♻️ Pivoting Your Business Away From Social Media — with Natalie Ross of Earth Speak

Amelia [00:00:02] [Music begins to play, overlapping with introduction to the episode] Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Amelia [00:00:08] I'm Amelia Hruby, writer, speaker, and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. On this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia [00:00:22] Download your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all Off the Grid [music jams and fades out].

Amelia [00:00:38] Hello, hello friends. Welcome or welcome back to Off the Grid, a podcast about running an online business with no or minimal social media presence.

Amelia [00:00:48] I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds and today I've got a great guest I am so excited for you to meet, but before I introduce her, I want to remind you about the free resource I've created to go alongside this show.

Amelia [00:01:01] The Leaving Social Media Toolkit includes three tools for, you guessed it, leaving social media. Inside you'll find my five-step plan for leaving any social media platform, my list of 100 Ways to Share Your Work Off Social Media, and a super useful database for organizing creative marketing experiments. It's a great resource. It's been downloaded— geez by— I think, over a thousand people at this point, and it is totally free. Just head to softersounds.studio/byeig, that's b-y-e-i-g to download it today. It is all linked in the show notes so go grab it, my friends.

Amelia [00:01:37] Let's get on to today's episode. So, today on the podcast, I've got Natalie Ross with me to talk about pivoting your business away from social media. Natalie is the co-founder of Earth Speak, which is a gorgeous podcast and membership collective she created with Shawna Cason. Together they grew Earth Speak to over six figures in annual revenue and millions of podcast downloads.

Amelia [00:01:59] And then, Natalie decided to pivot her business focus. Now she helps magical and intuitive business owners craft compelling offers that convey the value of their work while growing confidence to put themselves out there. She blends her background in soil science, journalism, entrepreneurship, clairvoyance, and trauma healing to help her clients create offers that are unlike anything out there.

Amelia [00:02:19] When she's not working, she's probably on the beach with her husband, hiking in the redwoods, or hanging out with rescue bunnies at the shelter, potentially the cutest activity of all time [laughs]. Natalie's on the podcast today because she sent me this really great email with the subject, "Fuck that shit. My life is not fuel for an algorithm or filling Zuck's pockets," [laughs] so I am really excited for everywhere this conversation is about to take us.

Amelia [00:02:44] Hi Natalie. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Natalie [00:02:47] Hi Amelia. I love that you shared that [laughs and Amelia joins in]

Amelia [00:02:50] When I got the email I was like, "Hell yeah, we're going in," and it was great. More people should send emails like that [laughs].

Natalie [00:02:56] I know, right? Like, just say what you want to say.

Amelia [00:02:59] Yeah.

Natalie [00:02:59] People try to, like, button themselves up into like [using a funny voice], "This is the formula and I should da da da da da," Like, no, just be yourself.

Amelia [00:03:04] Yeah, exactly. The perfect entry into today's conversation, I think. So, I really want to start by talking about Earth Speak and this business that you co-founded and grew and podcast you still run. So, can you tell us the story of, like, how did it begin and how did it grow and where has it ended up now?

Natalie [00:03:27] Oh my gosh.

Amelia [00:03:29] I know, long story—

Natalie [00:03:30] But I can condense. We're going to do the condensed version. So, I was a soil science— in a soil science master's degree program, doing a lot of research on, like, driving on the road, going on— I was on farms, extracting gas from the soils to measure nitrous oxide emissions, which are a greenhouse gas and da da da da.

Natalie [00:03:50] So, I was, like, hardcore into just doing science. A lot of alone time, a lot of time just out there in the field, in the lab, in the car, whatever, and listening to podcasts all the time. And this is back in, like, early— mid 2000s and I guess that was like 2013. But I started listening to podcasts way before then [laughs softly], and I just listen to so many podcasts about marketing, and podcasts about making podcasts, and all kinds of stuff.

Natalie [00:04:20] And I was into it and I was like, "I don't know why I'm into this. Like, I'm a scientist. This is weird," but I just loved it. And I was having a conversation with one of my little sisters— I have four little sisters. I'm the oldest and one of 'em— her name's Lizzie Ross. She was living in Tennessee at the time and I was in North Carolina and we were having a conversation on the phone one summer day about how we felt like there was more to nature than just things, like we felt intimately connected with nature and we had both had really psychic and intuitive experiences in our lives, and we had, kind of, dabbled and explored that, but we hadn't even talked about it that much with each other, much less other people.

Natalie [00:05:01] So, we were wondering, on the phone, we were like, "How can we learn more about this? And like how this can impact and play into our lives, how we can, like, bring this more alive and put it into practice in our lives. Like this must be— there must be more than what we see with our naked eyes and what we're told."

Natalie [00:05:17] And back at that— back in the day [Amelia laughs], it was before there were like thousands and thousands of podcasts about nature and intuition— and so, there was, like, three podcasts that I listened to, which kind of were adjacent. They weren't even it.

Natalie [00:05:30] And after we had this conversation, I was like, "Why don't we start a podcast?" And we started the podcast that we wanted to hear. We wanted to talk to people. We wanted to ask people questions about their lives, like I wanted to know real things about their lives in their weird, energetic, subtle experiences, and their intuition and their connection with nature and their journeys through the dark night of the soul. I wanted to know it all. And so, that's how it started.

Natalie [00:05:53] And fast forward, Lizzie's a musician— Violet Bell— Lizzie Ross, and she veered off from doing the podcast and she went to do her music full-time. And I kept the podcast going and met up with Shawna Cason, who is my work wife, life wife [Amelia chuckles]. We are— I love her so much. And we had this vision together. We're like— I actually had put out a call. I was like, "I'm looking for a show notes writer." And she applied. I was like, "Okay, this person is, like, not the show notes writer, but she's something."

Natalie [00:06:23] And so, we talked and we just haven't stopped talking since [laughs lightly] and we had this vision— we're like, "We want to create—"

Natalie [00:06:30] You know, I was out there podcasting and it's just this one-way broadcast and I love hanging out with people. Like, my favorite moments of being on the call with someone talking or going on a walk with someone, like I like the actual act of engaging and connecting and being in that moment and this one way broadcast I felt— still felt so alone and isolated and like—

Amelia [00:06:50] Mmhm.

Natalie [00:06:50] There's so much more connection that we can cultivate. And we both had this vision for creating a space where people like us could come together and learn and share and grow and practice our weird earth-based spirituality and practice things like clairvoyant readings and learn about healing in non-dogmatic ways and all of this.

Natalie [00:07:09] So we created it and that's became— that became— we changed— my podcast used to be called Dream Freedom Beauty and we changed the name to Earth Speak, brought her on as an owner, got all legal about it, and everything, and created this membership.

Natalie [00:07:21] And we actually beta-tested our membership for almost a year before we really launched it. It just was the right place, right time, because by the time we were ready to really put some fuel on the fire, the pandemic was happening, everything was shutting down, and everyone was going online. And we had already cultivated this, like, nest for people to come land and engage and be together. And it changed the trajectory of my life and the trajectory of the pandemic for me and our members. And it gave us a space to not go completely crazy [laughs lightly] in this experience.

Amelia [00:07:54] Yeah.

Natalie [00:07:54] So, that's the condensed version.

Amelia [00:07:56] Yeah. So, tell me, like, how does social media play into that? Like, when did—

Natalie [00:08:00] Oh yeah.

Amelia [00:08:00] Earth Speak get on Instagram? Yeah, how did that all go?

Natalie [00:08:04] [Laughs] So, back when my sister and I conceived of this podcast idea, this was like 2015 and I had already been on social media. I have a background as a photographer and I had a project photographing small, organic, local farms and I would post on there and I had been a guest photographer on Modern Farms, I think that's there called— the magazine. And it was really cool and I had like grown all these followers from being a guest on their account. And I was like, "Wow, there's a lot— there's something here. Like, this— that was really cool."

Natalie [00:08:37] And so, having listened to all these podcasts about podcasting and about marketing, I was like, "Okay," I came up with a rough but something of a plan. And I was like, "Okay, we need to somehow share what we're doing with people." And so, we created— before we even created a podcast, we created an Instagram account for Dream Freedom Beauty, and just started from zero and reached out to people and were like, "Hey, if you post about us, we'll post about you." And we tried to make little quote posts and we posted about ourselves. And I had my husband— [laughs] my dear husband— had him try to take photos of me and my sister [Amelia laughs] that we could use and like—

Amelia [00:09:14] Of course.

Natalie [00:09:15] Some of them were really cute, but oh my gosh, we really tried to like, do it, you know, and it did kind of work. But I don't know [sighs], we didn't grow that fast. I honestly like— I don't know. I'm thinking back to that time and thinking like, "How do you— how does anyone, like, get traction?"

Natalie [00:09:32] Because I am not someone who just wants to share all of my life online and I am not— I have a very limited capacity too. I have chronic pain and different mental illnesses and things that really limit my ability to, like, show up and be present and be consistent and all these things.

Natalie [00:09:47] But we kept doing it and because of the guests we brought on, we kept getting exposed to other people's audiences and then they came over and listened to us, and join— and followed our social media and joined our email list. And we just kind of kept growing like that and eventually, like we got to the 10,000 mark or something, I was like, "Whoa, this is cool. What are we gonna do now?" I'm like-- I don't know this. [Amelia laughs] I haven't thought about my early days of social media so long.

Amelia [00:10:17] Yeah, I know. I mean, what I'm hearing you say is a trajectory I'm somewhat familiar with through podcasting. And, you know, being on— a millennial on Instagram, which is— it was both, like, a lot of work. And also, you were somewhat an early adopter, at least in the podcasting area that you're in and that allowed you to get bigger guests who at the time were not guests on a lot of podcasts. So, then they actually shared your interviews that you did, and then that would bring more people to your platform and eventually it grew.

Amelia [00:10:49] I think now you have something like 35,000 followers. So, when did it move from being just like, "We're a podcast with, you know, an Instagram following—" Your sister left. You meet Shawna, you kind of decide like, "Okay, now we're a podcast with an Instagram following and we're going to start this membership collective."

Amelia [00:11:09] Tell us a little more about, like, how it became a business and the business ecosystem piece and then what role was social media playing in, like, was it growing your audience? Was it bringing new people your way? Like, how were you thinking of it then?

Speaker 3 [00:11:21] I mean, it was central and you bring a really good point— like we were an early adopter in the podcast world and we were on Instagram before the, you know, modern what we like to call algorithms. You know, it was—

Amelia [00:11:31] Mmhm.

Natalie [00:11:31] Still a chronological feed [laughs].

Amelia [00:11:33] Yeah, totally.

Natalie [00:11:34] Back In the old days [laughs and Amelia joins]. Yeah. And, like, our fifth guest was Chani Nicholas, and she didn't— we hadn't even published anything yet. She didn't know who we were. We did— you know, like, my sister was on her email list— was like, "I like this person. We should interview them." And I was like, "Cool," you know?

Amelia [00:11:50] Yeah.

Natalie [00:11:50] But Instagram was huge. Instagram is what showed me that there were other weird, witchy people like me out there who were into the same aesthetics I was into, who weren't, like, Wiccan and nothing wrong with being Wiccan, but I'm not Wiccan—

Amelia [00:12:06] Mmhm.

Natalie [00:12:06] And I'm not like— ah, just this, like, whole New Age world especially— it's changed a lot since then. But back then I was like, "[Sighs] I just don't resonate with these people." And then, I saw on Instagram people who are, like, learning how to start fires from rubbing sticks together and they're, like, in beautiful skirts and like, you know, I'm like, "Who are these weirdos out there doing these weird nature things and talking about spirit?"

Natalie [00:12:27] I was like, "Okay, there are people out there and I am going to fucking find them." [Amelia laughs heartily] Like, that was— like, I am not going to be this—

Amelia [00:12:36] Yeah.

Natalie [00:12:36] Hot pink pants wearing, eyeliner wearing, solo freak in the halls of a southern institution with old white men teaching, which I do appreciate them, but I was definitely not the tobacco chewing, camo wearing norm of [Amelia laughs] my environment, you know.

Amelia [00:12:53] Absolutely not.

Natalie [00:12:55] [Sighs] So, yeah, it was a huge role in showing me there are other people and that's where we would go to find guests. And, I think, because of our own following too eventually people saw that and saw that— oh, they would be compelled to come on our show because we have a platform, we have an audience.

Natalie [00:13:10] Eventually, when the pandemic hit, I decided to run Facebook ads and ohhh wow— that was amazing. That's where we went from, like, 20 to 37K and that was all a byproduct. I was selling workshops. I was just selling— we would bring on guest teachers to teach workshops every month, and then I would run the ads to sell those workshops. But then, the byproduct of that was we would get so many new members in our membership, we would get so many new followers, podcast listeners, everything. And you know, we had already grown something up to that point, but that, like, in a matter of months amplified it— doubled.

Amelia [00:13:52] Wow.

Natalie [00:13:52] So, yeah, it was pretty nuts. And that was a really unique time in ads too. I feel like I've been a lot of right place, right time and I'm willing to take risks and I have kind of privilege and background to be able to take certain risks, too.

Amelia [00:14:05] So, now we've got another piece of the story. So, you had all this organic growth from being one of the earlier podcasts in this space, which I think you're right, is like— a space so many of us want to— I'm so glad you exist. I'm glad you stepped into that.

Amelia [00:14:19] You get the organic growth, the guests help you grow, and then you start running Facebook ads to sell these workshops that you've been doing, and then you have the membership collective. So, that kind of paints, for me, this picture then of how you grew Earth Speak to a six-figure business.

Natalie [00:14:37] Yes. Mmhm.

Amelia [00:14:39] And it sounds like then, you know, content is key in that piece, like the fact that you're active on social media, you're posting, you're promoting what you're posting, you're making this podcast, you're promoting that, you're— and then your offerings are the workshops and the membership. That's kind of your, like, business marketing ecosystem—

Natalie [00:14:54] Exactly.

Amelia [00:14:54] In my— my, like, way of thinking of the world. So, you know, I think many of our listeners, like, that's the business they dream of [laughs] and they're like, "Yes, that's exactly what I would like." But for you, you know, we know, like, eventually that started to not feel so great or it wasn't working as well.

Amelia [00:15:12] So, tell me— like when you reached out to me, you kind of described it as, like, a content hamster wheel that was really burning you out. So— so tell me about like what shifted from that moment of, like, "Facebook ads are working great and we've grown and everything's amazing,” to like, "I do not love this and something has to change." Like, what [Natalie chuckles] happened there?

Natalie [00:15:30] Oh, [Amelia laughs] Oh, okay. Big thing was we had wanted to create Earth Speak in a way where we could honor our creative impulse and not put it into any sort of schedule or box of arbitrary consistency. And we have kind of meandered through that. And I will say it was authentic to be— in the beginning to be on the content hamster wheel. It was a thrill ride. It's exciting. It's fun. And the growth, it's a huge high and— [takes a deep breath] eventually though— and it was a weird time, too, because of the pandemic and the membership itself brought us teachers and workshops and guests and conversations and experiences with each other in the community that brought me to somatic trauma healing, which I've been doing for, like, three years now and I'm actually being trained in somatic experiencing, which is a modality of that.

Natalie [00:16:43] And it brought us so many other somatic and trauma healing resources and support that through the very work we were doing in our business, I realized that the business we had built was built on a trauma response.

Amelia [00:17:03] Mmm.

Natalie [00:17:03] Even though it felt so spirit-aligned and it was my soul work, there was another piece and it was not sustainable because of the trauma it was built on. And that trauma was trauma around me feeling like it was so, so triggering for me to actually receive money and pay myself for products, for services, for anything I was giving.

Natalie [00:17:26] I just felt like I had to just give and the only way that it would be justified for me to receive money, enough money for me to survive or thrive and pay myself would be if I could solve someone's— every problem someone has in their life. And that's a direct reflection of, like, my early childhood unhealthy relationships with my caretakers.

Amelia [00:17:48] Mmm.

Natalie [00:17:48] And this trauma response has— echoes throughout my life. And that pattern got interrupted and my life had to completely change. It was a slow burn to an overnight change.

Amelia [00:17:59] I mean, first of all, thank you for sharing. I feel like it's obviously such a personal experience, but I also feel like so many people listening it will start to unpack for them slash myself included slash all of us, like how our— you know, we build our businesses from our own experiences and often that means that our trauma is embedded within them, and that means that we're building our livelihood [laughs softly] on these foundations that can be inherently triggering for us or inherently challenging for us, or that we have to heal if we want to keep building on them, or that we have to like have our, you know, tower moment and totally deconstruct if we want to build something else that could actually be a new foundation for us.

Amelia [00:18:43] So, I'm wondering how does the content creation play into that for you? Like, I hear you on the— the sort of trauma response of, like, not being able to accept money. Maybe like— can you just talk a little bit more about, like, how content was a piece of that?

Natalie [00:19:00] Yes.

Amelia [00:19:00] Yeah, I'd love to hear.

Natalie [00:19:01] In realizing that this business was built on a trauma response, it's like a can't unsee. Once you see, you can't—

Amelia [00:19:08] Mmhm.

Natalie [00:19:08] Unsee, and then you see it everywhere [laughs lightly]. Oh, I am trying to do something impossible in my exchange, in my financial transactions with my customers. I'm trying to do something impossible in terms of, you know, my trauma had me believing that I had to solve all their problems in order for it to be okay for me to actually receive money and be nourished from them.

Natalie [00:19:35] And that's impossible. It's just is— I can't solve all their problems and it's not reasonable, nor is that a healthy relationship or expectation to put on someone. And I saw this same dynamic happening with Instagram and I was like, "Oh, we're all posting. And instead of actually seeking connection, we are trying to appease, people please, fawn to this invisible algorithm with its invisible rules that are always changing and that we can never win. This is an impossible target to hit. And when we do hit it, it feels so good that we feel justified in trying to hit it again. But then we feel devastated when we don't."

Natalie [00:20:23] And for me— like for someone who doesn't have a history of trauma, it might feel completely different. But for me, like my relationship with social media is a toxic relationship. It feels like a toxic relationship with a manipulative, narcissistic abusive person. I don't want to play this game anymore. It was like— I love having conversations with people. I love connecting with people, but I cannot keep doing this and chasing this invisible goalpost.

Amelia [00:20:56] Mm. Yeah, that really resonates with so much that I've shared on this show and that people have come on and shared too of just, like, this toxic relationship we get with these platforms and their algorithms and [chuckles wearily] our desires for, you know, the success that they promise and their withholding of that success.

Natalie [00:21:14] Yeah.

Amelia [00:21:14] And even when we get that success, then we're just supposed to desire more, like that sort of sense of there's never enough, there's no such thing as enough on social media.

Natalie [00:21:23] Yes.

Amelia [00:21:23] In that moment you saw it. You can't unsee it. Slow burn. It's like an overnight decision. So— so what happened next? You have this realization, you're like, "I can't keep growing Earth Speak through social media. It's not going to work. I have to figure out how to receive money so I can support myself." So, where— where do you go from that eyes open realization?

Natalie [00:21:44] Yeah, and I will say it was from that realization to actually being able to do something different was many months and many painful months of—

Amelia [00:21:53] Mmm.

Natalie [00:21:54] Uncertainty, unknowing, grief, defeat—

Amelia [00:21:57] Yeah.

Natalie [00:21:57] Confusion. It was hard. And I had a breakthrough moment where something came through to me that I just— it was like— had been— it had been there all along, but I hadn't been able to receive it or see it or follow that thread until this moment. And it came from actually being in a couples therapy [chuckles lightly] session with my husband.

Natalie [00:22:23] And we were talking about, gosh, I don't even remember— it's been a while now and I don't even remember what we're talking about [laughs] but the end result was that through our conversation I felt seen and supported in one of my core wounds and by my husband in a way that I had never felt in my entire life by anyone before.

Natalie [00:22:45] And it shifted something in me. I say it reached that critical mass of safety where all this time I had been acting in a trauma response and feeling, you know, like my survival instincts were really threatened and I was always on guard and on watch and I couldn't just settle into the moment, the present moment, and engage with what was in front of me. And through this session and his support, something shifted, something clicked and I— oh, I remember what it was— we were talking about how I felt like if I earned money, it wouldn't even be mine to do what I wanted with anyway, so why bother?

Natalie [00:23:21] And he was like, "No, your money can be your money. We don't have to do what I want to do with it. We can do what you want to do with it." And I was like— [gasps] like it changed everything for me. And it wasn't the content of what he said. I mean, it was in a way, but it was also the way I was being met and received with my unique set of wounding and trauma and disempowerment and feeling seen and supported and safe and nurtured for the first time. It was like this was like the final pin that tumbled this tower. It was the— [laughs] the tower had been crumbling, but it was like, "Okay, the tower is now completely crumbled and I can rebuild."

Natalie [00:24:02] And it was so psychedelic because within a week or two, I was doing a new business and I had clients and I hadn't even advertised. I was like, "What is [Amelia laughs] happening?" And I am very mystical and I do feel like my— my own journey of going from being in a threat response to finding safety does track with when I do find that place of safety within, then I can see and receive the opportunities outside of me. And they came. It was so cool.

Natalie [00:24:34] [Takes a deep breath] So, I got an email from someone who had been an advertiser on the Earth Speak podcast and they were like, "I really loved working with you when we did the advertising," like just my consultations with them during the advertising, they learned so much just from me getting— you know, helping them put together their ad. They were like, "Can you help me with my business?"

Natalie [00:24:53] I was like, "Yes, I could." [Amelia chuckles] And so, I crafted an offer and they were like, "This is great." And then, another person wanted advertising with Earth Speak but I could see in their— their content that they were just not connecting the dots from content to sales.

Natalie [00:25:05] They had all this— these amazing products for sale, they had all this amazing knowledge, and they just assumed that if they talked about this knowledge, people would buy their products. I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We got to do like— there's a few tweaks that if you do this in your approach, you're going to get way more value than being an advertiser."

Natalie [00:25:21] And they were like, "Oh my god, this is literally the answer to my prayers." Okay— [Amelia laughs] and so— and then, I had an idea and I reached— I had one person that I had worked with before, and I reached out to her. I was like, "Hey, I think I'm going to get back into this work. Do you want to do this?" And I made her an offer and she was like, "Hell, yes." And so, then I was, like, fully booked, I had reached my income goal. I was like, "What's happening? This is freakin' nuts."

Natalie [00:25:41] And it was more alive and energized and it was all just through direct connection, of course, byproducts of having been on social media, having been— built this whole thing with Earth Speak, but still it was, like, my direct emails with people— not— I didn't even post about it— I had been— it was completely underground for, like, a year before I even was like [using a goofy voice], "Hey, yeah, people I do this thing."

Amelia [00:26:01] Yeah, well, I love everything— I love— I love everything you're sharing [laughs heartily].

Natalie [00:26:06] Thanks [laughs].

Amelia [00:26:06] I think there's so much to the ways that our, like, healing journeys can be reflected in our outer world. I love that this, like, big moment in your healing came in relationship with—

Natalie [00:26:21] [Whispers] Yeah.

Amelia [00:26:21] Your husband, that it happened, you know, through therapy. Like, it wasn't simply just like, "Oh, I need to go, like, be alone by myself in the woods and fix myself and that I can come back and be a person and a business owner." Like, no, you really had to do it all in relationship. I think that's an important moment of it there. And then, the ways that, yes, these opportunities, kind of, are arising for you, but also, you know, you're just— it's all happening through relationships and relationship marketing, not content marketing and social media.

Amelia [00:26:50] Like this new business that you've— you're creating something that's built off of the relationships that you've formed through a successful, like, content career. But now you're moving— or you're just functioning in a different way that takes you out of that trauma response, out of that content hamster wheel, out of that, like, over-giving over-providing.

Natalie [00:27:10] Hundred percent.

Amelia [00:27:15] [Music begins to play as Amelia reads an ad] Hi, Off the Grid listeners. Amelia here, interrupting our conversation today because I want to share with you one of my favorite marketing tools. When I left Instagram, I invited all of my followers to subscribe to my mailing list in order to keep in touch with me, and I promised to send them monthly-ish notes on a lot of the themes I used to talk about on social media. I've used many email service providers in my day, but my favorite of all of them is Flodesk. Flodesk is a gorgeous, easy-to-use email service provider. It helps you create beautiful, thoughtful emails. And even better, it's really set up to help you create easy-to-use landing pages so people can join your list and workflows so you can automate sending messages to folks who sign up through different pages. Flodesk is how I run all of the welcome sequences and lead magnets at Softer Sounds. It's also how I run the Leaving Social Media Toolkit that you might have downloaded after listening to this podcast. I'm surely not sending those emails out myself manually. Flodesk is doing all of that automagically. If you'd like to give Flodesk a try, please use my affiliate link below in the show notes. You'll get a discount. I'll get a kickback and we will all send our beautiful emails together. Again, check out the affiliate link in the show notes. For now, we're going to get back to this episode of Off the Grid [music fades out].

Amelia [00:28:47] Your business ecosystem now— like what's up at Earth Speak? And you just gave us some examples of things you've worked on with people, but tell us more what your personal marketing businesses is like now too so folks can hear about it.

Natalie [00:29:00] [Sighs] I have messenger pigeons [Amelia laughs] and crows and I send them out every day at Crow o'clock. I just squawk and they go squawk it across the world and the right people come back. It's great.

Amelia [00:29:09] Obviously [laughs heartily].

Natalie [00:29:12] Really— oh my gosh [laughs]. It is all through relationship. With Earth Speak, Shawna and I decided to not try to make it our livelihood. We still have a membership and there's still— we shifted it to be within our capacity as we focus on other things and she is now a floral designer in West Palm Beach, Florida, in this super ritzy shop. She's a [Amelia laughs] freaking amazing floral designer.

Natalie [00:29:44] And I shifted into my coaching business and we put Earth Speak on hiatus where we needed to go into the, like, chrysalis mode of melting into mush again and just see what does this business— what does this thing we've created and co-created with each other and with our community and with spirit and nature— what does it want to become?

Natalie [00:30:07] Because that's how we started it in the first place too, which I didn't mention is Shawna and I would both get together on the— on Zoom and tap into connecting with the spirit of Earth Speak itself. And there was this whole, like, Earth Speak spirit council of these like nature beings and things that we felt connected to. And we would speak with that to inform what to do in our business and ask for support. And we would speak to our community and ask them what do they want and what do they want to create. And we've been in relationship with our business and with each other and with our community.

Amelia [00:30:39] Yeah.

Natalie [00:30:39] And so, we went back into mush mode— chrysalis— what is the— we had to compost what we had created and give it time to break down. And only now are we starting to— the food scraps are turning into really nice, rich compost and we're starting to peek our heads out from hiatus.

Natalie [00:30:59] Shawna and I have been talking this whole time, still connecting, still engaging in our relationship, and we have monthly calls with our community, but we stopped doing the workshops and stuff and scaled back the investment of the membership. And we are now emerging.

Natalie [00:31:14] We're letting ourselves follow the energy of what wants to be created. And I love that we're no longer putting pressure on Earth Speak to be our livelihood, because then it can be that— more of that, more of the space that we co-create and play and explore.

Amelia [00:31:30] I mean, it also just strikes me as really brave. That's not necessarily a word you've used, but I just find like pausing, stepping back, and deciding to compost something you've built to be a really brave moment and I really appreciate you sharing it and, like, sharing this story with us of realizing that like this— you know, you again, like you have built this membership that's like supporting both of you and it's become this thing that's much bigger than yourselves.

Amelia [00:31:58] And then, you pause and you say, "This actually isn't benefiting ourselves anymore. It's not working. It's built on this trauma response that I need to heal," and to be able to then instead of just, like, grinding it out and forcing it to make even more money, do even more for you, dissociating even further from your creative impulse, you really were able to, like, be in conversation with yourself and each other. It also didn't mean you shut it all down, right? Like, you didn't have a sort of like—

Natalie [00:32:27] Right.

Amelia [00:32:27] Avoidant— you didn't have a separate trauma response of like, "Oh, it's not working. Let me just like—"

Natalie [00:32:30] Burn it to the ground.

Amelia [00:32:31] "Can it." [Laughs] Exactly. Burn it to the ground or, like, totally ghost it or, like, you were able to—

Natalie [00:32:37] I did ghost it a little bit.

Amelia [00:32:38] Well, that's fine [laughs].

Natalie [00:32:38] I mean, we didn't do this perfectly. We did— I will say we— in the, kind of, death throes where we realized we had to compost it. We did have parts where we did try to push and we did try to be like, "Can we make this work? Can we fix this? Can we make it work?" And it was through kind of burning out all of our fuel that we came to the burn out. But that was the breakthrough.

Amelia [00:33:01] Yeah.

Natalie [00:33:01] And it sucked [laughs].

Amelia [00:33:01] Yeah.

Natalie [00:33:02] But it was what needed to happen.

Amelia [00:33:04] No, I really appreciate that— you sharing that, too. It's like— it's not that [chuckles] we had this perfect method for composting a project.

Natalie [00:33:11] Yeah, we were very messy.

Amelia [00:33:12] Compost is always messy, you know?

Natalie [00:33:13] Yeah.

Amelia [00:33:13] It's kinda gross [laughs].

Natalie [00:33:13] That's the point of it, right?

Amelia [00:33:15] Exactly. That's exactly the point. Okay. So, you're doing that with Earth Speak as you're growing your marketing business. So, tell us what you're up to in your work now and like— also like how folks can connect with you if they want to be part of that side of your work.

Natalie [00:33:29] It's funny because I've been in another mush stage with it now that I've been doing it for a year and a half. But basically, I help energy-led entrepreneurs take that expansiveness of their intangible gifts and translate them into a tangible form of an offer that they feel confident and comfortable putting out there in the world. And I help them process, compost, and everything those reactions that make it feel so scary to put themselves out there.

Natalie [00:34:00] And I help them compost those ideas that they think that they have to be on social media or they have to do this thing or they have to do that thing, and instead that— those are all coming from threat responses which could be rooted in trauma. And instead, I help them come into the present moment of what wants to emerge from them and where is the connection already flowing and how do they tend to that and amplify that and what's really authentic and in their capacity and feels safe enough for them to say yes to and invite people into this kind of experience with them.

Natalie [00:34:34] Because I think there's so many even— you know, people who are really talented practitioners and healers and service providers still have a hard time explaining what they do in a way that honors the energy and aliveness of it instead of just— and they think they have to put themselves into this formula of here's this format it has to take and what I have to say and like, yeah, there are structures and frameworks and strategies— I love all those things, but I love them in service of connection, not let's force ourselves into these boxes and then we have to check the box and put ourselves on Instagram and put ourselves on here and do this and that. It's like, no, what— what's actually alive for you and do that?

Amelia [00:35:16] Yeah.

Natalie [00:35:16] Whoa. Totally different.

Amelia [00:35:19] [Chuckles softly] Yeah, I mean, I love that so much. It really aligns with what I am always saying on Off the Grid, which is like, "You have to market your business, but you have full authority—"

Natalie [00:35:28] Yeah.

Amelia [00:35:28] "And agency in how you do that."

Natalie [00:35:30] [Whispers] Yes.

Amelia [00:35:30] And I'm always reminding people like, "You don't get to opt out of marketing entirely if you want to, like, make money [giggles]," but you don't have to do any particular thing. I love your thread of following what's alive.

Amelia [00:35:41] I also really love— just to highlight something— like the focus on trauma repair in your work, because something I see often working with clients, we can come up with the smartest, best, most effective offering that everybody wants to buy from them. But if there's something inside of it that like is creating or caused by a trauma response, like you won't be able to share it or you won't be able to get it out there, or you won't be able to actually let people buy it or let enough people buy it.

Amelia [00:36:08] And I see this— like it— it's always kind of heartbreaking for me. And I don't have the somatic background or expertise to share and support people through, but it's so needed, like, being in business brings up any and all money trauma we have, any and all avoidant or anxious attachment issues we have [laughs]. Like, all of that comes up.

Amelia [00:36:28] So, I think it's a really— I just wanted to share— I think it's a really beautiful, like, marriage in what you're doing, like, both the business strategy, offering design, marketing support, and the like— but also, we need to deal with what's coming up, like, in your body and in your mind and in your— in all of you as you do that. It's just so important

Natalie [00:36:44] Hundred percent. I'm over— people can't see it, but I'm over here [Amelia laughs] just nodding my head. I'm like, "Yesss!"

Amelia [00:36:48] You are. [Amelia and Natalie laugh] You're like, "I'm going to get nauseous from how much I'm nodding at this."

Natalie [00:36:51] It's— it's just so true. You know, you could have the best thing and have the greatest idea and be so excited about it and see the whole pathway there and have the aha moment and know exactly what steps you need to take. And then, why can't you take them? There's some sort of threat response—

Amelia [00:37:07] Mmm.

Natalie [00:37:07] And your survival instincts are saying something's not safe. And that's what I help people do, is I help navigate those tiny, energetic, subtle threads through very embodied, tangible methods in your nervous system, in your body. But also, I bring in my clairvoyance and my intuition. It's always part of everything I bring to everything.

Natalie [00:37:25] I can't not— and I help people find that ability to navigate those threat responses themselves so that they don't depend on me, but they can see, "Oh wow, this is what's happening." Because it's so bizarre that in our society, this isn't just the normal understanding baseline of like Kindergarten 101 of like, "Hey, your body has threat responses and they determine everything that you think and feel and act on." And if you are— you know, we don't even have that reality check of is this a threat response or my feeling safe and connected, like this should be just, like, core baseline 101— Life 101.

Amelia [00:38:05] Yeah, I know.

Natalie [00:38:06] And it's not!

Amelia [00:38:07] I know. Like, we don't learn any nervous system regulation skills ever. [Natalie sighs] It's really [Amelia takes a deep breath]—

Natalie [00:38:13] Right.

Amelia [00:38:14] Devastating for all of us. To, kind of, bring this all back to social media, as we start to wrap it up, I think something that really drew me to your work when you first reached out is connected to exactly this. And you were kind of writing to me about the way— it's and something I'd say about on the podcast all the time is that like, "In our business, if we want to make money and I think being a business involves making money, we need to be able to sell our offerings. And I think the best sales come from like authentic, vulnerable connections with other people."

Amelia [00:38:42] But so many of us have such trauma responses to that, such threat responses, as you're saying, to this idea of actually connecting or selling that I think we hide behind social media because it's more familiar and it's easier to be in this sort of relationship with the algorithm. It's almost like easier to be in a toxic relationship with the algorithm than to try to be in an authentic relationship with potential clients or customers or community members.

Amelia [00:39:11] And you had written in your initial email to me, like, things that started to spool that out. And I was like, "Yes, this is exactly it." And so, how do you teach people to make those genuine connections through their businesses, and how do you support people in feeling safe to do that?

Natalie [00:39:29] [Laughs] I'm laughing because I have people talk to people.

Amelia [00:39:33] Mmm. [Laughs] Of course.

Natalie [00:39:34] It's so simple. It's so simple, but it's not right. It's like [gasps]— and I mentioned earlier, somatic experiencing is this modality where I'm trained to track where someone else's nervous system is and to help guide them from that threat response back down to a space of safety, ease, calm, feeling connected.

Natalie [00:39:55] That's the missing link, you know, we've talked a lot about compost in the show, and I think this is another thing is, like, we have these threat responses, but then we don't come back down from them. We don't compost all that energy back into, you know, renewable energy. And we get stuck there. And I help people recognize when they're stuck there and learn how to come back down, discharge, shift that energy— and you can't force it.

Natalie [00:40:17] It's something that you have to learn how to work with the instinctual animal of your body with. It's something that's so automatic in your body that your conscious mind can support. It's like we're always breathing. We don't have to think about breathing, but we can think about, I'm going to breathe now [takes a deep breath].

Natalie [00:40:33] So, it's kind of the same thing with these threat responses and whether we feel threatened or safe. It's always happening and we can't force it one way or another, but we can support and guide our bodies through these waves. And it's good, we're supposed to have threat responses, like this is how we survive, but we're not supposed to get stuck in them.

Amelia [00:40:52] Mmm.

Natalie [00:40:52] And that's what I help people recognize real-time. Where is that happening in their body, in their business, in their interactions, in the way that they're structuring their offer, in the way that they're reaching out and engaging with other people to attract the right people to their offer?

Natalie [00:41:09] It's so core to every little moment of relationship with others and learning to recognize. And it's called regulation. Learning to recognize when you're regulated, which is safe, ease, settled, calm, or dysregulated, which is, like, anxious or exhausted, procrastinating, perfectionism, you know, all those things we don't want to be.

Natalie [00:41:30] Learning how to recognize that and instead of getting caught in the stories and the loops, being able to shift into, "Oh, what do I do with this?" Instead of believing all the stories that come up because they can project out to like, "Oh, you're going to, like, die alone under a bridge somewhere?" Like they go into— you know, the stories going to crazy places that we're not even aware of until we start tracking them. And they're like, "What? That's so not realistic." Okay, we can take it back a notch. So, I work with people directly in their bodies to facilitate the coming down from that threat response—

Amelia [00:42:02] Yeah.

Natalie [00:42:02] In easeful ways.

Amelia [00:42:03] Yeah. So needed, so necessary and not like what people think when they're like, "Oh. I'm going to start a business. What do I need to learn how to do?" [Laughs] And I— it's so—

Natalie [00:42:14] Right.

Amelia [00:42:15] Necessary. A friend of mine who I was on a call with earlier this year, she was launching a membership and she was asking me like, "What do you think, like, the most important things I should be doing when I'm launching?" And I'm like, "The most important thing you need to do is learn how to regulate your nervous system because [chuckles] memberships especially, it's like a lot of people that you're now in relationship with, it's going to bring up everything you feel like you owe them. People are going to leave. You're going to have to be okay with that. People are going to have conflict. You going to have to figure out, like, how to be okay with that, how to regulate yourself."

Amelia [00:42:42] And so, I do think for all of us and business, it's such an important skill— and for all of us in life. But I think again, in this conversation, we're talking about business, the ways that connecting our financial livelihood to our creative livelihood, to our day-to-day work, like it gets so entangled. And it's just— that has to be a piece of the conversation. So, thank you so much for— for bringing all of that here and sharing with us and— and telling your story. And where can folks find you if they want to stay in touch with you and your work in the future?

Natalie [00:43:15] Well in true form my online presence is kind of janky [Amelia laughs heartily]. Like I am— so I am on social media, but not— my business does not rely on it.

Amelia [00:43:26] Mmhm.

Natalie [00:43:26] It's just like— I post pictures of otters I saw on the Monterey Bay [Amelia laughs] or something, you know, like, so that's at @Natalie.Alexandra.Ross and my website is Natalie.net. And I say uhhh because it is so— basically I am— I am focusing so hard on relationships and connection, that I have really set aside the aesthetics and whatever—

Amelia [00:43:48] Mmhm.

Natalie [00:43:48] So, you can judge me if you want, but sign up for my email list because that's where it's really happening. That's where the conversation's happening. I try to bring that energy of regulation into them. So, sign up for the email list and you can work with me. I have a program called Confident Offer where I help people just go through that experience and it's a deep immersion. I think it's more like an offer creation mystery school because [laughs softly] it is so different than anything out there, but that— I'll be launching that again sometime soon.

Natalie [00:44:17] So, get on my email list there. I don't even have a sales page. [Amelia laughs] I literally just sold my first pancake test on a Google doc and it was great. And I love my people and we're having the best time and their minds are blown and they're actually talking to people and coming up with crazy, amazing offers, and doing it.

Amelia [00:44:32] I love it.

Natalie [00:44:32] So, that'll be happening again and we'll be firing up some more Earth Speak podcasts. You can— I'll be sharing whatever we do on Earth Speak on my personal email list, so it's probably the best place. Natalie.net.

Amelia [00:44:43] Perfect. I know. So easy— Natalie.net.

Natalie [00:44:45] Yeah.

Amelia [00:44:45] There you go, everybody [Natalie laughs]. Well, thank you so much, Natalie. Thank you so much, listeners, for being here. Head to the show notes for all of the links. [Outro music begins to play] And until next time, we will see you Off the Grid.

Natalie [00:44:56] Thanks, Amelia. Thanks, listeners. It's been a real honor.

Amelia [00:45:05] Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersound.studio/byeig. That's softersounds dot studio slash b-y-e-i-g.

Amelia [00:45:20] This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Purple Planet and our logo is by n'atelier Studio.

Amelia [00:45:28] If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help. Find more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time, we'll see you Off the Grid [music fades out].