From Homeless Teen to Living the Dream: 5 Lessons on Resilience with Natasha Miller

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

This week we're going to be talking about the why of make sense to make sense out of the complex and challenging. So if this is your why, then you are driven to solve problems and resolve challenging or complex situations. You have an uncanny ability to take in lots of data and information. You tend to observe situations and circumstances around you and and then sort through them quickly to create solutions that are sensible and easy to implement. Often you are viewed as an expert because of your unique ability to find solutions quickly.

You also have a gift for articulating.

Solutions and summarizing them clearly in understandable language. You believe that many people are stuck and if they could make sense out of their situation, they could develop simple solutions and move forward. In essence, you help people get unstuck and move progress. And so today I have a great guest for you. Her name is Natasha Miller. Now, Natasha isn't your average CEO. She sits at the helm of Entire Productions, which has been an Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America for three years in a row and poignant press. She is an award winning, bestselling author of a memoir, Relentless. Natasha studied entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School and MIT as a trained classical violinist and accomplished jazz vocalist. She resides in Oakland, California and is a member and has a regional position at EO Entrepreneurial Organization. Natasha, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me.

This is going to be fun. So there's a lot for us to jump into. Why don't we start by going back in your life, Natasha, and where were you born? What were you like growing up? What was your childhood like?

I was born in Des Moines, Iowa in the early 70s and I played in the dirt and with Pine Needles. And you know, I didn't grow up on a farm, but I grew up in the Midwest, which was very simple, wholesome, down to earth life. I didn't have a great family situation.

And it was a very challenging thing for me to grow up in a neighborhood where kids were having good experiences or much better than me. I was an outcast. I was creative, I was musical. I was definitely probably a nerd. I was not cool. I was not invited to the overnights.

So I grew a thick skin early on. I wish I had known back then that things would shake out okay. I'm not sure how much that would have mattered, but if I had some sort of. Actually, now that I'm saying that if I had some sort of beacon of hope, I wouldn't have tried as hard. So I take it back.

So what do you mean you were an outcast? Why were you an outcast? Why were you different? What was, what was different about you?

Well, I was just really, really, really creative. And.

That actually stuck out like a sore thumb. So I was an early singer, right? I was singing. Well, at a young age I was playing the violin. Well, in fourth grade I was in orchestra, you know, playing with senior. The, the senior high school level when I was in sixth grade. So.

That did. That's not cool.

Yeah.

Two fellow kids. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I. I grew up in a home with non traditional parents, but also sort of absentee and abusive situations. And I'll give you an example of just how weird I was. My walls were stucco and they were. There were holes and it was peeling. Well, I ended up, because I was so bored and so lonely, drawing around those holes, patching them up with these concoctions of play. DoH and glue and water. And I had a whole wall full of not great drawings. I mean, I wasn't a good artist, so that's not one of my claims to fame, but.

And then when people were able to come over or wanted to come over, which was very rare, they got to write and draw on my wall too, which you don't do. Like, that is not something your parents let you do is draw on your walls. So I was that kind of a kid.

Never, never picked to play Red Rover, Never. You know.

And what, what did that feel like at that time?

It was so incredibly lonely. I mean, to have the combination of being not treated well in my home and then having the outside world, which if you grew up in the 70s and 80s, you know, there's a lot of memes and jokes online now, like Our parents sent us out after dinner and you couldn't come home until the street lights came on. Right. And there would be some sort of, you know, everyone would just play and have a great time. And I'm watching everyone play and have a good time. And the moments that I get, you know, invited, I'm still on, on the outside looking in. And, you know, a lot of times made fun of. I wouldn't say I was bullied necessarily, but just not important.

Yeah. And then that continued all the way through high school, all the way till you graduated, or did it change somewhere along the way?

Definitely weird to the rest of my peers then I was, you know, I was on my own at 16 and having your own apartment and having a full time job at night to support yourself and then also studying with a college professor for violin. So it was like these polar opposite things. I'm destitute, I'm working, I live on my own, yet I'm studying with a professor at Drake University, you know, playing in the symphonies and orchestras. Nothing really made sense.

And it was hard for me. You know, I was friends with adults and anywhere from three to 20 years older than I was because that's who worked in the restaurant industry. So after a shift at the Spaghetti Works, where I was too young to waitress, I was a hostess. I would go across the street to the bars on Court Avenue in Des Moines with my fellow restaurant, you know, family, and pretend to drink a Cosmo or pretend to drink. You know, I didn't like alcohol, but that was my life. And then I didn't have anything in common with my high school friends, but the cool group definitely attached to me. And you can imagine why. Can you imagine why? Parties at Natasha.

Yeah.

Yeah. Parties at my apartment. So I spent the last two years of high school in the IT crowd, but not having really anything in common with them, but they would come to my place, so I was still on the periphery.

So you were on the outside, even in your own place.

Yeah.

Wow. You know, one of the common things about people that have the why of makes sense is that they were forced to grow up at a very young age. And that sounds very much like your story.

Yeah. Yes. I was an adult, a full throttle adult at 16. I didn't know, you know, when I came to my first apartment, I flipped on the switch of the lights. And you don't know as a kid that first of all, you don't really know about electricity. I mean, if you do, then you're special, but you don't know that Your parents are. Had to call the utilities company and back then give their Social Security number. I'm not even sure I knew mine. And then also have credit to their name. And if you didn't have credit, which I didn't, you have to pay a deposit, which means you had to have money, which I didn't have. So I learned really, really, really fast how to maneuver in life and how to solve problems and to make them simple. I didn't know that at the time that that was happening, but even yesterday, I was at a retail store and of entrepreneurs, so not corporate. And all I could do is find the things that they can improve on. And I'm thinking, just let me help you. Let me. You have to do this, this, and this. And then call Pacific Community Ventures, and then call the sba and then, like, let me fix you. And they're like, thank you, but.

Didn'T you just come here to buy a candle?

Yeah, you can't turn it off, huh? Just the way it is.

I need to figure out how to do that, because I was with my daughter, and she was like, mom, calm down. I'm like, no, but they just lost. They would have lost out on 300 a business at least if they just had done this, this and this. I couldn't even. I wasn't five steps into the door before I gave them that feedback.

You can do it.

Yes.

Well, okay, so you graduate from high school, you're the in. In crowd, but not really in the in crowd. And that. What happens to you after high school?

Well, I didn't have the attention of counselors, school counselors, because they thought, literally, one of my school counselors said after they saw me the year after I graduated, oh, wow, you made it out alive. We thought we'd find you dead in a gutter. And I thought, wow, well, why didn't anybody help? Nobody helped.

I didn't know how. Everyone. I knew everyone else was going to college, but I didn't know how to get into college because counselors weren't asking me for an appointment to talk about my future. They didn't think I had one. You might think, well, if you're the, like, concert master of the orchestra, how is that possible? But I just was under the radar. So I saw the most. The prettiest, most popular girl was going to ku. And I thought, well, then I'm going to apply to ku. And I did. And I filled out all those ghastly forms. I don't know how I made it through. I had no help. Financial aid Forms suck, and they sucked even more back then. But I went. I drove myself down from Des Moines to Lawrence, Kansas, did an audition, got a full ride scholarship, but I had to pay for housing. And at that time, I really did myself a disservice. I didn't think that I could live in a dorm because I'd been on my own for two years already living an adult life. And the thought of me now living with kids my age and a big structure didn't feel right. So I, you know, got a. I had to get a loan and then I got an apartment. I wish I would have. I wish I would have lived in the dorms. I could have regained some of my childhood back.

So once you got into college, how did you determine what you were going to have as your major? Like, take us through your process. What were you thinking? Where were you at? And I know we're going to. For those of you that are listening, we're going to get back. Yeah, we're going to get back to this. Because this is a big part of your book, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I had no other.

Feasible professional.

Future beside being a. A classically trained violinist that would either play an orchestra or be a soloist. There was nothing else that I was trained to do.

Nothing else that I was good at doing except for singing. But the violin was the thing that paved the way to various successes. So that was it. That's all I had in store for me.

Is that a good place to put all your eggs in that basket?

It was at the time, yeah. Because.

Professionally, I became an entrepreneur. We didn't use that word. We didn't. I didn't even consider myself a business person, but I could make a lot of money playing for someone's wedding or a small corporate function with my string quartet. I was hiring my professors, I was hiring people from the symphony. I was hustling for the business. And if I had one gig on one night, but then got two or three or four, sometimes other offers, there's no way I'd turn it down. My response would be, I'm personally booked, but I can bring in a group that's as good as we are, probably better manage them. And so from the time, I mean, my first professional gig playing the violin was at 15. But again, this was just me.

Making ends meet and surviving. I wouldn't have said it was a thriving situation.

Until I grew into it and understood what was, what the potential was.

So you had to make money, had to find a way. Did find a way, then found a way to Scale when you couldn't really be there. And then. Okay, so did you graduate from ku?

No.

You never graduated?

I didn't. I went back to. I went home because I got mono. I went to Iowa State on a full ride scholarship for a violin. I left there and I went to Drake University on a full scholarship on violin. And what was happening was a degree seemed like was something I needed because everyone else in my high school was getting one. And then I was making so much money already. And by the way, not in successful terms, but in my own world. Right. A couple hundred dollars a gig. That was a lot more than, I think minimum wage back then was $5 or $6. So at that point, I was like, why am I doing this? I'm making a living doing music, which is the only thing I ever thought I would do. I really wanted to be a singer, and I did end up doing that. But the reason why I wasn't able to sing at first as much as play the violin is because my scholarships were bounding me to that responsibility.

So I could. I was siloed, both mentally, but also financially because of those scholarships. But I left and never graduated. Moved to San Francisco when I was 23. 3. And, you know, back then, I just can't believe I'm saying this, I was. I grabbed from the library a yellow pages of San Francisco, and that's where everyone had their information. Like there was no. The Internet was just starting. And I looked up all of these string quartets and I joined. I got like a gig before I got to San Francisco, and I was going to play with the string quartet. Well, me playing with another person's string quartet didn't go over very well because I had become a leader and an entrepreneur again. We didn't use that word. We also didn't use the word scaling back then or I didn't. And so I played a couple of gigs with that group, and then I was like, screw it. I'm starting my own. And that is sort of how my core business, entire productions, was born. Now, mind you, I didn't realize, I had no idea that I had to pay taxes on this money, that I had to keep books, that I should have had a business license. When you're scrappy, like I had to be, you can't pay attention to those things. But once I learned that those were things that I needed to do, I did them.

So you started Entire Productions back when you were 23?

No, not officially. The official. As far as the documents read, it was 2000, the year 2000.

Okay. So 23 years ago, you're the IRS listening.

I hope that there's like a statute of limitations.

But that's interesting. So entire production started out as just being in the music world.

Yeah, Yeah. I had to give it a name. I landed a big account that I still have today, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it was a hundred thousand dollar account for entire year of entertainment for this retail.

Group. And I mean, I bit off more than I could chew, but that's what you do.

And do it, you learn on the job. And back then I knew jazz and I knew classical music very well, but I had, I was tasked with booking blues and.

You know, African samba music and all, all this. It's very multicultural in the bay area. I, I wouldn't even have been comfortable booking like a dance band or something that was outside of jazz and classical. But I pushed myself and I figured it out. And now we produce events for our entertainment side of every genre, every discipline of performer, from local to headliner. And now I basically know how to do it all, even if I have to learn on the job a little bit. You know, you can do it kind of. It's in there.

So for those of you that are listening, Natasha's why is is to make sense of the complex and challenging. How she does that is by finding better ways to do things. And ultimately what she brings are outside the box solutions, things that people don't expect. Not typical, right? Not traditional. So sounds like that's exactly what you did every step along the way had to figure out today and today. Yes, exactly. So take us through how you got, where you got as far as the beginning of entire productions to what it is today and what is it today? I hope you're enjoying the show. Let's take a quick break.

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Now back to the show. How you got, where you got as far as the beginning of entire productions to what it is today and what is it today?

Yeah, I would say the first 12 years, entire productions was a lifestyle company for me. It was supporting my recording and performing as a jazz vocalist. And I was still supporting myself by being the talent as a violinist and vocalist in the early days and then. And I wouldn't have been able to accept or appreciate or even think that I was the right person for this. But I was introduced to the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses program and you had to have $250,000 revenue or more and three or more employees and then you'd get basically this entrepreneurial master's program for free. We were at 1.5 million in revenue at that point because I had booked a headline artist and had tons of other smaller events. And it wasn't until that program that I went to at Babson College in Boston that where I had my mind just blown. Because back then, and this was, I'm embarrassed to say, but I'm just going to say it out loud. 2015, I didn't know how to read any of my financial reports and I didn't care. I had a gut feeling and an instinct for what was coming in and what was going out. But if you had asked me, you know, what does it cost to run your business? I would have to say to you, I have no idea. I can ask my bookkeeper, but I wasn't even sure she could tell me. So I learned how to read financial complex financial reports, learned about marketing, learned about. I guess what I would say what happened is I got educated or started to get educated and at that point everything exploded. My business grew 65% year over year.

My mind was insatiable. I wasn't able to study and focus in my early life except for on, on classical music and violin because my, my brain was busy surviving, trying to stay alive. So I didn't do well in school except for violin stuff.

Well, that turned out to be your gift though. You know, think about it. If you'd have taken the traditional path that everybody else, all your friends took, would you be where you are now?

There's no way to know. And I don't even know if this personality that I have would be my personality had I not endured and lived the life I lived.

So today, entire productions tell us about what it's like today.

Today. Well, post Covid because our multi million dollar Business went to zero in March of 2020, and I'm telling you right now, the fight or flight took over. And I, I seriously thought. I lived in a beautiful condo in Union Square in San Francisco. And I thought, oh my God, I'm going to be homeless again. That's it. It wasn't anything but that. And it took me a couple of weeks to realize that I have all these skills and all of this stuff that I could lean on to rebuild. And I did rebuild the company. We ended up doing 400 virtual events for our Fortune 500 clients in two years. And now we're back at. So we have two divisions. Entertainment, as I just said to you earlier, and then full production. So we produce events anywhere from a hundred thousand dollar budget to multi million dollar budget events, mostly corporate events, big celebrations, employee celebrations, launch parties, experiential marketing, summits, conferences. We have a team, we have a core team, but then we expand and contract with contractors for larger scale events. And it's amazing, but we don't do anything. Like they're expected. Like, like it expected. If I'm doing a walkthrough, I will just be blurting out these creative, over the top crazy ideas and my whole team is like, well, there she goes. And I'm like, we're not doing normal. And if somebody wants normal, they should go somewhere else. And they'll have a great experience somewhere.

Else, but not with you. All right, tell us about your craziest, most fun, most creative event you've done.

There are so many, because that's all we do. But I will make reference to one that we did in March of this year. It's our annual event experience for our clients and prospective clients. It's about a $500,000 budget event that we produce. And this year it's called this theme, was into the Wild. It was at the California Academy of Sciences, which is a giant venue. We only had two hours between the time they closed to the public to the time the event started to load in over 60 vendors, including 12 caterers.

It sounds impossible. And almost any event planner would say, hell no. But I of course took pride in saying, of course we can do that. And the response that we received, which I'm so proud of and really have to say, my team was the one who did that. I chose them, so you can congratulate me on that. Good choice. But the caterer said that their load in was easier with us producing it with 12 people than it is when they come in and load in when they're the Only caterer with another planning company and all these other vendors. So, you know, I think with what I came up with in my life, how I endured and what I had to do to survive, I have this incredible creative outlet. But then I'm very logistical and analytic, so those two things cross. And typically people are really strong on one or the other. I'm not even sure I could say. I mean, I suppose in actuality, if I had to say it was more creative, but I can't accept less than excellent. Free for analytical and logistical.

So the outcast, odd little girl from Iowa ends up in San Francisco putting on massive events for Fortune 500 companies.

That are outside the box. Unexpected.

Experiences.

Yeah.

Who to thunk it, right?

I don't know. I now look at people that don't fit in those, you know, the square pegs and the round holes, and I think, oh, they're probably going to make it in life, right? I'm living life in full Technicolor. And, you know, a lot of my friends still have the same job. They got out of college, and maybe that's perfectly fine for them.

And. And it would be interesting for me to know a life of contentment like that and security and love and, you know, going at an easy pace. I'll never know it, but.

I appreciate the life I have.

Yeah, you weren't meant for that, right?

Evidently not.

Okay, let's shift gears a little bit and let's talk about your book. Oh, yeah, you wrote a book called Relentless, right? Tell us about it.

Yes, I had the hardest time naming that book, but someone had emailed me during the pandemic after seeing what happened to my business, and she said, natasha, you are the most relentlessly tenacious person I've ever met. Good for you. And I said, thank you, and thank you. You just helped me with my book title. Now the book title reads, Relentless Homeless Teen to Achieving the Entrepreneur Dream. And I realized in hindsight that I did my life story a disservice by saying homeless teen, because, yes, I did get dropped off at 16 years old on Christmas day by my father at a homeless shelter and never got to return home. But he went back home to my mom and my two brothers, and they lived there, you know, ongoing. So homeless connotes a certain hardship that I actually didn't endure. It wasn't because my family didn't have any money. It wasn't because they were doing drugs. I was literally abandoned by my family. But to have a title read Abandoned Teenage to Achieving the Entrepreneur Dream.

I think it I think it. It makes more sense, but I'm not sure it would make more sense to the. To the people that, you know, are seeing the book.

So tell us about that.

What.

What was it like to be 16 years old, dropped off at a homeless shelter on Christmas Eve?

It was a combination of elation and terror, right? I was being threatened for my life. And I called 911 for the first time in my life. And in that flash, I thought, I'm going to be saved. Somebody's going to come and I'm going to get saved. The police are going to come and they're going to see that, you know, I'm being treated horribly by my mother and, you know, where will I stay? What beautiful house will I get to go to?

And then when I get there, you know, I don't bring a coat. It's sub zero. My dad says to me, grab as much as you can from your room. And I showed up at that homeless place, the homeless shelter, with a hefty garbage bag. And I now have learned from homeless shelters today that I support that. The saddest moments for them is when someone shows up with a hefty garbage bag full of their stuff. And I thought, oh, my God.

It'S hard to believe that that was my life. And here's another juxtaposition, was that I was a classically trained violinist. I was well read, I was well spoken. And now I'm with a bunch of kids who are on drugs, who are on alcohol, whose parents are on drugs and alcohol. They're runaways. They're not clean. And I do not fit in with them either. So they're making fun of me. Oh, preppy girl, what are you doing here? And looking around and going, I'm preppy. I didn't know that. I didn't think I was preppy. That would have been cool.

On the other line, right?

But honestly, after two days there, they started coming around and they understood I was just like them and probably worse because I'd been dumped there. And so, you know, I found some camaraderie there. But so it didn't last forever.

Were you. Did you stay in contact with your family while you were there?

I was able to talk to my dad ever so often. He did come when they were talking about putting me in foster care. And I think, you know, that calling 911 was my first triumphant fighting for myself. And the second one was when the foster care representative was saying, you know, she could be anywhere in the state of Iowa in the system. And I Said anywhere. She's like, yeah, 200 miles away. And I'm like, no, I'm studying with Dr. Beale at Drake University. I'm not, I'm not going anywhere. And I figured out through a law book that I was actually deemed by the state an abandoned child. And even though we didn't have an emancipation law there, I was unofficially emancipated. So you can imagine I was just even weirder than before.

Well, your weirdness worked, right?

I mean, it worked. Yes. And honestly, you know, recently I've seen some videos of homeless and drug addicted people on the streets in, know, major metropolitan places. And I'm sure, you know, I could go anywhere in Oakland or San Francisco. And I realize that could have been me. That could have been the trajectory. That's what my high school counselors and teachers probably saw for me.

Yeah.

Thankfully, I was never drawn to illegal substances or drinking or smoking. I don't even drink coffee. And so that could be my, my. I mean, it could be a lot of things, but, you know, uptight, nerdy, you know, violin violinist. Maybe not. That's not where you would turn first for sure.

So if you could go back and you could change it to where you didn't have to go through what you went through.

Yeah.

What weren't living in, you know, the situation that you were, would you change it?

Absolutely. Yep. I know a lot of people say I wouldn't change a thing. I love my life. This is what made me. I would like, I would. I still to this day would like to have known what it was like to be loved and cherished by my family.

Now that wouldn't necessarily lead to my, the neighborhood kids liking me. Right, right. I'm okay with that part. Like being the outcast because I'm a weirdo.

That wasn't as, that wasn't as challenging. But yeah, I would have. I would and I would. I would give up all of the success and all of these incredible inflection points and I would, if I had to do it again and I could have that love and security, I would not mind being maybe only taking care of a household and children or working the same job just to get a taste of what it would have been like.

And that's kind of what you're doing then for other kids, is that right? As far as working with, you know, shelter, homeless shelters and whatnot.

Yeah. I'm not working directly with the people in the shelters. I mean, I contributed with shining a light on them and some financial. I'm going to tell you honestly, I'm not terribly proud of this, but I did volunteer at a homeless shelter in San Francisco a few years ago for something called the Birthday Party Project. I didn't know how it would affect me and I.

I was like. I felt like I was standing with a foot as a homeless person and a foot in as the wealthy benefactor. And I was scared. I couldn't relate. I couldn't figure out who to be, which one of me I should be. When talking to the parents of these kids, seeing the. The bunks that they were living in, I had a little bit of a panic moment and I just said, you know what? I, right now, I can contribute other ways. I can give them things, I can give them money, I can shine a light on them for other people to engage with. But I had to protect my mental health. And maybe there'll be someday where I can figure out my stuff in regards to that.

But, yeah, it was a little bit of an identity crisis.

Yeah, I could see that. So what's next for you? Where are you headed next? What do you want to do? What kind of outside the box thing do you want to figure out next?

Well, since the pandemic has subsided, I don't know how if it's ever going to be over. I'm really focusing on scaling and growing entire productions into its most.

Into its greatest ability, into my greatest ability and seeing what it's like to have key executive leaders under me, as in I'm the visionary and they're operating and they're doing the stuff. I would like to see how not living and behaving as a business person in that scrappy mentality is and really leveling up. So I will enjoy the next few years of working on that endeavor. And of course, the moment I changed my mind to that endeavor, it was a hockey stick growth for our team, for me, for the clients we're getting, the number of events we're getting, and also the budgets that we're getting to work with.

So take us. Yeah, take us through that. What do you. For those that are listening, what do you mean by you changed your thinking or change your perspective? What was it before versus what is it now?

Before it was all inbound. We've. Everyone knows us because we've been around for so long. So not much in business development. Let's just say no business development except for me. Not much in sophisticated sales team, no management. And when, I mean, when I say no management, I mean I wasn't managing anyone. I would hire people and say, I'm not a micromanager. Here's what you do. You do you. And everyone was just flapping around. They were doing excellent work because they love what they do. But I'm going to tell you now, as of almost three months ago, I have a VP of operations. And they're being managed and supported and encouraged and held accountable.

And I'm appreciating that very much. And I also appreciate that that wasn't my gift. That's not what I was put on the earth for. It is what I could have done earlier when I was starting and building. But, you know, the programs at Babson, at Harvard, at mit, being around successful entrepreneurs and EO and the Genius Network have shown me for sure that I was, even though I had.

Outgrown what anyone thought I could accomplish and.

I outdid what I thought was accomplishable, I now see a much bigger playing field and I also know how to get there. And I, you know, you don't know until you know. So I'm excited to do that. Not for the money. And by the way, yes, I like the money. That is definitely endorphin hit. I still live a pretty moderate, modest lifestyle.

I do know I need to retire and be able to take care of myself and some of my family. So it's not about the money. It's about.

It feels like I'm playing maybe what other people feel like are video games. And we're keeping the arts alive by employing all of these artists. We're making people's lives. It's not brain surgery and we're not curing any disease. I understand where we sit in the importance of the world, but we're contributing positively. And we're contributing even more positively by really focusing on sustainability, which used to be the woo woo hippie feeling thing and now it's like a matter of fact.

Right? Wow. So I'm just excited that every time I learn something new and more, I am invigorated by the thought that there's so much more to learn. And so I'll never be bored. I'm always going to be challenged. And maybe I won't, you know, be. Maybe I'll sell the company. Maybe I'll let my team run it and I'll just be on a board of directors. Maybe. I used to think I. I define my life as a musician, a singer, songwriter, jazz vocalist, classical violinist. Then I define myself as the owner of this profitable, multimillion dollar successful business.

But I don't define myself today as any of those things. It's Just part of the story.

And I think that is actually arriving.

Really.

God, you're, you're doing. From my perspective and you're doing what People with the why of Make Sense are great solopreneurs because they hustle, hustle, hustle can figure it out. They're scrappy, they got the. But they don't need a lot of structure because they don't, they don't need it. They could just wing it and it works out.

Yeah, I can make anything happen and I can get anything I want.

Now.

Thankfully, I only want good things for people.

Yeah, but what you're doing is. It's interesting because what you're currently doing is the advice that we would tell somebody with the why of Makes Sense is put yourself in the board of director, get somebody else that likes structure, process systems in place for you so he can keep going. Because as soon as you run out of capacity or energy then. Or interest. Yeah. Or interest, then it goes away because you're it. And it's, it's fascinating how you're just naturally. Well, took you a while, but you got there and you're there.

Wow. Of course. I think, why didn't I do this earlier? Why didn't I? Why? You know why? It wasn't my time yet. It took me 12 years of living a lifestyle business until I discovered or be, you know, the Goldman Sachs program. And I met at the same time. Right. And so there is no really going back. And, and this is, this is the, this is the program for me. I don't know what's next for me and I don't need to know. It will remain reveal itself to me when it's time.

That's awesome. So Natasha, there, there are people that are listening that want to connect with you, want to follow you, want to buy your book, want to hire you to do an event for them. What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

The event production company is entire productions.com and my personal everything where you can find the book and all my other crazy things is natasha@Natasha Miller.com.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for being here today. I was looking forward to this. I was, I was really looking forward to hearing your story because I knew a little bit about it but now I know a lot more about it. So thank you for sharing and, and letting us into your world.

Thank you and thank you for helping everyone dig a little deeper and find their why.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.