Taking on The World With Natalie MacNeil

Emmy Award-winning media entrepreneur & Founder of She Takes on the World – Natalie MacNeil

Meditations for busy entrepreneurs. How to use your gut feeling more effectively. Why you should start incorporating video into your business now! How to make your video look and sound professional.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• The Conquer Kit

Check out SheTakesOnTheWorld.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy, and I am really excited to have my great friend, Natalie MacNeil on the show.  Now, she has a website called She Takes on the World, which I think is utterly amazing.  She also has a brand new book coming out called The Conquer Kit.  You can check it out at theconquerkit.com.  Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Natalie:	Thanks for having me, Jaime, I'm so excited to be here.  I feel like I've been waiting for this for a while.

Jaime:	That's what's so funny, you sent me an email.  Can you tell the story a little bit?

Natalie:	Yes, so in a nutshell, this is something that I knew we would do eventually, and when we got together, I had sent you, "I feel like we should just book my interview in because I'm so close to qualifying to be on Eventual Millionaire that I feel like if we just set the date, I will raise to the occasion and here I?ll be."

It took just a wee bit longer than I thought it was gonna take, but then, as soon as I was like, "Oh my god, it happened," you?re the first person that I called to tell this to.

Jaime:	You have no idea how excited I was.  I was like, "Oh my god," -

Natalie:	I was like, "Oh my god."

Jaime:	- like, "[inaudible] [00:17:16] like you care." You were like, "I can go on your show." I'm like, "Oh my gosh, book here right now."

Natalie:	I contacted you before I even told my partner that I had crossed the amazing millionaire threshold, so -

Jaime:	I feel special.

Natalie:	- you were the first person I told.

Jaime:	I know, which I'm so excited for.  I adore you, you know that.  Tell us a little bit about what your site does so everyone can make sure that they can check it out after.

Natalie:	She Takes on the World is one of the Forbes recognized leaders in personal development and business development for women.  She Takes on the World, it is mostly geared towards women wantrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.

Some people don't have their businesses yet and they're just getting started, and others are already quite successful already and are looking to take things to the next level.  That's She Takes on the World, and that is my main company right now.

Jaime:	It's insane the background that you have.  You have an Emmy, it's insane.  Give us some of the background that you came from, too, so that way we know how amazing and credible you are, too.

Natalie:	Yeah, so when I was still in university, I knew I wanted the start a business, and a lot of people said, "Well, you should go and work for three years, five years," all these arbitrary numbers, and I'm like, "Why? Why do I have to do - where did you even pull that number from? Why do I have to work for five years before I can start a business?"

	To give myself some time and space to actually figure out what I wanted and to har my own inner voice, I decided to go to Europe all by myself.  I already have a little business at that time, so I was making some side income and I had a full-time job through university, so I had a little bit of money to go and do a very budget trip to Europe.

	I was driving through the Czech Republic and I was listening to David Guetta's song, The World is Mine, like dance music, and at the same time, I drove by a giant globe that was two stories high that said, "The world is yours."

	It just totally took my breath away.  I pulled over and just kinda sat there honoring that moment for a few minutes, and really, that's where the seed of inspiration was planted for She Takes on the World, which I started as just a little personal blog.  It's also the moment that basically allowed me to make that decision that I was going to go home and start my own company instead of getting a real job post-university.

	Some people might be thinking, "That's so crazy.  You see one sign and that's it?" For me, those signs are so important.  I think your life is always speaking to you, whispering to you, and it's up to you to actually figure out what that means.  For me, that sign was like, "You've gotta do this, and you've  gotta do it your own way."

	I went home, started my first business, which is not the business that I'm currently running today, but started that first business, and then eventually found myself in the production and media world, which is where I wanted to get, met my former business partner, and then him and I merged into one company and did productions for a little while.

That's how I won the Emmy, through my production company, not through She Takes on the World.  Some people are like, "How do you win an Emmy for She Takes on the World?" I'm like, "No, that was - " it feels like a lifetime ago, but being in the production world, I think has also translated into what I do now because we do so much video content, and because I have that background, I think it kinda ups the - it ups the whole production value of everything we do.

We do a lot of live streamed events, as you know, and that generates a lot of leads for our business and a lot of new subscribers come into our community that way, so it all kinda ends up spinning into this beautiful web that you can't always see when you?re in it, but when you can look back, you can see how it all kinds fits together.  That's where I'm at now.

I know that's a really long story because I've had my businesses for ten years now.  [Inaudible] [00:21:23] ?

[Crosstalk]

Jaime:	You look like you're 25.

Natalie:	- hard to sum it all up in a one-minute spiel.

Jaime:	We have plenty of time, and I have a bunch of questions for you, of course.  I wanna get into the video stuff in just a second, but before we get into that, something that you said that I really wanna touch in was these whispers.  How did you know? I have an issue with this just in general, going with your gut or feeling what's right.

I'm so logical that it's hard to know what's whispering.  Sometimes, I'm like, "Shut up," you know what I mean, and I just keep going on.  Do you have any tips on how to actually attention to that and know what's right for you?

Natalie:	Yeah, so one of the things that a lot of people don't know about me is that I'm also a meditation and mudra, so this is a huge, huge, huge part of my life and is just starting to weave itself into my work now.  It was something that I didn't really put out there before, but I have all kinds of tips and tools for being able to hear that.

	I think one of the things that you can do, first of all, start meditating.  I think it's a hugely powerful tool for any entrepreneur.  It doesn't have to be associated with religion or even spirituality.  It doesn't have to be a woo-woo thing for you, it can just be a way to calm your mind and reduce the cortisol levels and let your inner voice come through.

	I think we all have that.  We all have that intuition, it's whether or not you can hear it and recognize those intuitive hits, or gut feelings, as some people like to call them.  One of the things that I like to do and that I find a very practical meditation for people who are new to meditation or thinking, "How can I figure out the next best step for me to take using meditation practices," is a concept called eating your decision.

	This is something I do all the time.  It's something that a teacher taught me and that his teacher taught him.  What you do is you sit in mediation, mediation, and you eat the first idea or path that you're thinking been taking, and you visualize how it goes down.

	You're visualizing what is the texture of it.  If that decision was a food, what would it be? When it's going down and your body's starting to digest it, what does it feel like? You actually go through the process of eating this decision.

	Then you eat decision No.  2, and you see how that feels.  It's amazing.  I've done this with people who don't meditate at all and it's amazing how quickly they can be like, "Oh my god, I know - " it's literally the gut feeling because your food's broken down in the gut and it's a visualization for figuring out what the best gut decision to make is.

	People always come back to me and say, "Oh my god, that made my life so much easier and really helped me to know what that gut or what that intuition was trying to tell me to do." That's a cool one that I like to give people to do it.

Jaime:	I've never heard that before, and that would help me so much.  Well, that's the thing, can you give us an example too Because I'm now going to try this.  I think it's really important.  I've been really trying to tap in.

	I meditate quite often.  I do guided meditations every night, but guided meditations really aren't enough for me, or at least I don't think they are, but that sounds amazing.  Give me an idea so I can get a little bit more detail when I actually do it.

Natalie:	Okay, so I just did this with one of my clients on one of our retreats.  She was trying to figure out a certain business partnership that he has an opportunity to do right now.  She was very much on the fence about it and I had her eat the decision.

	"Okay, your business moving forward without this partner.  You're gonna keep on doing it by yourself the way that you're doing it right now.  Eat that decision.  How does it feel? If you could describe it as a fruit or as a vegetable, what would it be?"

	It's amazing how your mind will immediately go to something.  She was like, "Ah, it feels like a pear, but it's really prickly." "Okay, swallow that.  How does it go down?" "Well, it's literally ripping my throat out as it's going down.  It feels very suffocating.  I feel like I can't breathe properly, I feel like I can no longer communicate the way that I wanna be communicating." "Okay."

	This was one of the key things behind her decision, was how she was gonna be able to put her brand out into the world and communicate that, so it's like she's feeling it in that part of the body that she's really wanting to tune into as she builds her business and her brand, and she's a speaker and all that.

	Okay, she goes through that, and then I say, "Okay, thinking about taking this path in your business, working with this person, how does that make you feel," and she's like, "Oh, it feels like sweet cherries on a summer day, totally going down well."

	It's amazing how people can quickly come up with that visual when you guide them through it, and I find, even for me, there's things that will come up during that process and during that meditation, and I'm just like, "How did I even think of that? How did that come to mind?" It's giving yourself the space to do that.

	I'm glad that you mentioned guided meditations because sometimes, people start a meditation practice with guided mediations, and they come back to me and they're like, "I'm just not feeling it."

Guided meditations aren't for everyone, and I think for people who have very busy minds and a lot going and always a lot of things you're thing about, which is a lot of entrepreneurs, going to mudras and mantras is a very powerful meditation practice because you're actually having to focus on doing something.

	Because you are, for example, with a - there's a mudra for prosperity, and that one goes like this, and so you're actually moving your hands, so it's very kinetic.  Then, you're also repeating the mantra Har, which is an ancient mantra.

The vibration that it makes as you say har is very calming for the mind, and it also helps you to actually focus during your mediation on something other than wok because once you have to continually repeat a mantra, your brain can't focus on anything else.  It keeps you very focused on the actual meditation, calming the mind.

Then, it's usually after those kinds of practices that you can really hear your own inner voice, and you can feel more - I think you feel in tune with yourself, and you can really drop out of your head and more into your body, which I think you need to do in order to make the best decisions.

Jaime:	I see.  This is amazing.  It's funny because I'm in my head a lot, logical, as much as that was a huge asset.  Then, I started doing these interviews, and a lot of the guys that I, both male and female, that I interviewed were like, "Oh, I go with my gut a lot." I'm like, "Well, what is that like?"

	It's so interesting to actually have tactics.  Can you explain what mudra is, though? Because I know I don't completely know, and I'm assuming nobody else does, either.

Natalie:	Yeah.  Mudra is - a lot of people know what the chakras are, right, seven chakras.  There's also tiny chakras in your hands and your feet, and there's also a lot of - mudra's tune into the meridian energy system of the body, and there's a lot of meridian energy points, and the meridian energy system is the same as if you're doing acupuncture, acupressure, so eastern medicine system.

	There's a lot of energy points in the hands, and so there's also the tiny chakras in the hands.  Mudras are - some people call it hand yoga, and these are very ancient practices that help to do certain things within the energy body that creates, sometimes, a physical outcome.

	For example, there's a mudra for patience, and this helps you to calm certain parts of your mind and tune into certain parts of the body.  The mudra for patience goes like this, and so this setup -

Jaime:	Like that?

Natalie:	Yes, and it's getting held like this.  The arms are slightly raised, but the shoulders are still relaxed.  This gets held for three minutes at a time.  Three minutes is sorta the starting point.  If you can't quite last for three minutes, it's okay, but three minutes is what I strongly recommend.

	This is the mudra for patience, and these mudras are - I mean, they've been around since ancient Egypt, pretty much.  They date back thousands of years.  Thanks to people like Yogi Bhajan, they've started to make a reemergence in the world, and especially in the west.

	People are starting to learn about them more, and they're being incorporated more into yoga practices, but you can just have a mudra practice, too.  There's certain physical effects and mental effects of actually doing these mudras.

Jaime:	I love this.  I love that we can take, especially, stuff that worked from a really long time ago and apply it to technology.  You have a tech background, you know what I mean? It's insane to be able to have both work cohesively.

Natalie:	Yeah.  I think for me, it's this whole idea of ancient power.  Power has evolved over the years.  Everything's always changing.  I feel now, everything changes even faster, and I think it's very - it's sacred to me to be able to use these ancient tools that were used then because the world, I feel, keeps speeding up, and it's a way to kinda slow down, and also honor the past, honor our ancestors.

That's something that's really important to me, that we stay tuned into that ancient power and wisdom, and that we don't lose that.  I think for women, too, at least for me, I also like to tune into that feminine power, but that ancient goddess feminine power.

When you look at a lot of these mudras and you look back to ancient Egypt, it's a lot of these really powerful women who are doing these mudra practices and bringing those into the world.

Mudras have been seen across pretty much every culture in some way, shape, or form, and yeah, I think it's - there's just something very special about tuning into the power and the wisdom of the past and staying connected to it.  It just means something to me.

Jaime:	Don't get me wrong, still, we'll talk about video in a bit, but, yeah, there's something else that I have to go into because I don't have a lot of women on the show, and people email me all the time, and I'm like, "I'm constantly looking for women, don't get me wrong."

	Give me some help because I love how you're like - I love the goddess and the - you know what I mean, and how powerful women are.

I really feel like a lot of the women that are listening need to hear this because I talk to clients constantly, and it seems like, you tell me what you think, but it seems like women have more mindset issues, almost, or don't feel like they can do as much, and the guys usually are like, "Just tell me what to do and I'll go do it,"  instead.  You tell me, what do you see, and how can we sort of shift that for any women listening?

Natalie:	Yeah, I think that's such a great question.  Before I came on our interview, I was speaking with a colleague, and I was like, "Oh, so I'm gonna be on Jaime Tardy's podcast, Eventual Millionaire.  I'm recording the show with her after this," and she was like, "Really? I really like that podcast." I was like, "Yeah, I've been waiting to go in it for a while," and she's like, "I just can't picture you on it," and I was like, "What do you mean you can't picture me on it?"

	She's like, "I just can't picture you like that," and I was like, "What do you mean you can't? You can't picture me as a millionaire, as a successful business owner," and she's like, "I think so.  That's bad, isn't it," and I'm like, "Yeah because what does that mean? What does it mean to be really successful? What does it mean to be a millionaire in a - ? obviously, what it means to be a millionaire is you have over a million dollars net worth, in a different sort of - not in the  literal context.

	That was kind of alarming to me, and I was thinking, "Yeah, I think there's a lot of people who may watch this interview and be like, "Well, she doesn't really look like or sound like everybody else who has been on," so I think it's one of those things that we have to look at different as being really positive.

I was lucky to have some really strong female role models and mentors when I was starting my business, women like Arianna Huffington, who sat down with me for a meeting, and we talked about exactly this, is that we need to stay in that feminine power.

I think there's a lot of women, especially when women started reentering the workforce in droves in the '60s and '70s, there was this drive to be like men to succeed.  The only way you were gonna get to the top is if you were very tuned into your masculine.  Look, we all have masculine and feminine energy, it's not that you are always tuned into feminine energy if you're a woman and always masculine for male.

There's a balance there, and I think the balance is very important, and for a long time, I think women were very driven by the masculine energy and were always trying to embody that.  Now, I think we're starting to look at, "Okay, what does it mean to really be in the divine feminine?" I think it's a conversation that still needs to be had.

I appreciate you asking these questions because it wasn't what I was planning on talking about, but I'm happy to.  I think we just need to start looking at different as being good, and it is a different form of leadership.

Sabrina Parsons, who is the CEO of a tech company and one of my mentors when I was starting out, she always said this: "Being a woman at - the only woman the all these events, and I know you know how this feels, I know how this feels when I had my media and production company."

I was always the only woman and pretty young when I was starting, and so you get these looks, you get those comments, and you're the one that stands out.  I think for a long time, we just tried to blend in, but now, I'm much more comfortable standing out and being like, "You know what? I'm not like everybody else, and that's okay, and I wanna be really tuned into my feminine side," and I think we need more of that in the business world.

Women are, for example, more empathetic in their leadership capacities, and I think that's a really important quality, and the world needs more of it.  I think having more women in leadership positions could lead to some really amazing changes, and I hope that we see more women stepping into those roles and feeling like they can be truly themselves and not feel like they have to be like men to succeed.

Jaime:	I agree with you.  It's so funny, I -

Natalie:	This could be a whole - I could talk forever -

Jaime:	I know, we could talk forever, and I think that's the thing, though, is I don't have a chance to talk about this very much.  I was actually on Facebook talking about some of this stuff, too, how in general, I think it's an asset, not a liability.

	A lot of people are like, "How do you do this?" Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the guys a lot of the times.  I have a lot of masculine energy, I love UFC, that sort of stuff, but trying to play up the other side.

I pushed down being a woman as much as humanly possible so I could be one of the guys, hang out with them, you know what I mean, so that way, you would be taken seriously because sometimes you're not.  Do you have any tips for women that are in the beginning stages? I know this is what you talk to your audience constantly about.

During the beginning stages, they might not have that confidence yet.  How the heck can they embody that without feeling like a fake, you know what I mean?

Natalie:	Yeah, confidence is such a big issue among women.  I see this every single day, it's that lack of confidence and self-belief.  You mentioned this before and I didn't really address that part of the question, but it's the whole mindset piece, and I think there's a lot more mindset issues with women than with men.

	For example, I was working with this one woman and her business.  She couldn't figure out why it wasn't growing past an $81,000.00 mark.  She's like, "I'm just at $81,000.00 for my consulting services, and it was growing so quickly before.  What has happened?"

	When we actually got to the root of it, we realized that her husband made $82,000.00, and it was totally this mindset block of like, "I shouldn't be making more money.  Mom stayed home with us, dad was always the breadwinner.  Who am I to be the breadwinner in my family?"

	I hear this from women all the time.  There's an exercise I like to do.  It's another meditation.  I meditate a lot on a lot of things.  It is definitely one of the most powerful practices in my life, and people are like, "How do you still have time to meditate when you're so busy and you're running multiple ventures?"

To me, it actually saves me time.  If I take 30 minutes out of my day to mediate and to be in that space, I figure things out that otherwise would have taken me hours.  It saves me so much time, so that is how I make time and find time to do it.

I have this meditation, and I call it the board room.  It's on my meditation album, so -

Jaime:	You have a meditation album? How do I not know [inaudible] [00:40:00]?

[Crosstalk]

Natalie:	I do have a meditation album.  At shetakesontheworld.com/resources, you will see the album.  There's also a couple free ones that you can get as well.  One of these meditations is called the boardroom, and most of them are geared towards entrepreneurs.

	In the boardroom, I visualize sitting around a boardroom table, and you call in the people who you really look up to, who really inspire you, and it's this visualization of kinda having a conversation with that particular person about what it is that you do really respect about that person.

	These can be fictional characters, they can be people living, dead.  I mean, I [inaudible] [00:40:46] call in Amelia Earhart sometimes into my personal boardroom, Daenerys Targaryen, Khaleesi from Game of Thrones, I call her into my boardroom when I need to tune into my warrior energy and get shit done.

	I have all these people who I'll call into this boardroom, and it's a matter of conversing with them about what it is you really respect in them and what it you feel they have that you're missing.  Then, you kinda visualize them as light and having that particular quality represented by light and coming into you, and sorta stepping into that and embodying it.

	I think when you start to do practices like that, when you start to really embody that power, you don't even need to sit in meditation to turn that on anymore.

I don't need to sit and do my full boardroom meditation for me to be able to, before a meeting, slip into the bathroom and just close my eyes for a minute and be like, "Okay, this is the kind of energy I need to step into, this is the part of me I need to step into right now before going into this meeting," because there are still things that I get really uncomfortable with as I'm building my business.

There are things that I don't fully wanna be doing.  Last year, we went through this big legal issue, and I really had to be warrior Natalie for weeks, and it's not something that I - it's not a position that I wanna be in where I have to have that warrior energy going for three weeks straight.  I had to carry that visual and had to work on fully embodying that as I dealt with this particular issue.

These kinds of things are inevitable when you're building a company, especially when you want to have a brand that has a lot of recognition and a very wide reach.  Shit happens sometimes, and you have to deal with it, so that's one of the ways that I deal with it.

Now, it's a lot easier where I can switch into those different archetypes or different energies depending on the situation that I find myself in, and that really boosted my confidence.  Try it with something like my boardroom meditation, and then you'll find that once you do that a few times, it's easy for you to just guide yourself into that place.

Jaime:	I love that, so a few times.  How many is a few times, though, too? Because I think that's the thing, people will be like, "Well, try it a couple times, and then when does it work? What if it's not good enough? Maybe it only lasts a little - " because this is what everybody's head does, you know what I mean.

Natalie:	I'd say trying it three to five times as the full guided meditation is really powerful.  I do short meditations for busy people.  Most of them are under five minutes long.

Jaime:	Wow.

Natalie:	Yeah, I'm not asking you to do a 20 or 30 minute visualization.  Once you get that process and you can do it for those five minutes, you will find that it's so easy for you to just step into that a lot faster and be able to do the visualization yourself in 30 seconds to a minute.

	I think you really do just need to do it three to five times, and then you've probably got it down enough that you can do it without having audio Natalie guide you through it.

Jaime:	You'll be already in my head, it'll be perfect, I will love it.  I'm totally gonna go get that.  I mean, it really does make a difference.  Even now, don't get me wrong, my confidence has changed big time in the eight years that I've been doing this, which is hilarious, you know what I mean?

When you can actually look back and see, I don't think we do that enough, of pre-business Jaime was a little mouse that didn't wanna talk to anybody, you know what I mean? I mean, I was called arrogant the other day, which is hilarious because to me, I was like, "Wow, I've come a long way," in a good way, not a bad way.

Natalie:	From shy to arrogant?

Jaime:	Exactly, it was crazy.

Natalie:	It's about taking those scary steps.  We take a lot of scary steps in our businesses to get to where we are and there's a lot of things that feel uncomfortable and, I think, can throw us off our game sometimes.  It's as you work through those that you build up that confidence.

	Then, I like having tools like this that actually help you to tune into that because I think too many people say, "Well, you need to be more confident." Okay, great, how do I do that now? Yes, there are certain - maybe sometimes you do need to see a psychologist.  Maybe it's something from your past that you still need to deal with because it's holding you back from really being your fully confident self, but I find oftentimes, it's just a matter of, especially as women, almost needing to step into these archetypes.

	This is why I love this particular visualization because it helps you to make peace with those parts of yourself that sometimes feel really unsure about and uncomfortable stepping into.

Jaime:	I love that, and the more you practice it, the better you get at it, and then - and it's not like you [inaudible] [00:45:46] do that all the time.

[Crosstalk]

Natalie:	Then it's just second nature, exactly, then you've just got it.

Jaime:	See, and that's what I love about you, Natalie, just in general.  I know you're like, "Oh, I'm different, blah, blah, blah." I've always seen you as regal, just so you know.

Natalie:	Thank you.

Jaime:	Yeah, really regal because you always seem so well put together, and you -

Natalie:	That's such a compliment, thank you.

Jaime:	You're amazing, and there's not that many people that I would say that about, just so you know, so it's not a compliment that I give often.  It's old school regal, like Arianna Huffington, sort of - you know what I mean? Well put together.  Is that something you [inaudible]?

[Crosstalk]

Natalie:	I do like her a lot, yeah.  She has that queen energy that -

Jaime:	Exactly, that's what I feel like.

Natalie:	- I really like.  I think for her because I've talked about her and her sister, and being Greek and having this very powerful Greek matriarchal mother, I think they got a lot of that from their mom and credit her with a lot of that.  It?s, I think, in that culture, too.  It's tuning in more, I think you're more tuned in, and so it's something that I do with - that I work on.

	Like I said, with the mudras, with these practices, I love that we get to tap into this ancient power and energy that I think is still present on the planet, it's just that we're so busy on our phones and in front of our screens, and we're so in our heads and not in our bodies anymore, and not spending enough time in nature because we're glued to our technology.

That's kinda what makes me sad, that's what I don't want, and so these practices, even just going out and putting - I love standing in the grass in bare feet and just feeling the energy of that, and you do feel it, even with the mudras.

One of the mudras I love, and I'm giving your audience so many meditation and mudras that you guys might have to pause this video a couple times and go back.  There's a mudra for releasing anxiety, and this is one that people, even if they're a little bit skeptical of mudras, are always like, "Whoa, that is awesome."

Again, the hands are up, there's a lot of mudras with the hands up, and with the hand, you make this, it's like this.  I don't even know what you would call this, it's almost like you can fit a ball still in the palm of your hand.  Fingers are spread apart, though, and then these fingers, they start to wrap in, but they don't come fully in.  It's like this.

Jaime:	Anybody who's not watching the video is going, "What the heck are you guys doing right now?"

Natalie:	Oh yeah, sorry for every listening on the podcast, I apologize.  You'll have to hop on and see this video too because this is powerful stuff.

	Put on a song that you love, it can be an upbeat song, something you like.  Again, this is three minutes, three minutes, it's a little long.  You're moving the hands like this, like this, and you're doing this for three minutes.

It's tough to get through.  It takes a lot of tenacity to get through this, but if you want it, you'll get through it.  If you're an entrepreneur, you're a go-getter, you're gonna get through it.

Jaime:	I can do this.

Natalie:	Do this for three minutes, and at the end, just bring your hands in worship pose, like this, prayer pose, if you wanna call it that, and you will feel this power just coursing through your body.  I promise, if you stick with it, if you can do this for the full three minutes, it releases a lot of anxiety and tension and worry, and you will actually feel that energy flowing through your body.

	That's what I love, feeling it because then you feel very connected to it, and you feel very connected to your whole body and your energetic body, not just - like I said, we spend too much time up in our heads.

Jaime:	I agree 1000 percent, and it's so funny, and it's a perfect transition to talk about video like we were gonna talk about [inaudible] [00:49:42].  How great, go in grass, and then video, no.

	You're amazing at this, though, and I have to make sure that we touch upon some of this stuff because it really does - what do you suggest? Especially nowadays, I know that technology has been increasing and getting better, we're doing so much more video.  How can we stand out in video? I know I need to work on my video, so give us some tips on that.

Natalie:	Yeah, when it comes to video, I think two most important things are your audio equipment, you know this from podcasting, it's all about the audio, and your lighting.  If you can get the audio right, you can get the lighting right, it's a really good combination.  I wouldn't usually shoot my videos in this space, this is a little too dark, I don't have any natural light in this space.

	One of the best ways to get amazing lighting is to just have the natural light flooding your face.  It's the best kind of light, or if you wanna film outside, filming at sunrise or sunset is the best light.  Sometimes, I'll film meditations- you need no makeup at all.  When you're filming at sunrise or sunset, you're naturally getting airbrushed by nature, it's gorgeous.

	That's one of my suggestions if you wanna shoot outside, but it's all about the audio.  Get a lapel microphone if you're gonna be shooting, and then it's so, so easy to - RED cams now are amazing quality video.  You don't even need a lot of equipment anymore.

	If you wanna get a lighting kit, if you look up Cowboy lighting kit, Cowboy lighting kit on Amazon, that's all you really need, is one of those kits for your lighting, and it will improve the quality of your videos 100 percent.

Jaime:	Looking at your backgrounds and stuff though too, should you do green screen - I know you always have - well, and even just looking behind you, right, whenever you've done any of these live - I've been on some of your live streams, which are incredible, you have these sets, and you have everything set up.  Does that make a - I mean, it does, I feel like it's utterly amazing, but what do we do? What do regular people do, Natalie?

Natalie:	I think that's a great question.  For me, I do have the set, and it's because I have a lot of things.  If you don't know this about me by now, and for everyone listening, a lot of things mean a lot to me, so I have all these little things that just have so much meaning to me.

	Every object, it's very strategic, and it's very thought out.  I don't just fill the set for the sake of having stuff on the set.

Jaime:	Really? Okay.

Natalie:	Yeah, if you look at She Takes on the World TV, which I will also note, if you look at She Takes on the World TV from three years ago, we've had very incremental improvements along the way.  This is one of the biggest business lessons that I've learned as well.  It's all about continual improvement.  One of the only real jobs I ever had, "real jobs," was working at Toyota on the assembly line.

Jaime:	Wow.

Natalie:	Yeah, it was one of my student jobs.  They paid really, really well, so that was great.  It put me through university and allowed me to start my first business.

	Seeing how they managed that company, seeing kaizen at work and this whole concept of always tinkering, always improving, really has stuck with me as I've built my businesses.  I'm always tinkering, always trying to make those little tiny improvements that over time add up to a lot.

	If you look at our old episodes of She Takes on the World TV, you'll see that they're so much better now because we've just changed little things at a time, and you'll notice that on the set, even hear in my office, I've got my sign, I've got my favorite roomie quote, "Don't play small, you are the universe in ecstatic motion," I've got my globe because I always have to have a globe on my set.

	Even these kinds of things, and this is just for interviews, I have stuff that has meaning.  If you look at the set of She Takes on the World TV, every object is there for a reason, so I recommend filling your set with things that actually have value and meaning to you.  There's no point in just filling the set for the sake of having more stuff.

	Plants always work well.  I don't have plants here, but you'll notice in our episodes of She Takes on the World TV, there's always lots of green and plants because I love being surrounded by nature, and plants add a nice pop to your videos.

	You don't have to start off with anything complicated, it could just be in your office.  Get some good lighting, get the right audio equipment, start shooting videos in front of your webcam.  That's how I actually got started when was doing She Takes on the World videos.  They were just webcam videos, even though I worked on really cool productions.  I didn't have the budget to do that for myself at the time, and so as we have more resources, we dedicate more resources, but I think you just need to start somewhere.

	It's like anything, right? You just have to get started, and video is going to be 80 percent of all content consumed online in the next few years.

Jaime:	Really? Wow.

Natalie:	It is crazy, so you've got to be incorporating video content into your business somehow.  It can be for showcasing your product, it can be doing an interview series like this, it can be just you answering customers? questions, or answering questions that your audience sends you, but you've gotta have some video content.  It's really, really important for the next few years.

Jaime:	I am buying a house, I told you this, you can stay whenever you want.

Natalie:	I can help set up your production studio.

Jaime:	Oh my gosh, that's - I'll wait for you.  That's what I was gonna ask you, I feel like I can finally sort of have the space to level up my video a little bit, and I know I need to be doing it.  I use a webcam, it's 100 bucks right now, it's still not the best.  This is a good setup just in general, but I'm going like, "Oh, now I have the space where I can do a set, so I need plants," but should I have - I love how on a lot of your sets, you have space, so it's not like you're against the wall, you know what I mean? I know you do here, but -

Natalie:	That is the key.  It's hard to visualize this without actually seeing it, so if you're interested in doing video, I recommend just popping on She Takes on the World TV and looking at some of our recent episodes.  You will notice that we leave a lot of space in the backgrounds.

	I'll usually be closer to the camera, the couch will be right in front of the camera, and then behind us, the shelves are pushed pretty far back.  If you saw this and were thinking, "Well, that would be a really terrible living room setup," you can't think about your set like it's a living room, you have to think about how it translates on video.

	Having that space and being able to fill it in, it adds a lot of depth, and having that depth is really important for your videos if you wanna get to that next level of production.  If you can have your couch, or you can be sitting closer to the camera, and then fill stuff in behind you so that you're just adding those layers, and think about it as - think about each layer.

	In a room, you should be able to have four different layers from where you're set up.  You might have a layer of some plants behind you.  That's kinda the easiest way I can describe it, is to have these layers.  You might have a layer of plants, you might have a book shelf, or some sort of sculpture, statue, piece of art, and just layer things.

	It creates the look of having a much larger studio space.  I just filmed a whole bunch of interviews live in my production studio, and it's small.  I've converted a condo into this production studio, and it's a 600 square foot condo, only one area of that which is actually for our productions.

	People arrived on the set, and I had been telling them before, "The set's really small, so I'm gonna have you guys come in at different times," and people are like, "What are you talking about? You have this productions studio and this big set," and it's not.

It looks a lot bigger on camera than it actually is when you see it.  People will see it and be like, "Oh, this is it?" I'm like, "Yeah, this is it.  This is all you need, it's just how you actually set it up."

Jaime:	When I went on David Letterman - my friends were on David Letterman and I got to go and stand on the stage, and I'm looking around going, "This is so tiny." I felt like a giant on the stage, it's so weird the way that it was set up.  It's so [inaudible] [00:58:36].

[Crosstalk]

Natalie:	I'm glad you mentioned that, yes.  If you go to pretty much any talk show, or any - think about any of your favorite morning shows, some of these sets are - there's barely enough space to fit that cocktail-size table with a few chairs around it, and then that's it, and then it's cameras.

	They create a background, so that's another thing that they'll often do in television.  Sometimes, they'll do a window, and the window is green screen, so you can add more layers there.  It's all about those layers to create some depth, and that's it.

	You shouldn't just sit somewhere, or you shouldn't sit against a wall, that's the worst.  Please don't sit against a wall unless you really have to because if you're sitting against a wall, it's just impossible, so move yourself way out from the wall and then build those layers behind you.  It makes such a big difference.

Jaime:	We need to have you coming to my new office, and then we'll do a video of, "Okay, Jaime, this is how you put this," and then we can make it all cool looking, okay?

Natalie:	Okay, sounds good.

Jaime:	Okay good, but that means I have to wait for you, but otherwise -  I'll film my own, and you can critique it.

Natalie:	Yeah, then we can film it for your audience or something, how we set it up, yeah.

Jaime:	Oh, I'd love this because I definitely wanna level up, and I think just in general, I scared as all heck when I first started video, and you just sort of get used to it, and used to it, and used, even though - it's funny, we should have a video of all of us beforehand fixing our hair a thousand times over, of, "No, it's still - okay, I think it's okay." I mean, come on, right? We're girls, we have to pay attention because I've had videos where it's been like this, and I didn't notice the whole time.  It's not good.

Natalie:	It's one of the things I'm really picky about in my videos, too.  My production team is always - because they know I'll be really annoyed if I have a piece of hair that's flying out, so they'll call  cut and be like, "Oh, that one piece of hair moved."

Jaime:	You have people that help you with this?

Natalie:	I do now, but when I first started, I did my videos all by myself for those first couple years.  Start small, start somewhere, start creating videos, and then, if they're getting a lot of traction, if they're converting leads, I think it could be a huge marketing piece for everyone listening if you do it right.  That's when you can invest in actually hiring people to come and help you, but try it on your own, first.

Jaime:	I'll work on it, Natalie, thank you.  I appreciate -

Natalie:	Your videos look great.  I mean, your setup is awesome, your audio is always perfect.

Jaime:	Well, and that's the funny thing, I didn't know - I don't know what you know, but I do know that having more - I'm in a small, super small, but all my other ones, I would set up the background and make it look a little bit better because you'd see so many people that would be against a wall, and I'm like, "Um," and they're millionaires.  A lot of the guys that I have on the show, they're - I'm like, "You're supposed to be [inaudible] [01:01:27]."

[Crosstalk]

Natalie:	Yeah, "You can afford this.  I'll [inaudible] come in and set you up properly." I mean, this isn't the best room for filming, either.  I will usually do interviews in here, and it's okay, but my next place I'll definitely make sure I have a nice big window in my office that I can look out at and film this way.

Jaime:	[Inaudible], She Takes on the World.  All right, so we have to start finishing up.  I could talk to you for absolutely ever, I know we -

[Crosstalk]

Natalie:	We have to start finishing up? Oh, no.

Jaime:	Yeah, I know.  I wanna talk about your book in just a second, but tell me, same last question I always ask: What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Natalie:	I listen to your podcast, so I really like this question every time.  I think when you're working towards a million because this was a goal of mine for a long time, too.

	When I started my business, I thought, "Well, of course I'm gonna be a millionaire at some point," and for me, especially in the last few years, it has to come with the why.  Why do you really want that? It sounds so great, like, "Well, I'm a millionaire now." It has a nice ring to it, but you-ve gotta know why you really want it.

	What I would encourage people to do as their actionable is sit and visualize what it is - what does that look like to you? What does living your life as a millionaire look like? Because sometimes, you can have that life even long before you're a millionaire, and I think you have to ask yourself why you really want that.

	If it's just for the ego, if it's just for the attention that you think it's gonna get you, if it's just to be on the Eventual Millionaire podcast, those aren't good enough reasons, as awesome as this podcast is.

Jaime:	Wait, what? No, yeah, I get it.

Natalie:	That was a driving factor for me.  I think you have to look at why you actually want that.  One of the visualizations that I love to do is, I know we've talked a lot about visualizations, and you can actually grab this one.  It's free at shetakesontheworld/resources.  It's my future success meditation.  It's only a few minutes.  You don't have to give me your email address or anything to get it, you don't have to opt in, it's just there for you to use.

	I like to visualize myself on a particular date.  I do this every year, visualizing myself on December 31st of that year.  What do I wanna be proud of achieving for that year? What do I wanna look back on and be like, "Yeah, that's the thing that really meant a lot to me."

	Visualize what your life looks like as a millionaire and why that, and really question why you want it.  I love doing that visualization.  I do it constantly, and this is something that I did when I imagined having all of this success and having these businesses that were doing really well, and realizing from looking at my bank account to talking to my accountant, "What is it gonna feel like to be a millionaire?"

	I would just soak every ounce of that up, and it was one of the things I did on my 20th birthday.  I'll tell you this story real quick because I was a peculiar child and quite ambitious.

	Every year on my birthday, I would actually, when I'm blowing out the candles, I would have to visualize what the next year was gonna be, or what the next ten - when I was 20, I was trying to visualize what it was gonna be like getting to 30.

	Wax is pouring all over my cake by the time I've done my visual, and my sister, who, she's kinda my opposite, my younger sister, and she's just like, "Oh my god, this is taking so long," because I would hold that visual.

	That's what I did on my 20th birthday.  For the next ten years, what does success look like for me? I just soaked all of it up, where I was living, how I was living, places I was traveling to.  I did this when I talked to you a couple years ago.  I would visualize myself coming and talking to you about my life now that I've hit some of these really awesome milestones in my business.

	I think there's a lot of power in the visual and really putting yourself in your own future self's shoes, and feeling, feeling that, and feeling everything that goes along with it.

	That is my actionable, and it's all guided. It's a guided meditation for you if you want it, and if not, just close your eyes, not if you're listening to this if you're driving.  Keep your eyes open, please, but when you have a minute, just sit with that.

Jaime:	I ridiculously appreciate you saying this because I've heard this from millionaires that I've interviewed, and I do this constantly, and being able to hear you again go, "No, it really does work," I'm not just going crazy and imagining it, you know what I mean?

	Over, and over, and over again, I have a meditation that I listen to almost every day that goes through what the future you looks like and embodying that feeling, so the fact that you just said that, I'm like, "Okay, good job, Jaime." Eventually -

Natalie:	Yeah, good job, Jaime, yeah, that's awesome.

Jaime:	Thank you, Natalie.

Natalie:	Yeah.  I'm so proud of you for this meditation practice.  Thank you very much for even letting me talk about that.  It's not something I get to talk about very often, and it's not what I thought we were gonna chat about for the last hour, but I'm really happy that we did.  

I think it's important, and I want more people incorporating those practices into their lives, and I wanna make meditation more accessible and comfortable for busy people.  That's my next venture that I'm gonna tackle.

Jaime:	I feel like it's the secret sauce.  One of my mentors, Amy Applebaum, -

Natalie:	It is.

Jaime:	- who I've also interviewed, does hypnosis and guided meditations, I listen to hers, and I don't think people talk about it enough as that it is.  Millionaires do it, and don't get me wrong, I love talking about tactical and stuff like that, but it's so funny how we don't really get into that enough to go, "Oh, what are you actually doing in your life'"

	Once I've heard it over, and over, and over again, I was like, "Ah," because I thought, no offence, long time ago, visualization and stuff was a little woo-woo and a little crazy, and then it started coming up over, and over, and over again when I met millionaires.  I was like, "Hm, maybe there's something to this," which is why I dove into it today because I don't think the logical-headed business people hear this stuff enough, so I really appreciate it.

Natalie:	I mean, so many people, you're right, do practice this.  Arianna Huffington, a couple years ago, loved saying when she was on her book tour that, "People used to be afraid of coming out of the closet.  Now, you've got all these people coming out of the closet as meditators," and it's this Fortune 500 CEOs, they're like, "I meditate," when asked about their success and how they actually achieve all these things.

	I think it is more common than people think, even for people who seem like very logical thinkers.  I'm very left-brain-right-brain, I am very logical but still have that spiritual part of me as well, and I know that I wouldn't be where I am today,  there's absolutely no way, without that practice.  It is what grounds me in every single thing that I do.  I can't even imagine my life without it.  It's just so integral at this point, and into my business as well.

I don't know where my business would be if I - it would be a very different business, that's for sure, but this kinda helps me - it roots me into everything that I do, and really helps me to carry a very powerful intention into everything that I do.  I'm all about being very rooted and grounded in intention, -

Jaime:	Which I love.

Natalie:	- in business, and life.

Jaime:	I think what's so important is the people that are listening needed to hear that, do you know what I mean?

Natalie:	I hope so.  I hope you guys have enjoyed this hour, and that's not what you usually hear on Eventual Millionaire, so I hope it's a different perspective.

Jaime:	I think it's awesome.  Tell me about your book, though because the book is a lot more tactical and stuff like that, too.  Give us where we can find it.  I know you have bonuses and all that fun stuff, so pitch like heck because the book is awesome.

Natalie:	Yeah.  This is The Conquer Kit.  The Conquer Kit is a 12-month creative business planner.  It's all custom illustrated.  It's colorful, too.  This is my black and white copy, but it's actually custom illustrated, so it has - it does have meditations in it for entrepreneurs, they're all included as part of the book.

	It's the best of both worlds.  It's very left-brain-right-brain, and I have created my own conquer kit every year for the last five years.  This is how I build my own business, but I've had to create my own worksheets, and then I usually put it all into a binder.  Now, I actually have this for myself, which is very exciting because now I can do my 2016 plan in this guy.

	The Conquer Kit is available at theconquerkit.com.  There are a lot of cool bonuses that go along with the book.  This is my dream book deal; I'm just so excited about it.  I know I shared this news with you when I got it, it's the Perigee imprint of Penguin Random House, and that was my dream publisher.

To get to work with them on getting this book out there, it's a very different kind of business plan, and I think it's one that a lot of entrepreneurs are really, really going to resonate with because it's more creative, it's more fun.

It's more for the 99 percent of entrepreneurs who never actually raise formal funding, who don't actually need that more traditional business plan.  Again I'm all about getting out of your head and getting more into your heart, and more into your different chakras, and more into your body.  I feel like this is what - this does that, but for business planning.  It's like, "Get out of here and get into this."

Jaime:	When do we need to [inaudible] [01:11:49] by to get all the bonuses and stuff like that, too because I highly recommend it.

[Crosstalk]

Natalie:	Yes, so we have a - there's a big Black Friday special preorder campaign, so stay tuned for that.  Even if you're listening to this and it's already past that time, you can still download all the bonuses, so no matter when you preorder, there's just extra bonuses for our Black Friday promo.  The rest of the time, you still get lots of bonus goodies with the book, as well as  some meditations that are found throughout.  I'm excited.

Jaime:	You should be.  I remember the day you were like, "Oh my gosh, I got," because you had visualized that, too, which is so amazing.

Natalie:	I had totally visualized that, and the visualizations are, I think, great for really feeling, and there's also a lot of hard work, so I don't wanna make it sound like it's all visualization, that you're visualizing yourself in a Ferrari, and the next year you're driving around in a Ferrari.  Doesn't quite work that way.  There's still a lot of work involved.

Jaime:	I thought you were gonna buy me a Ferrari, I thought that was what we were talking about [inaudible] [01:12:55].  Now that you hit this goal, you're gonna buy me - no? [Inaudible].  You've been awesome, Natalie.  I so, so - what was that?

Natalie:	I was gonna say, do I want a Ferrari? I don't think so.

Jaime:	I don't either.

Natalie:	It's not one of my core values.

Jaime:	You should rent one when you come to Austin, and then we'll just visualize us driving around for one day and not owning it, okay? That'll be what we'll - 

Natalie:	I don't know if I need a Ferrari.  It's just not one of the things a value the most.  My next big thig, I think, is a house with a meditation room, and a float pod, and a sauna, and very - like a sanctuary, yeah.  I can have other people come and be in the sanctuary.

Jaime:	Good, [inaudible] me over.

[Crosstalk]

Natalie:	Yeah, you can come over and go in the float pod, and sauna, and we'll meditate, and it'll be great.

Jaime:	Great, and then we'll video it because it'll be good, and then we'll show it to everybody.  We'll periscope and live stream it for everybody.

Natalie:	Yeah, all of that stuff, all of that stuff.

Jaime:	I love you, Natalie, we could talk forever.

Natalie:	I love you, thank you so much for having me.

Jaime:	Now we do have to start wrapping up, but you're awesome.  Thank you so much.

Natalie:	I really appreciate it.

Jaime:	I know, and we totally talk over each other.  I don't do this with anyone else except for friends, right because - I love you, I hope you have an awesome day, okay?

Natalie:	Thank you.

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services

Tags: Goal Setting, Goals, Meditations, millionaire interview, Natalie MacNeil, Planning, She Takes on the World, The Conquer Kit, Visioning

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Millionaire Interviews, Productivity, Visioning

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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