410 Natalie Ledwell: A Massive Moonshot

It wasn’t that long ago that people thought it “woo woo” to talk about using our inner thoughts to manifest our outer reality. Right? These days it’s become accepted wisdom in entrepreneurial circles. In fact every successful entrepreneur has a degree of mastery over their mindset. They see, believe, and experience the emotion and gratitude of success before it manifests.

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring woman who turned her epiphanies about the Law of Attraction and visualization into a fast-growing multimillion dollar business called Mind Movies – an increasingly immersive experience of “guided visualization” reaching more than 4 million people worldwide.

Natalie Ledwell, together with her ex husband Glen, launched Mind Movies in September 2008 when the world economy was collapsing. Both had partnered in dozens of businesses, and neither had any any experience in technology or internet marketing – and yet they pulled off a $1m dollar launch on their first try. We’re going to talk about how that happened – from visualization, alignment and passion – to team building, getting the right mentors and more. I can’t wait to share this one – because wait till you hear what Natalie is up to now! And first…

Now back to the inspiring Natalie Ledwell.

Natalie is hard at work on a massive moonshot – her groundbreaking new program entitled, “Personal Growth Studies”. It’s a powerful children’s curriculum designed to help youth from ages 5-18 in establishing a strong foundation in the Law of Attraction that will give them transformational mindset tools for the rest of their lives.

I’m inspired by Natalie because she’s playing a big game, getting out of her comfort zone to do something new when she could easily have limited her dreams with the wildly successful Mind Movies.

If you want to know how to play a bigger game – that is make your dream impact on the world, and leverage business for your ideal lifestyle, then listen on. Natalie will give you your blueprint for how to leverage visualization, intentions and the law of attraction. This is a woman who has truly walked her talk with authenticity – and she is living and breathing proof that the Mind Movies she created for herself continue to manifest the life of her dreams.

Natalie is also a bestselling author, host of The Inspiration Show, co-host of the cable TV show WAKE UP, and she’s got a new podcast as well launching soon.

I first met Natalie at a retreat in San Diego at our mutual friend and health entrepreneur JJ Virgin’s house for the inauguration of what we call the Unicorn Club – for women with 7, 8 and 9 figure businesses. And Natalie, of course, blew me away with her vision for how she can help the world’s children master the law of attraction – so they don’t have to spend years … like me … unlearning all those limiting beliefs we accumulate. What a gamechanger!

So everyone … ready for Natalie Ledwell? I am. Let’s fly!

Natalie Ledwell

Natalie Ledwell is “walk your talk” proof of the law of attraction, reaching more than 4 million people worldwide with Mind Movies’ innovative guided visualizations. Now her moonshot is a global children’s curriculum called Personal Growth Studies to give kids 5-18 the mindset and other tools they need to live creative, fulfilling lives of financial freedom. We talk about the specifics of manifestation, team building and much more.

Melinda Wittstock:         I am so happy that you’re here. Welcome to Wings.

Natalie Ledwell:               Thank you. Thank you. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’d like to start at the beginning of women’s entrepreneurial journeys. What was the spark in the first place that led you into entrepreneurship and beyond that, to Mind Movies?

Natalie Ledwell:               My first career was in the fitness industry and I left school when I was 15 and I wanted to be a teacher, so I became the next best thing which was an aerobics instructor, and I grew up in a country town. One of eight kids and when I was 18 and old enough, I was the hell out of there and moved to Sydney which was the big city and obviously still working in the fitness industry. At the age of 21, I talked my way into managing my first fitness club.

I had no clue what I was doing, but I’m thinking, “I could do a better job than you”, and then got accepted and went, “Ooh, now I have to figure it out.” The great thing about working in an industry like that, especially in Australia, is the club owners spend a lot of money on motivating and training their employees and so I got some fantastic training on how to run a business. I got to cut my teeth on somebody else’s business which was awesome and after 11 years of working in that industry, I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been here, done that. I’m looking for something new.”, and I met my now ex-husband, Glen, and he came home one day and goes, “Honey, we’ve bought an night club.” I’m like, “That’s not quite the shift I was thinking of, but okay.”

So what was really interesting is now, we have our own business and when you’re looking at the outside, you think, “Oh, fitness club, night club, two different ends of the spectrum.” But not really, because they’re both service businesses. Both of them, you have clients and you want to make sure that you’re managing their expectation and managing the experience. What I learned from fitness, I was able to apply to our night club, so we had that club for five years.

We were the number one club in Sydney for four of those five years and at the end, we pretty much had the same staff for that entire time. I remember that last night, all of them saying, “Whatever you do next, we’re in. We want to come and work for you.”

We understood how to treat our employees, how to respect them, how to … my whole thing is it doesn’t matter what role that you do in this club, whether you’re the DJ, or the security guy or the cloakroom girl, we all play an important role and if one of us isn’t stepping up, it affects everybody else.

:                                               I don’t care. No one’s more important. We’re all just here as a team. Being able to cultivate that kind of an environment for employees was paramount to being able to keep something, especially if you’re into something like a night club where there’s a lot of cash going back and forth, so you’re really exposed to people stealing.

Number one, you don’t want to give them a reason to steal from you and number two, you want to make sure that you’re really looking after your team. The other thing that we did, too, is that we were able to manage the experience of the clientele coming into the club. When they came in, they knew exactly what style of music they were going to hear. They knew that they’d only have to wait a couple of minutes to get to the bar. They knew exactly what to expect and so every time they would come in and they were having an amazing experience and of course, this makes them want to tell their friends.

This is why we had such a successful business, even though from an outsider looking in, it looks like it’s something that’s completely different from each other.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love what you said about team. Do you think that was instinctual? That was just something that you knew, or did you learn it somewhere or … everyone that I know who succeeded as an entrepreneur has cracked the code of relationship. Whether it’s with their team members or their clients or customers or investors or whoever it is?

Natalie Ledwell:               It’s paramount, because here’s the thing: especially if you’re in a longer term relationship … like the Mind Movies we’ve been doing now for 10 years, and we do have a turnover of our staff and our team, but that’s the nature of the beast. We normally choose younger people. They come through, they learn a lot by working with us. They expand who they are through the post-development techniques and tools that we teach and then they’ll move on to bigger and better things.

In a way, I’m like, “I think this is a great thing. That’s exactly what I did when I was young.”, so I’m always like, “Yay! I’m so grateful for you.” We have a team in Lithuania and a team in the Philippines and the team here, so it’s important that everyone feels like, again, that they’re part of that family or they’re part of the team. And not just knowing that, but then also knowing how their role affects other people within the team, because a lot of our team all over the world … some of them here … so understanding that and being empathetic for their other team members I think is important.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s a challenge, building virtual teams. They’re becoming more and more the norm, but when you’re not in the same place, you can’t look someone in the eye, that’s obviously technology like this. We’re recording this interview on Zoom right now, but what are some of the things that you do practically to make people feel really involved and actually teach them about that, those interdependencies, which is so easy for people who are isolated to just not understand the impact of their actions.

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah, well, we have job descriptions. We have flow charts of how the company works and who does what and where they fit in. We have everyone record a little video when they start so that they get introduced to the rest of the team and they have to say who they are, what their role is, some of their hobbies, if they had a super power, what would that be. It’s a way for us to be able to connect with them.

And then every week, we have what we call a stand-up meeting. Where [inaudible 00:16:44] could stand up cause it’s going to be really quick and each of us get to share a win, a grateful and a challenge. We do this so that if one of our team members is facing a challenge, maybe someone in that meeting goes, “Oh, I can help you with that.” But it also means that we understand what is going on in the other departments that are outside of what we’re doing and we stay connected that way.

Plus, we also really make a point of having social time with the team as well. I live in L.A., but the team’s in San Diego, so when I go down, we do lunches. Glen, he’s Mr. Social, so he often has opportunities for the team to get together outside of work and we really make sure that we keep that connection and because we are a smaller team, we can also very quickly see if there’s any personality clashes or what issues that are happening. We’re approachable. Our team members know they can come to us and say anything to us and we’ll be able to handle it with grace and ease and be able to make sure they are heard, which I think is a big thing.

All these little bits and pieces and it’s not just like our team, you think about all our affiliates. I remember when we started Mind Movies because Glen and I knew nothing about the internet when we started. And by that I mean Glen could hardly turn on a computer and I hadn’t even heard of YouTube. I didn’t even know what that was. We had been in business. We had 20 different types of businesses together.

We had a way of doing business which was all about … we’re both very personable people so it’s all about the relationship. Whereas most people would just email their JV partners, Glen’s on the phone. He’s doing little videos. We’re creating events once a year where our top affiliates can all fly in. We’re exchanging ideas. We’re keeping these lines of communication open. We’re supporting each other.

We’re very clear about what our parameters of what our deal is going to be or the parameters of our project, so that there’s no surprises and we both know what’s expected of each other. Being able to cultivate those kinds of relationships as well … affiliate marketing was the bread and butter for us, which is where most of our growth of our companies come from so why wouldn’t you spend most of your time cultivating those relationships when it’s such a big part of the business that you have?

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. So smart. Take me back a little bit to the genesis if you will, of Mind Movies. What was the spark that said, “Oh, let’s go create this amazing thing.” Presumably somewhere along the line, you discovered the law of attraction and thought, “Hmm, this is a business. There’s an opportunity here.” How did all that work?

Natalie Ledwell:               Well, it’s an interesting story, because [inaudible 00:19:32] 2006, I’m having a moment and I’m sitting in [inaudible 00:19:33] now, but I was in my house in Sydney. I’m looking at all these bills and I’m looking at my bank account balance and thinking, “Okay. I’m missing information here.” We had four businesses. We’re still not making ends meet financially, which it was just insane, and I’ve been to all the Tony Robbins and the Jim Rohn and all those. I knew what to do and I thought I was doing everything right, but I’m missing something, and not long after that, a friend said, “You’ve got to borrow this movie. You can get it online. It’s called The Secret.” I’m like, “Okay.” I remember Sunday afternoon, Glen and I put this in the DVD player. We’re sitting there and our mouths are dropping. I’m like, “Oh, my God. This is what we’ve been missing.”

We realized I had been doing before I saw The Secret is that when I’d set a goal, it had to be something I knew every step. I need to know exactly how it’s going to happen, otherwise, I don’t believe it’s going to happen. With Glen, he was like, “Oh. So when you visualize, you actually got to feel the emotions of being there. You got to feel what it’s like to already be there.” This is the frequency that you’re sending out into the universe so that whenever there’s a vibrational match to that thing, it’s attracting it to you.

Melinda Wittstock:         Ah.

Natalie Ledwell:               This was the missing key and then not long after that, a friend showed us this movie that he’d put together which was his version of a vision board, so it was PowerPoint slides and then a picture which enhanced the PowerPoint slide, the affirmation, and then music. And I was like, “Whoa. Oh my God this is amazing. You have to show me how to do this.”, and then he approached Glen and I and said, “Look, I’m looking for someone to partner with. I want to set up a website. I want to make sure the instructions … we sell the instructions so people can create these movies for themselves”, and Glen and I are like, “Well, we don’t know anything about computers or the internet. We know nothing.”, and we’ve got four businesses.

But we knew it was a great idea. The Secret had just been on Oprah and I remember Glen making a comment, “Wow, can you imagine if you could really ride the wave of what’s happening about the law of attraction?” Then not long after, our friend Ryan came to us with this idea. We’re like, “Hmm.”

I think it cost us $2,000 to get started. $800 for the video camera … no, $800 for the website, and $1,200 for a video camera so we recorded this video, stuck it up on YouTube. It was so illegal. We had no idea what we were doing. We had the beginning of “I Dream of Jeannie” in there, we had [inaudible 00:22:04] music. That one little video, we were getting so much traffic and so many customers from this one little video and within a few months, there were so many emails of people saying, “This is changing my life.” I’m like, “Okay. We need to really focus on this. This is something important.” We decided in April, 2008 … no, we bought a program.

So we had to figure out the Internet marketing thing, and we discovered you could buy programs online that would teach you how to do it, so we ended up buying … our first program was called Mass Control, by Frank Kern.

Melinda Wittstock:         Okay. The original program?

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah, right? The reason we bought from him is because his persona was like the beach bum. We’re like, “Yeah, we can relate to that guy. It’s only $2,000. We can do this.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Natalie Ledwell:               It was a $2,000 program and we implemented one idea from the first module and made $6,000. So I was like, “Whoa! Okay, and this guy’s a genius!” So we’re like, “Okay.” He was doing a live event April, 2008, in San Diego, so in Glen’s original Mind Movie, one of his affirmations is that we live in an endless summer, so he’s like, “Right. We’ll do six months in California and six months in Sydney.” We’re like, “Okay.” So, we go over. We go to that event. We meet all these other people that are internet marketers, so we’re like sponges in that world. We also got accepted into Frank’s Master Mind group, his [inaudible 00:23:35] Master Mind group which was the smartest thing we ever did because we then spent the next six months working our tails off [inaudible 00:23:41] from our bedroom.

Natalie Ledwell:               It was crazy because we had no money to pay anyone to do anything for us so we had to figure everything out ourselves, so at 40 years old, I’m learning how to edit videos, with no instructions, I’m just trying to figure it out, having a bash. How to do the websites, all those kind of things and everything that goes into doing a launch, so by the time we got to the launch which was September 2008 … now this is the month that economic crisis hits the world.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, this is Lehman Brothers. Everything falling apart right then and everybody’s in complete financial … I know. I lost … oh gosh. I lost a lot.

Natalie Ledwell:               Right. People were losing everything. Their jobs, their fortunes, their houses, like everything.

Melinda Wittstock:         I know.

Natalie Ledwell:               We had no idea, because we were working 14 hours a day out of our bedroom, that we had no idea what was going on in the outside world.

We get to the morning of the launch and I remember that we had $120,000 on credit cards. This is how much we had accumulated over the six months to get this thing off the ground. I was just like, “Oh, my God. Please, please let this work.” So there’s two weeks. There’s the pre-launch week where you’re setting up emails and building a list and our list went from 8,000 to 80,000 in a week.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s amazing! In a week!

Natalie Ledwell:               It was growing so quickly that our payments system, who I won’t name, shut down our account because they were convinced we were doing something illegal, and we had to get Frank on the phone with them and we got it reinstated and then we get to the launch and of course, same said company decides to shut down for maintenance the morning of our launch, so not only can we not stagger 80,000 traffic so we don’t crash the server … we didn’t crash the server, thank God … but no one was getting their confirmation emails that they had purchased a program and so by lunch time, I had 3,000 customer support emails going, “Are you guys scammers? What’s going on?”, and we ended up doing the first hour, we hit $100,000 and this is selling a $97 program with no upsells. It was a straight $97.

Natalie Ledwell:               By the end of the first day, we got to about $288,000, but then we ended up doing a $700,000 launch, selling a $97 program.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s amazing! That’s amazing though, but I have to just ask you this question though: did you actually visualize that?

Natalie Ledwell:               Oh, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         That [inaudible 00:26:18] of a launch, so you knew you were going to hit [crosstalk 00:26:18].

Natalie Ledwell:               Well, yeah, so we had a Mind Movie obviously that we watched religiously every day and we talked about the type of customers we’re attracting, we talked about the business, how it was growing, what we were going to do once it was a success, and our monetary goal that we put into Mind Movie was $1,000,000, and no one told us that we couldn’t do that with a $97 product. We had friends doing $1,000,000 launches but with $2,000 programs, not $97, so of course, we’re not upset with $700,000. But we are Australian and we’re over here so we had to use PayPal as our payment gateway and of course, they froze the account.

Natalie Ledwell:               We can’t get to the money and they released enough for us to be able to pay for postage. We had $100,000 in postage because we had CD’s back then, and we could pay … we actually had a copywriter in the JV managers just work for us on the percentage of the launch. They just put faith in us, so we were able to pay them, and then we go back to Australia and every time PayPal said they would release the money … there’s 500 grand sitting in there … they kept changing their mind, and in the end, we had to get a friend of ours who was an attorney just go ape on them and they finally released the funds, but the end of the story is, when we transferred the money back to Australia, ’cause we are an Australian company, we earned 250 grand in the exchange rate because of what was happening in [inaudible 00:27:49]. We basically did a $1,000,000!

Melinda Wittstock:         You got to the million that way, that’s amazing! That’s fascinating to me because something you said earlier about visualization, like the earlier mistake that you were making of thinking that you had to know exactly how it was going to happen, or even just like those steps. You don’t. It could come from anywhere, just like it came from the exchange rate thing which is totally unexpected.

Natalie Ledwell:               I don’t recommend it. Not the best way to earn a million dollars, nearly went bankrupt.

Melinda Wittstock:         The economy collapses.

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah. Exactly. Everyone’s losing their shit and we’re like, “Whoo hoo, a million dollars!”, but it’s also an example of regardless of what’s happening around you, when you are very clear about what it is you want to create, what’s happening around you doesn’t even play into the mix.

Natalie Ledwell:               What was the question?

Melinda Wittstock:         No, I was just curious about this idea of the genesis of Mind Movies. What you were talking about how … I think it’s really our ego, perhaps that gets in the way, right, where we think we have to know how. We end up constraining the intention or constraining the vision by imposing our will on it, rather than just saying, “Hey, universe”, and feeling like it’s happened already and feeling that emotion as you were talking about.

Natalie Ledwell:               Yes and here is the scariest and most overlooked and hardest part of the law of attraction and creating the specific outcomes that we want: yes, you can be clear about where you want to go. You can visualize every day vividly. You can put yourself in the picture and be tasting and feeling and smelling and it be so real to you that your subconscious mind thinks, “Yes, this is actually real, and you’re taking action and everything’s fantastic”, but the thing is … and I know as women … and I am a confessed, recovering control freak … have to know, have to have to have hundreds of balls, so I can have them in the air, but I’ve got to know exactly what’s going on and I’ve got to be influencing everything. Delegation used to be one of my hardest things to do because I’m like, “No one does it as good as me.”, so you have this … here’s the thing. For us to be able to create and manifest with these, and for things to always be coming our way, we need to sit or marinate in higher vibrational emotions as often as possible, because this higher vibration of emotions that we’re sending out is also the same vibrational matches abundance.

:                                               So when we’re being desperate and we’re trying to force things to happen and we’re just closed off to it, it has to happen one way and it has to look a certain way, otherwise it’s not what we want, what we’re doing is we’re shutting off the flow between us and the universe. We’re down in this lower vibration and all we can see is what’s not working, what’s hard. We have this belief that we have to work our tails off to get anything to happen and if we’re not on the verge of having a stroke, then it wasn’t worth it or it’s not going to happen.

I’m telling you now, the honest truth is that when we can surrender and go ,”This is where I want to end up. It doesn’t have to look exactly like that, but let’s look at the macro things. I want to be financially free. I want to be able to travel with my family. I want to be able to work the hours that I want so I can spend time with my family. I want to be able to travel and I want to do all these amazing things”, and as long as we’re not too tied to how that’s going to happen … because honestly, I had all these affirmations.

We got introduced to a network marketing business just before we got involved with Mind Movies and I looked at this business, but I’m like, “Whoa. Now I can see what’s possible.” So, I had all these affirmations about traveling the world, speaking on stage, working on the beach with my laptop if I wanted to, all these kind of things. I was convinced it was going to be network marketing and a year later, after we come back … after the launch, I was going through some stuff at home and I looked at these affirmations and I found them and I’m like, “Whoa. Mind Movies was the vehicle.” Now if someone a day before Ryan had come up to us with this idea, and said, “You’re going to create this and more, through the Internet.” I would’ve laughed at them because there was just no way that that was ever going to be on my radar.

When you can focus on how you want to feel and what your life looks like when you get to this end result, then you’re open to all these things, and actually, when I’m teaching people a lot of these principles, a lot of what comes through is, now that I’m getting all these opportunities, how do I know which one to take? This is like the challenge, because we’re now resonating at the frequency of abundance and this is why it’s all coming through.

Often, we’ll take these delicious little side turns and also, there’s no such thing as the wrong decision or the wrong action, ’cause everything is always going to lead you to where you’re going to go anyway.

Melinda Wittstock:         Any way, right? We might take detours but you do end up where you’re supposed to be. It’s interesting that I used to be, with my intentions, similar to you … this control freak thing that I used to say specifically how it’s going to happen and all this sort of thing, right? And, now, actually I’m radically different than that now. Now, it’s this asking for inspiration and asking to be open to it and asking to act on the right ones, right?

It’s almost like saying to the universe, “You know that I know, that I don’t know. Show me.”

Natalie Ledwell:               But see, when you get to that point, the universe goes, “I know.”, and then they send someone to you who does know. You’re like, “Oh, good!”, you know? Honestly, I’m working on this children’s program on the moment and I originally had created 12 lessons and then it was like, “What happens after that?” I’m like, “I don’t know.”, and I’m like, “I’m not qualified to do this.” I left school young, and I didn’t have kids and this is not my thing and then my girlfriend from Sydney emails me and goes, “Do you mind if I help you do the curriculum?” She’s a child psychologist. She’s worked for the UN for eight years. She’s worked in refugee camps around the world.

Her and I, when we work together, it’s like this synergy. It’s all just come together. I’m like, “Wow.” So you see when I didn’t know … and I’m like, “But I don’t know what the next step is, where the next piece is.”, but I can hold the bigger vision then what I need just shows up, like, “Okay.”, and it’s not even like I’m surprised anymore because I’ve got so used to knowing that whatever I need for the next step … and sometimes I don’t even know what the next step … and someone will show up and go, “This is what you need to do next.” I’m like, “Whoo, okay. Great.” So-

Melinda Wittstock:         Trust that this happens and I think that more that we exercise that muscle and the more that that happens, the more that it happens, but what I love about Mind Movies is that it helps people with … it’s immersive, almost, right, in helping them get there, because I think often, when we meditate or visualize, there’s so many extraneous thoughts. It’s almost like we’re getting interference, from all these different things and it’s hard to focus and then that inner voice says, “What are you doing? Are you sure you want that? What makes you think you can have that?”, and there’s so many different ways in which it’s difficult for people, at least to begin with and it takes awhile.

Melinda Wittstock:         So to have that actually just really putting yourself there. It’s not a question for you about technology. Have you ever thought of using augmented reality? Can you imagine? Putting on that headset and be right there in Mind Movies?

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah, our virtual reality app comes out in the next month or two.

Melinda Wittstock:         It does? Okay, so there we go. So that’s awesome. That’s really cool, so it’s a VR. It’s not augmented, it’s a full VR, like you’re-

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah, so you basically put your phone into the goggles and you … through the app … you play your personal Mind Movie that you’ve created and then it’s actually coming … like you’re inside the Mind Movie. It’s really something else.

Melinda Wittstock:         That is phenomenal.

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah, it’s really cool.

Melinda Wittstock:         Gosh. I’m going to get that.

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah, so here’s the thing about a Mind Movie that I think is really powerful. It’s not just the end product, but it’s the process of getting clear. Here’s the thing: when I’m teaching people how to make a Mind Movie, yes we want to make sure that we’re using affirmations to describe this future that we want and we don’t do it so that we can stand in front of the mirror and go, “I’m wealthy. I’m thin and I’m whatever.”, when that’s not the case, but we need to write it in present tense as if it’s already happened because this is where we need to be in our mind.

I always say, “Okay, here’s the things you want to think about when you’re describing … like comprehensively describing your future.” First of all, you need to know what it is that you want. Have outrageously successful business, a loving, supporting relationship, being financially free, whatever that is. The next kind of thing that you’ll want to think about is what life looks like when you get there, ’cause this is the juice of visualizations. This is where you’re going to go in your mind when you’re thinking about this. How is your day different? What are you doing different, all those kind of things.

Then you want to think about why. Why am I doing this? Why am I pushing myself to get this done? And there’s three types of why’s. There’s the why for the people that you’re serving. There’s the why for the people that you love, and there’s the why for you. You can be as selfish as you want. Some people want … if I was doing this in my 20’s, I’m like, “I want to do this to stick it to my mother, to show her that I don’t need her [crosstalk 00:37:45].” Luckily, I realized that wasn’t very healthy and I love my mum, but that would’ve been my motivation. Whatever it is. I’ll stick it to my ex-husband, whatever that is.

Then you want to think about the action. When I think about actions, I’m thinking about, “What do I need to change in my daily routine, in my daily practice so that I’m being this vibrational match, that I’m doing the things that I need to do to get to where I want to go?” You [inaudible 00:38:09] plan that maybe, if it’s my health and fitness Mind Movie, I’m exercising every morning and I’m eating Paleo and I’m not drinking and I’m not eating cheese, or whatever that is, so focus on that.

The last one is what I call your thoughts. How do I need to change the way I think, to be able to become this person and to step into this future? When you get really creative about all those things, just the process of doing that is amazing and obviously, you know, adding pictures and then of course the music is the secret sauce because we all know how music can invoke a certain emotion and when we’re doing our visualizations, we need to be in an elevated emotion. We need to be in this higher vibrational emotion and music can get us there straightaway.

But when we’re visualizing, what I highly recommend is that sometimes … [inaudible 00:38:58], “Okay, I want a successful business., and then when we’re visualizing, we’re kind of chopping back and forth with different things, and we’re trying to see the movie and we’re not … I’m like, “How do we do that?”. And what I recommend is that you just choose one scene, one scenario and put yourself in it, so rather than seeing a movie with you as a character, you’re actually in it.

I manifested a beautiful man, my boyfriend Wayne, he’s amazing, and I used to do this visualization and I would see myself … I was on a beach with my partner. Of course, he didn’t have a face, he was just hot, and I’d be laying on a deck chair and I could feel the deck chair underneath my legs, underneath my ankles. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin and I could hear the waves just crashing a little bit on the beach. You can smell the salty air and I would reach across and I could pick up a glass and it was really cold and it had a Pina Colada in it. I could taste the pineapple and the coconut flavor and I would put my glass down and I would reach across and I’m holding my man’s hand and the feeling of love and contentment and happiness supporting this whole event. This is how I would be feeling in that moment if I was there, so these are the feelings I’m feeling.

So I’m trying to use as many senses as I can, and I’ve been chopping and changing from different scenes, but just go deep. Really go into something because when you do that, honestly, your subconscious mind goes, “Oh, this is what we’re doing now. This is our reality.”, and when we do that, it starts to automatically create thoughts that are in alignment with what it thinks is reality. What happens is that it starts to create these new neural pathways for these more positive thoughts to travel down, and what happens is that that nattering, that negative little voice starts to get less and less, because those newer pathways start to take hold. So every time we think about money or start to work towards our goal, these positive thoughts are coming up, which just start to change our actions automatically.

I know that when I’m focusing on my health and fitness and the body I want, getting out of bed and exercising is not a chore. I go to a restaurant and I’m looking at the menu and I just automatically make a healthy choice without thinking about it because everything is alignment. When you’re feeling like you’re already this healthy person, that frequency is what you set out so everything that you need to make that a reality comes to you. You’re not running towards it. It’s coming to you and this is the secret behind the law of attraction and how we get it to work consistently for us.

Melinda Wittstock:         You know, it’s so interesting because attraction is such a feminine energy as well. Often on the podcast, we talk about women being in balance between their masculine and feminine. I remember in my 20’s and 30’s because I started out as an entrepreneur. There weren’t really many female role models to model yourself on, so there were only like dudes, so I behaved like ’cause I thought I had to, but it was really masculine pursuit like I’m going to chase down the wildebeest with my spear, right?

It doesn’t really work for women as well, but this does because I think when we’re all about abundance and manifesting and attracting and it’s a better way, even to be good at sales.

You strike me now as someone who is effortless at sales. Was that always the case or is it just because you’re so passionate and you believe so much? You’re really good at it.

Natalie Ledwell:               Like I said before, you want your business acumen and these other … the law of attraction stuff and combine the two. Working in the fitness industry, I got a lot of sales training, like a lot of sales training. I wouldn’t say that the style of selling that we were learning back in the 80’s and the 90’s is what we would use now, but I understand the mechanics behind it and we … I actually had a lady come up to me. I was in Berlin last week at an event and I was going Mind Movies workshops and she came up to me and she goes, “Natalie, Natalie!”, and I go, “Hi!”, and she goes, “I have to tell you; you are the best salesperson in the world.” I went, “Am I?” She goes, “Every time I see a video of yours, I don’t even know what you’re selling but I’m buying it. I have so many things of yours, I haven’t even opened them yet.” I’m like, “Okay!” But I think … like I said, having the technique important, but then when you combine that when you’re speaking, that you’re coming from a place of authenticity and being genuine, that you truly know that what you have is going to change the life of the people that you’re talking to and you’re not doing it because it’s expected.

Natalie Ledwell:               You’re not doing it because you’re forcing it. You’re doing it because you absolutely, truly, with every fiber of your being believe that that is the case.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes.

Natalie Ledwell:               I think if you combine the two of those things together, this is where you have a very powerful combination and the thing is too, when you’re looking at your why, when you’re focusing all the reasons why … when you’re focusing on, “I need to get this amount of money in my bank account.”, yet that’s great, but that can’t be your only focus. It’s got to be focusing on and reminding yourself how this is going to change their lives, the people that you’re serving, the people that you love. This is going to change their lives, the people that you’re serving, the people that you love and for yourself as well.

Melinda Wittstock:         Getting into alignment with your true north, if you will, your passion, your purpose, your talents, all of those things, when you get that alignment … I’ve had … as a serial entrepreneur, I’ve had businesses that have worked really easily. They’ve just instantly gone into flow and there are other ones that have been like pushing a boulder up a mountain. Like you think it’s the right one for you but obviously, there’s something out of alignment, right? Two steps forward and really like a kick in the head. I look back and I think, God, what was the difference and I think part of it in my own evolution along these things … I didn’t know a lot of the stuff I know right now about law of attraction or just even letting go.

This principle of letting go, or surrender, which I do so much of now, I didn’t know any of that stuff way, way, back. Things would get into flow almost by accident. I didn’t really know why and other things not. It was tricky to understand what was the problem and you look back on it now and you think, “Oh, okay. That just wasn’t in alignment at all.” I was doing it because I thought I should, not because of any passion or alignment on mission.

Natalie Ledwell:               From what you are describing is what I call my beige years.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love that.

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah, beige is just such a nothing color. After we sold the night club, Glen and I … we went through this whole series. We had the first [inaudible 00:46:04] advertising company in Australia, we had property development, we had coffee franchises, and a whole food business. We were into everything, manufacturing alcohol. It was just crazy and we’d just look at these businesses and go, “Can we do it? What’s our return on investment? What’s our exit strategy? Blah, blah, blah. Can we make money?”, so you’re just going through the motions.

There’s no buy-in, there’s no passion, there’s no purpose. It was just this drudgery of … it was. It was beige. And that’s why when something like Mind Movies came along and we started getting all these emails from people saying it was changing their lives, I’m like, “Ooh, okay.”, because this is what had happened: in fitness, I was top of my game. I used to speak on stage to club owners from all over Australia, telling them how to manage their team, how to systemize their business, all of these type of these things and I was a person of significance in that industry in Australia and [inaudible 00:47:04] a night club.

I remember having a moment thinking, “Um, how did I get here? I’m not meant to be here. This is not where I’m supposed to be.”, and I struggled a little bit ’cause now I’ve gone from this helping people to be healthy to the complete opposite of that. So I struggled a little bit. When we were going through all the beige businesses, it was “Eh, this is okay.”, and then Mind Movies came along. It woke up that spark that I had already experienced in fitness and I recognized it and I was familiar with it. I’m like, “Guys, we got to do this. Let’s do this.”, and because it was something that we all passionately felt about and we could see every day we were getting emails validating that what we were doing was making a change, it makes all the difference.

Natalie Ledwell:               Believe me, we were in a really sharp learning curve of how to … yes, we had business know-how, but this whole Internet thing was a whole other game.

Melinda Wittstock:         And it was early days, early days for that too. There were no hacks. There was no InfusionSoft or ClickFunnels or anything right? You had to do it all from scratch.

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah, exactly and sometimes with trip wires and all the jogging, you’re just like, “Okay.” Again, I am super grateful to my ex-husband and we’re still business partners and he’s the marketing genius behind Mind Movies and yes, I’m speaking in front of the camera and the messenger, which is what my wheelhouse is. This is what I’m good at and what I feel passionate about, but he’s also just as passionate about marketing and making sure that out the billions of websites out there, that people get to find us and get to come across our message.

Melinda Wittstock:         What a wonderful co-founding team, right? When you have two people that are aligned on the vision, but have different skills that they bring, right, which is so important. You see a lot of sole founders struggle with that because they don’t have … there’s a part of them that’s missing and getting the right … so I’m adding up all the amazing things that you did right, like getting into the Frank Kern Mastermind, finding out from masters right at the get-go, the fact that you were aligned on purpose and that you brought totally different skills to the table … what’s the other one? God, there’s so many.

Natalie Ledwell:               And the thing is too, when we’re looking back at the beige years, I look at every single business that we had and honestly, there is some life lesson, some business lesson, some experience that we had in every single one of them that is contributing to our success with Mind Movies and if we hadn’t gone through that journey, number one I don’t know whether we would’ve recognized Mind Movies for the opportunity that it was and I don’t know whether we would’ve been able to capitalize on it, because we wouldn’t have had all that experience and that skill behind us.

This is how I can reconcile that beige years were part of the journey, an important part of the journey.

Melinda Wittstock:         Natalie, that’s like the Steve Jobs quote, where he says when you look back on your life and you see all these things that don’t seem connected, but when you look back, you get all [inaudible 00:50:34], you look back and you see, “Ah, right, because I’m combining this and that and that and that and oh, I see. That was all meant to be and I can see that.” In particular, you mentioned at the very beginning of the interview that you wanted to be a teacher and think of how many people that you have taught something so valuable and now transitioning to this even bigger mission for children and youth around the world and what a game changer that’s going to be.

Natalie Ledwell:               Yeah. Well, now I’m teaching teachers.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Natalie Ledwell:               Like, really? This is where I’m at? I do … most days, I do pinch myself and go, “Is this … I’m from a family of eight kids in a country town in Australia and I’m living here in Marina Del Ray on the marina and now I’m friends with people like Jack Canfield and [inaudible 00:51:35] and we’ve reached 4.5 million people around the world and now I get to work with kids [inaudible 00:51:38], is this my life?” And sometimes, I pinch myself and go, “How did this happen?”, and other ways, I go, “I know how it happened.” My life is by design. Everything in it is by design. So then I’m grateful, but I’m just eternally grateful that I get to live this life.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s wonderful. Are there things along the way that you’ve found different for being a female entrepreneur as opposed to being a male entrepreneur or is it really basically the same? Are there specific lessons or specific ways that women in this game need to pay attention to…to succeed?

Natalie Ledwell:               I think one of my gifts, which helped me a lot, is that I’ve never really compared myself to other people. I never compared myself to other women so I didn’t feel the pressure to have to perform at a certain level, to reach certain milestones. If anything, I’d set myself high standards that I would beat myself up with if I didn’t reach them. I think a lot of women can understand that, but I would never compare myself to other people and I’ve always had the mindset that if it hasn’t been done before, then why not do it? Why not? Let’s go do that. No one’s done it before? Cool. Let’s go down that road, because I think I’ve picked up enough skill and … and the moment I’m looking at tackling the education systems around the world … when I think about it sometimes, I go, “Seriously? What, you think you’re going to pull that off?”… but then I know too much about how we can really achieve anything when we apply all of these lessons and my life is so in flow.

Natalie Ledwell:               I have a really strict daily practice and I meditate every day and I take breaks from the computer and I do mindful exercises and I exercise and do all those things that are going to keep me in this higher vibration so I’m really purposeful about how I do that and how I keep my energy clean, so that I can make sure that I’m aware of everything that’s coming in and surrounding myself with an amazing network of girlfriends who every time I have my little moments where I stumble and go, “Grrr.” I can call any of them up and they just put me back up and I’m like, “Right, that’s right. You’re right. Yes. Okay.”, and I can keep moving forward so that’s really important as well.

For me it’s just … I can’t believe that this is my life sometimes.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful. How did you get rid of the perfectionism gene that so many women have that stops us from [inaudible 00:54:25] soon enough, stands in the way of scale for most women founders will struggle to get to a million dollars because they’ll create a business around something that they love to do, and they have expertise in, credentials and knowledge and all these things, but they end up doing that thing and can’t scale, either because of a control freak or fear. “I don’t have enough money, I can’t hire yet.”, and they stay stuck.

How do they break out of that?

Natalie Ledwell:               Well, I’ve always working with a team and I’ve never … I don’t think there’s anything I’ve really achieved purely on my own. Yes, I’ve been a driving force to make a lot of things happen, but I do ask for help and I do create the team around us and I also know that I don’t know everything.

When I enter a conversation, whether it’s around my business, if it’s around life or anything, I know that opinions are just opinions. They’re based on my experience up until this point and if I don’t give someone else the opportunity to tell me their opinion or their side of the story, then I’ve missed out on an opportunity to be able to grow and to learn and to expand my own opinion.

I’ve always been … I’ve never been threatened by having a team member around me and going, “Look. What do you think about this? I want to ask your advice.” When we had the night club, I knew nothing about running a night club. Are you kidding? I hadn’t even worked behind a bar, so in the beginning I was honest. I go, “Guys, “I’m relying on you to teach me how to do this and how to do this in an effective way and teach me all the tricks that we need to know.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful, because that builds them up and they feel ownership at that point. What a wonderful thing to do that because most people wouldn’t think that way. Most people would think they had to become an expert before they had the right to do it and once they are an expert… then they’re going to be the expert and no one else can contribute.

Natalie Ledwell:               Or make out that they’re an expert when they’re not and the people who are experts can see right through that. Why bother doing that, you know?

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. You can’t attract great people doing that. When you look at … say the next five years in this wonderful mission that you have, which it’s so, so exciting, where do you need the most help, right now and how can people stand up … ’cause I know so many people are interested in this. This is our future. We have so many big problems on the planet that I for one believe that entrepreneurs will ultimately solve and our children really need to learn entrepreneurial skills but also obviously to succeed as an entrepreneur on obviously the mindset skills as well, so what you’re doing is so valuable.

Melinda Wittstock:         How can people show up and help you?

Natalie Ledwell:               Right now … ’cause we’re just towards the end of creating the curriculum itself … we’re looking for any kind of connection to an education system anywhere in the world. We’ve set the whole system up so it’s delivered online. We can do the teacher training, but the whole things set up, so that’s exactly what we’re looking for right now, specifically with that project, so if you go to Natalie Ledwell.com, you’ll see that there’s a page there that’s specifically about the kids program and you can contact me through there. Soon, we will be releasing a stand-alone program so that homeschool and parents and grandparents can actually do this at home with their kids individually, and be able to take them through the whole process as well.

That’s where we’re standing at the moment, but my vision with this is to change a generation. I think, I’m going to do it, might as well go big.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, I want to introduce you to my 15-year old daughter because this is her passion. She’s a fierce critic of the education system and then she’s had a ringside seat … one of my businesses I launched when she was only six weeks old. She’s been with me, watching this the whole time, but yeah. A lot of kids are really passionate about it and this generation coming up, they seem to know … or they seem to be much more open to it and of course, you watch little kids, like three, four, five, they already know this.

Natalie Ledwell:               As I’ve been creating the curriculum, we’ll take children through it, video them, then watch the video and tweak and change. We did some pilots with some children in Detroit. Some of the group lessons we did was with the detention class. We’re like, “Oh, God. The detention class of Detroit. Holy cow.” It was so … they just ate it up. Loved it, because we’re teaching them about [inaudible 00:59:04] how [inaudible 00:59:08] what this emotional intelligence is, how to manage themselves, how to self-regulate, and we’re getting them not just to do these habits, but to acknowledge how they feel when they do them, so that they’re distinguishing between, “This doesn’t make me feel good, this activity. This one does.”

Of course we have an app that goes along with it so they’re getting recognized and rewarded for doing random acts of kindness and then gratitude and all the different things, so it’s … we really are looking at making a big change to this next generation and like you said, they love the information and then they’ll go, “Oh, yeah. I know that.” They’ve already come through with a lot of information, but this generation is the first [inaudible 00:59:52] they’re really concerned. They’re concerned about the planet. They’re concerned about where we’ve been going as a [inaudible 00:59:55]. These things really disturb them, so they’re … we need to help to get in schools to help them deal with that, but then show them, if they want to make a difference, this is how you can [inaudible 01:00:09].

Natalie Ledwell:               So we’re trying to mold that behavior as well.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s so wonderful. And of course, can hardly wait, to for the virtual reality. Yeah, I can hardly wait for that. Everybody, look seriously, if you have not done Mind Movies, really, sign up. It is game changing and particularly for anyone in business. Wherever you are in your journey, if you’re starting one, or you’re stuck on the start-up sticky floor or wherever you are, this is really going to help, right?

Natalie Ledwell:               Absolutely. If you go to MindMovies.com, you can actually download six pre-made Mind Movies you can instantly start watching them. Things on building courage, having a wealthy mindset, all these things that we need to be able to create an outrageously successful business. Now as soon as you start watching these Mind Movies, you start to put yourself in that future, in that possibility so you can start to feel the shift straightaway.

Natalie Ledwell:               MindMovies.com and just download the six pre-mades from there.

Melinda Wittstock:         Awesome. Natalie, thank you so much for putting on your wings, taking flight, lifting us all up.

Natalie Ledwell:               Thank you, darling. I always enjoy having a chat with you and I’m actually buzzing after this [crosstalk 01:01:26] calm myself down, because this is what I love and you’re right. The entrepreneurs are going to really help to fix what’s happening economically in the world and I know the women entrepreneurs especially. We’ve come from this place of collaboration of sharing and supporting each other so when you can find a community or something, like you’ve got Melinda, where women can help each other, help other women, this is where we’re headed and thank you for everything you do.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, well thank you so much. I think when we show up for each other, we turn business to each other, we invest in each other. Anything’s possible.

Natalie Ledwell:               Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:         Thank you.

Natalie Ledwell:               Thanks!

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