and that's like, nah, that didn't happen. That's why I don't like what I ate in a day, because my food does not look presentable. Like, it's some potatoes, it's some beef, it's some vestibule.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

I wouldn't, well, my whole house does not look presentable. I I failed at being a content creator in like a week because your house has to be pristine, it also has to be like well decorated. Then you gotta have art and color and vibes and sage and curtains and side tables, like you gotta like be aesthetically, bro. You got more than I got. I got like a white wall here, like there's nothing because like any other angle of this room would show the amount of clutter in this room, and like anytime you want to record, like if you're in your kitchen, you gotta have every surface clean. Like, if there's a crumb on the floor, people are gonna drag them like right, and so like I have a housekeeper, but like she cleans, she's not really like a declutterer, like that's not what I pay her to do. And then, like, my office was struck by lightning, so we had to move everything out, so everything is kind of displaced right now. Like, I'm not in my office, that's why I'm not in the pink room. Like, my office is pink. Okay, people are meeting with me, like, what happened to the pink room? Oh, it's still up there, it just has stopped. Yeah, it's yeah, it's just right, it's empty because it's had to be like resanded and repainted and etc. etc. So, yeah, it's been um it's a process, it's a process for sure.

SPEAKER_03 50:19

So, if you had some advice for a business owner, someone who's been where you've been, and they're trying to make those choices between running a business and their health, what would you advise them from your point of view? I know you you can't do it for everybody, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

I would I would ask you right now to identify on a scale of one to ten, how much is your health affecting your life? Not your business, your whole life, all of it, your relationship, your energy levels, um, your mood, your relationship with your family, your children, on a scale of one to ten. If it's a two, meaning not really affecting it enough for you to even name something that's going on, then why would you make big crazy sweeping change, right? Like you could go to sleep half an hour earlier and probably fix your whole life. But if it's a seven, an eight, a nine, or a ten, you're in a crisis. And you're probably gonna have to do something drastic in that, right? I also think we have to admit or acknowledge to what degree our businesses are dependent on us. So if you are like me and you do one-on-one coaching, you do live coaching programs, you do live uh podcast interviews, you do live Zoom meetings, things that have a time and a date, and other live human beings are gonna show up and expect you to do work, then your capacity to be well is a lot higher than someone who's running a SaaS or running a faceless YouTube channel or someone who has big corporate contracts that they only have to show up twice a year to do trainings for, as opposed to someone like I have a good friend, Dominique. She does like 80 to 100 speaking gigs a year, and most of them are out of the country. They're in Africa, they're in Istanbul, they're all over the world. So she has to be at peak physical form because she's fighting jet lag. I mean, she's like a size six, she runs marathons, she has to be at peak, peak form, like 320 days of the year. She can't get sick, she can't miss a day. So she's got a really high business. I would argue that mine's kind of medium because it's Zoom, it could be rescheduled. And then there's people with low capacity, they barely got to show up at all, and the business keeps working. You need to know what kind of business you have. I think figuring out how do you keep the mandatory systems of a business running, which are your marketing and sales department and your client fulfillment. And so, for marketing, could you get a limited run podcast out? Richest, it's only going to be 12 episodes. It's going to be bingeable so people who don't know me at all can listen and go, oh my God, the way this woman thinks about money and wealth is so potent, this is what I want to buy into without me having to record it all the time, meet with people, do a whole bunch of logistics, edit, and then have people reschedule. I don't have to do any of that. We can set it and forget it. So, what are things you could do once? If people email you asking you to meet for a second sales call, make them a Loom video and walk through on the Loom video what the options to work with you. Because guess what? If you don't say their name or the date or any of the prices, you can reuse that video over and over again. So, like, create a database of videos for when you're feeling well. Like, if you're having a good day, put on your makeup, do your hair, and record as much as you can get done that day. So I think that's that's realistic. I also think you're gonna have to like sit down with your money and be really honest about where you are financially. If you are in a place where you married an anesthesiologist and that person can pay all the bills, whether you do your business or not, then you're good to go and your life is fixed and hallelujah. If you're like the rest of us, then you are gonna have to decide what is the baseline that this business has to make to be able to stay afloat. Like what is that number? And if that number isn't feasible, can you work out things with your creditors or your debtors? Um, can you get clients to renew up front? Can you get a full-time job? This is controversial. I had much better mental and physical health when I worked a job because I only worked one job, and when that job was over, I clocked out. That was technically I had two jobs, I had a part-time, but still, when I worked at Wells Fargo, I got there at eight in the morning, I left at 5:15, and I left my job at work. We didn't even have a work phone because I wasn't a supervisor. Okay, so I could I couldn't work outside of work. Like I we locked the branch, we set the code, and I left, I didn't think about them people. That's it, it was it. So, like my brain got to actually like turn off and rest in the evening. Like, I actually got regenerative sleep, which I think is something that early stage entrepreneurs aren't getting. And if you know if you're listening to this thinking, Natalie, you're just a shitty entrepreneur. Go read books by people who are successful, read Steve Jobs' book, read anybody's book, they'll tell you the first 10 years they didn't sleep and they lived on Slim Jim. They were super unhealthy for a long stretch of time in the beginning. And if that is a trade you are willing to make, I'm willing to let you make it. But like we need to stop pretending like the beginning part is easy, that everyone who's an entrepreneur is feeling some version of freedom and that money and I made tons of money. Quiet as it's kept, most people in business ain't making no money. Yep, let's just be all the way for real. I chose to slow my business down. A lot of people, the economy slowed their business down for them. Trump slowed their business down with the tariffs and the rules and the changes. They have no business really, like the revenue has fallen off a cliff for a lot of people. And so, if you're not gonna be making any money anyway, you might as well get your health together, right? Like you might as well pour into your relationships. And so I think honestly, now if your business is slow, now is a great time for you to rededicate because you can't say you don't have the time when business was booming. Oh, I don't have time, I don't have time, it's not the right. Well, now you have time. Now you have time because you have very few clients, and so now you can do something about it. And it's also okay to admit you have a problem and admit that you're not ready to do something about it. And I think that we don't believe that. We we love to say, well, you know, I'm gonna work. Admit if you're not gonna work on it. I've been fat a long time, and I will tell you to your face, I'm not ready. I told you this before, I ain't ready to do that. I ain't ready to work on that because I knew it was going to cause changes in my life that I ain't gonna make it. I didn't want to lose no money. I didn't want to, I wanted to make as much money as I could when I made it, and thank God I did. Thank God I had a six-figure savings cushion because I wouldn't still be in business. Like we went through some rough months, and it's only because we had surplus cash when we did to get you through great business credit, exactly to be able to move me through it. So now I can make payroll whether we make any sales this month or not. If we make zero dollars this month, I will still be able to pay myself on February 1st. You might not be in that space, listener, and that's okay. But like, have a talk with your spouse, like really talk. Like, I hope you're having money meetings already, but be honest. Hey, I'm drowning in debt and I'm burnt out and I'm overweight and I'm miserable, and I really need your help. I really need you to pick up a second job. I need you to work some overtime. I need you to stop ordering DoorDash. I need you to return all that shit you bought the kids for Christmas, and we need to make some handmade gifts and teach them some responsibility. Like, I need help. And I think as women, especially women of color, we are trained to never complain and never ask and never admit that we are drowning. We just don't want to tell anybody because all of our self-worth since we were children has been wrapped up in our problem-solving skill and our effectiveness skill. Even when I was dating, I was performative for my husband. I didn't realize it at the time. There was an administrative thing that he had struggled with. He hadn't been diagnosed with ADHD yet. I didn't even know what ADHD was. I thought that was something only children got, and they put them on Ridland when they were like seven, because I'm ignorant, right? Yeah. And like, now I realize even when me and him were dating, I was doing tasks for him. Like I was showcasing my value as a woman and like how easy can I make your life? Like, that is social training that even I did not realize I had. And I would argue I have less negative social training than the bulk of people. It's probably why I'm so confident, you know. But like it's insidious. And so I think whenever people admit, it's part of why I've pulled back from social media because I'm I don't want to have to justify what I already know is true. I already know that it is true, it is untrue that I could run the exact business I used to run at the velocity I was running it with the programs I was running, and do as much to tackle my health as I'm doing now. It's impossible. But yet, if I go online and say that, comment, comment, comment, flood it, flood it, flood it. That's not true. You don't know this, and you haven't done blood typing, and you haven't done this, and you haven't bought this program, and and it's it's all it all ignores what I know to be true. This is what God put in my heart, Natalie. Something's got to give. Yep. He never said be destitute, he didn't say lose your house, he didn't say quit your business, but he did tell me something has got to give. You can't spend every waking moment glued to a computer screen, glued to a phone screen, working yourself to into the ground, and also think you're gonna be effective in every other category of your life. You just can't, you just won't. It's not real. And the fact that I even have to say that is indicative of how toxic our culture is. Like the fact that I even have to say out loud, common sense, duh, if you've been spending zero minutes a day on your physical health, and now you're gonna spend two hours between getting dressed, driving to the gym, doing the workout, driving back, and eating a nutritious meal, it's at least two hours. And that's a reasonable amount of time. If you're in a big city with a longer commute, it might be more like three hours, right? But include all of it, yeah. Like back to my homeostasis, back to the point where I'm sitting on my couch doing nothing. Back to that point. It's hours. How could you think you're gonna put two or three hours of extra activity on a jam-packed day and it not affect anything?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:07

Because that's what the social media influences sell you.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

They they make it seem like that's true, but they also pretend to wake up at four in the morning, and I admit that I A, I would never do that. B, I think it's stupid. Like you, your circadian rhythm is best when you go to sleep when it's dark, and you wake up when it's light. And there's no argument with that with science. No argument.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:28

There's a study recently that showed that people were more effective starting work at 10 a.m. So not even.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

So if it's still dark outside, how could that work out? And it's always interesting when I meet people who are just like, oh yeah, no, I wake up at four so I can get up before the kids and I can do this and I can do that. And I'm like, I guess. Like, I'm not mad that you exercise, but it's sad to me that you had to basically sneak out of your house in the middle of the night to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

I got absolutely hammered by a group of fit pros because I told I said to a client, I talked about how a client woke up at six, he hadn't slept properly, but she was struggling to do her workout, and I said to her, Go back to bed. And everyone was like, No, no, no, she's got a workout. And I was like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This woman is exhausted. She's running the business, she's running the family. The workout, the workout is a minor in this, she needs to sleep. How's she gonna perform in her work?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:43

Yeah, but you also are more prone to injury when you haven't gotten enough rest. It's really easy to miss a stair on that stairmaster, it's really easy to um not grip that kettlebell tight enough.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:58

Like I've seen quite a few gym accidents in person and on, you know, and and people also don't have good gym safety. I'm paranoid of injuring myself in the gym because I'm fat. And as a fat person, I know people can't wait to laugh. People can't wait to go online and go, ha ha ha, that's what your non-athletic butt get in the gym trying to do this and that. So I like to do simple movements that are at least five or ten pounds lower than what I could have comfortably do. Like, I don't do ego lifting in the gym. You know, if I'm doing some kind of like press, I don't sit. I sit on one that has the back. Like I raise the back up and I actually use it so I can engage. I'm not one of those, it's like, no, I'm gonna engage my core tight. I'm gonna hang from the bar with the kettle. They put the kettlebell on their foot and I'm trying to raise their bar with their leg. And I'm like, that's a great way to snap your ankle if that kettlebell is too heavy. You know, like it's just it's it's one of those things, or like take your whole shoe off with it. Like, I've seen some really weird stuff. People put like this heavy thing and they like cross their body with it, and like snaps back and they like hurt their shoulder. So I'm paranoid about being injured in the gym. And so you probably won't read no stories like that about me.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

Um, because I'm very particular, but like, why do people even think that's okay? And like that, that's what I'm telling you. I have softened into an identity that says I can have it all, but just can't have it all at the same time. And I think it's very important for us to recognize that some realm of our life has to be primary, some realm of our life has to be secondary, and everything else has to be tertiary. And I don't think people know what tertiary means. Tertiary doesn't mean third, it means like way over there, yeah. Right, background noise, like ambient noise. And so if my health is gonna be primary, meaning grocery shopping, meal prepping, um, going to therapy, meeting with the health coach, um, actual exercise, recovery from exercise, correct supplementation, doing blood work, going to my doctor, getting lymphatic massage, sitting in the sauna, whatever that looks like. If that's gonna be my primary, and my secondary is probably gonna have to still be something that makes money because we still have bills, right? Then pretty much everything else gotta be tertiary. And I meet women, they're trying to be wife of the year, mom of the year, run a marathon, have the business that breaks records, they're trying to grow, they're trying to double their business every year, which is so ridiculous. And maybe in the beginning, like doubling from 100k to 200k is not ridiculous, but every single year, like growth, we we need to we need to cut this snippet. Okay. Growth every single year is unhealthy. Rampant, unchecked, doubling year over year, every single year, growth is unhealthy. There's Nothing in nature that you can find that doubles itself on a routine basis that is healthy. That sounds like cancer. Cancer cells grow unchecked like that. There is no healthy mechanism in the animal kingdom or in biology that does that. Humans are the only species that think that somehow we are going to double and triple and quadruple and grow and grow and grow and grow. And that and it's somehow that is sustainable and wise, and then we're going to pull it off and be really happy when it happens. It's complete bullshit.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:39

Completely. And we try and do it with exercise. I see all the time on the people jumping.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

We want everything bigger and better. The number of people I've already seen. There's a woman in my free Facebook group who posted, What are you doing to set yourself up for a record-breaking year? Was January the 6th. Damn, can I get past the holiday? What why am I thinking about breaking records for the year on the sixth day of that year? I haven't even fully tallied what the record from last year was. How many of us have complete financial records from 2025 right now? No, I don't even have my books yet. Exactly. My bookkeeper hasn't even given me my books yet. How could I even know what I did last year to be trying to one up it? So there's there's this productivity culture that's super toxic that tells us, hey, no matter what you've accomplished, it is not good enough. Six days into the new year, you should already be thinking about how you are going to break the records from last year. Don't celebrate, don't ponder, don't pat yourself on the back. You hit the ground running. Six days into the new year, you should be thinking. And when I push back and said I'm not breaking any records this year, she wants to pop up. Oh, why is that? Why would I want to? What what what am I breaking a record? For what reason?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:14

For who? Why? Well, what's the for who?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:17

Why? What is going on? Like, why would any of these things matter? Why would any of these things be important? And we've just it's such a toxic culture, and so that's why it's radical for someone like me to say, I'm not responding to my DMs. You, you and your weird pitches and all that strange stuff you want to do, I'm not responding to it. I'm not listening to your voice notes. I don't care what you got going on or that you're trying to get my attention and that you're a fangirl or whatever. I don't care. And people think that's radical. Oh my god, Natalie. Natalie must have had a nervous breakdown if she's not posting on social media. Why would I have to have a nervous breakdown to post less on social media? Like, since when has my whole life been to appease you on social media? Let's be honest, most people don't even comprehend the stuff I post anyway. It's a little too highbrow for most of the people in my audience. If we're being kind of honest, I'm a smidge pretentious. Some of these words people have to look up and they have to really ponder, right? A lot of people really have no clue what I'm talking about on the internet anyway. So why do you care? We've just taught people consume, consume, consume. And people who are addicted to consumption love my page. And they think because they're addicted to consumption, I'm addicted to production. But baby, I can take it or leave it. I'm here to make money. So if my business is gonna make less money, I could make less posts. I don't have to do this. I think that that's a really powerful place to be in, but I think it's one that very few people have explored. And so watching me set a boundary triggers something in them because they're like, oh no, if our Trojan gladiator, Natalie, is not trying to double her business, what are we doing? Well, if Natalie can't double her business, what hope is there for the rest of us?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:06

But even the gladiators need to rest sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:08

Like, I am not a gladiator, I'm lazy as hell, I'm Garfield the cat. I want to play the lasagna. I am not a hardworking person. I hate hard work. I am tired. Did I tell you I'm exercising tolerance? My heart rate spikes before I get on the machine. I am not a high performer. Whatever, however, you define high performance, I do not meet the criteria in any way. So, like it's comical. It's comical to me that people are holding me up as the standard of productivity. It is so funny.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:47

The thing is, they don't realize though that you've got systems and ways to do things that probably make it a lot easier for you to do than it is for the average person. So they just see well, Natalie's got all these posts coming out, right? That's what they see. They don't know that you've been doing this.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:01

That's my gift. I'm a linguist, I am a wordsmith. I can write 10 posts in 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:09

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:10

20 minutes. I am not spending hours a day on content. Who has that kind of time? But people don't help myself, so I just post what comes to mind. But that's I don't go out of my way to do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:24

That's exactly it. People think I exercise for hours a day. My workouts sometimes are 20 minutes. Why?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

I believe it because you've like, that's what I'm saying. I believe it because you've like, hey, you're already at a baseline of fitness, which is what I tell people. People all the time. They're like, Natalie, if you're taking two hours to work out, then you're not doing it right. I'm like, well, first of all, I'm including the time I got dressed, the time I drove there, the exercise itself, my cooldown, the time I drove back, my shower. I'm talking from baseline to baseline, from I'm sitting here to I'm back sitting here. That's one. Two, as I've already mentioned, my body does not take well to strenuous exercise. So it might take me an hour to do 30 minutes worth of exercise to make sure that my heart rate is in zone and I don't pass out. Um, neither of those things are wrong. I also think it's interesting that my body pisses other people off. Like, why do you care how ineffective my workout is? Fine. Maybe it's ineffective.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:25

Okay, but improve them in any way.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:28

Like, why do they care? That's that's always intriguing to me. It's always very interesting listening to people who are like, I could do it better, you should do it better. Why do you care if I'm ineffective? Why do you there's who cares? I read 200 books a year. You know what I don't care? People who read zero books, people who read three books, people who read five books, they mean nothing to me. They don't affect my reading level or or any why do I care? I don't care. So, like, if you're fit and I'm fat, why do you care what I do in the gym?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:04

Humans. That's what I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:08

I'm just saying, ride off on your like cloak of superiority and leave me alone. Why do you care? I just I I'll never understand the and people are infatuated with me. Like parasocial relationships are the number one thing that I hate about being influential because people really think they know me and that their opinions about me are wanted, cared about, thought about. I don't care about what people like I have enough thoughts, as evidenced by the volume of content I put out on the internet with no AI. My God, it's it's quite evident that I have a lot of thoughts. The fact that people think I care about their thoughts, it's puzzling.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:55

It's quite the puzzler because it makes them feel important. Because if they get a reaction from you, if they can get a reaction from someone, they feel influential, or they've been able to show you.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:07

But they could just influence their own people. Like, why don't they just go on their own page and build some personal influence?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:16

I don't know that I can't answer that question.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:19

Like they could they could totally do that. Like, that is an option that humans could could have. Like, that's a choice that they could make.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:28

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:29

Um, if they if they wanted to, I mean, I'm not saying they have to or they should, but like they could do those things. I don't know. I'm just I'm I'm at a point in life where I'm laser focused on me, and I think most people would be better if they did the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:47

Nailed it. Like most of the I I read your cob your post and I see the comments, and I'm like, have you been in business and understood finance like Natalie does? Um, sure you don't.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:57

Like, you can see you can tell by the way that they comment, like, people really, really don't get it. And you know, there's a lot of toxic stuff. Like, when I go online and say, you know, putting my health first has cost me a lot of money in my business. Like, I don't take on as many private clients anymore. Um, I don't schedule as many calls, I don't run as many live programs. I wanted to have a dinner in DC in March, but I'm like, you know, Natalie, you're really supposed to be limiting your capacity, you know, the flight and the trip and having to sell it and promote it and then write copy for it. Like you might be pushing up against your capacity again. Well, I can charge$500 a ticket for a dinner. Like I could have made three or four or five or six thousand dollars and potentially upsold those people into thousands of dollars more, right? Like that choice might cost me$10 or$20,000. And when I go online and say me putting my physical health first cost me money, people, that's mindset. Your mindset is telling you that you can't, if you you're choosing that and you're doing this and you're doing that, and then they get an immediate. And I'm like, I see why people lie because you can't be honest. I'm telling you what honestly happened when I honestly chose to honestly prioritize my health, and you're telling me I did it wrong and it shouldn't have happened that way. And I'm like, there is no real passive income without the stock market, and like people don't get math. If you want to live off your dividends, you need millions in the stock market. So, like even if if you want like$500 a month in dividends, you'd have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the stock market. Like a one share of Apple gets you like a quarter dividend every three months, like it's a teeny, tiny sliver of the stock price. Like, I have over a hundred shares of Apple, and I think my quarterly dividends like twelve dollars, right? So, like yeah, so like that's not an income driver unless you've got a ton of money, like Warren Buffett money. Yeah, he's getting hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in dividends. That is atypical. And so if your business requires you to have active income and be actively present, well, being less active would mean less money. That's just straight-line logic at that point, and people will argue oh, you know, money just comes serendipitously to me. I need a$5,000 deal, you know, in my sleep, right? But that was a fluke, that was a happenstance. You didn't predict that. That wasn't something that you knew was gonna happen. Am I saying that I never wake up that people have gone on my website and bought one of my courses while I'm asleep? No, of course I'm not saying that. That happens, but the bulk of my income for years has been from private one-on-one coaching where people paid me thousands of dollars a month, and now that is not the bulk of my income. So my income has lowered. I think that's reasonable, I think that's logical, I think that's sensible. I don't know why that's hard for people to understand. That seems very easy to understand, and I I just my nephew is seven, and when he can understand things that people on Facebook can't understand, I know I'm in the wrong place.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:10

You know what? Let's just end it on that one because this could be like a this could be a three-hour long episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:17

I make it the rest of our lives. I just listen, when I come back and I'm all fit and ripped, and and I'm still admitting that I'm tired, people are gonna be pissed off. Because right now, people are like, okay, it's gonna get better for Natalie. She's gonna feel like a Trojan. She's gonna turn the corner, she's gonna get that body fat. And one day I'm gonna be skinny and it's like, damn, she's still tired, huh?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:43

I I was talking about well, I've got a client right now, she's very lean, she's done some amazing work, she's got really lean, and she goes, Greg, I'm tired. I'm like, Yeah, because you're now too lean. We need to get you to eat some more.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:59

Oh, well, because women are taught diet culture. Like, I think the average age of when girls go on their first diet is eight years old. I'm pretty sure that's what I read. Which is super dangerous because at eight, you haven't even gone through puberty yet. So, like, it's the worst time because it's right when your body is about to gear up for a big transition and like needs nutrients. And so, yeah, all women actually know how to do is eat less. That's really their only kind of defense against near any problem, just eat less. That's just the solution. And so, when their body needs fuel, they're actually confused because at no point have they ever been taught like this is how you eat a meal. I had a friend once who told me she had never been full, like she had never felt a sensation of being satiated ever, that her mom taught her to basically only eat like half a portion at a time because being full stretches out your stomach, and that makes your capacity to eat more over time, so you don't ever let your stomach get stretched out, and your stomach is like the size of your fist. So she just routinely ate a few bites of food at a time, and this was an adult person, but it's I was like, okay, and she's like, I'm like, I'm not saying be stuffed, like I'm not saying be uncomfortable to where you can't sleep, but the idea that you stop eating while you're still getting hunger systems, you're like signals crazy. Yeah, why are you like your brain is telling you you're still hungry? Like, like currently actively, and you stopped. Like you would have to pry that fork for my cold dead hands. Like, I'm not gonna stop eating if I'm still getting hunger signals, it's just not gonna happen. So I I was like, I have to admire your restraint, but like that's the kind of person I'm afraid of, to be honest, because you can't torture them.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:05

Nah, you could you can't do anything with those people. I'm scared.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:09

Like, I would be the easiest person to torture. Like, if you gave me a bowl of oatmeal and told me I couldn't move from this table until I ate it, I would give you whatever secret you wanted. Like, if you like threatened to cut off one of my acrylic nails, I would tell you whatever you wanted. Like, I just yeah, like I just I'm taking notes when I come to America. Not my finger, just my just my fake nail. Like, I I I have like you know, like I care, I have zero tolerance for discomfort. So, yeah, no, like that's that that's that's my thing. I think the honesty.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:44

And that's the thing from for me, I guess, is that I'm dealing with a lot of people with really bad history. The average woman I've read is that's done 65 diets by the time they're 40, 45. Believe it. But people then they try and correct me, and I'm like, but I know what your mum told you when you were younger, and you've still got that programming, so you need to slow down a little bit and really analyze what you're talking about because it doesn't, it's not actually it is, and I've had like the opposite of that programming, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:14

Like I had a parent who grew up in an era where looks mattered a lot. Like my mom was at her peak, like my mom was 21 in 1970. If you go watch Soul Train, you know how thin people were in 1970. So I definitely got training of you have to have straight teeth and you have to be smaller to get a man. Like, you're not gonna get a man looking how you look. Like, this look is not gonna be good enough in the in the man marketplace, right? And I used to be like, F the man marketplace. So, like, I stay fat on purpose because I'm cool. You ain't gonna like me, I don't like you either. Like, I I like I I I I took it, I took it the other extreme. Yeah, I took it the other way. I was just like, cool. I mean, if you don't like fat women, then it's better for me. Like, I can get more accomplished in my life without having to like worry that some man is trying to sleep with me. So, like, I've kind of used my weight as an armor for a long time because I get more male attention when I am smaller and I don't really desire more male attention. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't in my history, male attention has not done anything positive for my life.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:29

So you get that.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:30

Like, male attention has not like made my life easier or made me richer or given me better job opportunities. Like, there's nothing positive that has ever come from like, oh yeah, uh men find me attractive. That's benefited, like that's improved my life in some way. It's never done that. So I think I kind of overcompensated and was like, wait, if I stay heavy, I can be like totally devoid of the BS of men altogether. Like, I can like pick and choose which men I want to like sleep with and like completely ignore all the rest of them. Like, he's actually like a really smart plan, and like I got so much done with the outcompany of men, like my life was like so much better. Yeah, like you know what I mean. So, like when I meet people who are just like, I hate being single, it's lonely and it's horrible. I'm like, girl, you ain't doing it right.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:18

You are not take a bunch, take a bunch.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:22

Well, there's there's pros and cons of every season, and I think the biggest thing with trying, most women, people wish they were in a different season. When people are thin, they hope they're lean. When people are lean, they wish they were an Olympian. When they're an Olympian, all they think about is the next four years trial to be for the next Olympics. Like, people don't spend any time being thankful and grateful and living in the benefits of their current situation, right? Now, if you are, you know, unhoused and on the streets and very ill, obviously it would be difficult to find pleasant gratitude in that moment, and I am with you. But most of us have a scenario that's got some upside and some silver lining. We just don't spend any time happy about it, right? Like, look at all the entrepreneurs who work from home, full-time self-employed. They don't spend one day happy about that. They spend every day thinking, I wish I had more money, I wish I had what Natalie had, I wish I had what Greg had. I wish I had this, and I wish I had that. So they don't even get the joy of their current situation because they are chasing mentally after that next situation, which means you didn't get any of the benefit. So, like I meet people who are single and then they get married and they're miserable because they spent none of their single season finding out what they like, growing into themselves, traveling anywhere. They spent their whole single season yearning for this person that was gonna make them whole, and then they married them and realized no one's gonna make you whole but you, baby.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:59

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:59

It's got to be you, and if it and if you ain't whole alone, you're not gonna be whole with that man. So now what? And they're right back in the situation, and now they're like, Man, I really squandered that whole season. Like, that's where I'm at. I am not trying to maximize my full-time entrepreneur season. I'm not trying to maximize it. Like, I'm I'm going to live it, I'm going to experience it, but I'm not trying to like make the most of it. I'm not trying to like double and triple and like have this unfettered growth. I'm gonna I'm gonna beast mode my entrepreneurial season. Like, no, I'm going to take the good and the bad and keep living. That is my goal. Anything else is performative, really. And we have to be honest and ask who are we really performing for? And do those people matter? That's what I realized. And people expect you to tap dance when you're online, and like they want you to expound, they want you to tell things that you're not ready to tell. Like, I put what I meant to put online when people go, can you expound on that? No, I said as much as I intended to say. I said what I said in the post. I don't owe you three paragraphs of my feelings behind it, and I think I am in a very good position to reprogram what people's expectations of influencers are. We are actually not your friends, we're actually not um relegated to hang out in the DMs with you. I mean, people are so desperate now, they don't even take no for an answer. I had three of the strangest pitches yesterday. One of them was trying to offer me legal services when I already have an attorney. And I told her, No, I was not interested, that I was not spending even one dollar on legal this year outside of routine contracts and things like that. But like, I'm not suing anybody. I'm not pursuing trademark disputes. I'm not doing any of those kinds of behaviors. And in return, she left me three voice notes. And I'm like, so you made an offer, and I told you, no, absolutely not, that I wouldn't spend even one dollar on it. And your response is let me take up even more of your time with several minutes of voice notes, even though I know you don't know me and you've already told me that you have no interest in this. So like people are so boundaryless, yep, that when you set up boundaries, they're actually surprised.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:37

Yep. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:38

Because they're like, oh, she meant it. And so I've just been like archiving conversations. Like, you can talk to yourself in my DMs. I actually don't owe you anything. And even that has been powerful for me because I was definitely taught to be polite and courteous. And I have spent years trying to wrangle these psychos on the internet into some type of permissible human behavior, and they just don't possess it. No, they don't have it. And they're boundaryless in their own lives. So that's why they don't mind like running you down because this is what they're accustomed to. And so, you know, saying what I meant and logging off has been really powerful. And again, it gives me more time. Like, I have to admit, on a day like today, I don't have the time to dawdle with people and their crazy money mindset. So if you don't believe me, you don't like me, you need more explanation, go read a book, to be honest. Like, go read a book. And no, I'm not gonna give you a long laundry list of books you should read either. Like, maybe you could investigate what kind of book to read.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:44

They could just go listen to Buff, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:47

Oh, yeah, but that would be too much, like, right. I mean, people want you to spoon feed them everything, they won't even go to my website and click the link. I have a website, it's beautiful, it just got redone. It's UnapologeticWealth.com, and it's always been that website. That website has been there since the inception of my company. And the number of people who go, Hey, can you send me the link for that such and such and such again? And I'm like, it's on my site. You can also go to natalybullen.com, it redirects you to unapologetic wealth. If you can only remember my name, they won't do it. Can you send me the link? You send me the link, you send me the link. It's like, what am I missing here? And and yet, these are the people who folks want me to believe are doing so much better than me that I need to take their advice on the internet. But they can't even find the link to my five-year-old website to be able to click on it and buy what they need to buy. Like when we have launches now, we close the cart on time. We used to let it stay open and we have the lingerers and they would onboard late. But you know what? I deserve better than that. Again, from a bandwidth perspective, I do not deserve this indefinite kind of waiting period where um people sign up when they want, they onboard when they want, and they do what they want, and we've got to come back around and explain things we've already explained and send calendar and let no, I deserve better. Like if we're going to say Natalie's health is her primary priority, everything else has to shrink to add more space and time for that priority. It's just what's got to happen. And I I am proud of myself for doing it, but I am admittedly a little bit surprised at how recalcitrant people seem to be to allow that to occur. It's almost like people want to test your boundary. Like, oh, are you really gonna put yourself first or are you going to still dilly-dally with us online? And like, even when you put things like if I pre-schedule posts, people complain. They go, I thought you were on sabbatical. I pre-scheduled this post. I'm not there. You know, and it's like when the CEO of PepsiCo goes to Aruba for a month, nobody even knows because commercials keep running, and no one like judges them. So I think it's very interesting how we judge black women for doing the exact same thing that the CEOs do. We run ads, we pre-schedule content, we write emails months in advance, but yet when I do it, I literally had somebody go, I wouldn't hire you as my coach because you're on social media too much. And I'm like, most of those posts are pre-scheduled. So I'm not really sure what you mean.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:39

But that person would have seen you on social media a lot to try to think that they think you're online too much.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:47

Right. So you must be online a whole lot as well to know that I'm online a whole lot as well, right? So, like, you're listening the irony is not lost on me. The irony is not lost, but like I'm okay with being misunderstood, and I think that is the key to personal development. You will hold yourself back indefinitely waiting on people to understand you and come around to your side and get what you mean. Like, I have released all expectation of being understood even a little bit. I totally I I expect people to misunderstand purposely. I think people are obtuse on purpose, they look at things and they want to argue and they can't help themselves, and I I'm accepting of that now, and I think for a long time I felt like it's my responsibility to be a clear and honest communicator and for people to understand exactly what I mean, and if people misinterpret what I mean, then I need to come back in a comment and re-expound again and tell people again what I meant again, right? Like having people argue with me and tell me that eventually my body will get fit, and eventually I'll only need to work out twice a week, and eventually I won't be sore anymore, and eventually, and I'm like, but you're not a medical doctor, you've never seen my blood work, you've never seen my charts, you've never, you know, nothing about my medical history at all. Like what you're saying is anecdotal based on what has occurred in your body, but your body is not my body, so how can you definitively say what is going to happen? Not to mention, and this is something I don't tell everybody. I did a health experiment. I went no meat, no sweets, no alcohol, and no added sugar for nine months. During that time, the only liquid that I drank was water and water with electrolytes, clean powder electrolytes.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:11

Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:12

That is it. I did consume small amounts of fish, but went mostly plant-based, and I exercised five to six days a week, mostly just walking. And in nine months, I dropped about 40 pounds without any weight loss aid. Um, I also had joint pain in my knees and ankles that made me feel like I was 100 years old. My digestive system was really, really unhappy. I felt like I just like I just felt like food was my enemy. I was cranky and hungry, even though all of my labs were better, even though my cholesterol was lower, and even though my blood pressure was 120 over 70, and even though I was out of obesity and into being overweight, um, my skin was tight, but my hollows under my eyes were very deep. Like I just felt like I looked sallow, like I looked like I hadn't slept in a long period of time, and nothing would shake the soreness. I was so sore one night that I basically just made like a cot in the corner because lying down hurt so bad. I basically would just like prop up in a corner to sleep, which made it hard to get up to go use the restroom. And so I was basically like dehydrated towards the end because getting up to pee and the toilet being so low hurt so bad. Like my quality of life was zero. I was basically an invalid trying to be this fit person. So I already know what nine to 12 months of discipline looks like. For me, it is nightmarish. And they're supposed to, you didn't eat the right food, you didn't eat enough food, you didn't do this, and you didn't do this. Were you listening? All of my lab work was better on paper. I was healthier, had less body fat, less visceral fat, lower cholesterol, better like it was working, but I felt awful now to me. It don't matter how you look if you feel like crowd. And so I had to admit coming into it this time, I'm gonna have to lose weight slower. I'm going to have to do whatever a tolerable amount of exercise is for me, which might not be the progressive overload progression that other people can manage. I might need to eat way more food than the average person, which means that I don't have the noticeable immediate, you lost 50 pounds in two weeks, Ozimic fat loss thing. And like I might have leftover skin, I might have stretch marks the rest of my life. I might never look like these Instagram baddie type women. Like that just might not happen. Like I came to terms with some reality really early. So listening to people who don't know me at all, who go, Oh, you should just stretch more, you should just switch to Pilates. I've done Pilates, I've done pure bar, I've done Zumba, I've done pole dance, I've done things I've done things you've never heard of attempting to find this holy grail kind of system that like makes it better, but they all raise your heart rate, and my body sees anything that raises my heart rate as a threat. Yep, whatever it is. So, like, did I enjoy Zumba? I mean, I guess it's jazz or size. Did my body enjoy Zumba? Hell no, I just did it anyway. And so, like, I I've I had to recognize Natalie. Your need for people understanding you is gonna make this process even worse. You know the truth about your body, so forget what anyone else thinks. Don't click on these links, don't buy their supplements. Forget it. If they don't understand, it's not for them to understand. They're not living in your body, they're not living in your house, and their opinion really doesn't matter. And that alone has been so freeing. I think we really should keep things close to the vest. I've been a transparent person for a really long time, and frankly, I don't know that it has benefited anyone, maybe to a degree that people go, oh, if Natalie can do it, I can do it. But I think you should have a modicum of success before you share anything now. I didn't share anything about my weight loss journey until I was already down 15 pounds. And I'd already found a fine uh a new fitness trainer and I'd already joined the gym and I'd already done my annual blood work. Like I'd already done a lot of work. I think we share too soon, too early, what we are trying to do, you know, for the sake of content. We we film ourselves and we're very vulnerable. But like I think if we really ask ourselves why am I doing this, the answer is I need external validation from other people. And if that's the case, every goal that you set out to accomplish is gonna be harder. And so I think this year is gonna be really remarkable in that I'm not gonna tell people everything, I'm not gonna chronicle things for people's digestion. I'm not gonna lead first and lead the charge. I'm gonna let people figure it out when they see me in person.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:46

Mic drop right there. Boom. Um, thank you so much for joining me today. Like, I know we could I could just I could just ask the question and just sit back.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:02

Yeah, because you're too good of a listener. That's that see, that's the whole problem. That's why I've been trying to push you into being a life coach.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:09

Well, I kind of I kind of see it as I am anyway. I don't I I my angle is the health and fitness stuff, but yeah, I end up coaching on all sorts of stuff. So it's like, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:19

That's how I feel when people call me like an identity coach or like an image consultant. I've had people call me all kinds of stuff, and like honestly, the way you feel about money radiates from the way you feel about self. Almost always, very rarely do you meet a person who is like, I don't very, very rarely, I in my opinion, am I meeting somebody who's like, I don't care one way or the other how I feel or how people feel or what it looks like, or like we care to a degree what people think. And we also care how our progress is perceived. But when I meet people who are really settled in themselves, like really self-secure, very rarely do those people make financial decisions against their best interest. Very, very rarely do I meet somebody that's like, I'm confident, I'm self-secure, I'm good with who I am, and I'm aware, and I have high self-trust, but I just went and spent$10,000 at the mall and I don't have any way to pay it back, and I'm gonna tank my credit score. Like, I just don't meet people like that. And so, you know, I can speak just to the money part, but the I who they are and who they believe themselves to be, it permeates through every little crack. Like I've been like going through my closet and like giving clothes away, and I I'm not just passively doing, I'm actively going, Natalie, why did you buy this? Why do you own three of the same striped shirt? Like what was the belief pattern? Was it that you were irresponsible with clothing, that you were gonna lose it? Like, was this a compulsion? Did you just have a bad system and forgot what you already own? Because if I don't tackle that, I'm gonna lose weight and do it all over again. I'm gonna lose weight and I'm gonna go shopping and I'm gonna fill up a whole new, I'm gonna have a the same closet with different size clothes in the same thing. And so I've been forcing myself to try on every garment I own. Does it fit? Do I still like it? And and getting rid of the things that don't work and revamping my closet and even hiring some help. And it's been very eye-opening because people who hoard tend to hoard multiple categories.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:38

And it just moves. So they they hoard food when they're heavy, they go on a diet, they hoard something else, and then they hoard something else, and they hoard something else. Like until you get to that root behavior, what is it that feels unsafe with having the right quantity of items in my house? Like until that gets to the root, you're always doing stuff. So I'm excited about it. I'm excited for you too. Like one day you'll be like, okay, fine, you got me. I'm a life coach, and I'm gonna be excited about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:08

I'm kind of there already. My clients tell me already, so I'm kind of I just use the health as the angle because it probably feels safe right now. But yeah, maybe I just need to talk myself up some more.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:20

You know what's positive self-talk is so powerful because your subconscious only really listens to you, it doesn't really like weigh other people's voices as high as yours. And so, like, you can easily retrain your own subconscious with like affirmations without having to do like a lot of work, like you could literally like record yourself saying some affirmations and just like play it when you go to sleep at night. Like, it's just an easy thing to like start reprogramming. But I have found that people who don't do identity work relapse all the time, you know. Like I'm teaching, you know, Overflow, which is a money mindset program, and I taught them day one. Here's how you actually keep change. You have like a frame, which is your new belief. So let's say my old belief was that being overweight benefited me somehow. Who cares how? Just being overweight benefited me, right? Um, it gave me more time to work my business, right? That's true. Um, and it it it kept away unwanted male attention. And let's face it, I have normal cholesterol and good, you know, maybe not great blood pressure, good blood pressure. I'm not sick. So being overweight is okay for me because I'm not sick, I'm fine, right? That was my old belief. So let's say I have this new belief, which is that if my physical health is great, everything else will be great as well, or everything else has the possibility to be great. It will trickle down in my life if my physical health is great. Well, as soon as you make a declaration like that, you're gonna be met with a scenario that allows you to practice that new belief, right? So, like today, I have another Zoom call. It would be very easy for me to say, I don't want to go to the gym between now and then, I don't want to be tired on my oh, it's cold outside. Yeah. I'm gonna eat the breakfast, I'm gonna work out later, right? But if I have my new belief system, I get to practice and say, well, my new belief says that my physical health being better will make everything in my life better. So maybe I'll be more energized on that two o'clock call than if I don't go, right? So I'm gonna go to the gym anyway. That was an opportunity to practice, to choose a new belief in action. That's the only way mindset stuff sticks. The reason why mindset gets a bad rep is because all people do is the front part, they do the affirmations and the beliefs, and they tell, but they never actually go out into the real world and practice shifting into that new belief in real time. So there's never any um evidence. Yeah, there's no evidence of the change because there was no change, like there's no place for them to actually say, I am a different being now. Right now, I have an opportunity, and with money as well, with you know, any anything you can put this down to, there has to be that new opportunity. There has to be the interruption. You have to be able to interrupt that pattern and go, wait, that's already been my pattern. I'm already sedentary. So this inclination to not go to the gym, that is that is part of my sedentary pattern. So now I have an opportunity to interrupt that sedentary pattern by going to the gym anyway, right? And like doing something about it. Most people don't do that, so they slip back into their old habits like really, really fast.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:51

Um, and that's why people go, I don't like mindset work, mindset work. Well, because you're only doing like a piece of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:58

Yep, you're doing half of it. You just you literally just explained pretty much my what I call my superhero identity work that I do with clients. Because the first thing I'm gonna ask is, who do you want to be? Because if you come and tell me, Greg, I want to lose weight, you've said that a million times already. You said that so many times that you're even bored of it, you know? So I'm like, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:17

They've also lost weight before. I guess my my immediate goal this time was not, I know I can lose losing weight is a mad problem. It's just like getting rich in the stock market. Getting rich in the stock market is a mad problem. If you put X amount of money into the stock market and invest it every month over a certain number of years, it is impossible for you to not become a millionaire. Yep. Impossible. The only people who don't become millionaires in the stock market are people who don't put enough money in it. Yep, that's it. So it's it's the same. So it's it's a kilocalories, 30 3,500. Like it's calories. So, like if you want to lose palm fat, it's 3,500 calories. You cut the calories, you lose the fat, it's inevitable. It happens. Is it exactly that number for everybody or some people less metabolically active? Okay, fine, you got me. Everyone's number is not exactly 3,500 because of their body makeup and composition, but there is a number, and if you hit it, you will lose the weight, it's inevitable. So, why set a goal that's a mathematic certainty? If you know you could hit it if you wanted to. Like, I also feel like it's visceral. There's a show on Netflix that I watched last night. That name is eluding me, which is weird because I watched like eight episodes of it on the background. It's a game show, and the prizes are these big, huge prizes, like a trip to the Mediterranean, a year of DoorDash, a Parisian uh fantasy, uh whatever, right? Like big expensive prizes. And at the end, only one person wins the prizes. There's like eight teams. And my husband went, This is dumb. So when you lose, you don't get to keep the prize. Won you fought for that prize and then you lose it. This is dumb. They could have just given points, and then the person with the most points at the end just wins all the prizes, right? And I said, right, but by making them prizes up front, it gives you a visceral reaction. You're connected to that prize because it's not just points and it's not just money. You envision yourself in Paris with the designer clothes on. It's it gives you something. So, like I decided I didn't want a weight loss goal, I didn't want like a numeric goal. I want to wear like a sexy dress with my back out. Like, you see what I mean? Like, I set some like visual like things I could see or touch or feel because anybody could lose 10 pounds. Like, yeah, anybody could lose 10 pounds, but like then what are you gonna do? Like, what's next? Yeah, and most people don't have a what's next, and then as soon as they lose the weight, they take birthday pictures, they look cute, and they put it right back on. Because there was no real like system involved with it, and so like I'm I'm determined this time to like get what I'm after, and not just oh yeah, I want to lose 10 pounds, losing 10 pounds would be cool. Like, you can't even like as heavy as I was, you couldn't even tell if I lost 10 pounds, like 10 pounds. Like, maybe I would have felt it, but like people wouldn't have even noticed that I had lost it. So, like, what are you actually losing the weight for? And like most women have so little muscle tone. Like, when I go to pure guard, they're in there shaking like a leaf. Like, they have so little muscle. And like most people's goal really should be to gain muscle mass. Like, that that should probably be the real goal online. But like, I think people are so afraid of the word gain in any capacity, they don't want to gain weight, gain mass, gain. I mean, they're afraid of creatine. Like, people don't want to gain anything, like, they are terrified of their scale going up like an ounce.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:58

Yep, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:59

And again, I guess being a big person most of my life, I'm not afraid of like what's another pound or two. Like, I just I don't know. I I feel um a lot less attached to diet culture. Like, I've always felt like diet culture was out of reach for me anyway. So I'm kind of like, man, you know, if I pick up a pound or two of muscle, like what's it gonna hurt?

SPEAKER_03 1:52:22

Yeah, it's not gonna do much. Yeah, and people think that um 99 of people aren't gonna grow. Look, do you know how hard I if I want to put on some muscle? Do you know how hard I have to work to do it? Like, I gotta train hard, and I'm a guy who's been athletic most of my life.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:39

Yeah, I'm just not, I just I'm not gonna, I'm not. So I don't know. Um, so we'll see. I don't know what what is next. For me, I haven't decided my next because I'm determined to settle into my now, but I'll keep you posted.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:53

All right, then I'll have to have you back when that when you're ready for that. So um, so for the listeners, you Natalie told you the website, go and check her out. She told you the name of her website.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:06

We'll just drop my Facebook page and the link, and and they can follow and get what they get.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:11

Exactly. So, yeah, thank you for being awesome, and thank you for being a good friend as well, and for supporting me as well. So, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:18

Anytime.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:19

And yeah, I'm looking forward to the next episode that we do this in maybe in maybe six months' time. And you need to come to Thailand, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:27

Like everyone says that, but this is me, I'm not everyone. Okay, Valid. I just uh you know what it's something about me in a in a super super long flight that just don't even sound realistic. Like, I feel like the flight is like a hundred hours, like you fall. It's one of those flights. I like flights where you fall asleep, you wake up, and you're there. Yeah, I know the white you fall asleep and you you wake up a little bit. This is one of those flights where you like take a nap, eat a meal, fall asleep, wake up, another meal, you go to the restroom, there's another meal. Like that freaks me out. Like, I just feel like you're on the flight, like until tomorrow. Like you fly on Monday and you get there on Tuesday, but it's not even Tuesday anymore because it's Wednesday and because it's like 12 hours ahead, and like yeah, like losing a day in the air freaks me out. I'm I'm gonna, yeah. But my friends that are like like everybody is like they love it, and like the cost of living and the food quality, like uh that's the worst thing about America, it's just what they allow to be put in our food is just so dangerous, yep, um and toxic, and it's just taking me a long time to like not beat myself up for being so inflamed, and like it's taking me a long time to be like, Nelly, you're not old, and you're not sick, and you're not dumb. Like, how did you get to like how did your body even get here? You know what I mean? Like, I've spent a lot of time trying to like work out how a person who eats relatively healthy, doesn't smoke, drinks in moderation, got to the point where they're so inflamed that like the treadmill almost killed them. Understand that like that's been hard for me, but I finally have uh placed the blame in the right place. So I'm feeling good about it. Feeling good about placing blame where blame should be is is exactly should be.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:31

So yeah, yeah, all right. So, listeners, thank you for listening. Go follow Natalie. Um, you'll get some business gems, some money mindset gems. Her podcast birthright was a game changer for me. So I think it's like$250 or something for how many 150 odd episodes.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:52

It's 200. It even has a pay what you can on it, and uh it's a year's worth of Monday through Friday episodes. I think it's like 260 or 270. I'm crazy. See, this was back when I was in the capacity game. Seeing you got what you got, it was um it was a fun time, but it's still a game changer.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:11

So go check Natalie out and share this episode with a business owner who is struggling with their health because I think there's some absolute gems. I will see you on the next episode. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:22

Thanks.