In this episode, Dave is excited to welcome Natalia Wiechowski. Also known as Think Natalia, the Middle East’s leading Edutainer. Natalia is an award winning, bilingual public speaker, impression management coach and digital influencer. She has won excellence awards throughout the Middle East, Africa, UAE and everywhere in-between. She has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Yogalife, Link magazine and others.
But what is interesting is she never started out to do any of this. In fact, at age 15 she was one of only two competitive soloists in a new category – Discodance – on the competitive German dance scene. She danced at international championships and music concerts with audiences of up to 12,000 people. She did this for many years and while completing her studies.
So how then did she end up going from being a top competitive dancer to working in the Middle East to gaining over 100,000 followers worldwide in less than a year and half and becoming a top influencer, speaker, and coach? We find out in this episode!
Natalia started out of college and took the first international position she was offered in the UAE. She spent 3.5 years there and had some success, but wanted something bigger. So, in her 2nd job, she initially hit the mark. She was very successful, won all kinds of awards, and made a lot of money, but something was missing. She was exhausted and found herself getting sick over and over again. It was after enduring this for a while that she quit her job and took a 9 month sabbatical.
As she says, she had hit emotional and physical rock bottom and had to take a break and detox her whole life to find who she really is, what success means – essentially her true purpose.
She changed her routines, her habits, and the way she approached life. She immersed herself in learning and growing herself. She also changed how she approached her social life. She started a blog and started to do more social. People started asking her to help them do what she was doing. She did a lot of early work and consulting for free.
It was through doing this that she figured out who she really was – A public speaker, a coach, and digital influencer. She set her focus on those 3 areas and cut out everything else.
Natalia says that there was no one thing that really crystallized things for her. It was a series of things.
At the 7 minute mark, Natalia talks about belief and how she changed the way she thought and how she approached things to change how she did things and change her results. She gives several examples.
Natalia shares a great quote “People act according to their level of awareness.” And explains how this can impact people, both in a bad or good way, in their lives.
She says that some people think that “If they blow someone else’s candle, theirs will shine brighter,” and that is not the case.
At 12 min mark, Natalia talks about the steps she took to make her vision a reality. First, she had to forget everything she had ever learned and then had to redefine everything. Then, she began to educate herself in the areas to develop her new beliefs and then test what she learned to see if held true. She shares multiple examples of how this testing worked and didn’t work. As she says, she “failed herself to success,” through this process.
Natalia talks about taking action and how striving for perfection is not a good thing. She talks about having the courage to start, even when you are not fully prepared. She mentioned that starting automatically puts you ahead of others and not being afraid of looking foolish is critical because you won’t know everything or have everything perfectly aligned.
At the 20 min mark, Natalia breaks down her 3 main areas of Public Speaking, Coaching, and Digital Influencing and gives advice for the how to be successful in each. She says that there are specific things that work across all areas and really for anything.
She breaks it down this way
Thoughts on personal branding/impression management?
Thoughts on building a following?
3 secrets of Influencing that others don’t talk about:
At the 30 min mark, Natalia talks about how she works across the different social media platform and manages content.
Biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?
Natalia still seeks out coaches and mentors to hold her accountable and help her grow in areas that she feels she needs work.
At the 37 minute mark, Natalia discusses the systems and routines in her business and how they help her productivity and success.
At the 40 minute, there is a great discussion on the mental and physical roller-coaster of being an entrepreneur and how to cope with it.
Best Quote:“Some people think that if they blow someone else’s candle, theirs will shine brighter - and that is not the case.”
Natalia's Misfit 3