This is the second part of Nathalie’s interview and there are quite a few nuggets that will resonate with each of us. One of her five life lessons that she has already learned at the tender age of 24 is to learn to accept feedback and not take things  personally. This reminded me of the Four Agreements: Don’t take things personally, be impeccable with your word, always do your best, and never make assumptions.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I am known as the raw foods witch, and I help people to eat more fruits and vegetables. I have a background in software engineering and all of my nutritional knowledge is self taught based on the experience of the results that I have had eating this way.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

I do not see a big difference between my personal and professional life. I try to live by my values. I am very environmentally friendly and it’s important for me to believe in what I’m doing.  I like to support certain types of organizations, restaurants, where I buy my groceries. I like to have a good balance where I spend time with my family, boyfriend, friends and a good amount of time on my business. In my mind it’s all the same because anywhere that I am, I am going to be thinking about my business, ways to help others, and things to recommend. If someone recommends a book to me and I read it and enjoy it, I am going to recommend it to my clients. My personal and professional lives blend together.

What’s a major regret that you’ve had in life?

I think it’s only a half regret, but I think I regret going into computers instead of business school, but at the same time I think that I would have ended up in the same place. But a part of me regrets having that kind of background. I would have liked to know about building a business, marketing and about the legal aspects of a business instead of the technical background that I have. I think in the end I would have been able to learn both things so it isn’t the biggest regret ever.

What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

1. To not second guess myself. There were many times when I made a decision and wondered if the other way would have been better. Now I am a lot more comfortable with the decisions that I make.
2. Life is short. There is a lot of heart disease in my family, and that in part brought me to discover raw foods and adapt to this lifestyle and realizing that we are here for a certain amount of time and have to make the most of it, and we also have to take care of our health.
3. My third life lesson is to follow your passion and doing things that you think really matter in the world. So I was working in a very corporate environment, and it was really good money, but it wasn’t what I thought the world needed in terms of what I could offer it.
4. Learn to accept feedback and go with the flow. I am a perfectionist so when someone criticizes my work, my website, I have to look at it and take what’s useful and make the change. I am learning not to take things so personally.
5. I am very focused whenever I have something to do, but I have to tone it down because for a whole week I could be working on my website at the exclusion of everything else or I could be exercising and doing nothing else so I have to balance all of this. I am working on this because I have a Type A go-for-it personality.

When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

I like to read and I read quite a bit. I also like martial arts, swimming, playing games with my boyfriend and friends, card games, board games, that kind of stuff.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Most of my ideas come to me right before I fall asleep, go for a walk and when I shower because I am relaxed then. When I take a break from work I get ideas, all my ideas come to me at once and I have to write them down immediately or I might lose them.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“Well-behaved women never make history” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and the reason why I like that quote is because society has a lot of expectations when it comes to gender, and as female entrepreneurs, we have to be bold and be who we want to be and not shy away from our potential and what we can do in the world. For me, well-behaved is bucking convention and going against the norm.

How do you define success?

I define success by the way you feel, and I know that some people define it by money, your house and by more tangible stuff. But I think that success is more about the inside and how you feel on a day-to-day basis. If you feel like you are contributing and being rewarded for what you are doing and feeling comfortable in your space in the world, then you are a success.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

The formula for success will depend on the person. For entrepreneurs it’s putting yourself out there and deciding what you want to do, how you’re going to help people and going forward and creating great information and being there for people, but also taking a look at all the things that contribute to success, such as are you sleeping enough, are you eating well, are you exercising and creating a legacy, which is one of the things that will be there for generations to come.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Start local if you can and one of the things that has been useful for me is doing talks, and demonstrations, and connecting with people in person. Beyond that is building your website and creating your marketing. Having a website has been great for me because people have been able to go there and get information. From there keep building your offerings.

If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

The number one person would be Steve Jobs and I’d like to know how he keeps his drive and doesn’t get distracted from all the rumors. It would be interesting to learn how he keeps level headed.

Another person, who I have met (she was filming a movie in my small home town and I waited around until I got to meet her. It was a very short meeting) who I would like to meet again is Angelina Jolie and I would ask about her work with the United Nations and all the volunteer work that she does.

I would also like to meet Bill Gates and ask him how he manages his foundation and find out where he is going with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I would like to also find out what motivated him to start the foundation.

The fourth person that I’d like to meet is Gary Vaynerchuk. I feel like I know him already because of all his videos but I would like to ask him how he manages his time. He used to answer all his emails and now he doesn’t anymore, but he does everything himself and I’d love to know how he does that.

I would love to meet Hillary Clinton and find out how she ran her campaign.

Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply? Did you have an emotional or intellectual attachment to this book? Why?

It would have to be Wishcraft by Barbara Sher. It took me out of the way I used to think about life, doing things and achieving goals. I like the way she describes how to get other people to help you to reach your goals. It was very step-by-step which was awesome. One exercise I liked was designing five or six lives and see how they each did and it was really interesting to see how you could have different options and you didn’t have to have one you and you could take different aspects of all those selves and incorporate them into your life right now.

One of the things I wanted is to have clients and do more one-on-one coaching and consulting and the other part was writing so it was really interesting to see how one of the mes would be a writer and the other a coach and I thought to myself that well I could do both, so I did.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

I would take Tribes by Seth Godin which is about leading people where there was no leader before

I would also bring The Purple Cow by Seth Godin as well, which is about how to make your business and your offering different.

The End of Overeating by David Kessler is about how the commercialization of food has made it easier to eat a lot more of it

Nine Lives That Are Holding Your Business Back And The Truth That Will Set You Free by Steve Chandler. And that book is basically just taking away all those things that you tell yourself to keep you from doing things that you really have to do in your business. That book has changed the way that I think about business.

Another book that I really liked is Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robins. I read that one quite a while ago but I think that I could read that one over and over again. That book has everything to keep you going.

What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

I like the movie Hook and it’s about Peter Pan and I also liked A League of Their Own, which was about women playing baseball during the war.

I really like Sarah McLaughlin and I could listen to her over and over again.

What excites you about life?

There are really very few limits and that excites me, and more people are living an alternate lifestyle eating more raw foods.

How do you nurture your soul?

I meditate a little bit and I love going out into nature, sitting under a tree or by the water and connecting. I find that great for my spiritual side.

If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for? Or, if I gave you a magic wand, what would you use it for?

I would wish for a solution to our overpopulation, and not a gruesome solution but one that would take into account everything that the planet needs, that people need. The solution could be really simple like people cutting back on certain things that they considered necessities. I want to heal the planet.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

There is sunshine and I am with people that I love.

What nuggets can you take away from Nathalie’s interview?

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