THE PODCAST FOR ONLINE COURSE CREATORS GOING BIG!

Join business strategist Tina Tower as she explores how to build your empire by packaging your expertise into online courses, speaking, content, podcasting and credibility.

Tina has over 17 years of experience in starting, building and selling companies, she's a speaker, teacher, mama and world traveller.

She's unapologetic about living an intentionally big life and if you want too, this show is designed to show you many different options to help you gain clarity over YOUR version of awesome.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Natalie as she shared her unique approach to creating courses by relying on her intuition instead of constantly seeking external feedback.

Join us as Natalie delves into the importance of disconnecting, resetting your mind, and honoring your ideas. Natalie shares what she does and doesn't do when tapping into her intuition and how she balances spirituality and strategy when running her business to create a unique experience.

Finally, she opens up about her philosophy on building wealth and making investment decisions. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to tap into their inner wisdom and take control of their course creation journey.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why loving the process and being open to experimenting is the greatest quality of a course creator
• Natalie's advice to tap into her intuition
• Why Natalie sits in the moment to remain clear and connected
• How she can balance being strategic as well as in her inner experience when running her business
• Natalie's team structure that allows her to have space in her business
• Investments, building wealth and knowing when to spend or invest

Want more?

We have some incredible things happening at Her Empire Builder this year! If you are a course creator, you have to be a part of this incredible community. Jump on to herempirebuilder.com and check it out!

If you loved the episode, I would be so grateful if you shared it on insta or left a review! 

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Her Empire Builder is a combination of live sessions and pre-recorded content to help you get what you need, when you need it.

I know that you're the expert and you've got all of your subject knowledge nailed - now it's time to build the business behind your online course and stop being the worlds best kept secret. 

Show transcription

Tina Tower 00 :00 :01
Oh, my gosh . We have the legend , Natalie MacNeil . Welcome to the Female Course Creator show.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :01:28
I'm thrilled to be here. I adore you, Tina. I can't wait for whatever we cover today.
Tina Tower 00 :01:35
I have wanted to do this since we met at Denise Duffield Thomas's rose farm , of all places . I loved saying a sentence like that . We met at Denise's rose farm . You're there by the fire trying to get it going . I'm like, no, we need more love. It was such a real moment for me because I followed you, obviously for a long time and admired your work. And there you were, just hanging out by the fire on the farm, trying .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :02 :02
To start a fire that Tina really helped to start . Tina and I were the fire starters and fire keepers , both in life, and it feels like that plays out in a lot of ways in our lives.

Tina Tower 00:02:17
Now I want to start because I researched you quite a lot to see what questions I wanted to ask you. And there's one line that I saw like three times on your website and social media that I was like, gosh, it's . It's such an embodiment and such a beautiful line and so simple that it says head high , heart first . And I read it, and when I read it was like, oh, it's such a beautiful connotation and such a theme of everything that you do. Did you come up with that ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :02 :46
I am a little embarrassed to say that .

Tina Tower 00:02:50
Do you even know what that was automatically .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :02 :51
No, I do remember reading it it's not like a phrase that I say all the time , but I do remember it and for me it's like head High helps me adjust my posture , which when you have your posture adjusted , so many other things can shift in your life. It actually impacts your confidence , it impacts your ability to breathe and take in more air and keep stress and anxiety away. So that is something that I check myself on very often , these like little attunements that we can make. And then for me, everything is heart first . Everything is from the heart and heart led. And I'm so devoted to letting the wisdom of my heart guide me in my life , in my relationships , and of course in my business too .

Tina Tower 00 :03 :45
Yeah, I just thought that sentence just summed up everything so beautifully and a good copywriter embodied that . So I want to start that . Well, you've been coaching over a decade and what I found super interesting , you raised the investment in 2012 to launch Virtual Business Coaching Incubators . Which was so ahead of the curve then . What got you doing that then ? I mean , was there even any virtual business coaching happening in 2012?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :04 :18
I had been in the space for even a little longer than that . But 2012 is when I actually raised funding to launch this online incubator . At the time I didn't know of any other incubators online . And then after I did that , there were definitely a lot of incubators that started popping up with the name Incubator . Not taking credit for having started the first one, I just didn't know of any in person ones at the time. And I went to a very entrepreneurial university , lived in a very entrepreneurial city in Canada, and I started my first business in my teenage years. And then by the time I got to my early twenty s and building my production and media company , I was not a virtual incubator , but I was in an incubator in person . And that helped me so much with my business and getting things off the ground connected me to a lot of mentors and I knew that that would be a really amazing concept to bring online as well and to connect more women entrepreneurs with the resources that I was getting access to back then .

Tina Tower 00 :05 :33
And so what was the thread in going ? Because, I mean, you won Emmys, you weren't just doing small production , you were like at the top of your game in doing that . What was the thread that then led you into the coaching industry ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :05 :49
First, I trust my intuition always, even when it defies what seems logical . And I just am always listening to the whispers in my life . And while I was building that business , the production and media company , I was doing that with a business partner and we were working with a lot of big clients . We were doing some of the earliest work in 360 degree video technology , which is what ended up evolving into virtual reality and augmented reality. But this was a long, long time ago. And while I was in that space and growing that business,Iwaspretty young.I was in my early twentys. I looked pretty young aswell.

Tina Tower 00 :06 :37
You still look in your people always.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :06 :41
Thought that I was an intern . Like, I got that all the time for my business partner .

Tina Tower 00 :06 :47
I got that in my first business as well . It's the company and he's running this shark .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :06 :52
I would get so frustrated if I would turn up to a call or a meeting and people thought I was the intern . I hadn't done all the personal work that I've done at this point where things like that don't bother me so much anymore , but as a bright hunger .

Tina Tower 00 :07:07
I need to prove yourself , though .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :07:08
Which exactly it triggered me so much . And what prompted me to start a blog called she Takes On the World was a week of situations where that just kept happening and where I just kept taking all this shit . And I was like, I need to do something to work with this . Like, whatever this is. I want to share my experience and contribute potentially to being able to do things differently or to helping some of these people who are making all these comments to expand their awareness . And I started to speak up about it. I started to call people out when I would hear these comments . And I started this blog called she Takes On the World about my adventures , building a company and traveling the world . I was also pretty nomadic at the time . I was traveling a lot . And that little blog called she Takes On The World ended up taking on a life of its own and becoming a little empire in and of itself that I ran on the side of my media and production company until it became very clear that I was meant to focus on that for a while . We had grown to have chapters around the world , so I was working with women entrepreneurs all over the world to launch businesses and it was so deeply fulfilling . I was writing columns featured in all the major media outlets , signed a book deal for it, and that was just the turning point for me of making that my full time thing for quite a while .

Tina Tower 00 :08 :50
I was always going to do something like that .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :08 :52
Yeah, it was exactly what I was meant to be doing at that time . Yeah.

Tina Tower 00 :08 :59
And she takes on the world . Became a book . And that was your first book , right ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :09 :03
That was my first book .

Tina Tower 00 :09 :05
And you've written four now?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :09 :07
I've now written five, six.

Tina Tower 00 :09 :16
So many books . So how have you evolved ? Because I know a lot of people when they're in the early stages . So like, you, 510 years ago are going , how do I set up my brand positioning and different things ? Did everything have you led with the I think I know the answer to this , but I really want to hear your answer on it with the intuition and going , you know now, I'm going to start this program . Now I'm going to morph my offers into this . Now I'm going to release this book . Now I'm going to run this retreat over here. Like, how have you systematically worked out your direction or have you let every year kind of unfold ? How has your evolution happened ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :09 :54
I love talking about this because our personal evolutions , it's like one of my favorite things to talk about . I mean, my company is called Coaching Evolved, and I just love that process of consciously evolving and being very aware of what's unfolding . So for me, it's a blend . I am very strategic and I can map things
out , but I always leave space for magic as well and for synchronicities and for other things to come into my field that want to be worked with or want to be birthed into the world . So it's a blend of both of those things and what happened . When I was starting out , everything was very synchronistic as it was starting because I started she Takes On the World. The name for that came to me in a dream after that wild week that I had of all kinds of things happening that I was like, this isn't right . And then from there , I was one of the very early adopters of Facebook and using it for business . Tower and using it for business . I was part of Facebook because the university I went to was one of the first universities in Canada that got access to it, back when it was just a student network .

Tina Tower 00 :11:14
When you say early.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :11:18
Like Facebook beta , where you had to get an invitation from someone and be registered at a particular university . And then Tower, same thing , like very early on Tower. And because of that , when social media started to pick up and people were calling it a trend , I knew it wasn't just going to be a trend . I knew that it was going to change the world and how we connect and how businesses get built . So that was already being worked into writing the blog , she Takes On the World . And from there , I just started getting asked to speak at events to talk about social media. I was using Tower to connect to journalists , which was helping me to get pressed , and that just started to snowball . And suddenly I was speaking at events on how to build your brand . And I felt very connected to branding and marketing , and that was a strength . And then from there , the actual offers , they started to organically form . I didn't have a lot of examples at that time of people running these huge online courses that was pretty new, but there were some people , there were people like Jeff Walker who were already in that game. But again, it was so much smaller than it is now. So there was a lot of experimentation , which I actually love. I think this is one of the greatest qualities that you can have as an entrepreneur , as a course creator , is to really love the process and to love the experimentation . Because things have obviously changed so much . And I feel like in my whole journey over the last 15, 16 years , there have been so many ways that the industry has evolved . And you have to just love the process and love figuring out what's going to work now and what's going to work now, what's going to work now, and letting go of what you think you know, and continuing to approach things with a beginner mindset . So that's really what informs what I end up creating . It's why I created all these courses . For she takes on the world , the incubator being the main focus . But then there was a point where I knew that was no longer my highest calling and highest path forward . And that's when I let that go and ended up starting Coaching Evolved. And our suite of programs , which also continues to evolve . We started with our ICF accredited somatic coaching certification program . And that's evolving now just in response to the feedback that we get from people and what people are asking us for.

Tina Tower 00:13:59
And have you found that led a lot of the evolution as you've gone through is giving people what they want next?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :14:05
I think that can be a trap , too . It's like giving people what they want and getting sucked into all the feedback that we can get in our business . And if we're trying to respond to everything people are asking for , that's a recipe for burnout and for just spreading ourselves too thin in terms of our energy , our resources , our time . But I do like to listen to the feedback and keep a pulse on what's happening in the industry and then also continue to tune into myself and my intuition . And it's also about what I feel called to create at this stage in my journey . And that's really what I'm starting to work on now, which is a mastery experience for skills upgrades for coaches and how to weave somatic coaching and work into existing courses and programs and coaching offers because some people don't necessarily want to do the certification , but they really want to learn some of these skills . And it feels like something that I want to be doing that feels like my zone of genius , because I've trained in over twelve different tools and modalities and systems that I weave into our program that people are really wanting to learn . So I'm responding , and I'm also really deeply listening to what I feel is like, what is my edge of evolution ? What can I be doing that's challenging me and exciting me? And that's really bringing all of my genius and everything I've learned to this point into the world and into a course .

Tina Tower 00:15:49
So there's like five questions I want to ask you from that sentence that you just said because you are a very in tune human . And I know that we always make such better decisions when we can hear our intuition as well as trust it. But it's a noisy world we live in and we're getting pulled in all different directions . And for a lot of people that don't have those rituals and don't have those practices and it can be hard to distinguish what is actually our intuition and what's being biased and influenced by everything else. Do you have a certain practice that you do to drop in to that and know what is actually your invoice that's telling you and guiding you?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :16:30
I love this topic , Tina. So there are the things that I do and then equally as important are the things that I don't do. And I'll start there. So what I don't do is I don't go and look at every possible competitor in my space and follow them all on Instagram and check out everything that they're doing because that can take you down a very dark well and really distract you and keep you stuck because you start to compare yourself . I think that comparison game is one of the most toxic things .

Tina Tower 00 :17:12
Having this exact conversation with our marketing manager this morning , do you want to do a full competitor analysis and different things ? I was like, no, I don't .
Natalie MacNeil 00:17:22
Yes, it's like stay in your lane, stay with what feels true for you and what's aligned with your genius . So that's step one. It's the things that you don't do, including things like comparison , including things like not working nonstop without taking breaks . And I know that's really hard , especially when you're new to business , because you do create this internal pressure and feel like you always need to be doing something and that's never going to change . Like my to do list , just like everybody else's , you cross something off and you add two more things to it.

Tina Tower 00 :18:00
Yeah.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :18:01
So that never is going to get done .

Tina Tower 00 :18:03
But it's important , I think is one of the biggest things in terms of burnout and overwhelm and we always have more ideas than time and energy available to implement them . How do you measure yourself when you've done enough and you know that's it. And I also want to ask you because you've just done a month in Bali too , in terms of a lot of people aspire to have that sort of freedom and flexibility and disconnection and ability to be able to disconnect . So I want to ask you about I want to ask you about that and how you have your team and all of the senior Natalie, so many things to share. How do you know when you've done enough ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :18:39

Yeah, and I think this now comes into the things that I do actively to stay connected to myself and to my intuition because honestly , sometimes it feels still at this point , like it's never going to be enough . There's always so much to do. And it's on me to say this is good for today. And the way that I personally split that up. And this was in one of my books called The Conquer Kit. It's a business planning workbook for entrepreneurs . I have a priority list and I have a to do list . And those things are separate . So every single day, I have my top three priorities . These are the must do today . These are the things I have to get done to continue moving forward towards our goals , to make sure that I'm not being a bottleneck to anyone else in my business , to serve our clients at a high level. And then I can get to my to do list once those three things are done . But if those three things get done , that is enough for that day, regardless of what else I can cross off my list . Because I know there's always going to be more . And that took me a long time to practice , to really feel it , and to have an embodied experience of that's enough . And it's so challenging to do that . And then even for this latest trip to Bali that I did for a month , I know that I need that space and I work best . This is also from my Conquer Kit book and planner . I have a planning system too , called Conquer Your Year. And I work in sprints . It's how I personally work best . Where I can go hard for twelve weeks , where I'm so focused and so productive . But what I start to notice , and there is research that backs this up, my productivity will start to fall off after that , and it will be very hard for me to stay focused unless I have a full reset . I have this hydroponic gardening station and it needs a reset every twelve weeks , and so do I. It's like the plant air garden thing .

Tina Tower 00:20:55
Those big white ones? Yes. Are they awesome?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :20 :58
Oh, I love it. It's the best thing because I love being connected to my food in that way.

Tina Tower 00:21:03
And the plan. The amount of parallels with growing food and business are huge.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :21:08
So many. And I watch this food grow and they're happy and they're growing so much . They're just like growing wildly for those first like four to six weeks , and then it starts to slow down a little bit . And then after twelve weeks , that's usually when there's the harvest . And then I have to reset the hydroponic station . Like complete reset . That's me. I'm like a hydroponic garden station . And it's like a lot of us where we need that reset so that we can clear our minds . That's also when my best ideas come . That's when I can collapse time . That's when something that if I was sitting at my computer , it would take me hours and hours and hours to do one piece of my strategy , but I can be on a hike in the jungle and it all just downloads for me and becomes so clear and I can write it down when I'm done .

Tina Tower 00 :22:00
Yeah. And so how do you communicate that to your team in terms of going , look , I'm here and then I'm gone , and you have to be that stable , constant there ? Do any of your team ever resent you for being able to do that ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :22 :14
I have attracted a team that really enjoys doing that too . So this is something that I feel is more cultural in our business now. We build in breaks for everybody , so if our team members want to be away somewhere and having a lighter work schedule , we accommodate that . Of course , there are times of the year where there are launches or there are times of the year where it's all hands on deck and that's very understood and people show up so fully for those periods . And then the rest of the year we try to have that flexibility for people . And then over the holidays , for example , when I was just in Bali, pretty much for three of those weeks, the whole team was off and we had a company wide Shutdown , which of course needs to be communicated to clients . And that's something that you can just bake into your business if it's a value for you the way that it's a value for me. I want my team members to feel like they can go off and play and have a trip and have time away because I know that they're going to come back feeling reset and feeling ready to dive in and take on more and work towards our goals too.

Tina Tower 00:23:32
Yes. Okay, so I want to go back to your to do list as well because this is purely selfish reasons I'm asking this question . I have three to do lists in that I have our top priorities . One, and then I have the things that we need to work on systematically and then I have a list of wish lists , like to do if there's time . And every time Natalie, I add something to this list, I'm like, this is where dreams go to die. Because I am never getting to that list . And it's filled with all of this gold that if I just had the time in it and I'm always constantly disappointed that I never get to it. I know you have all of those as well. Do you allocate them to team or have you learned how to deal with that disappointment that you can never do all of the ideas?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :24 :23
I have really shifted my relationship to ideas because I have book ideas that are in my notebooks and I have program and course ideas and I have event ideas and I have just completely other businesses that have nothing to do with what I'm doing now. Ideas for me, the process of writing them down in an ideas book . Like I have this book that's just for those things which it sounds like you want to . And my relationship to ideas is, I think , really beautifully articulated in the book Big Magic . Have you read that by Elizabeth Gilbert ? Highly recommend that book to any anyone creating anything in the world , which is all of us divine creative impulse is alive in all of us. It's a really good book . And she articulates something in the book about how there's , like, a sea of ideas and there are all these instances that have been tracked in history where people have had the exact same idea at the exact same time , or scientists have made the exact same discovery at the same time without having any communication with each other . I find that to be really interesting and so I don't treat an idea as this is mine, like anything in my life. I try to practice nonattachment to it. So what that looks like is writing it down in my ideas book. And sometimes I've had ideas that , like , years later , even they'll come back around and get incorporated somehow into my business . But there are other ones that I write it down to honor it. And then I just say a little , like, prayer or I surrender it. And it's like, if this is meant to be, may it continue to stay in my field and speak to me. However this idea is meant to enter the world through me or through someone else. May that just be a perfect unfolding for everybody and it's going to play.

Tina Tower 00:26:30
That pop back to myself.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :26 :33
It's really helped me to let go of any disappointment around what I'm doing and what I'm not doing , because there are so many things that I think would be so much fun to be doing . And I know that some of them are not right now, and I know that some of them will be better off managed and created by other people as well . And that's okay too . We're so involved .

Tina Tower 00 :27:02
So I want to ask you because I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days with you at Denise's as well, so I got to see you in real life , which is often different to what people are depicting , I have learnt over the years . But you are even more Ethel in real life than you are online , which I found really cool . What are the things that you do when or maybe you don't even lose it anymore because you've been practicing it for such a long time . But when life does hit that overwhelm bump and you get into that moment of going , whoa, hang on. I'm coming out of myself. Here. What it is the practice that you do to bring yourself back into that alignment and back into what you were just saying in that you can let it go and you can know that it's not right for you . Now in that . Does life ever get overwhelming for you where you lose that Zen and you get caught up and then how do you get back to where you want to be?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :27:54
Of course . I think what we do in the moments , like the moments , the seconds that follow coming out of alignment , if we can catch it in that moment and we can be with it, we can notice there's a somatic . It comes from somatic psychotherapy , but it's this process of just stopping and having the awareness of what's going on. So what am I noticing right now within my thoughts ? What am I noticing within my heart ? What am I noticing emotionally ? What am I noticing about this situation and then staying with it ? And that's a really key part , is that we actually stay with it and we feel it and we bring our awareness , our full awareness to it . We can take some deep breaths into what we're feeling . And from that place we get just enough clarity and we get just enough connection to who we really are that often we can choose a next step that feels responsive instead of reactive and that feels aligned for us. But it really is a muscle . It's something that we have to practice over and over again before it becomes something that's more second nature and that we can do without really thinking about it. And that does take time. And of course there are things that will still trigger me and there are times when I will be in an experience , I'll be in a thought and I'm like , where is this coming from ? But if we can get curious about it too , and like , where is this coming from ? This is so interesting . I wonder what this is about . And we can take the space to journal it and to not repress it. I think what helps us to stay really clear and also connected to our truth , connected to our intuition and so few people take the space to just be with what's there . And this is the really key part of it without judgment . So being able to notice it's like watching clouds pass
through the sky. It's like you are the vast, luminous blue sky. And if you're in something , if you're stuck , if you're triggered , those are just clouds passing by. And if we can take a moment to just notice them passing and notice what's present now, we have a chance to just stay really clear and connected . And that's what I try to stay in. And look , it's work . It can be work . I also love speaking of work , I love the work by Byron Natalie . She's amazing and just examining what is true . So if we're having a judgment , I could listen to her. For example, if I'm having a judgment , let's just say I'm looking at somebody else. I'm looking at someone on Instagram and I'm starting to get into a judgment around , well , she's newer . Than I am to this space . She shouldn't be having this kind of success . It's not fair that she's having this kind of success so early. Let's just say that that's the thought . And through a process like Byron, Natalie's process , we can look at, okay, how true is it that it's not fair that she's having all this success so early? And how am I showing up when I'm believing that ? What am I making that mean about me? And then one of the big things about the buyer and Natalie work process that I love is turning it around and turning
that belief back around to , for example , saying , well , I don't deserve success so early in my career and how true do I believe that is? Now we're into some deep work and processing , right ? So I think the more that we can say what I like to refer to as emotionally and energetically current in our circumstances , we've processed things . We're not dragging around all this baggage because we're doing our work . Then we can deal with the things that come up as they come up without that stuff hitting on all sorts of other baggage that we haven't yet processed .

Tina Tower 00:32:14
I find I meditate just for 15 minutes a day and when I do that , I can come back to it quite like I noticed a difference in my whole day compared to the days that I miss. And honestly , I probably miss about two days a week on average . And on those days I find I don't notice the thoughts as much . I'm more reactive and more in it. Do you have rituals and habits in your life that are like your non negotiables ? And then do you have some that you do and you know, your actual best self would do all the time, but you can't quite get the consistency . That's why she wants to do that .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :32 :52
So I wrote a whole book for this . It's called the rituals . Yes, there's 44 practices in it that I do pretty often . Although some of them are seasonal practices , some of them are like a once .

Tina Tower 00 :33 :06
A year getting straight to Amazon and just buying all your books .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :33 :09
And then I also have the Rituals journal , which is a daily rituals practice . So for me, one of the things I talk about in the book as well is that this is the difference for me between habits and rituals . Actually with a habit , habits are amazing and obviously it's great to be able to make things more automatic in our lives , which is the purpose of a habit . Something becomes habitual if it's a really good habit that's serving you , that's amazing . But what happens when even these good habits , we're just moving through them without even really being fully aware and present to what we're doing and why we're doing it anymore ? And to me, a ritual is about bringing your conscious awareness to it and being really present with it . And because that's how I treat my rituals . I change them up quite often and every day it's more of a check in of what do I need right now, what feels alive in me right now? What would best serve this moment ? Because if I'm getting up and I'm just going through my morning routine or my habits , maybe it's not fully supportive and fully aligned with where I'm at. So then I have ones that I'll pull from and I believe in following what feels good in the moment . I do take it's usually at least an hour in the morning , which I know might sound really luxurious . Yeah. For some people , like, what , a whole hour ? I have a sauna and my sauna is a game changer , so I just ordered a sauna. Yes, Tina. Yeah. Meditating for 15 minutes , namely .

Tina Tower 00 :34 :55
This sounds so bad, but I read all the health benefits and I'm like, that's the easiest health thing I could ever do is just lay in a nice warm room . That's my type of healthy .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :35 :06
I like to bring in, like, what do I want to sweat out right now?

Tina Tower 00 :35 :10
What do I want ? Because it's got all the different colors that you could do the color therapy in there . I'll bring that one in as well.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :35 :17
You're on it. So you can have a process like that . This is called habit stacking . Works for rituals , too, and whenever we can stack something . So you're going to be in the sauna anyway. Can you bring in a process of releasing and letting go? If you're brushing your teeth in the morning , can you bring in some affirmations ? Like every time you're brushing your teeth , can you affirm what you love about yourself and what you're excited about in your life ? Or do a gratitude list while you're brushing your teeth because you're going to do that thing anyway. That's a hack that is so incredible for your life, for your business . And in the morning , I also meditate and take that space to just clear my mind and to attune to myself and my inner being . That's an important part of my day. I like to move a little bit and that looks different every day. Sometimes it's like five minutes of stretching and just doing some jump squats . Other mornings it's a walk , other mornings it's something more intense . It really depends on my body . It depends on what stage I'm at in my cycle and whether my body is feeling like it needs just really soft movement or whether I do feel really strong and want to do something a little more hardcore . So that's more of a daily check in as well. And then I always do some sort of healthy beverage smoothie juice. My partner and I have a coffee ritual as well that we do together . So we do our coffee , we set our intentions , and it's nice to have that shared practice and to share ritual with the people that we love as well. And those are the ones that are pretty consistent . Every day, my priority list , my to do list , and then I have rituals for before . Anytime I'm getting on a call , an interview , a coaching session , I like to get my energy up. I usually do a few really deep breaths and just let go and become really centered so that I can be of highest service . So that's one that I do. There are so many getting off the screen at night really important . I do a lot of biohacking things as well , and I got that from .

Tina Tower 00 :37:27
You, too, i show into, like, you have this amazingly. I knowyour space can be interpreted as a bit woo woo sometimes with the soul led, heart centered . Like, it has that connotation with it. But you're super into AI strategy and all of that part of the work as well. Do you find that there is a misconception of the industry and a lot of people have both of that ? Or are you unicorn in that you have both of those sides together so beautifully ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :38 :01
My ego would like to believe that I'm a bit of a unicorn , but I do know other people that are also like that . And I've studied Tina for a long time , and Tina is really not what most people think it is. It's really a path of totality is the best way I can describe it, very succinctly . It's an acceptance of everything , like, every part . And the more I just am open to everything that's unfolding . And it's like, I love that strategic part of me. I love that I know how to run a company . I love that I'm an amazing investor . And I love that I can go and be totally disconnected from all of my creations and from my investments for a few weeks and just be totally in my inner experience without any attachment of what's happening externally or what's happening in my bank account or what's happening in my business . So I think that part is a little unique . I do see people who will be on the spiritual path and they'll shun business and they'll shun money. And I know those people who have been really successful , and then they've , like, given everything up to follow a spiritual path and live in an ashram. Yeah, and I know people who kind of do the opposite of that, too, where they'll leave their spiritual path for business . And I just believe that everything can exist simultaneously . I believe we can have what seems like conflicting thoughts and opinions . Everything is much more nuanced than we like to believe it to be. People get into this way of thinking that it has to be A or B, that it's like, it's this or it's that , and I'm an A person . And that's , I think , one of the best shifts that you can make in your life , in your business , is where you have those ors like , it has to be this or this , change that to and because you have the capacity for so much more than you sometimes think you do.

Tina Tower 00 :40 :09
So how do you manage it from a practical point of view with your team ? How many have you got on your team to run your business at the moment ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :40 :19
There are twelve core people right now.

Tina Tower 00 :40 :22
And have you got a manager that looks after the management of the team , or are you doing that part ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :40 :29
I am involved in that part , and I have someone doing that , so I'm not completely hands off . I was for a period of time before I transitioned into coaching Evolved. I was more removed than I am now because coaching evolved is what I would still consider a start up. I've been building this for the last few years, and there are still those pieces that we're putting in place . I'm still very involved in our curriculum . It's an ICF accredited curriculum , so that comes with a lot of extra checks and balances in ways that I want to build things . But yes, there are people on the team . Like, there is someone who's managing operations and project managing the things that I'm launching and working on right now. And I'm also involved in it. I think when we hire people , that's the point where you want to make sure you're hiring someone who's going to be a good cultural fit . And I'm very honest and upfront with people about how I like to work and about some of the ways that I live my life . So I tell them there are times where I disconnect and you will not be able to reach me for this whole week or these two weeks . I encourage other people to also take vacation on our team . So those are things that we talk about upfront so that it's clearly communicated , which allows me that space without feeling any sort of pressure .

Tina Tower 00 :42 :08
Yeah, perfect . Yeah. Now I want to ask you I told you my questions are all over the place because one of the things .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :42 :14
That I was so blessed by when .

Tina Tower 00 :42 :17
We got to see it and it was such a privilege . Thank you for letting me sit with you and your beautiful Mastermind group while we were there . But you talked about wealth and getting everyone's feedback on wealth and building investments and different things . And the start off point that I would love from you was you were talking about business class flights and paying for business class flights , and I can't remember exactly what you said, but it was something around like, why would I pay $5,000 when that's going to turn into like , $ 25,000 if I invest it in there ? Because it was so relevant to me at the time in going because we're just starting to get serious about building our share portfolio and all of that sort of thing . I'm really researching a lot and getting into and my ears are just kind of freaked out. And I was like, oh, I was not expecting you to say that . And then you went off on this thing all about how women need to build wealth . And I was just like, here I was thinking you was like, this earth here, and it just went . You really debunked all of my myths of different things , of which I'm not ashamed to say, and I really appreciate you doing that , but can you tell everybody all about your philosophy behind building wealth and investing and how you've done that for what shocked such a long time of your career ? Like you have played the long game with it , which is so smart .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :43 :42
Before I dive in because this is another topic I love. Thank you so much for going down these different paths and allowing me to show up in the fullness of who I am and all the different things that I love. I love that we can talk about all of it.

Tina Tower 00 :43 :59
I'm so glad I got to meet you first because you are that yeah.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :44 :03
I love that we're covering so much ground . So for me yes. What you were saying about the business class flights , it's a blessing and a curse to know about the power of investing in compound interest , because exactly what Tina is talking about , what I start to do is calculate , okay, so business class flights right now to Australia are going to run me $9,500 was that amount . So that plays out for me as an overtime thing . Like, if I invest $9,500 today in my portfolio , I have a sense of what that's going to be like 30 years from now. And I'm like, oh, wow, like hundreds of thousands of dollars .

Tina Tower 00 :44 :48
And you said it's a calculator and you could put in the amount . And I've used it like five times since putting in the king and going , wow, this is a thing . So you've changed the direction of our wealth .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :44 :59
Amazing . And sometimes we have to look at okay, but based on other factors , not just considering the money , what about my well being ? What about my energy ? So what I then start to do is, okay, 9500 seems a little bit deep for a business class flight . My max, I'd maybe spend up to 4000 on it to be really comfortable . But can I get a flight that feels like it would be a better flight for my body ? So for me, that was, can I get a really good sleep at home in La. And can I take an early morning flight ? There are rarely early morning flights to Australia from La. There are only like one or two a week. Most of them leave late at night and you fly through the night . So I just found a flight that worked for me so that by the time I was landing in Australia , it would feel super late for me. La time . I'd be ready to go to bed . And it actually lined up time zone wise for me to be able to go to sleep when I arrived there . So that for me is perfect . I could just sit in premium economy . That was my little upgrade . I think I got the flight for $1,000, saved a bunch of money that I'm like, yes, that's an extra over my lifetime or 30 years out, we're talking about an extra couple of hundred thousand dollars in my portfolio . But sometimes if I'm going to an event or there's something that I need to be very well rested for, I will still choose to make that investment . So if I'm going to be on stage or I'm going to do a television interview and I know that I'm going to show up as the best version of me and super enthusiastic and that that's an opportunity , then I'll invest in the business class flight . So sometimes it's just a matter of looking at what makes the most sense and how I'm feeling . What does matter to me is investing as early as you can and starting before you think you're ready and starting no matter how much you're making , if that's possible for you and your expenses , businesses will always want more . My business could always use more money to invest in more things , to develop more of the strategy and build that out, launch it, more marketing . My business will always take more money into ads , and it's really important to follow , in my opinion , a profit first model , which is where you're taking the money first . It's like every 10% of that is going to me, or 10% of that is going into my investments , and then I'm working with the rest in my business , and that includes salary as well . So that 10% is you putting that into your investments , and then maybe another part of it is going to you and your salary . And then we have the money . We're working within our business . So I've been able to I've built my wealth over the long term . It started with opening a brokerage account on my 18th birthday as soon as I could , going to the bank and being like, I'm ready to start investing . I was very interested in it from a young age. And it starts with $100 that I'm putting in.

Tina Tower 00 :48 :30
Right .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :48 :31
And if you look over time , even investing $100, yeah, huge start . When you're young , you can be a millionaire after 35 years. The earlier you start , the better . And that's what I want to encourage everyone to do. If you're not already investing or you don't already have a stock portfolio , or maybe you do, but you're very hands off with it, check in on it, develop a relationship with your money and pay yourself first . Pay that investment account first , and consider things like your business class purchases that could end up being worth a lot if they're invested in the portfolio .

Tina Tower 00 :49 :14
Yes. There's Melissa Brown who is fantastic . She has an online course called My Financial Adulting Plan. And one of the things that she talks about is every time you make a purchase that you don't need. So if it's something like bags , shoes , like things that you want that we can sometimes think we need , but you don't actually need , every time you purchase , you have to put the equal amount into your share portfolio so that you're looking after yourself and future you. And I started when she said that three years ago. That's what really got me started in doing this . And it has changed the game for me, because even now, if I don't want to pay for it twice , I don't buy it because I'm like, well, if I want that $200 pants , do I want to take $400 out right now? Not really. So I say no. Or it also goes into the portfolio . So it's an incredible association .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :50 :04
It's an aggressive strategy . I like it.

Tina Tower 00 :50 :07
I know I loved it.

Natalie MacNeil 00 :50 :09
I certainly really like that .

Tina Tower 00 :50 :11
Yeah, it's really one of the questions that I want to ask from that is, because you set yourself up for retirement financially , what keeps you motivated to show up and do the work that you're doing for so many people every day now?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :50 :28
It's the love of it . And I love the creative process . I love sharing . I think our wisdom and our gifts , they are within us, for us to share. And it's my darmic path . It's what I'm meant to be doing . And I always trust that if I'm called to do something , it's because I'm meant to bring it into the world for whatever reason . And that's really what keeps me going . And I've had periods in between companies where I've taken a lot of time off . I had a period where I was off for about six months . I get that itch . And the muse comes to dance with me, and I'm like, all right , let's do this . There's only so much time that I really enjoy, of just , like, being in my own experience and doing whatever I want. There's that calling to serve and to share and to support others . So, yeah, I think finding that it's like connecting with that divine creative inspiration and connecting with that higher purpose , it's so important because that's what's going to give us the energy for everything we want to create . And that's true for me.

Tina Tower 00:51:48
Yeah, I think there's such a difference in like one of the cruel things for me has been when you have to do something and there's this resistance to it. It's like, Well, I have to do all these things , so I don't want to. But when you don't have to do it, you can do whatever you want. It's like, I want to do all of those things .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :52 :08
It's so true . This is what I always find when I'm on my sabbatical , which is one of the reasons why I love them so much . If I take a month off , I will just naturally end up creating things or working on things just from a place of joy. There's no deadlines . There's no pressure . It's just like, I want to be doing this right now. This is my highest desire in this moment .

Tina Tower 00:52:29
I know we both just got back from Bali, and I sat there with my notes , and I purposely tried not to take too much work because I was like, family holiday. I really want to be in it. And when my kids were out surfing , my husband's out surfing , and I rewrote our entire launch training and all of our emails and offers , and I'm like, if I'd sat in my office and being like, okay, I have to get this done today , there would have been friction there . But it just flew down to me. I was like, we should never be in an office .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :52 :59
It's true . I'm trying to figure out that balance right now in my own life . It's that balance of being in it and being strategic and also being surrendered , and it's being out in nature and going to one of the things I do in Bali is I spend so much time in nature . I go to classes , I prioritize all of those things and then work kind of fills in based on what's going to bring me joy. So how can I bring more of that into my life here? And that was a really big learning for me because sometimes I think , oh, I can go away and take the month off so that I can rest and recharge . But I come back , and sometimes it feels like I haven't even been away. I dive back into work and it feels like there's so much to do. And I've really recognized recently that wherever you go, there you are with all of your and it's so important that in my home life that I'm creating that . And I set my life up here because this is where I'm spending the most time and the way that I play and the way that I structure my time when I'm away and on vacation . I need to bring more of that into my day to day here so that I can continue to be in that energy and that flow . So that's what I'm actively working on right now.

Tina Tower 00 :54 :25
You'll have to share that when you work that out because I travel a lot as well, because I feel like it unlocks something in me that I just don't seem to get at home . And even the I stopped drinking alcohol in December , so I decided I was going to be alcohol free for a year. And when you said, wherever you go, there you are, has never been more true for me than since I stopped drinking alcohol . And I was like, oh, Tina underscore tower and give it a review. It really does help us to be able to bring you bigger and better content as we grow. Have the most beautiful day. I'm Tina Tower, and I'm cheering you on all the way.
wow, there's a lot happening up here when we don't numb it with alcohol , and it's a whole different discovery in being so hyper aware of everything that's going on all the time and recognizing those thoughts and those behaviors and those triggers and all of those different things .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :55 :09
Yeah. What a journey .

Tina Tower 00:55:11
What a journey . So I have one last question for you . My final question is what is your definition of success ?

Natalie MacNeil 00 :55 :19
Success is when you live in a way that is authentic and true for you. So success is when you show up as your full self in the fullness of who you are and you be that in the world . To me, that's the highest level of success that we can attain is to just be ourselves in this world that tries to make us a lot of other things .

Tina Tower 00:55:58
Yes. That is a beautiful note to finish on. Natalie , thank you for answering everything so beautifully and honestly and fully . And thank you for letting me go everywhere .

Natalie MacNeil 00 :56 :07
We all thank you . Thank you for taking us on this journey . I had so much fun .

Tina Tower 00 :56 :13
Thank you, gorgeous .

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