Relentless Leadership - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 025

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Today's guest is a master at bringing corporate events to life. She's had a best-selling book in over 10 categories on Amazon and Barnes Noble with her book Relentless. She's the Chief Motivation Officer. Welcome, Natasha Miller. How are you, Natasha?

Hey there, I'm pretty good.

Well, before we get into the meat of it, what does the Chief Motivation Officer mean? I love your title.

You know, I have various titles on various places because titles, you know, they definitely mean something and then sometimes they don't, right? So CEO, president, boring. I think in some places it says Chief Experience Design Officer, Chief— I mean, you know, I'm the founder of a company, I'm working on the business, not in it day to day. I'm, you know, strategist, visionary and cheerleader. So, you know, Chief Motivation— Motivational Officer sounds right for today.

Perfect. Well, I like it. I hadn't seen that one before. We are CMOs also, but Chief Marketing Officer. So as long as you don't use the acronym, don't steal our acronym. Call yourself whatever you want.

I don't love acronyms to start with, but that's another conversation.

Yeah, very good. Well, thanks again for joining me. The question I always like to start with from your perspective is, what is an opportunity that you see that maybe other C-suite members or C-suites aren't seeing, or something that you see that maybe you think they should also see?

So full-time or fractional?

Did you— You can tell me from your perspective, whether it's full-time or fractional, what is an opportunity that you think people should be made aware of?

I think anybody in that realm, you know, certainly their leaders and the conversation around leadership, how to lead, who's a good leader, what's a good leader. You know, there's not one definitive answer, but finding the one definitive answer that's for you, I think is important. It's like finding yourself. So, you know, Gary V talks about empathy, right? And we were just talking about cheerleading and, You know, some people can lead with an iron fist and be respected. Some people can lead in a little more soft way. Introverts, extroverts, we can all be leaders. It's just finding out what the best fit is and not trying to be, um, that of whatever book is recently out about how you need to do that.

So I love that everyone's individually different in the way they lead. But are there some commonalities or some requirements to be, you know, almost table stakes for being a good leader that are similar across the board that you recognize?

I do. I actually do agree with Gary Vee and his, you know, he has 12 and a half steps to leadership and talks about empathy. I don't actually follow him as much as it sounds like I do, but he came to mind. Understanding emotional intelligence, you know, having it for yourself and then understanding and identifying it in other people, really important. Being empathetic, but being also able to draw the line where necessary. And it's this fine balance, and it may be a different line for a different person in the company, and that's not necessarily fair, right? But sometimes it's necessary. And, you know, saying, well, we don't do that, we've never done that, so we're not going to do that for you— probably not a great sign of leadership. But also being so wishy-washy that when asked, you're just like, okay, sure. I think, you know, people like to have bumper lanes and, and things to bounce off of instead of just this wild, wild west.

Yeah, and I've been, I've been thinking about that quite a bit. And those bumper lanes, to me, it seems like core values of the organization and individually should align, of course, but those can sometimes be those bumper lanes in absence of clear rules and guidelines within an organization. What do you think about that?

I think if you are defining core values and trying to keep in mind all the things that you'll endure or experience so that your core values do speak to those things. And that's really hard to do, right? There's millions of things that could happen, and if your core values don't address, you know, the thing of the moment, then you're in trouble. So I, you know, it's not impossible, but it is a challenge in creating and defining what core values are and what they aren't is, you know, it's, it's a challenge. And I think, you know, people have them on their websites and they have them on their walls and thinking that their employees are reading and understanding them. And if it's not talked about and not described, they're not reading or understanding them.

Right? They're just words on the wall.

They're not even motivational, right? They'd be First of all, they're going to disappear after a few, you know, glances at it. Yeah, it becomes white noise.

It certainly does. And part of the leader's job might be to make sure those core values are ever-present and not lost on the walls of the hallways.

Also, I don't agree with, you know, calling, you know, one or two employees out every week on their, you know, core value that they— right, that's not terribly inauthentic, that's not authentic. But calling out somebody that has really exemplified a core value in the moment, at the right time, unexpectedly, not like on Monday morning, who's going to be called out for their good behavior? Yeah, again, don't think that works.

Interesting, because it's all— I've always heard that, and I've recommended in the past that you can implement some awareness of core values in a weekly meeting like that on purpose, intentional, to bring it to life. But over a period of time, it could definitely become trite and not meaningful. But I love the idea of just calling out in the moment.

That's— yeah, I think it's more impactful for the person you're calling out because they don't think they're getting slapped with the good participation merit, right? Yeah, we already called out everybody else. Who's last, right?

Yeah, it's Natasha's turn. What did you do remotely good last week that we could correlate to a core value? Yeah, I get that, and I've done that before. Just happens. What are some of the— what, you know, what is the role of the leader? I think if you had to describe what a leader does What does a leader do?

You know, that has changed for me in experience and with time and of course reading. But I think recently, and I'm not going to be able to quote this correctly, but a leader's job is to inspire others to be their best selves within the organization. And what it doesn't mean is micromanaging. What it doesn't mean is, you know, dangling carrots necessarily or threatening pip, you know, performance of, you know. So I hope that I am embodying that with my team. They're very self-managed and they're motivated internally. But, you know, I do some of the things I just talked about and sporadically no one can see it coming. Do some gifting, do some calling out. So I hope I'm really growing into a very, very good leader. And I can say 10 years ago, people may have called me a good leader. And they may have been saying that because of the success my business had, or they saw me in an interview or an article. But the truth is, I was in my infancy still. So I can see the difference. They may have liked me as a person. And they thought I'm such a good leader. But if they looked under the hood of my organization, you know, there were some challenges that I don't have today. So I think I'm learning.

Yeah, I like what you said about inspiring others to be their best in the organization. I've always thought of leadership as being, you know, inspiring is one of the characteristics of a good leader. But then we add to it the context of to be their best inside the organization. It's more just inspiring somebody to, to do something or go somewhere or follow you. It's more about inspiring people to want to be better, be their best within the organization.

And that's exactly— I mean, it's not my job to make them a better person outside of what they do for work. Hopefully it spills over, but also very important, especially to my organization, is make them their best selves within the organization so that they can have success, but also pull the company forward, right, with their ideas, with their skills, with their talent, and maybe lead us in a different direction. I don't want to be the only one, you know, driving the bus. I need people to take turns, right? So in my company, my, my people get to say, my client Google did this $1 million event. They don't have to defer to me. Even if I'm standing right next to them, they know that I want them to own it.

Yeah, it's so powerful. Because I feel, you know, along the lines of inspiring others to be their best, good leaders inspire other leaders to lead. And that's the whole idea of having an organization full of leaders is, I think, the best— that's the nirvana for an entrepreneur that really wants to step out of the business and let it run and grow without them. Correct. Versus somebody who wants to centralize all of the decision-making and kind of have a hierarchy of control and—

Yeah, I'm done with that.

Are you? Yeah, I'm so done with it, but I see it so often that, and it's unintentional or there might be a lack of awareness, but it can be stifling and of growth when everything has to go through any one person anywhere in the organization, including the top. Yeah. What are some other characteristics? We've got empathy, good emotional intelligence, inspiring, or what other items come to mind?

I mean, this is a little bit of a grandiose term, but vision. And vision means so many different things. Of course, you can say vision for the culture within the organization. You can say vision for the quarter, for the year, for the next 5 years. I think the vision for me that's really important is to remain with a firm grounded foundation and be able to expand from there and not lose sight of that core character of the company. And I was thinking about this, this morning, randomly about how my core business, Entire Productions, may grow and flourish without my day-to-day, everyday input, and how that might chip away at that core foundation. And what I remembered is our clients remind us. So 6 months ago, I had a call from a client discussing the experience they had with one of my employees. And they're like, we just— we're not feeling the entire production's spirit and partnership that we have grown to know over 10 years. And I'm like, brakes squeal, right? Because, wow, I understand that there's a disconnect. And this employee they were referring to was excellent at what she did, but she was probably and, and this was as a leader for me to discover, overloaded, um, you know, in over her head. It's not always the employee also, it's, it's a combination thing, right? So, uh, something, some part of it has to do with the client too, but that interaction wasn't what they experienced before and what they kept coming back to us for. And they had the wherewithal to tell me instead of just be frustrated or never call us again. Now, I don't think it was that bad, but, um, you know, a leader needs to identify when to— well, when to make a decision, but also how to make a decision. So it's getting the facts from the client, listening, digesting, trying to imagine what was going on with the employee that made that, you know, situation not beautiful, then going to them in a way that isn't you know, defensive for them, and having a talk instead of blame being thrown immediately. That is, if you go— if you turn to blame immediately, then your leadership style needs to be examined, in my opinion.

Yeah. That's an interesting observation. If you have a client coming to you saying, you don't feel the spirit that we used to feel. Yep. To me, my question goes to, have we developed the processes and the training internally to deliver the same experience from client to client as we grow or scale? Exactly. And I always start with process first before I look at people. Do we have a process that makes sure that we're doing this? And then if we do and the person isn't following process or isn't delivering on it, then we have a people issue. And almost 9 times out of 10 or more, it's a process issue.

And in this case, I had to talk to that employee and tell them it's their professional responsibility to themselves and to me or to their manager to say, heads up, I'm buried, right? I've got about 3 too many RFPs on my plate. About to lose my mind. My team is very Type A, go get them. And when they've up to their eyeballs, they're still saying, I have bandwidth. And it's my job or the manager's job or whoever's, you know, in charge of that department to say, okay, where are you really? And to let them know it is your professional responsibility, whether you're 23, 43, a manager, you know, in shipping and packing to say, heads up, and when you're at 80% capacity, not 105. So, you know, giving people permission to be honest about what's going on. And I think, you know, for my team, people are moving so fast, they forget that part. So I'm, I feel like as part of cheerleader, I'm like, is everybody overwhelmed? Is everybody, you know, like somebody say, you know, I need help, but nobody does. But, you know, I have to remind them, don't burn out. Not good for me, not good for you, not good for this group.

Yeah. And there's not an easy metric for burnout. I mean, you can measure overtime hours if you're measuring that way, or, but, you know, net promoter score, customer scores, that's that the lag indicator. You don't want— if you had a leading indicator, too late. Yeah, it's too late when that happens. I also find we've got, we've got lots of different cultures in our organizations. We have people from the Philippines that work for us, from Mexico that work for us, and then we have demographic differences. And based on where you're from and your culture and your, you know, your age group and your experiences, you say yes to more or no to more. And it's interesting how some people will raise their hand no matter what. Because that's how they're trained or that's how they've been brought up and that's their culture. Some people raise their hand because they're just trying to make a mark and they're newer and they want to prove they can do more. And then some people have been around a long time and just that's how they see value is just taking on more responsibility. And it's hard to communicate what the right mix of that is, I think, as a company. That's where leadership comes in as well. Like how do we build the the right culture where it's expected, as you said, it's your professional responsibility to raise your hand. We value that. We don't value keeping saying yes just to say yes. And in this day and age, I think as companies become more and more virtual and hybrid and remote, it's harder to sense that. Like when you all work in an office together, that you can that emotional intelligence.

Oh yeah, you can, right? You can feel that emotional, uh, you can feel the bandwidth and the waves of, uh, vibration immediately.

But when you're all dispersed and working from home and on your computers or out at the job site, it's harder to get a gauge. Yeah, I had a client once who had, uh, I like a green, yellow, red button. Yeah. Similar, you've seen those, I think maybe at McDonald's in stores.

How was your service today?

You know, he would have it at the employees when they came in right by the time clock, you know, how you feeling about going to work today? You know, he had them push green or yellow or red. That was his way of trying to understand if culture's right or not. I don't know. I haven't followed up with him for a while to see if it's working. He had just installed it.. But there's got to be ways to measure that, that work well.

Yeah. As you get bigger and bigger, it's, it just becomes more difficult, especially with that middle management layer in there.

Yeah. So tell me a little bit about your book Relentless. What's, what's, what's the story behind your memoir?

Yeah. The, the book is titled Relentless: Homeless Teen to Achieving the Entrepreneur Dream. Which really does encapsulate the, you know, book's contents pretty well. It's the story of my life. And I set out to write what I thought I would refer to as a business memoir, which doesn't have a big category. You know, in publishing, they want you to have a business topic book or a memoir and don't mix the two. You know, it's just hard to market it. You know, not a bookshelf for business memoirs. But the way I wrote the book, I just really wanted people that found themselves to it. They didn't have to be entrepreneurs or business people to appreciate the story. And the story is of, you know, I grew up in the middle of the country in Des Moines, Iowa, close to you. And in the mid-'80s, you know, when I was coming of age as a teenager, '70s and '80s, there wasn't a whole lot of, well, let's just be honest, talking about anything under the surface in general. That wasn't our culture. I was treated very poorly by my mother and my family in general to the point where I was used to every day hearing the words, "I hate you and I'd rather kill you and go to jail than have to look at you again." Every day of my life, there was something like that and lots of threats of being killed. When I was 16 on Christmas Day, I finally felt a different tone of my mother. You'll see in the opening scene of the book, it's quite traumatic, but I finally called 911. Again, in the middle '80s in the Midwest, if the police come to your home for a domestic disturbance, they can't do anything. They couldn't do anything unless you had a gusher of blood coming from somewhere or a broken bone, a visibly overt injury. I described this in quite detail, so there is a trigger warning there. Unfortunately, quite a few trigger warnings that I didn't ever expect that I would have to write. But when trusted readers and editors read it, they said, this needs a trigger warning. Not everyone can just open this book and read it. And I thought, well, great. My life has been reduced to these really horrible trigger warnings. But you also don't get to balance out that trigger warning that says, but wait, it gets better, right? But in the title, you'll see that it does. And I learned how to be on my own at 16 years old after living in a homeless shelter and being told I was going to be put in foster care. And this was all while being a classically trained violinist. And I certainly wasn't a prodigy as far as the world was concerned, but I was considered a very talented violinist in my little, you know, bubble. So I was studying with a college professor since 7th grade. So you can see the juxtaposition of, you know, you don't hear a lot about trauma, abuse, and neglect of a young person who's also thriving in another way, but it was my out, it was my outlet. So the whole book isn't about all the negative inflection points. It definitely shows you and leads you just by my story. There's no— it's not a to-do list. It's not a— this is how— it's not a how-to book. I didn't write it to be inspirational or motivational, but that's what's happening with it. And I'm okay with that, right? I'm okay as long as I'm making a positive impact. You have to read past the first few chapters though to get to the upswing.

Yeah. Well, I could just— I mean, although I said earlier you can't feel the emotion when you're not in the room, I could certainly feel the gravity of what you went through there in your little synopsis that you just gave me now. And I can't imagine what that was like, but I can see how this book, it sounds like, is part of your— leadership journey by helping and inspiring others to be better themselves. It sounds like it just, you know, not planned, but it fits right into what we were talking about earlier. How has some of the feedback been from people in your own circle and then people completely outside your circle?

I'm curious. Yeah, I love my own circle. Of course they're supportive and they've been critical when I've asked them to be, which is a huge blessing, right? You can't, you can't write a book in a box. So I did get some critical compliments. I mean, they were kind of like a compliment sandwich. But now that it's out, the people that I know, of course, well are blown away because they don't know— they didn't know all the details of my life. I had kept it secret, but not because I was ashamed. It's just not what you talk about. You know, at cocktails. I don't really drink, but let's just, you know, it's not small talk. And even there are things that I wrote in the book that I hadn't admitted to my best friend or my therapist, but I decided it was okay to go ahead and put it in for the entire world to read. Somehow that felt safer. I— somebody can analyze that out there. What I'm surprised at is, and what I'm delighted at, are the people that I don't know that are writing furious, fast and furious notes of thanks, appreciation. I feel like what I'm hearing back from them is that I'm giving them a voice and that I said some things in the book that like nobody would dare say. And now that I've said it and I'm a fairly public person, it just leaves a little bit more bandwidth for somebody else to dip their toe in that vulnerability pot. And so I think I may have mentioned to you yesterday that I was surprised at how many men are reading the book. And what I'm getting from them are underlined or circled or highlighted passages with things that they were interested in. And then the feedback, they're telling me their life story. They're telling me things that they probably aren't talking to other people about. So I'm holding this information for them. Which I feel a great privilege to do. And then, you know, the, the guy from Arizona that I told you about yesterday, I think, wrote, this is the book that I wish I had the courage to write. Right. And that is telling me that this book is bigger than I— than me, right? It's, it's no longer really about my story. It's about allowing other people to see themselves in my story. Now, hopefully most of the people reading it weren't abused physically and mentally and emotionally, didn't have to go to a homeless shelter, but every one of us has gone through things. And as we get older, how many hero or heroine journeys have we all gone through, right? Right. And I think it's important. I will tell you this, I believe this to be true for me. If I had come out with my first book being a subject matter book on experience design, event planning, or how to scale and grow your business by 65% year over year, I would get some attention and I may be helping people, right? Hopefully I would be, but the stickiness of what people, how they interact with me now is so much deeper. And it was uncomfortable at first because before the book came out, my team was sending out advance copies to people that I was being interviewed about or interviewed with. And it didn't occur to me that they got the manuscript and that they would have read it. So then, you know, they're paging through it and they're reciting to me lines and they're asking me about the book and I'm like, oh my God, it's, it's actually happening. Now I'm used to it for the most part. But it's just very interesting how each individual has their own— like, not everyone's saying the same passage. People aren't pointing to this one passage. There's not one passage in common with everyone that people are glomming onto. It's different for everyone. So, you know, it's, it's made me feel incredible. That I'm making an impact in a positive way. Small, medium. I mean, I don't, I don't think I'm transforming anyone's lives over here, but—

Well, you are. It sounds like in micro-transformations, you're giving some people permission to open up about areas that maybe have been kept closed for too long. You're inspiring others to want to plow through and do their— do the work that you no doubt did to get where you are. I'm curious, one takeaway I was thinking about as you were sharing is now that you've written a book and it's out there, your assumption is everybody knows it. So in some ways it allows you even to be more vulnerable now because whether that I've read your book or not, which I haven't yet, the expectation of that is, well, you're going to eventually read it, so I might as well go vulnerable now. It's given you yourself some permission to continue to be maybe more vulnerable than you used to be. And maybe that's why you wrote some of those passages that you hadn't talked about before because you—

Yeah. I mean, listen, those passages, and I do want to, you know, kind of give a teaser not to give the whole thing away, but I remember I worked with this incredible editor, which is so important when you're writing a book, but especially a memoir. Because we tend to write memoirs, we as in not professional writers, in an essay form or somewhat like a journal form. And even if we're editing it ourselves, we're not creating beautiful prose, and we're not creating suspension, and— So this, uh, Jamie is his name. I wrote this one passage that is pretty intense, and I said to him, is that too much? Have I gone overboard? Have I pushed the limit? Are you sure we should put this in? And he just said simply, absolutely. This is going to show people who you are, and they're going to know for sure that you're being honest with them. I was like, okay, here we go. Oh gosh. And interestingly enough, I think it's so taboo what I wrote about that hardly anybody has brought it up to me, but I know it's making a difference to other people. It has to, because I had never read anyone's account of that myself before. So it's like I'm coming out with the new vulnerability, right? Going a little deeper than we've gone since Oprah and, you know, all these self-help talk people have been like opening up the wounds of people.

Yeah, well, good for you. I mean, I can only imagine the journey you went through writing it and the memories and the questioning of should I put this in, should I not, and to have gone through all of that itself is quite a feat. So congrats for that. And then now getting it out there to the world and getting the response that you didn't expect but are so appreciative of is fantastic.

Yeah, one other thing is if you're thinking about writing up your story, interesting things will happen while you're writing it. Something very interesting and mind-blowing happened to me, and it's actually at the end of the book. It's like crazy. I don't know if I would have discovered this crazy thing had I not written the book and started to do the research on my own story. And then also, once it's published, you wouldn't believe the, the skeletons coming out of the closet with people admitting things or telling stories that had never been told. You know, you got to have a good therapist lined up because it's, it's just really interesting. And it's not over yet. Like, there are still things I'm sure I will discover. This book has only been out since March 22nd. It, you know, God save me. We'll see what happens.

So walk me through a bit, just the timeline of when you started thinking about the book, doing the research for the book.

Just give me that Yes. So 4 years ago, I was at a conference in Vail called 212, and it was a mentoring, uh, mentorship conference where we were all mentoring each other rather than being spoken to by people above us, all 7, 8, 9-figure businesses. And I went to this conference to learn about business and scaling, what other people are doing. I did not go to this conference to realize that I have to write a book about myself. But there was an author there. She was one of the mentors. She described, you know, a handful of things that she was an expert at. And there was just something that literally just came up through me during this session with 10 other people. And I kind of blurted out for the first time out loud little bits about my life. And I could feel the whole room leaning, like literally leaning in to the table. And you know, everyone's ego, they want to be heard, they want to participate, they want their piece. All these people were giving their time and energy to me, and I had to stop the engagement to say, listen, we've got like 45 minutes left, you guys need to talk too. And they're like, no, no, no, we're all in on this. And that's when the tinglies started happening, right? And I was like, oh, this might be something. I told my dad and my daughter that I was writing the book, but I didn't tell my brothers for a few months because I was a little worried about what they would think because part of their life is in my life story. That's when the research, grilling my dad about why did this happen, why did you let this happen, what was happening? And having him at an older age be able to say without being defensive, you know, this is, this is his vantage point. And I did that of certain people in my family that I could. Another thing I did, which is really interesting, is I thought that I was remembering in a more dramatic way some of the things that were happening. And I thought, am I writing things? Am I exacerbating the story? Am I Have I remembered it worse than it was? So I dug out my journals, which I had kept since I was 10 years old. And as I was reading it, I was basically bawling the whole time because it turns out it was much worse than what my memories were. And that was really shocking. I thought for sure I had blown things out of proportion, or for sure I had, you know, created a little bit more than it was.

The mind's an amazing thing. It wants to protect you.

Yeah.

And so it had to dumb down your story. Not probably the right word to use.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that was, that was a really, that was a really hard day.

And is your mom still around?

Yeah, she is. I don't have a relationship with her. In July of 2019, I, you know, a culmination of events, including, you know, things that were happening about the book, showed me that it was no longer healthy for me to include her in my life. And, you know, I thought that was a very kind of taboo reaction. But I just recently saw on a our, you know, EO channel online, a question about something similar to this. And I saw a lot of people's replies about cutting someone out of their life that was a family member. And I thought, just like I think people are reading my book and saying, oh, I see myself, okay, I'm okay. I actually had that, and this was just a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah.

It's hard to do because you're judged, right? It's, it's, you know, a lot of people are like, well, that's the person who gave birth to you, that gave life to you, that— and I'm like, well, okay, but for me, it is not healthy for me to have a relationship. Have you been able to forgive her? Oh man, I tell you what, I, I have been able to forgive her off and on. But unfortunately, my daughter had to relay this to me a few years ago. Having your 24-year-old say, Mama, you know your mom is still abusive to you and your brothers. And I just thought, oh my God, you know, like, that was a come-to-Jesus moment that was not pleasant, right? But since writing the book, Some of the things I've discovered about her make me much more empathetic. Now I understand there's an explanation, not an excuse, for what happened to us. And unfortunately, being able to approach her with that empathy is still not safe for me. But there is a part of me that wants to do that. And, and who knows, maybe one day I could.

Yeah, forgiveness is a hard thing. I recently went through an exercise with my, my coach, and I went back and had to think through, can I really forgive this person for this thing? And it was, it was challenging. It was. And I actually, what I did, because I wrestled with it for a while, I went out and did some outreach with a few other people and said, I'm struggling with forgiveness. Have you had experiences, and I think things work in weird ways. But I ended up just having two really great conversations with individuals that made me understand that I could do it. And so, but, you know, it seems like an easy thing. Yep, I'm either going to do it or I'm not. Like, it's rationally, it seems like, yes, I guess.

But the process of trying is not— no, there's a lot of, there's a lot of twisted, turny DNA, you know, there's just so much that you have to separate before you can get to that black or white.

Right. Yeah, it's a process. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. You know, that was some, some heavier conversation. It's obviously you're, you're, you're the person you are today because of everything that you went through, and you've made the most of it. And you You're relentless, as the title of the book is, but you're also, you know, you're inspiring and you're inspiring me. I'm sitting here thinking of ways that I could continue to be a good person and share my story even. I'm questioning, I've been on a speaking tour recently and I went the soft route. I went the, let's talk about fractional life. What it's like to be a fractional person. But I had this calling when I— before I made the decision to go down a path to tell more of my story and my journey. And I'll tell you, so I just— just to give some context, I went through Global Speakers Academy.

Oh, I did the first one.

Okay, were you in this most recent one? And we were supposed to pick a, you know, pick a path, like, just, you got to pick content, you got to either go, you you just gotta pick something, right? And I didn't know what I wanted to talk about when I went in there. And I wrestled, there's a 5-day program as you went through, for 3 days, I'm like, do I talk about myself and my journey or do I talk about marketing? But while I was in the room, everybody else, and they're my target audience, if you will, they're business leaders, were much more interested in learning about fractional leadership and fractional marketing than than hearing another entrepreneurial journey story because we all have our story, right? So I put my marketing hat on. I said, okay, if the market's telling me that I need to talk about marketing, then why should I not follow that path? So I did it. I wouldn't say it's the easy way out, but it was where I was being guided. But I left that academy knowing how to present and give a talk, which I can take it and apply it to any other talk in the future. And I'm 100% confident at some point, I'll tell my other— my journey story in some way, shape, or form. And maybe it's not over yet.

So maybe that's why I'm still not— Yes, you know, talking about timing is really important. So before 4 years ago, wasn't time for me to tell my story. I hadn't developed and grown enough. And I also didn't have enough space yet, you know, before that, to, to look at my past in a way that was meaningful. And honestly, 4 years may sound like a long time to write a book. You know, you could do it in 8 months, you can do it in 10 years. 4 years still seems like a long time, but I needed that time, first of all, to discover the things that I discovered, then process them. Yeah, right. And then, you know, it And, you know, I, I teach people to write their own memoir, to how to, you know, figure out their publishing path and their marketing plan. But if somebody came to me at 25 and said, okay, I want to write my memoir, um, certainly that can be done, but will it have the— it just depends on their life, right? Their life story, their life journey. If they're growing up in a typical middle America family you know, with not terribly high or low inflection points, maybe not time yet. Yeah, you know, who am I to say? But in general, once you hit about 35, you've got enough experience under your belt to have lived, you know, a life to be able to share with others, you know, the pros and cons of the choices you've made. But by the time you're like in your 40s, you're well on your way to you know, having stuff under your belt to share with other people.

Yeah.

And then at 50, you just don't care anymore. So if you're like, I know I'm 51, and I'm like, bring it on. What do you want to know?

Yeah. Wow. So how did you, you know, are there some things about yourself that you learned that show up now when you go to work? How are you a different leader?

Because of this process? Oh, it's interesting. You know, my team, my team knows me in a, in a whole different fashion. And then they all had heard that I was writing this book, and they got inklings of what it was about. But now they have the book. So I know they're armed if they've read it. I mean, I know a couple of people have. I know for sure a couple of people have, maybe they all have. I know that they now know a deeper side of me. And we don't have to get into like a big book club discussion as a team, right? But it's kind of given me a sense of relief that people now understand, like, I'm very introverted. I'm very outgoing. And I'm, you know, I'm a performer. But in general, I spent a lot of time alone. And I felt apologetic for that. A lot of times I would come into the office at 10 and I'd be gone by 2. I'd go home and continue to work. And I thought leaders had to be present, had to be there. Well, I couldn't do it. And I felt apologetic. And then recently, I'm like, nope, now people are gonna— they may— it's not spelled out in the book, but they may understand now more intuitively why I need that time by myself. Yeah. So I don't know how it's changed me as a leader, but it's changed, you know, it's improved a couple of things that were wearing on me.

Yeah, that's good to know. What if everybody in your organization could write their own memoir? How— and share with each other? How great would that make the teamwork?

The culture. Yeah, it'd be interesting. I mean, I've— I have people as young as 23 on my team, and I'm, I'm the oldest now. I'm the oldest now, up until they're almost early 40s. I mean, our team, first of all, we're all mostly female, and, um, some of us share more than others, but, um, we are, you know, we weathered the pandemic together. So that's, you know, we shared a lot during that time.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that was a time that was the global reset. I called it at the time where everybody just took a fresh perspective on everything. Yeah. What's really important? Who am I really? Who do I want to be around? Really?

What's, what's important? Oh, God, that's so true.

That is so true. So tell me, uh, what do you do for fun?

I— okay, so I just moved to a beautiful place in the Bay Area that is, um, it's right by a waterfront. I'm looking over, I can see the water from here, and it's a community of lots of artists and just so many different walks of life and people, and we all gather naturally. Not— there's not like a, everyone come out, but we all kind of gather around. And anytime I want to feel uplifted, happy, or removed from whatever it is that I'm concentrating on, I just go outside. And there's a group of people out there with their kids and their dogs and skateboarding. So that's what I do on a daily basis for fun. On the weekends, I love to get in my kayak. I have a kayak here that I can put into the water. It's an Oru origami kayak that folds up to like a briefcase style. It's so cool. Or I have— I belong to this yacht club in Alameda, which sounds fancy and it's not. And I take a kayak from there and I can bring friends there. And I just love being on the water. If you could put me in a kayak and just shove me out in the middle of the estuary, I could just sit there in the boat. I do paddle, you know, and I do, do some of the exercise part of it, but it's so zen out there.

I just love it. Are there big waves and ships going by in that area, or is it kind of quiet?

Yeah, it's the estuary. It's the estuary between Oakland and Alameda, which is an island, and it's across the bay from San Francisco. So yes, there are big ships and there's a bunch of rowing crew boats, but we're, you know, if you're on the water and you're a small vessel, they have to take heed to you if they know what they're doing. Yeah. Um, so yeah, and I, you know, I know where to go and where not to go. If somebody is, you know, zooming by in a boat in a no-wake zone, you know, I just get perpendicular to the wave and ride it out.

Your best, yeah. Yeah, I remember I was in San Fran a few, a couple years ago, and the activity on the water is always exciting.

Oh yeah, I love to go sailing too, but that's a lot more work and a lot more—

They had people surfing in that area.

I was surprised to see. Yeah. By Golden Gate Bridge and Baker Beach in a wetsuit.

Yeah, there was a lot of wetsuits.

It did not look warm. However, there are people, and it's amazing to me, at the Dolphin Club in San Francisco at the foot of Ghirardelli Square, there is a swim club and people swim every day out in that little part of the bay with no wetsuit. And do you know who the people are that are the most most frequent are people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Really? No wetsuit because they've been doing it their whole life.

Yeah, they're just used to it.

It's not, not as big of a shock.

Crazy to me. I won't even set foot in my shower when it's lukewarm. It's got to be steaming hot. Yeah, I did hear that a friend of mine was telling me that the there's a whole trend of taking cold showers.

I don't know if you heard of that, or ice. Oh yes, the Wim Hof, the ice baths.

It's definitely a thing. It's supposed to increase your circulation. And we were— that's the way we were, you know, our genes are supposed to be colder. I don't know, I don't believe it. I'm like, I, Chris, I'm not going to get in a cold shower. I get my shower because I want a warm shower. I'm not going to turn it cold.

Not going to be— maybe at the end for fun, for like a split second. Or maybe just because it's ran out of hot water because I've been there so long. Yeah, I see you have children's photos up there, so you might have a water shortage at some point if you're last in line.

Yeah, we had, uh, 4 at home for a while there. Uh, it was actually— I think we had a nice hot water heater. It kept up pretty good.

Pretty good.

Yes. Good. Well, I've really enjoyed our conversation today.

Thank you.

Me too. Yeah. If people want to reach out to you, uh, get connected, what's the— we'll have the show notes, but what's the simplest way?

The simplest way is through my website. I'm going to give you the URL. It's officialnatashamiller.com. And if you'd like to know why it has to say official on it, just send me an email and I'll give you that backstory.

Oh, leaving something to lure us into a little more conversation. That's funny. So Well, great. Well, I will, I look forward to sharing this, the podcast. I am gonna, I'm deciding whether I should take your advice and do the audiobook, or just get the book. And I'm going to be on a plane for a long time, 12 hours, I think maybe the audiobook might just be an easy way to sit back and enjoy. So I'm gonna go down that path. And catch up with you that way.

And then when I get back, I'll— I'd love to hear from you about what your takeaway was from it.

For sure. I'd love to share. Well, thanks again. And thanks to our listeners. If you want to reach out to the official Natasha Miller, you can certainly do that on her website. And we'll have that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much. And that's a wrap.

There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at FractionalCSuiteRetreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at Y-O-R-C-M-O dot com. Your CMO dot com.

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