SPI 599: Rewire Your Mind for Growth with Natasha Graziano

SPI 599: Rewire Your Mind for Growth with Natasha Graziano

Natasha Graziano: When you feel uncomfortable that is when you know you are growing. Comfort is the enemy of growth. So if you are feeling uncomfortable, sticky, fearful, nervous, that’s when you know you’re in the right place. Because you are about to grow, baby. You are about to come out of that space and you are about to become something greater. Like you overcame that previous situation, like you overcame that other one before that, you’re still alive, right? You’re still breathing. You’ll probably overcome this one too.

Pat Flynn: This is a survival story. And what I love about Natasha’s story is that she has lived through some trauma. She has lived through some stuff and she chose to opt into helping and serving others as a result of that. And, and that’s absolutely huge. That’s the kind of person who I wanna hang out with and be involved with somebody who can teach from the experiences that they’ve had, especially when it has just knocked them down so much. So Natasha’s gonna tell that story, but what you might not know about Natasha is she’s the number one female motivational speaker under 40. She is on an author of several books. She has 11 million Instagram followers, just, wow.

So, incredible accolades in social proof, obviously, but I want you to listen to this episode because you’re gonna hear proof in her story in her teachings to help you unlock what’s happening inside of your mind, let go of those limiting beliefs, and really get to that next level in your life. Not just your business, but in your life as well.

And it’s gonna become very obvious, very fast, just why she is the number one female motivational speaker. I mean, you can hear it in her storytelling, in her voice. And that’s inspiring to me because I’m a public speaker as well. And I have trained for that and I have paid attention to speakers and I, I study that.

And so I love that as far as a conversation. But also just the art of it. She’s beautiful at that, but also just the lessons you can learn. We do go through a lot of tangible things that you, the listener can actually go through right now, as you’re listening some exercises in your brain that you could actually do. Just an incredible and deep, deep episode.

And I look forward to hearing what you think about it. So this is Natasha Graziano. You can find her at NatashaGraziano.com. She’s also on Instagram and she’s got a new book, Be It Until You Become It, which is out right now. You can find it wherever books are sold. And, we’re gonna talk about that message and exactly what that means today.

So here she is. This is episode 599. We’re really close to 600. This is gonna be a good one.

Announcer: Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he’s determined to become a wizard with Notion. Pat Flyn!

Pat Flynn: Natasha welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast. Thank you so much for being here today.

Natasha Graziano: Thank you so much for having me, Pat. It’s such a beautiful day moment to be here with you. This is one of my favorite podcasts of all time, and I’m just so excited. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Thank you so much. And I know it’s a busy week for you this week, the week that this episode’s coming up because you have a new book that just came out.

Congratulations on that.

Natasha Graziano: Thank you so much. I know, I can’t believe it. This is the week. This is the week. Be It Until You Become it right now.

Pat Flynn: So good. And we’ll get into a lot of the themes and principles of that. But I wanna dive into you really quick, Natasha, cuz even I wanna know a little bit more about how you got to where you’re at, cuz you have this incredibly massive following people, follow you for the way you, that you coach people through challenges in their lives.

How did you get to where you’re at today? Where did it all begin?

Natasha Graziano: No, the story did not begin in the way that you’d imagined. This story has been a crazy journey. Of building back from nothing. Only in 2018, I was homeless. I had nothing, I was bed bound. I was on the floor and I thought that there was no way out.

I thought this illness that had hit me had taken me to nothing. And the mistakes I’d made in my career were what had led me to really ruining myself and ruining my, my self belief and value for myself. And when you lose that, when you lose self belief for yourself, you lose everything because you don’t feel you’re worthy.

And so when you feel like you’re nothing, well, the universe shows you what nothing is. And that’s what happened to me. I was in a place of nothingness. I was in a place of my lowest despair and trying to build back from being on the street, then living in hostels with my son who was young at the time. And trying to do that all alone as a single mom was very hard. And I knew in my heart, there was something greater for me. I just knew there was something bigger in the world that I was here to do. And each of us is born with a gift Pat. Each of us is born with a gift, which we are meant to find within ourselves and share with the world. And so I knew my gift was to help people.

I’d already been on that journey, but I knew if I can just help someone today, if I can help someone to better their life, solve a problem for them, it will take all the stress and anxiety away from my life as I’ll be focused on other people. And so day by day, I started to build back.

Pat Flynn: You know, it’s really interesting. I hear often that a lot of successful people, successful entrepreneurs, have had some sort of life changing moment happen for them to be able to realize their self worth and to find themselves. You know, you had mentioned that you had a previous career that maybe led up to this point of breakage of suffering that then you were reborn from.

Can you go a little bit more into, what were you doing before? Like what led you to the hard times? What were you doing?

Natasha Graziano: Yeah, of course. I mean, so I had a drug addiction, the drug addiction was fed by being a webcam girl and it was just a vicious cycle. So I was out in the world and then my body was exploited.

So I was going through distress, sexual abuse, various different horrendous things during the time that I was doing that kind of work, but it was all feeding this addiction. I didn’t feel it was worth anything more than anything I was doing. Most of it I don’t even remember I was so high, but I wish that no one would ever have to go through what I went through.

And that’s why I wrote my first book is why I’ve written this book, because I believe that everyone has a second chance and everyone is someone’s daughter. Everyone goes through something in their life, whether it’s a small challenge, a small trauma, it doesn’t matter what level of challenge or trauma, that is it’s how you overcome it and who you are after that challenge and trauma.

So yes, that did take me to the street. Yes. That took me to having nothing. But it, without that challenge, without that failure, I would not be who I am today because I had to fall down to get back up to be who I am today. I had to fall down flat on my face to be who I am today.

Pat Flynn: A lot of people fall down. They’re encouraged to get back up, whether from within or from external, but then they get up and they look around and they have no idea where to go. They feel lost. How did you determine what direction to go in from there?

Natasha Graziano: You know, I’d already, I already say to people when people take everything from you. The one thing they can’t take is your mind.

One thing they can’t take is your mind. Because that’s what you’re reading, that’s what you’re listening to, that’s what you have worked on. That’s who you are. So take away the material, take away the body, take away everything. You have your mind, that 2 million year old piece of hardware, your brain is so powerful and limitless, when you understand how to tap into it. That I realized how I would get out of it was by applying techniques that I had previously used to overcome challenges and I would start to plan. And if I worked on a plan, then if I missed a day, I would always go back to the plan and know, okay, the end goal is to provide a home for me and my family is to be a role model, not only to my son, but be a role model in the world. And I have to understand now that if I don’t overcome this trauma, if I don’t overcome this fear, the world is gonna pass me by because nobody else cares for you when you are down. Nobody else takes that time.

Particularly when you pushed everyone away, they don’t take that time. You are the only person who can control your destiny and your outcome. Otherwise, if you leave it to other people, it’s his story, not yours. So every day I would work on new strategies, new techniques, and try every day, something new applying things that I’d learn in podcasts, things that I’d heard in stories things that I’d read about in books. And I knew I had ancient wisdom. I’d studied in neuroscience. And if I started applying in my own life and I didn’t give up because the key is this, it doesn’t matter what the truth is about you. It doesn’t matter how or what is really the truth. If you are trying to rewire your brain and get out of a situation, you are in. It is about whether you believe in that new result, whether you believe in that new version of you, not whether it’s true or not.

Pat Flynn: It’s one thing to come up with a plan. It’s another to believe in that plan. Where did you belief for your new plan? Come from?

Natasha Graziano: I had no choice. I was a single mom. I was with nothing.

I knew if I could just make $150, I could put a roof over my head or pounds, whatever it was at time. I knew if I could do that. I could make money to get myself out of being in the street at the time, and then a hostile with my son. And I knew if I could just get 150 bucks, I could transform that into something greater because that’s what I’d done before.

And I understood how to do that. Entrepreneurial mindset will never, never go. It grows, but I had to unlearn what I knew to grow. I had to really unlearn a lot because I had hardwired my brain to be addicted to money, addicted to material. And I had to rewire it to believe. And how do I get that belief as you asked?

I connected it to my why. Every single day, I would look at a picture of my son as I’m doing right now. It is a picture of my son right on the back of one of the stands here. And I would literally look at that every day and look at him physically with me and think, I don’t just wanna be a role model to you. I wanna go on and be a role model to millions of other. And I really want to do something with my life. I wanna prove them wrong. So it came from my why.

The craziest thing happened to me. I was walking on the street one day. My son was in his stroller. I think we were just going into a hostel. And when I say we had nothing, I was still in debt, hundreds of thousands, and a lady came up to me and she was asking if I wanted to support a child in a charity and donate. And I looked at her and I thought, why are you asking me? I have nothing. How am I gonna be able to give if I can’t even put a roof over my own child’s head. But it was in that moment that I realized I’m gonna give her my card details. I’m gonna give her it. It’s gonna bounce. But if I can find a way to make it not bounce to get 150 bucks, actually it was 30 bucks for this thing at the time.

My motto’s always at 150 bucks, you can turn it into anything. So I got the money together. I knew exactly what I was gonna do and the money didn’t bounce and that child I’ve now been supporting for the last few years. She’s called Sundry she’s lives in Uganda. I not only support her, but I went on to support many of the children in her village.

So they became my why. That became my, my belief of why I had to change and why I needed to change my reality.

Pat Flynn: So you understood that really you had no choice, but to make this work in some way, shape or form. And that’s so powerful. And I felt the same thing when I got laid off from my job in 2008, having just proposed to my girlfriend and we were starting a family together and I had to make it work.

I didn’t have a plan B. There was plan A and plan A had to work and I was gonna do whatever it took. You had mentioned some strategies or things to help rewire your brain and, and things like that. Can you uncover a few of those? I know that you likely talk about a lot of these in your book, but might you have one or two exercises that anybody struggling through something similar right now could potentially work themselves through?

Natasha Graziano: Absolutely. I’ll give you a piece of neuroscience to begin. So there’s a part in our brain, the lower part of our brain called the reticular activating system. It filters 2 million bits of data, every second colors and sounds and things that you see. And what it does. It shows you anything that you deem is important.

So what do you deem is important? Well, anything that you focus your mind on is what it deems as important. So if you are trying to rewire your brain, but your current belief process is I don’t feel worthy of love. I don’t feel worthy of joy. I don’t feel worthy of creating a great business around me. I don’t feel worthy of creating a passive income.

I don’t feel worthy of creating. Something bigger than what I’m doing now, then ultimately your reticular activating system’s gonna respond to that and show you evidence around you to prove that that belief system is real in evidence in people, events and places. So, if you want to transform it, you must change and hardwire new belief processes in build new neural pathways through repetition, every single day of new affirmations, new beliefs, new practices, and new words that you are aligning yourself to.

So I do feel worthy of love, actually love adores me. I love love. I feel great. I really enjoy being in a relationship. Or I, I know I’m worthy of creating an amazing business, a passive stream of income, multiple passive streams of income. And you focus on that and you just start to believe it. Like I said, even if it’s not true, it doesn’t matter.

It’s whether you believe it or not. And then when you start to believe it, your reticular activating system around you start to show you evidence in people, events, and places to prove your new belief system is real. It’s a great way to start.

Pat Flynn: I love that. I I’ve heard something similar shared before with relation to like confirmation bias, right?

Like if you have a bad day, you start out the day by getting off on the wrong side of the bed, you stub your toe and you start telling yourself, well, it’s gonna be a bad day today. And then you immediately start. Seeing all the things that now support that. And it’s up to you in your mind to change that story about, sure, maybe you stub your toe, but how do you wanna react to that? How are you going to not let that affect the rest of your day? Cuz it really has nothing to do with the rest of your day. Although we start looking for that and you know, we’ve heard things like this before, like think and grow rich. Right. Which I know we’re all familiar with.

But I know the immediate reaction when I share that book with people, maybe a reaction that the audience is having right now, hearing this is, is that really true? Like, it almost sounds like pretend or fake it till you make it, or how is just thinking about money or thinking about love and pretending to ourselves, like, aren’t we just lying to ourselves, Natasha, when we say that, how do you counter a person who comes to you with that argument?

Natasha Graziano: Well, the truth is it’s not just all in the thoughts, it’s in the feelings and the actions, because your thoughts become your feelings, your feelings become your actions and your actions become your habits and your habits are you. So if you think your way to success, yes, somebody probably can. But for the majority, you are gonna need to do way more than just think. You’re gonna need to ingest new information, feed your brain, amazing things like what you’re listening to. Again, podcast, what you’re watching on TV. Are you doing things that are genuinely benefiting your life or you’re watching trash TV?

Are you allowing the news to infiltrate and pull you down and make you feel negative? You have to hard wire and fire up particular neural pathways through thoughts. Yes. But feelings, you must feel it into existence. So everything has a frequency, right? Let’s say that you wanna be a best selling author.

You wanna be a best selling author and you want to sell 10,000 copies of your book. So that exists somewhere in the quantum field. It does already exist in order for that to come to fruition, you have to take inspired action towards it. How do you take inspired action? I do a really simple exercise with people. And I tell them, think of your future self. So visualize this future self right now, the version of you, who’s a best selling author. Let’s used that for example, and now they have all this money that they can use for what, what are you going to use now you’re a best selling author. Think of what it is that you can achieve. Now you’re a best selling author. You start to feel it into existence. And then you think about the thoughts that that version of you would have. I actually don’t like the term fake it till you make it, which is why I wrote the book, Be It Until You Become It. Because it’s about being the version of you not faking it, being true to yourself, your authentic self.

That’s what the world wants to see more of, but you just need to vary the version of you that you’re playing right now in your movie, because we choose our character in our movie and we write our script. So choose your thoughts of how that version of you will think the feelings that version of you would feel.

And here’s the big one. What actions that, that version of you would be taking every. That’s the inspired action piece inspired action creates drive, momentum and motivation. So if you wanna do the exercise, just close ride for a few minutes and think about how do I think as a best selling author? I definitely don’t complain. Right. I think positively, I feel good things I do every day and were account more. Maybe I would write more, maybe I’d approach more people approach a publisher.

Pat Flynn: Wow. probably the most powerful answer I’ve heard to that question. That’s incredible. And first of all, great way to tie in the book in there and it’s perfect. Right? It’s not fake it till you make it. It’s be it till you become it. And it starts with the belief, like you said, that is the key. You could have a key to a door. You still gotta put your hand in the key and hole and open it. That’s the action part, right? The key is the belief. And I think that’s so, so important.

And then for me, one thing I love to do is, you know, we have often these big lofty goals and it, it’s so hard to imagine ourselves way there. Right. But if you are imagining yourself, for example, becoming a bestselling author, can you imagine 10 people benefiting from your book? Can you imagine sharing your story with one person? Right. And starting a small that’s. That’s what helped me, because I often had suffered from imposter syndrome, which I know you’ve spoken about, and you’ve helped people through tell me about how you help people through imposter syndrome, because immediately a person’s gonna go into the DeLorean. They’re gonna fast forward into the future, and they’re gonna see themselves as a best selling author or whatever their goal is.

And then immediately the shadow starts to appear. “That’s not true. You could never do that. You’re not qualified. Who are you to be a bestselling author when there are so many other people who are even better than you out there who could write something even better?” How do we remove that shadow that often appears when we’re trying to set forth a goal?

Natasha Graziano: This is the biggest topic that I keynote on how to overcome imposter syndrome to unlock your fame and your fortune. I don’t mean fame in a pretentious way. I mean, fame, that it’s gonna help others. The bigger you are. You have a number one podcast. So, you know, the power of that fame, you reach millions of people you’ve had over, I think 50 million downloads.

And that really is powerful because you are able to change lives on a profound scale. So you’ve understood the power of unlocking impostor syndrome. So for somebody who’s listening, You want to do something great, like Pat, you want to do something, you know, maybe like myself, you want to do something like somebody else.

First of all, when you start to hear that inner critic and that voice start creeping up on you, you just have to realize that you are in the right place. Why? Because when you feel uncomfortable, that is when you know you are growing. We don’t grow from comfort. We grow from discomfort. Comfort is the enemy of growth.

So, if you are feeling uncomfortable, sticky, fearful, nervous, that voice is beating you down. Like he were saying is telling you’re just not gonna be able to do it. That’s when you know, you are in the right place, because you are about to grow, baby. You are about to come outta that space and you are about to become something greater.

That is where we grow from. That’s where our soul grows from. And you have to just believe it, that you are worthy of it and practice different exercises. Remove the blockages, remove the limiting beliefs daily. This is not easy. I’m not saying this is easy. When I was building back, of course, the voice kept pulling me back down.

And sometimes I got slapped back down to the floor, but I say to people, don’t look at me now, look at how many times I fell down and got back up again. Break through! Because let me tell you if you don’t break through, no one else is gonna break through for you because yesterday does not care about you, so why do you care about it?

Don’t listen to the voice and the things inside of you trying to tell you, you are not good enough because fear is false evidence appearing real. So you’ve gotta fight through it knowing it’s not real. And guess what? Like you overcame that previous situation. Like you overcame that other one before that you’re still alive, right?

You’re still breathing. So what does that say? That tells you more than likely you probably overcome this one too?

Pat Flynn: How did you become such a great speaker?

Natasha Graziano: Thank you. Well, I, I just had a big voice, I think, as a kid and I always loved speaking, you know, at dinners, I would always be like, can I do a toast for the person? And can I. I just, it started young. I overcame the fear of speaking publicly, but I honed in on my craft. So I started to understand. The power of the voice and understand that I’m only ever talking to one person. I have an entire mastermind based on teaching people, how to be the best public speaker they can ever be.

I coach high level entrepreneurs and this mastermind all the time. And what’s incredible is the same things come up every time. But once they break through that barrier, I bring out that limitless energy inside of them. I help them realize, and this is what it’s about. If you realize your limitless potential, you find it inside of you and you hone in on that.

And then you just expand it and magnify it. Oh, anyone can be the best public speaker. Anyone.

Pat Flynn: So powerful. I mean, we’re only on a podcast here. However, I’m getting keynote, TED Talk vibes from you. Like as far as how I’m receiving this. So I knew that you had some training and it’s no surprise to me that you’ve helped other people in the same realm as well.

Now I know this book of yours is your second book and this one is a absolute passion for you. And so important to you. Tell us a little bit about the new book that just came out. And who is it for?

Natasha Graziano: So my book Be It Until You Become It, I’m so excited. It is my gift to the world. It’s for someone who wants to change their life for the better. It’s for someone who wants to better their life.

It’s for someone who wants to achieve greatness and have a bigger impact in the world. And I go through a meticulous 12 step blueprint method throughout every page in this book of how to become the version of you before you get there. So it’s, the law attraction explained through neuroscience and ancient wisdom.

I take the woo woo out of it. And I show you how to apply methods that have been used by some of your favorite experts. Quotes in here. Ancient philosophers. Quotes in here. It’s powerful. It’s very moving and it’s very actionable. It’s very easy to apply. It means that you really didn’t look any further because you will have every answer you need in the chapters here.

It’ll show you how to realize the potential we’ve been talking about and magnify it.

Pat Flynn: Love it. I consider it sort of like an extension of The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield, which gets very into the, the head space of, of what we’re doing as creators and, and a person who’s trying to put something out there into this world on YouTube, on a podcast, or what have you.

And I think these two books combined can be a really amazing sort of set of weapons to do what you wanna do. What’s your favorite part of the book that you just wrote?

Natasha Graziano: My favorite part of the book is when I dive deeper into the meditation behavioral synchronicity practice, which is my MBS method. It’s a powerful method, a mix of ancient breathing techniques, modern day neuroscience, all in a deep guided meditation.

So what you do is you and people who can’t meditate, for example, they’ll sit and they’ll do this exercise for 10 minutes and they find, my God, how did I just meditate for the first time in my life? How did I just go into an altered state of awareness is because everything you want to. Has a breathing technique to it.

I know that sounds crazy, but if you understand how to breathe, you can breathe it into calming yourself and then visualizing when you’re in that ultra state of awareness, you can start to visualize exactly what it is that you want and draw it into your reality. Now, most meditations, when you do them, some people don’t go deep enough. Some people don’t even get started. Cause they’re like me and they find it hard to meditate. They’re so go, go, go, go, go. But the meditational behavioral synchronicity process, which has been practiced by doctors, monks, psychologists all over America at the moment, we’re actually going through scientific research through MRI scans and EEGs to prove the difference in the brain before and after doing it. And the transformation in your general happiness and how much better you feel after practicing this exercise on a daily basis, that will be book three. So, you know, it’s very powerful because for anyone that wants to understand how to remove, what’s blocking them from actually achieving those goals, the MBS method is the perfect way to get it out, just get it out of your system.

And by the way, the funny thing is most people don’t realize. We don’t know, usually, what’s blocking us. In fact, if you’re like me, you probably block it out altogether and just feel amazing. Cuz you may have had some traumas you’ve been through in your life. But that is not the case.

I assure you there is still blockages inside of me. And until I did my method, I didn’t know what they were. So I had to go deeper. I had to spend time understanding and I didn’t have time to start sitting with a therapist. That’s why the MBS method is nicknamed three years of therapy in 15 minutes, you will go to that deep place.

You’ll go into your altered state of consciousness, which is the alpha and the theta state of mind. Right now we’re having a conversation we’re in beta. And when you go deeper, it’s proven that your mind, your bright is more impressionable when your brainwaves are slower, and then you can remove the blockages and replant and rewire your brain to your new belief.

Pat Flynn: Wow. Where can people go check out the book?

Natasha Graziano: You can buy it in all your wonderful bookstores that you would ever buy the book. So Barnes & Noble and anywhere that you buy a book. So have a look, Canada, UK, America, just anywhere that you buy your book in your local bookstore. And if you wanna buy it right now and you’re at home, BeItUntilYouBecomeItbook.com.

And actually you’ll get a free bonus course with me, which is awesome because then you can dive a little deeper and you get that as a gift when you buy the book. So, yeah.

Pat Flynn: Amazing. Thank you, Natasha. A couple more questions if you don’t mind.

Natasha Graziano: Sure. I’m loving spending time with you, Pat. I mean, you’re an amazing interviewer, this is fun.

Pat Flynn: Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, I’m very impressed with how you’ve branded yourself, your business. Tell me a little bit about what’s working right now to help you. As far as business growth, obviously the book is going to help and guest spots like this on podcasts, obviously help, but like what has helped you get to where you’re at today, as far as business and entrepreneurship, because wow.

If somebody goes to your Instagram, they’re gonna see double digit million figure Instagram followers that just doesn’t happen to anybody. You have to have some sort of special skill to be able to do that. How, how did you do that?

Natasha Graziano: I realized very quickly that people like vulnerability and people like your story unmasked, which means for anyone that’s in NFTs, you’ll understand this.

When you are unmasked, people can see who you are. People know who’s behind the project. They want to see who’s behind the brand. So the same way that. Pat face is behind the brand. Everybody knows this incredible entrepreneur. Who’s so wonderful in his beautiful face that that doesn’t harm anyone, you know?

So it’s so nice to actually see who’s behind the brand. So I realize if I can post content and videos and stories and use different. Platforms and be omnipresent across multiple platforms. I’m able to reach different people. So on TikTok, I reach millions of different people that I definitely don’t reach on Instagram and then on YouTube and my podcast, et cetera.

And so I realized if I post content, which is every day, here’s the key. Offering value to somebody’s life, whether it’s bettering their life, their health, their income, helping them to be a little bit more like me helping them to be a better entrepreneur, whatever it is, helping someone every single day in the post.

And if I can do that, I can do just that every single day in a post people would click and like, and follow. And it grew and it grew, and I kept doing that every day. And so anyone can do this. Absolutely. Anyone can do this, make sure you are posting content, find people that you like find your top five people that you’re inspired by.

So if you wanna have a podcast like Pat study his podcast, watch it, understand it, listen to it, and then start to create in that same way. You want to have a Instagram like mine or whatever it is, YouTube you’ll choose and understand how often they’re posting. What they’re posting. And then what times they’re posting, I’m gonna tell you something, which I’ve based my entire career on.

And again, I talk on this on stage all the time, and here it is. People look at three things when they come across you, your brand. One, what value are you offering? So they no longer really put you into Google. They go straight to your social media. They go straight to your show, straight to your Instagram, straight to your YouTube straight, whatever it is, they go straight to a social platform because that’s current right now, we live in a digital era.

Number two. Who are you associated with? So they want to see who you are alongside. So when you come on my page and you see I’m on stage alongside the likes of Mark Cuban or Grant Cardone or Jesse Itzler, Jim Quick, and now Pat, you start to think, okay, well, you know what? They like her, the like, know, trust factor, the trifecta.

I like her. Automatically. I like him because they’ve seen you alongside people that they already trust. So you want to be associated with good and strong like-minded individuals. That also helps you grow by the way, because when you’re on someone else’s page, you promote each other. When they’re on your page, you promote them.

It happens all the time. Ed Mylett, funnily enough, last night said, Hey, I’ve got an event coming up. Can you promote it from me? I said, sure. He’s gonna promote something from me back. This is how it. You know, you start to build networks and friends with good people.

Pat Flynn: And we’re doing that right now.

Natasha Graziano: We’re doing that right now. And I’m like, well, I’m ready. You know, I’m so excited to have you on my podcast, on the law of attraction. I can’t wait to have you on there. I’m just beyond excited because thank you. I’ll be honored. You are amazing. I’m so excited with booking him right after this. So number three people look at where have they seen you, so that’s press, where have they seen you?

And are you in publications? Who’s talking about you, are you in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Vogue, whatever it might be. They want to see what you’ve been in. They want to know that other big publications that they trust, again, like trust, know trifecta. They want to know that they trust you. They want to see that you are in things.

So I needed to have to sing about myself because the likes of Forbes magazine will write the number one female motivational speaker under the age of 40. I’ll have Courtney Kardashians, magazine, or publication online. You know, it says leading mindset, coach, things like that. You have great associations with big people.

And when you have stuff like that, they sing for you. Can you imagine if people sung for you? Now, asked to go on someone like Pat’s amazing, number one in the world podcast, the answer’s probably gonna be yes, because you have value to offer. You are alongside great people and you are already spoken about in a phenomenal way.

So you’re winning.

Pat Flynn: I love that. To take that even further, I think there’s a big difference between just telling people what to do. I E the language, you should do this versus what I feel from you and what I often do and what I see from a lot of other successful people, which is here’s how I did this. And here’s what I learned about it.

Here are the mistakes I made here are the things just like you said earlier, vulnerability opening up to a process of something that you’ve been through that builds trust much faster, because nobody wants to hear somebody speak from a podium. They wanna speak to a friend who’s been in it first or is in it with them.

And I think that’s so powerful. So thank you so much for all that, cuz I’m just very curious if you were to pick one of the platforms, I know you’re everywhere, if you had been forced to choose just one that is that you enjoy the most, which one would it be and why?

Natasha Graziano: Have to be Instagram. Because I think it’s the most functionable cause of the DM feature.

I love YouTube. I love video content. I love audio content. I met my husband on a social. I met him on Clubhouse, you know?

Pat Flynn: Oh, no way.

Natasha Graziano: Yeah. We met on Clubhouse and got married on Clubhouse. Yeah. And we got married on there. Oh, it was amazing.

Pat Flynn: Did you hear his voice and you’re like, I like his voice? We need to hang out.

Natasha Graziano: That was it. I heard his voice and I said, this is the one. I was like, this is the one he’s a Mexican, is this guy, let me follow him. And now the rest is history. I would choose Instagram. I would choose Instagram because of the DM. I love it. It’s a great way to connect with people. Over 40% of market research is done through social media platforms, maybe even higher today.

So it’s a powerful thing to connect with and don’t be fearful for anyone. Listen. Just dive in, just begin. You know, I think the biggest thing I ever did was just pressing upload, you know. And I preprepared content, I preprepared 30 posts ready, by the way, when I was homeless, I still had a phone and had content and I was still posting because I didn’t want anyone to know I was homeless.

I didn’t want anyone to know that I still had an illness, which I was battling for a couple of years. I didn’t want anyone to understand or know the truth. Now I’d be much more vulnerable. And you know, I talk about things very openly, but it’s hard when you go through something, but you don’t have to put your whole meal plan on there.

You don’t have to put I’m eating spaghetti bolognese tonight with the kids, you can just share what’s relevant for your brand. Putting my son up is relevant for my brand, cuz I’m showing I’m a mom and now I’m not a single mom anymore. And dreams can come true if you focus and apply. Just remember if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Always plan, always make great content and get connected with new people and social media gives you that opportunity.

Pat Flynn: I agree. And thank you so much for that. And by the way, you and I connected on Instagram through a direct message and here we are. And I love that. And it’s true. I mean, I think TikTok obviously has like the algorithm.

You can reach millions of people in a very short period of time, but you can’t really connect with. The individuals there, like you can on Instagram. I agree. I mean, I go on stage and I speak about creating these moments of surprise for people. And the way that I teach that is to go into Instagram and send a video message to somebody who’s recently left a comment and it just blows their mind. Right. How do you use DMs best? Instagram for your business.

Natasha Graziano: That is so cool. I love that you, that you surprise your audience members. That’s so amazing. I use it all the time in many different ways. We repost everything. So if somebody’s listening to this right now and they. Screenshot it, and they post it on their story and tag me, I am so likely to repost that because I appreciate when somebody spends that time and shows their appreciation and I show mine back tenfold and their name goes out to, you know, millions of people.

I love to show appreciation and gratitude publicly. So when somebody writes a nice testimonial, I always like hugely thank them. And we give them gifts and all kinds of different things. We use social media to collaborate. This is a big one. So. In the same way, like you and I are connecting here, I’ll also do Instagram lives or I’ll do content, which we post onto social media.

So I’ll post this episode, for example, onto, or a clip of it onto our socials, which I love to do. And then with other collaborators, they’ll repost mine, et cetera. And then it helps everybody’s platforms to grow. Cause I realized a long time ago, there is actually no such thing as competition and many people would disagree.

It’s just my personal viewpoint. There is such thing as co-creating though, there’s such thing as creation. And when you turn a competitive mindset into a creative mindset, you are able to realize that somebody will, will not, not buy from you because they’re buying from somebody else. I’ll buy the same white shirt from three different stores.

I don’t buy from the other two because I only have this one here, whatever it is that you want. To sell someone’s there to buy. And it doesn’t matter that somebody next to you is, you know, doing very well and you may not be, but you can change that. That part of it you can change. It may not matter, yes. But what you can change is what you can change and what you can change is getting your name out there in a bigger way, getting your brand out there, optimizing, maximizing, becoming omnipresent, being fulfilled as a business, connecting it with a higher impact level, scaling it on social media.

Pat Flynn: I think that’s exactly the way we should be using social media. For sure. And I agree with you. There should not be this thought of competitors. I often say it’s not competitors. It’s complimentary. These people can compliment what you’re doing and you together can help the same audience and both succeed together. I mean, I, I can feel it from you. I feel this, I know a lot of the people I spend time with, we live in this world of just abundance.

And in that way, we can all win. It’s not a poker table where if you are winning chips, that means I’m losing chips. We can all win together. And that’s why I’m so grateful to have connected with you today, Natasha. And to connect you with the audience who’s listening right now. Name of the book one more time and then where can people go and follow your journey?

Natasha Graziano: Amazing. So, Be It Until You Become It is the name of the book it’s outright now. Right now, let’s go. I know. It’s so exciting. It’s so exciting. Reaching the people it needs to, I always say you read what you need. You get exactly what you need. There’s a reason that you’re listening to this show today.

It doesn’t just like fall into your lap. Suddenly something. Has happened in your life has led you to this moment, you know, so you can get the book in any bookstores and make sure you read it and come and check out anything that I’m doing. Follow me on socials. You know, I would always say, just connect with me, DM me.

There’s so many wonderful things that I’m involved with and doing at the moment. And there’s always a space for you listening. There’s always a space for someone to maybe join something I’m doing or come and be involved. And I look forward to hearing from you.

Pat Flynn: Thank you. And that’s NatashaGraziano.com and check out the book.

Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate you. This was a pleasure.

Natasha Graziano: Thank you so much, Pat.

Pat Flynn: All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Natasha. Natasha, again, thank you so much for your time, your energy, your spirit, and sharing your wisdom. And a lot of these techniques that you use to help you unlock what it is that is next in your life. And that helps me and that helps the listeners as well. So again, I appreciate you for that. Your book, Be It Until You Become It is out now everywhere. Everybody should go and check it out and you can also check out Natasha’s stuff over at her website, Natasha Graziano and also follow her on Instagram, where she’s got 11 million followers. That is, that is just awesome. And I can’t even imagine well done, and this was super fun. Thank you so much for the conversation. I look forward to continuing our friendship together, Natasha.

And I hope that you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to serving you in episode 600 coming up just a couple days at the time, this episode comes out it’s Friday episode. So it’s gonna be something really special. I got a fun story to tell you, and hopefully an analogy that works cuz it worked when I recorded it. And you tell me whether it works or not. So make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss that.

And all the other episodes that are coming out here in the six hundreds, which, is just again unbelievable. Thank you so much for helping us get here. Thank you to Natasha and thank you for sharing a little bit of your time with me today. Cheers. Take care of peace out and as always Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski. And our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We’ll catch you in the next session.