108: From Struggling Podcast to Six-Figure Success with Natalie Eckdahl

Alexa @ FBP
by Alexa @ FBP on Jul 25, 2017 in ,

Welcome to episode 108 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks to Natalie Eckdahl about growing her podcast into a six-figure success.

Last week on the podcast, Bjork interviewed Sarah Wu about her viral blog and why “going viral” quickly might not be the best thing for everyone. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.

From Struggling Podcast to Six-Figure Success

“If you build it, they will come.” That’s what Natalie thought of her audience when she first built her podcast back in 2014.

While that wasn’t exactly the case, Natalie started to understand her audience and quickly grew her struggling podcast, The Biz Chix Podcast, to a six-figure business.

Along the way, Natalie has coached many different types of women entrepreneurs, and she has learned about their struggles, issues, and tools for success. The lessons she has learned helps her educate, encourage and promote entrepreneurial women looking to grow their businesses.

In this episode, Natalie shares:

  • Why she decided to start her podcast
  • How she scaled that podcast into a seven figure business
  • Why it’s important to understand your audience
  • Why she recommends joining a mastermind group
  • The common mindset issues she sees in her clients
  • How to be intentional with your time

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Resources:

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Transcript:

Bjork Ostrom: In this episode, we’re going to be interviewing Natalie Eckdahl from bizchix.com about some of the common mindsets that people have, the breakthroughs that they need to have in order to find success in their business, and how her struggling podcast turned into an extreme success.

Hey everybody. It is Bjork Ostrom. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Today, I’m chatting with Natalie Eckdahl from bizchix.com. She’s going to be sharing a lot of the things that she’s learned over the past few years as she has built her own business around a podcast and then coaching and working with clients, specifically female entrepreneurs. She’s also going to be sharing with some of the things that she’s learned as she’s worked with multiple different entrepreneurs and kind of averaged that out and say, “Here’s some of common issues that I see,” or, “Here’s some of the common breakthroughs that I see as I work with clients.”

It’s kind of this nice, duel interview where we get to chat to Natalie about her business, the things that she’s learned, but also get to learn about the things that she’s seen within other businesses that she’s worked with. I know that you’re going to be able to take a lot out of this interview and apply it to the thing that you’re working on, whether it be a brick-and-mortar store or a blog or a business online.

Let’s go ahead and jump into the interview. Natalie, welcome to the podcast.

Natalie Eckdahl: Hey Bjork. So excited to be here.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I was doing some research like I do before I jump into a podcast interview, and it was fun to see a few different really significant sites put your podcast in the top recommended podcast, so recommended podcast for women entrepreneurs. We have a lot of women entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast, so I think it’ll be a really good fit.

Natalie Eckdahl: I’m excited. Yes, it was exciting to be featured in those lists, especially the one for Inc. I think Inc has some amazing SEO out there because it pops right up.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, Inc and Entrepreneur and, or it was Forbes maybe. I forget, there’s a long list of these different types that have featured you. Really cool. What an honor. Also, want to give you some props out because I saw you have like 270 episodes of your podcast, and-

Natalie Eckdahl: I do.

Bjork Ostrom: … I have so much respect for people that have staying power and continue to publish content over a long period of time, and you’re doing that, so congratulations on that as well.

Natalie Eckdahl: Thank you. That means a lot coming from a fellow podcaster because we both know how much work goes into this-

Bjork Ostrom: For sure, yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: … and it’s really, I appreciate that from you.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup, for sure. Take us back, I’m curious to know, back to episode one. Can you think back to that time. What were you, as you’re processing through this idea of starting a podcast, building a business, what were you thinking and what was your hope at that time and has that realized or have you kind of shifted along the way?

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, there’s been some shifts for sure. I initially started the podcast because I was a podcast listener and an entrepreneur. My husband and I had a software company together. I was wanting to hear entrepreneur stories. At the time … This is going back to, we’re recording this in 2017 now, so this is going back to 2013, 2014. Yeah, 2013 is when I was really listening to a lot of podcasts that year. I wasn’t hearing a lot of women either interviewing or being interviewed in the entrepreneurial space, and I was longing to hear women’s stories and stories from women that were balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship, which is what I do.

I’m a mom of three. My children are 15, 5, and 2, and so-

Bjork Ostrom: Even in your podcast intro, you hear that word, you kind of have those sound clips, which is so great.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah. I actually got my boys, who have adorable voices, they’re hired on as doing a little bit of promo for me here and so-

Bjork Ostrom: All right. Yup.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, my audience loves-

Bjork Ostrom: Put them to work.

Natalie Eckdahl: … hearing them. Yeah. They’ll say, “You should mastermind with my mama.” It’s very fun.

But going back, and then I actually thought I was missing something. I thought that I didn’t understand some secret to work-life balance, and I thought, man, maybe I could have a podcast and maybe I could interview women and I could discover the secret to work-life balance in the process, like as little side benefit of all this.

I started off as an interview show, and my desire was to build this audience. I actually thought if I build it, they will come. I learned very shortly that that’s not the case, or wasn’t the case for me.

I built this podcast. I created great content. I was releasing five episodes a week at the time. I now only release one a week. You can say I was little crazy.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: I thought I would create this podcast, I put it out there, all these women would find me, and then the sponsors would come knocking on my door and say, “Natalie, this is incredible. Can we pay to sponsor on your podcast? Can we pay you money?” I thought that I would create this amazing income from that. That did not happen.

So I built an audience. It did not grow as fast as I thought it would. It was not sponsor-worthy at the time. It is now, by the way. But, so really, things … I had a big learning curve to go on in terms of what my audience wanted, how to grow an audience, how to monetize an audience, and how to adjust to the shifting changes in the online world because I think even if we go back to when your wife started her blog, the blogging world has changed, you know-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, absolutely.

Natalie Eckdahl: Just, there’s, sometimes there’s a right thing to start things, and it gets, it’s a little different when you start them later.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup.

Natalie Eckdahl: I’ve had a lot of learnings from January 2014 to now, and it’s been a wonderful journey. It’s been incredible. I now have an amazing connection with my audience, and I have been able to build a business that’s a multi six-figure business that’s scaling to a seven-figure business through the podcast only.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and so I want to back up a little bit. There’s a few different things I’d be curious to know more about. One of the things that you had mentioned was you had a software company. I’m curious to know what was and did you wind that down at the time and then that allowed you to invest more time in this?

Natalie Eckdahl: So, no. I did not wind it down at the time. I did, I was doing it altogether with my husband. We had an online scheduling software company, and we actually just closed the doors on it in the last month because it was not monetizing as well as BizChix was. We’ve decided to both, my husband is also working with me in BizChix, and we’ve shifted our focus to this business. The cost to acquire a customer was too expensive for us in that business, and we didn’t take on venture capital, which some of our competitors did.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, yup.

Natalie Eckdahl: So many lessons learned from that company, though, and if we hadn’t have had this, honestly, we wouldn’t have BizChix at this point, so-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s one of the things I love to draw out in interviews is how somebody’s previous, potentially unconnected story, at least at first glance, is actually a huge part of the success journey, and that could be true for me, whether it’s working at a nonprofit and then transitioning into doing the online businesses that we have, or in your case, running this software company, which you wouldn’t think would necessarily be related to podcast, but I’m sure there’s a ton of different elements that are connected to it.

You had said that there was a ton of different things that you learned from that. Curious to know, what do you feel like the biggest thing that you learned was?

Natalie Eckdahl: One of the biggest learnings that I, similar to you, I love looking at transferable skills and things that you learn in one area of your life. I have corporate background too so I pull from all these different areas of my life.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Natalie Eckdahl: One was just the social media. We had, we started that software company in 2010. Didn’t know anything about social media or social media for business, so things we learned for that company, we leveraged into BizChix.

My husband has, he’s a software developer, so anything to do with tech is super easy for him. He does all the tech for BizChix, and even with recording the podcast, I don’t, I’ve never edited my own episodes. My husband started off as my editor. He like, “I’ll just learn to edit,” and so he did. I outsource that now, but he basically could edit for me at any time. Once in a while, I get behind, and I do ask him at 10:00 p.m. at night to edit and release immediately.

Bjork Ostrom: Which I’m sure he’s super excited about.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, he’s real thrilled about that. Luckily he’s a night owl, so he’s wide awake at that hour. Yeah, so those are a couple big things.

Then an interesting that I’ve thought about recently is in that business, we were targeting local service providers, so health and beauty professionals, massage therapist, anyone that had an appointment-based business, and so we really had to get in the head and understand that avatar, and it turns out that those are a lot of the types of women that I am drawing to BizChix now and I’m working with, virtually, so I really have great feel for their struggles, for their pain points, and I’ve been thinking in their frame of mind for a long time.

That’s been really interesting because when I started BizChix, I wasn’t sure which type of women entrepreneur I was talking to, and I interviewed women entrepreneurs from every type of business you can think of and women around the world. I still do work with women in multiple types of businesses including online businesses and product-based businesses, but a lot of women I am working with, especially at the six-figure and beyond level, have some type of local service-based business that they’re leveraging online strategies into their business.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. Example being …

Natalie Eckdahl: Some examples are like even like a speech therapist or acupuncturist, someone that has like a music school or-

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Natalie Eckdahl: … a dance studio, things like that,

Bjork Ostrom: So there are people that have, in some way, shape, or form a local business or maybe not entirely local but have some type of service that they’re offering and then are looking to use different strategies, many of which would be online strategies to leverage that and either build their client base or connect with more people.

Natalie Eckdahl: Exactly, or they want to start a speaking career, start working with other professionals in their industry, so they have built up an area of expertise, and they might be hired by someone in another location who’s just starting out to learn, to leverage their skills or fast track their business.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Natalie Eckdahl: Other women are bored with their local business because it’s doing well and throwing off money, and they’re ready to start something different, so that’s another reason they come to me as well.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s a huge part of work, isn’t it? It’s not just the finance piece of it, if it’s what we’re doing every single day, it has to be something that we’re entertained with, or not even entertained or challenged by, I think is a better word-

Natalie Eckdahl: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: … for it, that we enjoy doing, and that it’s life-giving, not just financially beneficial.

Natalie Eckdahl: It’s true, and when you’re a high-functioning person and you’re achievement oriented, you need to keep having that next thing to achieve.

Bjork Ostrom: This is just out of curiosity. You said you were listening to a lot of podcast at the time. What were those podcast that you were listening to? What were the podcasts that inspired you to start a podcast?

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, sure. I found, I’ve tracked this back because I was like, how did I even find out about podcast, because it wasn’t as if a friend recommend that I find podcast or listen to podcast, and so I was a fan and still enjoy listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio. I’m a huge fan of talk radio. I grew up listening to talk radio. My parents didn’t listen to a lot of music, so driving around, I had to listen to talk radio with them, and-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, at what age do you feel like talk radio switches to being interesting because I remember as a kid, being like, “No, talk radio’s the worst,” and-

Natalie Eckdahl: No.

Bjork Ostrom: … then at some point, I’m like, “God, I need to listen to more music because I’m just listening to people talk all the time.”

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, I’m not, that’s such a good question. I really am not sure. We, in the LA market, so I live in Southern California, I grew up in Southern California, we had a great station that had some politics but had, there was a few psychologists on in the middle of the day, and I love, people would call in with their problems, and the psychologist would answer. I actually remember listening to one on my own in high school, so I know I was choosing to listen to that in high school. It was like the before reality TV age. That was the-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Bjork Ostrom: I remember in college picking up some podcasts. That was around the same time, and the Dave Ramsey show’s one of those. It was really … It was actually when I came out of college, so it would’ve been right out of college, and I was like, “Oh, and now I have debt.” It’s like, I don’t really understand this, and how do I work thought his process having student loan debt and coming to understand that, so that was really important in informing my personal finances. Were there other ones that you can think of that were-

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, so I was listening to Dave on the radio, and then he went to iHeartRadio and would do replays, and so I would listen there. Then he said we could go to iTunes and hear him. That’s when I was like, oh. He talked about podcast, and I was like, oh, there’s other things I could listen to as well. Then I found John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur On Fire. He was, really, John was my gateway to other podcast because he interviewed many other podcasters, and so I started listening Amy Porterfield and Pat Flynn and Michael Stelzner, and then kind of got off on my own and found different people to listen to.

Even today, I really listen more by topic. I don’t necessarily listen to specific podcasters. I’ll find something I want to learn about or I’ll find someone I’m interested in and try to hear them. I love hearing people interviewed, the same person be interviewed by multiple people, I enjoy that. Also, as an interviewer I enjoy observing the different ways people ask questions.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah absolutely, and to see what different angles people take when they’re interviewing the same person.

Natalie Eckdahl: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay, cool. That’s always interesting to hear and I think also beneficial for people that listen to podcast because what we found is people will maybe listen to a handful of podcast or maybe one or two, and there isn’t a great way to discover really good podcast. I mean obviously, there’s the top podcast in iTunes where they’ll have rankings and things like that, but there really isn’t a good search mechanism to find those, so I always love to call those out when possible.

The last thing I wanted to pull out from that little snippet of text, or not text, but little snippet of your story that you gave was this idea of the podcast starting out and you kind of having this idea of what it would be in terms of generating revenue from a sponsorship and that you’d be able to kind of build up momentum with it. At what point did you realize that wasn’t necessarily this story, at least not right away, and how did you continue to stay motivated in creating that content because like we said, it’s a lot of work.

Natalie Eckdahl: It is a lot of work. I went from five episodes, I did five episodes a week for the first 75 episodes, and then I went to three a week until I got to a hundred, and I went to two a week and that kind of got me through most of the first year.

Also, during that first year, I was pregnant with my third child, so literally, my son was born September 2nd, and I launched like January 31st, so a big part of that, for sure, was also preparing for the birth for my third child and planning a maternity leave.

I think it was as I was holding this newborn who I know is my last baby, and I love babies, and thinking, okay, if I’m going to keep doing this, I need to have there be some money associated with it. I need to, it needs to … It’s not a hobby. Podcasting for me was never out of a hobby, like I love the medium now, but at the time when I started, the point was to make it a business in some way.

At that point, I’m like, well, it’s not a business because zero dollars has been made from it. Only money has gone out, so-

Bjork Ostrom: And this was how far into after you were doing it?

Natalie Eckdahl: This is the whole first year. I made zero dollars my whole first year in the podcast.

I’m holding my baby and I’m thinking, maybe I should just quit this. I’m only hearing from a few listeners. My listenership is only a few hundred. Really excited if I get total 500 listeners an episode. Really, that’s not going to bring in sponsorship, and I don’t even know if I can monetize from this small listenership.

I decided, first I decided to launch a Facebook group, which was the smartest thing I ever did.

Bjork Ostrom: Why is that?

Natalie Eckdahl: Because that allowed me to continue. It allowed me to connect with my listeners and meet them in a place, because before that, people would just say, “Go to my show notes and leave a comment.” Well, if you, many … You’re all listening to a podcast. How many of you have ever left a comment on the Food Blogger Pro Podcast? I mean-

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like a 1 to 5,000 ratio.

Natalie Eckdahl: Exactly, exactly. It takes a lot to get someone to do anything from a podcast because we’re doing something else while we’re listening usually. We’re multitasking while we’re listening, so it has to be very compelling.

I decided to create my Facebook group as a lead magnet for my site. I would tell people to join the BizChix community, and you would get access to my Facebook group. It grew slowly over time. Now it is my favorite place to spend time. It has a life of its own. Women are in there helping each other. It’s pretty spam-free because it’s full of listeners. It’s not just, it’s not one of these Facebook groups that’s 20,000 people or 30,000 people, which, if I had made it a public open group, it could be that. But it has about less than 1,500 people, about 1,300, 1,400, and it’s very responsive. People have even made friendships in there and met offline together. That really made a difference.

Then I decided that I wasn’t going to continue unless I could also monetize. When I thought about the difference things I could do and that had been recommended by different gurus that I was following, a lot of the teaching was on doing something digital, and I wasn’t sure if I had enough of an audience to launch something digital and make enough money off of it, but I knew that I could either do one-on-one work or group work with people, and I would need a smaller amount of people. I launched a paid mastermind in the winter of 2015, so basically January 2015 it started, and people signed up for it.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s like, wait a minute.

Natalie Eckdahl: In fact, two of my guests signed up, so that really shocked me. I had six women in that group, and that was the beginning of my monetization journey with the podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: Can you talk a little bit for those who aren’t familiar what that would look like when you say paid mastermind, what it is and why that’s a beneficial thing for people?

Natalie Eckdahl: Sure. I’m a huge fan of masterminds. I did a whole series of masterminds actually in the, gosh, the fall of 2015, I did a whole series on them.

But masterminds are, it’s a concept that was coined by Napoleon Hill in the book Think and Grow Rich, which is a great book. I’m just going to share a little quote that he says from that book because I have it here. He says, “The mastermind principle consists of an alliance of two or more minds working in perfect harmony for the attainment of a common objective.”

In normal speak, because that was back in the 1930s, what would Napoleon Hill did is he studied the most successful men of his time. What was in common were these different principles that he puts in his book Think and Grow Rich. One of those is the mastermind principle. He found that all of these men, which include Henry Ford and J. D. Rockefeller, they all had a mastermind in their life, which included two or more people that they met with regularly and discussed their business and their life.

That is what I’ve created for my community is I do mastermind for women entrepreneurs, and I bring together anywhere from six to eight women in a virtual group. We work together on each other’s businesses. I facilitate the group, and people pay to be part of it because I put the group together and I’m facilitating it and I’m creating that time and space for it. What happens in that group is people come together and they share their wins and their goals and they’re accountable to the group for those goals. They also get to be in the hot seat, which can sound scary, but it’s actually exciting. It’s where you share a business struggle that you want help with or an idea you want help brainstorming.

The way I put together groups is I pull in some teaching and training I have from my MBA on teams. We find when teams are studied that the most creative teams are the teams that come up with the most creatives are diverse. That can be in terms of not just racially diverse, but in terms, more in terms of industry that everybody’s from, educational background, location, cognitive diversity, personality diversity. I’m looking, when I put together groups, it’s not everybody from the same industry, and so they’re bringing different ideas to the table.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it reminds me, just the other idea, I met with somebody who has a website, kind of in the similar space in that he runs an online business, but the focus is outdoor gear and outdoor life. It was really fun-

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: … to talk to him because there was … It was just so refreshing because we’re in this niche, we understand this niche. We talk to people that are in the niche, and the conversations can seem similar, but then he came from the outside and was asking these questions like, “Oh, do you guys … ” One of the things he said is like, “Do you guys do takeovers?” I was like, “Takeover? What is that?” He’s like, “Oh, if you work with an advertiser and there’s a page takeover where they are the only advertiser on it,” and it’s like, this is just something that I had never thought about before.

Also, I’m part of it, a couple of different groups, masterminds, and just have found it to be really beneficial for that, like other people from other places looking in.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: I think it could also apply to, it doesn’t just have to be business. I think that’s the thing that’s refreshing, it could be-

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: … parenting, it could be faith, it could be a whole slew of different things that this idea of gathering with a group of people to try and solve a common problem and talking about it and having other people weigh in on it is such a powerful, powerful concept, so I think that’s really great.

You start this with your podcast. How did you transition to people from the podcast to the Facebook group? Like you said, it’s kind of hard to get people to take action when they’re consuming something at the gym or at the grocery store or washing dishes. Did you do a mention of it on the podcast and say, “Hey, come-”

Natalie Eckdahl: Every episode.

Bjork Ostrom: “ … and check this out.” Got it.

Natalie Eckdahl: Every episode.

Bjork Ostrom: This was before-

Natalie Eckdahl: Even now.

Bjork Ostrom: … you had a sponsor. It was kind of the sponsor of the podcast.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes, and I even had my online business. If you go back to older episodes, you’ll hear ScheduleMax is sponsoring that episode. My husband was really insightful, and he noticed that it kind of helped prepare the audience if you shared either, even if you just shared your favorite tool or your favorite book, that the audience would get used to me being someone that they could count on and that recommended great things.

I tried a lot of different things. I tried, we had ScheduleMax sponsor the podcast. I would just share my favorite tools, as I said, favorite books. I would share about the group and things happening in the group. Another, one thing that I’ve done … First of all, I want to say, at the beginning, if anyone’s starting a Facebook group, it takes time. Even where we are today with our Facebook group where it was a few years ago, there’s so many groups now. There were not very many groups when I started mine, and I think the more niche your group is, the better at this point.

But, when … My group has evolved by talking about it on the podcast and doing it, spending a lot of time in there. I helped shape the culture in there. I was involved early on in every single post that happened. One of the best days of my Facebook group experience and journey was when someone else posted besides me. You know, I just-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: … have a few hundred people. I was like, “Yay, someone else asked a question.”

Bjork Ostrom: Right. It’s alive.

Natalie Eckdahl: It was so exciting. I look at my group today, and there’s some days, many days that go by and I hardly interact in there but it’s its own community. It’s a thriving place where people are helping each other and interacting.

It took time, and I just talk about it on the show. I’ve also done episodes where I take conversation from the Facebook group and I put it on the podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, sure.

Natalie Eckdahl: We had a great discussion in my Facebook group about outsourcing at home, and I heard you talk about this recently on one of your episodes about, that sometimes we’re so focused on outsourcing in our business that we forget that it’s actually easier and cheaper to outsource things at home, which buys us more time to work on our business, and we are in complete alignment. We are of one mind of that.

That … But what women struggle with is in doing that often, and it could be generational and different, and also location, where you are in the world and in the United States, even, many people feel that they’re going to be judged for outsourcing things at home. What will my friends and family think if someone else is cleaning my house or doing my laundry or grocery shopping for me or helping me drive my kids right? What will other people think about me and how do I manage that and handle that?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, it’s a really interesting, I was thinking about this the other day, a really interesting thing to process through because it’s like nobody would think twice if you go and get your car fixed by somebody else or, at least not the people that I hang around with, or if you have an issue with your air conditioner and somebody comes and fixes it. But then there’s these like, the irony of it is like, it’s things that potentially take up a lot of time but aren’t super skill-based, like maybe it would be, especially if you have a really big yard, it would be doing the yard work. But there’s something that’s like, well, you gotta do just do that your own. You gotta own that and do it on your own.

Some people might enjoy that, but I totally feel that and understand that, even though in a week, I feel totally strapped for time and feel like I’m trying to squeeze every hour out of the day, still feels a little bit weird hiring somebody that would come and do the lawn and save two hours a week.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, it’s amazing, the different mindset around that, and then also are concerned with being judged by others.

We had this amazing thread going on in the Facebook group, and I saw five or ten points that I thought, wow, these are really great. It’d be great to put this into a podcast, so I got permission from those ladies, and I shared their tips on air, so that really-

Bjork Ostrom: What were some of those tips, just out curiosity.

Natalie Eckdahl: Oh, gosh, let me think. People just shared all the different things that they outsourced and how they overcame things. I’m a huge outsourcer, so I have a lot of things of my own, but let me think if there is anything …

One is tutoring. Some people that have school-aged children, they’re spending a couple hours in the evenings tutoring their children, and it can be really stressful as parent, and so people are outsourcing tutoring. People are … They talked about even seasonal things, like hiring someone to hang your Christmas lights.

I have a woman, I call her my fairy godmother. She’s a neighborhood lady that’s a widow, and she comes in almost every day during the week, and she cleans up all of our breakfast dishes and she does our laundry. She does all of our laundry. I am not, when I’m done with work for the day and pick up my kids from school, I’m not coming home and trying to straighten the house. It’s already done.

One of my clients outsources a lot of cooking, so she actually has a woman that comes into her house every two weeks and cooks five to seven meals in her … The lady goes, her, the woman she outsources to goes and buys all the groceries and comes and cooks in her home and freezes a bunch of things and even makes some snacks. They have some allergy requirements that she is able to meet.

There’s some really creative things that women are doing, and men too, but it’s, I think that we, just because we haven’t seen anyone else do that in our own personal life, that shouldn’t hold us back. I feel like sometimes we feel like we have to tell everybody what we’re doing. I’m telling you all right now, I’m having my laundry and some cleaning done, and I’m sure a few of you are like, “What? She can’t clean up her own breakfast dishes?”

You know what, I really don’t care if you think that because this is what works for myself and my family and gives me so much more time with my … My key is to get more time, and I want time with my business and time with my family, and I don’t enjoy doing household task and I don’t think it’s a good use of my time.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, absolutely. Lindsay has talked before about this idea where she has a “things I do” and “things I don’t do” list and just saying here are the things I do and the things that I enjoy, here are the things that I don’t do or the things that I don’t necessarily enjoy. One of those is gardening. She loves the idea of a beautiful garden and having that, but it’s like she just isn’t a gardener. She’s great at cooking. She loves cooking.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Even when-

Natalie Eckdahl: She wants to cook the beautiful-

Bjork Ostrom: … she doesn’t need to, yeah, she’ll do it.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes, I love it. Pick the beautiful vegetables and herbs and have all them on the ready, but not … Yeah, I think I feel the same way, and I also understand how first-time people, that’s their favorite hobby. I love her, I love her list idea, that’s great.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup. What I’m learning is there are people that will be able to do that and will be excited about doing that because, an example would be the woman that comes and does the cooking and prepares things for the family, I would assume that her interest and passion is in cooking and preparing meals and probably has some type of business that she’s built in that-

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: … so I feel like there’s a win in that, and that you’re also potentially supporting somebody else who has their thing and is starting that, so it can be a win-win.

Natalie Eckdahl: I think that’s, I love that you brought that point up because I think that’s what helps a lot of people to actually move forward and outsource is that, “Well, I’m helping this other person, and I’m impacting their family and helping to provide for their livelihood,” and that can be the switch for a lot of people.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and there’s something, this is a little bit of a higher level, but just economically, I really like the idea of … If you have a business and if you’re building it and if you’re at the point where you’re creating an income from that, to not hold on to that but think about how we can be strategic about this to get more of a good thing, which would be helping somebody else do what they do in order for you then to have time to be with your family or to work on something that you’re really passionate about. It’s a net positive, like there’s just good stuff that comes from that, which I love.

The other thing that I wanted to talk about and maybe drill home a little bit more is that the point when you started to gain some momentum with the podcast. You do this paid mastermind group, and then before, you had mentioned like, hey, things are going really well with the business right now.

You talked about those early stages, that first year, you’re hustling, you’re doing a ton of content, you’re not necessarily seeing a lot of the fruits of that, but at some point, it tips over to a point where you said, where you’re starting to actually gain some momentum with that. What did it look like from that point to where you are right now? What are the things that you learned and implemented to allow you to really double down on the success that you had with some of the things that you learned at that point?

Natalie Eckdahl: Thank you. Great question. I … One of the big game changers for me was creating a mastermind for myself, so finding some people that I thought could really speak into my business and that I would want to speak into theirs and that I could meet regularly with, and so I formed a mastermind for myself, for my own business. That was amazing to have. These women from different walks of life really speak into what I was doing. One of their suggestions for me was that I should do solo episodes and that people wanted to hear from me.

I really struggled with a lot of imposturous syndrome around that. I was like, “Well, what do I have to share? I don’t know what would I share with people,” and it turns out I have a lot to share.

Those initial episodes were more audio blogs where I would write a blog post and read it, and now it’s different. It’s more just a training that I do. That was when, one turning point, and I started doing that in, say, the spring of 2015. Then I realized my mind actually likes to group things by topic, and I thought, well, it’d be really fun to do a podcast on a topic. I played around with it with some mini topics, and then in summer of 2015, and this is when I started getting a lot of attraction in my business, I did a series all on social media, and I called it Social Media Summer Camp.

Even in the middle of that, Periscope came out and-

Natalie Eckdahl: … I did an episode on Periscope. It was like brand new. I covered every social platform. Those really got shared a lot, and then I created a landing page just for those episodes so it made it very easy for people to share that page. When they maybe sent someone to that page, there were like 10 episodes to listen to on that page. I felt like that was strategic. Then, so I did, I podcasted in series format by topic for a number of subjects. I did social media, then I did a series on masterminding, and then I did a series on productivity.

Around the end of that Social Media Summer Camp series, I started hitting the thousand, not thousand dollar, thousand listeners an episode. I felt like there was a tipping point with that, getting to the thousand per episode mark. That was really exciting.

My group, at the time, I think was less than 500, like 300 to 500, but it was tight enough with me that I was able to monetize it and continue to get coaching clients and get mastermind clients from it.

Then the other thing that was recommended to me was that I do coaching on air, and that scared me. That was scary. I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone would want to coach with me on air.” I put out a … I was like, well, I’m going to try it. Two of my other favorite podcasters are Shane and Jocelyn Sams of Flipped Lifestyle, and they were doing on-air coaching calls, and I loved them. I was addicted to them. It kind of goes back to what I loved about talk radio growing up was hearing people share their problems and someone give them an answer. That’s really similar to the psychology shows I was listening to and Dave Ramsey show. People call with their problem, and he tells them what he thinks they should do.

I like to tell people what I think they should do. That’s why I like coaching, I like helping people and giving my opinion and speaking into their lives and their business.

In my group, I put a survey application, like a type format for people to apply to do an on-air coaching call thinking, gosh, I really hope one person applies so I can do one of these, otherwise, it’s going to be kind of weird. All of my clients started emailing me saying, “I want to do online coaching call with you.” Someone that had done a call previously with me said, “Hey, if you still have that recording of that call we did, that call, you could share it on air,” which was really wrong and vulnerable. I couldn’t believe that she would let me share it on air.

I actually shared hers first, and that was in the spring of 2016. I think that that has become the most favorite thing that I do for my audience. They love it. I enjoy doing it. They write to me and tell, my audience writes to me and tells me that they learn something from every call. Even if they are not the one being coached, they find something in there from the conversation that they can apply to their life. I love it because not everybody can afford coaching, and so for me, it’s a way to coach in mass and to help everybody that, even if you can’t afford coaching, you can get something from those calls.

Back with … I don’t do those in a series format, but I have kind of followed my idea of creating landing pages by topic, so all of my on-air coaching calls are together on one page as well, and there’s a button for them on my website.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I think that’s one of the realities of us hearing stories is that we can hear a story completely unrelated to our life, but apply the learning from that to something that we’re going through or processing with. I think that’s one of the reasons why people love to hear coaching calls is because they’re able to take things away from that and maybe it’s a completely different business and potentially even a different problem, but the way that you look at it or talk through it allows them to then process through that as well. I can see that really being beneficial.

Do you feel like those also then allowed you to … It seems like it would potentially be a really good form of content marketing in the sense that it gives people a chance to not only have really valuable information, but then also to get a little bit of a preview of what it would potentially look like to work with you.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes. It has been the best thing I’ve ever done for my business. That has led to … Let me tell you about a couple of other things that were transformative in my business, and one was those. At the same time, I was selling strategy sessions, which started out as a way to work with me one time for 90 minutes, and now I do them for 60 minutes.

Those were a preview of what that would be like, and so it was literally like test driving a car, test driving Natalie coaching, listen to a few of our episodes, and they honestly convert someone from a listener to a client faster than I ever could’ve imagined.

Many people will find those and listen to a few of them and immediately book to work with me. As a result of those calls and just the way my audience has grown in the last year and a half, I’ve worked one on one with over 100 to 150 different women, so I’ve literally had an hour or more of time with 150 women in the last 18 months that are women entrepreneurs. I feel like I’ve gotten a great window into what’s going on for women in this kind of small business, micro business space in the online world and the offline world and the product entrepreneur space and the commonalities between them. It’s made me a better coach to work with so many people in such a short amount of time.

What I was finding is I was offering these long-term coaching packages, but again, those were less approachable to the average person, and most business owners can find the funds for a one-time session. I work fast, and I discern quickly, and I have an intake form that I have people fill out, but I’m able to give … Most people, they tell me, they write back and they tell me, they give me little updates, and they tell me they get four to eight weeks worth of action steps to take them one call. It’s been such an honor to impact so many women in such a, in that amount of time.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s actually one of the things that I wanted to talk about with you is, and we chatted about this just a little bit before we started the call, but this idea that you are able to work with a lot of different people, and you see a lot of different situations, and therefore, you’re able to assess relatively quickly what commonalities there are in terms of either struggles or successes. A couple questions around that.

One of the things that I would love to hear you talk about is what do you feel like one of the most common mindset hurdles is that people have to jump over or one of the things that’s holding people back that they have to work through. If you can’t think of one, it could maybe be a couple, but things that are really-

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: … common mindset issues or hurdles.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes. One of the things that I help most women with has to do with mindset. I don’t necessarily advertise that I do that, but mindset and confidence comes up a lot when I’m on calls with women. I encounter it myself too. I feel like any time we’re stepping, putting ourselves out there, being vulnerable, or trying to take our business to the next level, that we have a lot of self-doubt, that imposturous syndrome, you may have heard it call before I mentioned that earlier, but it’s like feeling like you’re a fake and that people are going to find out that you don’t really know what you’re saying you know. Even though at the base, you really know you know it, so I feel-

Bjork Ostrom: You probably don’t know how much you know in a lot of situations.

Natalie Eckdahl: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: Exactly. I feel that, for women especially, and that’s my area of expertise, and that’s who I’m speaking of, women really struggle with owning their expertise and saying, “I am an expert. I know this.” I struggled with it myself. I am an expert in business. I’m an expert in online business, and I’m in expert in many different facets of business. I have a graduate business degree.

Bjork Ostrom: Why do you think that is that that happens? Before we get too far away from it-

Natalie Eckdahl: Sure-

Bjork Ostrom: … I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Natalie Eckdahl: … yeah, well for women, we are taught, we are conditioned to not brag, and you will hear, hopefully it’s less now as parents are getting more aware, but you will hear girls, “Well, that’s not nice,” you know, “Natalie, let’s not do that.” I was actually raised not to brag about myself, and my mom would say, “It’s not our … You should not be bragging about yourself. Other people should be talking about you. You should be not be talking about yourself.”

Well, I realized when I went for my first interview, I literally remember thinking, I’m going to have to brag about myself here or I’m not going to get this job. In the corporate world, in my corporate experience, one of, again, those transferable skills, those things that came back to me that helped me was I worked with a lot of men, and I had to learn how to hang with the guys and work with them and be respected, and also to … I observed them. I love observing people.

Guys are pretty comfortable sharing how great they’re doing with each other and don’t really just each other for it unless it gets out of hand, but then they’ll get each other in line.

Women, we are taught not to brag about ourselves, and we’re sometimes are mean to each other. I mean, like, “Oh, can you believe she said this about herself?” There’s some socialization issues, I think, in terms of not being confident in sharing how great you are.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Natalie Eckdahl: This even comes on social media to be able to share a great win or how great your business is doing. I was intentional in sharing my income on your show, sharing how well I’m doing because in general, women don’t say how well they’re doing. I don’t do that to brag, but I wanted you guys to have an idea of where my business was and how far it had come, but it’s honestly uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable for me to share that out loud.

I was also taught we don’t talk about money. We all have these things from our childhood that money messages and messages about people who have money that are wealthy, that we want to just tap into to see if we still agree with them because our parents had great intentions. My mom’s intentions, all those phrases that she shared with me that she, that I’ve had to change many of them. Many of them are awesome, and I’ve kept them, but I’ve checked in with those things that were kind of taught to me to see, do I agree with that or not?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, and it’s, the other thing that’s true is it’s so personal and emotional, whether it’s money or a business or a success, all of those things are personal and also potentially vulnerable. All of that stuff is, plays into that mix and becomes a part of that so I can see how it would be a really common thing whether for women, I would assume in a lot of situations for men as well, to work through.

Some of the other common mindset things that you work through, or would you say that’s kind of one of the biggest ones?

Natalie Eckdahl: I think that, I think one just, I think sometimes people have success and it scares them.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Natalie Eckdahl: Sometimes it’s scary to go to that next level so I think that there are some points where we have to all, in different stages of our business, go over a hurdle. For me, I’m talking about them financially, but it doesn’t necessarily always have to be tied to these numbers, but just getting got the first dollar you make in your business, that’s a hurdle. Sometimes, there is a hurdle, a mindset with even offering anything for sale. I’ve even seen some amazing bloggers that have a following, and they are not able to offer anything on their site to monetize because there’s some blocked there for that.

Then getting to that five-figure level, these are kind of the levels I see, getting to five figures, getting to high five figures, then getting to past six, getting to multi-six, and then getting to seven, I feel in each of those financial touchpoints there is usually a time where the entrepreneur pulls back and gets a little fearful about what will change in their life and their business and with the people they love and with the people they’re serving if they take their business farther.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a really interesting thing to think through. What do, what are, when people that you work with process through that and come out on the other side, how does that happen? What is it the mental mindset that they then develop that allows them to move through that? Is there any commonalities with that?

Natalie Eckdahl: It’s really individual because some people get stuck there, and they’re not able to move forward. The ones that do move forward are doing a lot of self-work on themselves, and for … I can share these with someone, but I need, as an individual, that person, my client needs to do their own work.

One of my clients has been the most successful in this. She reads a lot of self-help books, and a book that really helped her was The 5 Second Rule. Have you heard of that book?

Bjork Ostrom: No, I haven’t, and I’ve heard a lot of those self-help books, so I’m going to look it up, yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, it’s Mel Robbins, The 5 Second Rule. She was in a place in her life where she was procrastinating a lot, and literally, her life was not at all where she wanted to be. One morning, she just decided, okay, I’m not going to sleep in. I’m going to get up when my alarm goes off. I’m not going to hit snooze. She just, in her mind, said five, four, three, two, one, blastoff. And blastoff, when she got past one, she had, she got, blasted out of bed.

One of my clients said we’ll get stuck in like, I don’t want to send that email or I’m afraid to make that phone call, or I’m on social media instead of doing this content I need to create. She will say, “Five, four, three, two, one,” and then she has to take action. If you read that book … I’ll just give you the quick summary.

Basically, we don’t give ourselves time to talk ourselves out of it. Our brain is created to help us avoid pain, so if we think it’s going to, anything’s going to be painful, our brain is going to help us avoid-

Bjork Ostrom: Right.

Natalie Eckdahl: … doing that, and so the five seconds doesn’t give your brain time enough to give you excuses.

Bjork Ostrom: I love that.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s not the five-second rule for eating something you dropped on the ground? You can make it apply it to that too, though, like if you dropped something, you’d be like, “Five, four, three,” and then just eat it.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, you did, yeah, because you don’t have time to think about it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, we do have five-second rule for food all the time here because I have, as I said, little kids here.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah. No, yes, you’re right, it’s different than the five-second rule for eating. It’s just, it’s for taking action.

Bjork Ostrom: Action.

Natalie Eckdahl: I think that that’s what people that are successful and moving past these difficulties, they … I call it doing it scared. Sometimes you have to do it scared.

When I was sitting … I don’t know what it’s like for you, the first time you did an interview for your podcast for-

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, I was so, yeah, I was so nervous. Yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: I remember the only reason I moved forward and hit record and went on Skype was because I had made an appointment with someone.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup, yup.

Natalie Eckdahl: I was so, so scared. The same thing with any, when I did a solo episode, the first one.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup.

Natalie Eckdahl: Publishing that out, what’s going to happen? Is my audience going to be like, “Yeah, stick with the interviews, Natalie.”

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Right.

Natalie Eckdahl: Then with the-

Bjork Ostrom: It’s really true, yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: … on-air coaching calls, the on-air coaching calls were so scary for me. That’s very vulnerable to put, I’m literally showing people my work. It’s out there for thousands of people to listen to, and I didn’t know what other coaches would think. Would I be judged and did they not like what I do and would they think, I should’ve given different advice.

What I find out is actually coaches listen to my shows and enjoy hearing where we’re similar and where we’re different, and they love it, and … It’s, ended up all ended up being great, but each of those times, I was paralyzed. I had gotten paralyzed, and the only way I know how to get out of it is to take some kind of action forward. You can’t wait until you’re not scared anymore. The fear is not going to go away. You have to do it scared-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah-

Natalie Eckdahl: … and you take whatever action you can, and that’s why being in a mastermind, that’s why I’m going to go back to that because it’s so supportive, and it doesn’t have to be a paid group. I happen to create paid groups, but people form masterminds all the time within their own network, but a mastermind gives you some support to do it scared.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, I was watching a video, actually, on your Facebook page. It was Will Smith talking about skydiving. He talks about this idea of being so scared, and then you actually do it, and it’s so great, and-

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: … the worst part is leading up to it. I’ve really found that to be true with what we’ve done and can totally relate to the things that you said, whether it’s recording the first tutorial that we did for Food Blogger Pro or the first podcast, like very distinctly remember this moment of like taking a deep breath, and it’s so goofy because it’s like … You, looking back on it, and you’re like, oh, yeah, you think this is going to be such a big, important thing when you’re starting, and it is down the line, and it’s important that you start, but I think it’s also good to realize this is the first step, it’s not the final set. Like you said, to take action and start is so important.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Question on the flip side of that. We talked about these mindset hurdles or difficulties that people have, but what do you feel like is one of the common traits that you see with some of the people that are most successful, whether it’s the entrepreneurs that you interview or the people that you work with that have transformative experiences. Is it that action piece, they’re moving forward and taking action or is there something else beyond that?

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, I actually did a study, my own little study, of my entrepreneurs that were at the six figure or beyond level in their business. When I say that, that doesn’t mean that they are taking home six figures-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, right, right.

Natalie Eckdahl: … but their revenue level, revenue was at least six figures. One of the things that amazed me is that they set goals and hit them every week. They set a goal, they know what their goals is, and they hit it every week.

If you think about, that is something all of us can do in our business, no matter what level we’re at, whether you’re at the beginning or middle or really high level in your business. No matter where you are, you can set a goal and you can make it happen by Friday. What would happen in your business if you did that for, let’s give us all a little vacation. Let’s take four weeks off, so 48 weeks, in the next 48 weeks, or next year, if almost every week or every week that you decided you went on vacation, you set a goal and hit it. What would happen? Because what I find is people will make goals and not hit them, and they’ll get in that procrastination. That was one of, that was a really insightful thing to see.

Another really interesting thing when I looked at the women that were at this higher level of business is there was some local element to their business or some one-on-one work they were doing in their business. As much as I love the online world, I absolutely love it, I feel like there has been a bit of brainwashing that has gone on, that the only way to work with people is through mass, working with people, through courses, and through membership sites, but it has to be, like there’s almost something bad if you trade your time for money. I like to say, “I will trade my time for money for the right price any day of the week.”

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Natalie Eckdahl: I think that one of the things I’ve helped some of my clients do that have even have a really great audience and digital products, there is, there … Everybody has a high-level or VIP offer in their business they could offer. It could be a VIP day. It could be someone, like you would have one in your business. Someone might want to come and spend the day with you and Lindsay and find out what would, if you were me at this stage of my business, how would I, where should I go? Like fast track me.

People will pay a lot of money for that. I recently did a VIP day where I paid someone $10,000 for six hours of her time. I’m planning a live event, and I want it to go really well. This women has a ton of experience, and I forked over the money because I, at this stage of my business, I don’t really have time to take a course anyway. I couldn’t find a course for what I needed, but I wanted to pay someone who was an expert and could just fast track me in that experience, and I think that we all have offers. It may not be for $10,000, but it could for many thousands, and I’ve helped my clients create these in their businesses, and they’re seeing a lot of success.

Another book I like is The 80/20 Rule, if you’ve heard of that.

Bjork Ostrom: Yup.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, by Perry Marshall. That’s another great book. It’s basically, now I’m going to mix it up because it’s the end of the day here for me, and my brain is slowing, but-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Natalie Eckdahl: … so help me out if I get it wrong. But, so 20% of our clients are, or customers, provide 80% of our revenue. That rule kind of goes throughout our business in different areas like 20% of the people complaining are 80% of …

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, so like 20% of the, like customer support would be example, like 20% of customer, or 80% of customer support is 20% of people, or 20% of people is 80% of customer support.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: But essentially, the potential for the small portion of one pie to represent the big portion of the other pie, whether that’s clients for revenue or customer support time for tickets or issues, so in general, it’s, you find it to be pretty true.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, so it’s been amazing for me to help people see like wow, there’s some other ways for you to add a stream of revenue to your business, and it’s through one-on-one work. I also, when people are starting out their business, the fastest way to bring money into your business is through working directly with someone, whether it’s one-on-one work or a group program.

Often, we are also missing the local element in our business, so we’ve gotten so enamored with everything going online that we forget, wow, we could offer a local workshop in our area of expertise, and people are there, and then “know, like, and trust” factor in person happens so fast. It takes so much longer online to build a relationship that you can build immediately in person.

Bjork Ostrom: Right.

Natalie Eckdahl: I feel like these are some trainings that I am bringing to my audience that are a little different than some of what’s been taught, and I just love the whole combination of it all. I like that we can create a business that has an online aspect, a virtual aspect, an in-person aspect, this en masse group, like a course or a membership site, and this one-on-one work. I like the diversity of income streams for all of us.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, absolutely, and important to think about, though, is as you’re growing a business and to know that it just doesn’t have to be one source. You can diversify that and look to those other sources, which I think is a great reminder.

THere’s actually a podcast interview that’s coming out after this interview, and it’s with Greg Hickman who has a-

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: … business called System.ly, and talks about some of the same things, this idea of working with a group of people, maybe doing a workshop or something like that. A lot of what he does is focus it, on going from that one-to-one to one-to-many, but I think it’s so good to have the perspective of like, doesn’t necessarily have to be the end goal for everybody. It’s not a bad thing to continually work in the one-to-one relationship and especially if it’s something that you enjoy and a person that you enjoy and a content focus or the conversation that you’re having around the topic is enjoyable as well.

Natalie Eckdahl: Exactly.

Bjork Ostrom: We’re coming to the end here. One more question that I wanted to ask is, and I’m asking this because I know that you think that it’s an important thing, and you’re intentional about this, but you’re growing a business, a successful business, but you’re also focused on spending time with family and making sure that you have margins in your day to not have business overtake everything that you do. What would your advice be for people that want to hustle, they want to work hard, but also they don’t want to get to the end of their life and realize the only thing they did was work on their business.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes. I think it’s really fun to create some goals around what you want with your family or, I call it, everybody’s VIPs. We all have our VIPs in our life, and for me, that’s my husband and my daughter and my two sons. Just really thinking through how to structure my life so that I’m meeting the needs of the different people that are important to me.

One thing that I don’t outsource that I could is driving my teenage daughter around. She’s 15. She’s in high school, and she’s in a private high school that we have to drive her to. People have looked at my life, and my friends, they’re like, “Just hire someone to drive her,” and I certainly could do that but I know that those are one of the best times to have conversations with her because my little guys aren’t generally in the car, and we can have a lot of one-on-one time together.

I’m intentional about the ways I’m spending time with my kids. In the mornings, I’m a morning person, my husband’s a night owl, so I am usually up with the boys. They get up really early, and I, and I’m not perfect at this, I want to be honest, but my goal is to not have my computer out and not be on my phone and to be able to hang with them before they go to preschool and to play with them, to get on the floor and play these boy things that don’t necessarily interest me so … Or I love reading books, so I’ll try to get them to pick out a book to read.

Also, just thinking through, with my boys, they really love simple things, like they just want to go for a bike ride with me. They, and really not worrying about these big, expensive things. They like to go on bike rides, they like to go swimming, so I love creating quality time with them and being intentional about that. Then on the weekends, that’s for family.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yup, and to be intentional about even the things that would be perceived as normal, so it’s that time in the morning just playing, or it doesn’t have to be something extravagant, it can be the-

Natalie Eckdahl: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: … day-to-day stuff, which I think is so great. The car ride or playing in the morning, so.

Natalie Eckdahl: Yeah, it’s, when you ask them their favorite thing, they’ve, these different little things that they like doing or think are fun, it’s those simplest things, and so I try to remember that because I feel like I need to be creative. My husband likes to do lots of different things, and he’ll be like, “What else should we do today?” I’m like, “They really just want to go for a bike right,” and he’s like, “But we just did that yesterday.” I said-

Bjork Ostrom: Doesn’t matter.

Natalie Eckdahl: … I’ll be like, “I know, but that’s all they want to do. They think it’s the best,” and then we’ve won, so.

Bjork Ostrom: For sure. Well, that’s great, and I think a good note to end on. But before we wrap up, where can people follow along with you, Natalie, and keep up to date with what you’re doing and maybe learn a little bit more about potentially working with you?

Natalie Eckdahl: Oh, thank you. Bizchix.com is my website. B-I-Z-C-H-I-X dot com. I always say I spell chix with an X here. That’s where you can find everything. There’s ways to work with me. I am hosting a live event for women entrepreneurs in Southern California in October, and that’s for people that already have a business because we’re going to be covering some kind of intermediate and advance content there and planning our 2018, so I’d love for if anyone is interested in that to check that out.

Again, you can do all that on my home page to find out how to work with me and find out about the live event, but I would love for people to just listen and see if they feel a connection. I actually prefer to not get referrals, like direct … People will say, “Well, I’m going to refer a friend to work with you,” and I’ll say, “Refer them to listen,” because I love when people-

Bjork Ostrom: Make the connection.

Natalie Eckdahl: … listen to the podcast, and they’re like, “Yes. I know that I am connected to her, and I want to work with her, and … ” I think that’s the best thing is to just find BizChix in your favorite podcast app and see if my content and style resonates with you. If so, reach out and tell me this is how you found me. That’d be fun.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Yeah. Great. We’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes as well. Natalie, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it.

Natalie Eckdahl: Thank you, Bjork. This has been so much fun.

Bjork Ostrom: Thanks.

Thanks again, Natalie for coming on the podcast and sharing your insights with our audience, and thank you to you, wherever you are, listening here to the podcast today. It really means a lot to us.

If you ever have an idea or feedback or a potential interview you’d like to see for the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, let us know. Just drop us a line at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

All right, that’s a wrap. Make it a great week.

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