Unapologetic Wealth: Embracing The Radical Act of Making Money with Natalie Bullen - EP 042
Mar 25, 2025
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What if you could rewrite your money story and step into wealth without guilt or hesitation? In this episode, I sit down with wealth coach Natalie Bullen to dive deep into the concept of wealth identity and how societal expectations shape our financial mindset—especially for women.
Natalie shares her personal journey from traditional finance to entrepreneurship, showcasing the power of embracing unapologetic wealth. Together, we explore the phases of wealth, the difference between financial security and true abundance, and the mindset shifts needed to break free from limiting beliefs. We also discuss the ethics of sales, the importance of aligning your business with your passions, and why pleasure should be an integral part of success.
Join us for a powerful conversation about financial empowerment, and start redefining what wealth means for you.
Episode Takeaways:
- Everyone has a wealth identity shaped by personal experiences and societal influences.
- Hard work alone doesn’t guarantee financial success.
- Recognizing and rewriting your money story is key to financial growth.
- Women are often conditioned to play small in their financial aspirations.
- Financial hardship can serve as a turning point for transformation.
- Wealth is subjective and defined differently by each individual.
- Embracing unapologetic wealth is essential for women to thrive.
- Money is a tool that can support personal and professional goals.
- Aligning your business with your values and desires leads to greater success.
- Many people unknowingly hold onto limitations instead of pursuing true financial freedom.
- Ethical sales should be a consensual exchange, not manipulation.
- Developing a wealth mindset is critical for achieving financial goals.
- Pleasure should be experienced freely, not just as a reward for success.
Key Insights:
“It's time for us to rewrite our own money story and you have to recognize that there's a story being told in order to do so.” — Natalie Bullen
“We need to stop telling ourselves that money is bad. Money is a tool and it helps us accomplish what we want to accomplish in a really effective, efficient way.” — Natalie Bullen
“Figure out what the thing is that's right for you, that suits you, what it is that you're really excited about, what it is that you're really passionate about, that you want to do, the contribution that you want to have, and then how to bring that to life in a way that works for you.” — Rachel Anzalone
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Natalie Bullen:
Connect With Me:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @RachelAnzalone
- Facebook: Rachel.Anzalone
- LinkedIn: RachelAnzalone
Question for Your Reflection:
What beliefs about money have you inherited, and how are they shaping your financial decisions?
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Remember: Your pleasure is your power. 💫
Ready to step into the pleasure revolution and transform how you do business? Let's explore how to maximize impact, profit, and pleasure in alignment with the new paradigm. Schedule a time to connect with me right here >>>
Episode Transcript
Rachel Anzalone (01:12)
Hello and welcome to Pleasure and Profits. On today's episode, I'm speaking with Natalie Bullen, founder of Unapologetic Wealth and a leading expert in sales coaching and pricing strategy.
But more than that, Natalie is an expert in helping you identify what your wealth story is and making a conscious choice about what you want your wealth story to become. Natalie has an impressive background in finance, having worked at one of the largest financial institutions in the US before she transformed her own financial journey, going from working multiple jobs to building a business that generates more in a month than she used to make in an entire year.
Since 2021, Natalie has coached over 300 clients, helping them achieve an average 38% increase in revenue year over. Her specialty is empowering entrepreneurs to confidently sell high ticket offers without apology. As a self-described wealth catalyst, Natalie's mission is clear — to create more impact-driven, well-capitalized businesses by helping entrepreneurs not just make money, but keep it, grow it, and build generational wealth. Natalie believes that making money is a radical and necessary act and stands firmly for ethical sales processes and women having a whole lot of money.
I loved our conversation. It was very lively and I hope you enjoy it too.
Rachel Anzalone (02:27)
Welcome to Pleasure and Profits, Natalie. I'm so excited for you to be here. I have been following you for a while online and watching you sort of blow up Facebook with all of your enthusiasm and excitement and bold, audacious, and unapologetic perspective about money and wealth and women in entrepreneurship. And I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (02:51)
I'm pretty excited about it. Thank you for having me.
Rachel Anzalone (02:55)
So one of the things that you talk about on your website is this idea of stepping fully into your wealth identity. And I would love for you to start by just sharing a little bit about your own journey from working in traditional finance to starting an entrepreneurship to this current iteration of what you're doing now and how that really relates to your own process of stepping into your wealth identity.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (03:21)
You know what? I really ought to rewrite that copy. I don't do it justice because everyone already has a wealth identity. You already have one. It might not be one that you purposely chose. It might be your parents. It might not fit. It might be your ex-husbands’. It might be societies. It might be the Democrats. It might be the Republicans. But you already have an idea. You already feel a certain way about money. And that way is cemented. You believe what you believe, what you've always believed.
So stepping into is not the right verbiage. It's really elevating your wealth identity to something that could actually ever make you wealthy. For instance, my wealth identity has always been hardworking provider. I had a mom that worked two, three jobs. My grandparents lived through the great depression. They taught me to value a dollar. They taught me to save and be very frugal and live beneath your means and be a good steward and tithe to the church. And if you don't work, you don't eat.
My grandfather got me a job when I was 15. He literally went into a grocery store where he frequented, told the manager he had shopped there for decades and told them to give me a job. So I've always had the belief that if you need more money, you just clock more hours. You do.
Rachel Anzalone (04:33)
Hmm, yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (04:35)
That's just… Because that was my wealth identity. My relationship to money was if you need more, you work more, you clock in more, you apply more, you work harder, you pick up overtime, you pick up extra shifts, you work when everyone else wants to go home. They offer voluntary time off, you don't take that because you're a hard worker. But hard workers are inherently capped financially because their earnings are capped to their labor and there's only so many hours you can work.
There's only you, you only have one body and it can only be in one place at one time. So all of your wealth is tied up in actions. You're screwed. The hardest working person you know is not the richest person you know. It will never be.
Rachel Anzalone (05:14)
Absolutely, 100%.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (05:25)
Impossible. So it's really not so much stepping into it. It's recognizing that you have one and doing something different. You know, I don't know. Have you ever, you've probably watched some variation. Have you ever watched any rendition of Romeo and Juliet?
Yeah, most of us have, right? Well, I've seen more Romeo and Juliet than most people. I've seen Romeo and Juliet on ice. I've seen Romeo and Juliet in multiple plays. I've seen skating. I've seen gymnastics. Okay? I've seen Romeo and Juliet. And you know what's always going to happen at the end of that tragedy? Romeo and Juliet are going to die.
It does not matter because it is a tragedy and that's what happens, right? The actors all stick to the script. The script says at the end they die. That's what the script says. So it doesn't matter what happens to the actors. You can get whatever actor you want. You can get whatever stage you want. You can get whatever location you want. Everyone is going to play their role because the script says at the end both protagonists must die. That's what happens in tragedies. It has to happen.
A lot of us are living a money script, just like that. It just ain't called Romeo and Juliet, right? Maybe it's called a Rachel Anzalone production. And that's the script. So if your brain is always running the script of, “I have to work more, I have to do more, I have to justify, to make money,” then you'll always get the outcome of that script.
And the Romeo and Juliet outcome is that both the characters pass away. That's the outcome. It's probably not the outcome you want. We don't want them to die. We get really attached to these young people. We think it's tragic. But we know when we sit down that that's what's gonna happen, right? So like, it's time for us to rewrite our own money story and you have to recognize that there's a story being told in order to do so. If I go in the ground and I have accomplished awakening people to the idea that there is a money story at play, and getting people to write out the script that they have been living and ask themselves objectively if this is a play they want to keep watching. Then I'll accomplish everything I need to accomplish in life.
Rachel Anzalone (07:18)
I love that. So rather than stepping into your wealth identity, it's really about rewriting your wealth identity script, rewriting your wealth storyline. Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (07:28)
Yeah, yeah, because you can't step into something you've never heard of. Like now I have a fully formed, very abundant wealth mindset. I believe that I can make as much money as I choose to. But I believe that now because I've been exposed to people who make a lot of money, because I'm self-employed and can have unlimited earnings potential. I'm not working in traditional finance where for all intents and purposes, unless you're in a hedge fund or on some type of commission structure, you're basically in a fixed income. So yeah, now I have a fully realized, and like I say fully realized, it's always work. Because every level is bigger, right? Like my current money mindset might get me to be like a decamillionaire, 10 million net worth. Would it get me to a million? Would it get me to a billion? No.
Rachel Anzalone (08:11)
Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (08:15)
No, I would have to do even more work and expose myself to even more things and more people and get that inner fortitude because women are trained by society to play small and ask for very little, need very little. You see those memes? She doesn't ask for much so she deserves the world. Bullshit. If she doesn't ask for much, she won't get much. Right? Like that's not a flex. Being really easy and agreeable and nice and not requiring much from people is actually not a compliment. It's not like a good thing. It's not something we should aspire to.
So I want to counteract the forces that tell us that we don't deserve to have a lot of money or that worse having a lot of money is going to corrupt us in some way. Like newsflash, if money makes you a bad person you were already a bad person. Money just gives you the opportunity to express your badness in a more large scale way.
Rachel Anzalone (09:00)
So I know a little bit about your story and you could share as much or as little as you want to. What was the turning point where you went this way that I've been raised, this old story that I've had is not the one that I want to live. And I'm going to choose to do something different. And what happened that made you make that pivot?
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (09:23)
Definitely filing bankruptcy with a finance degree in my 20s with three jobs and a college degree. Yeah. Yeah, that'll do it. I'd never been on a vacation as an adult. I didn't own designer purses or clothes or shoes. I didn't have children out of wedlock that I couldn't afford to provide for. I did everything right. I went to school on scholarship and I worked until I couldn't keep my grades up and I lived in an apartment where my rent was $454 a month. I literally did it all right.
And I had some female health issues. I tried to get FMLA and my FMLA got declined, and my job rolled back all of the time off that they had given me. Cause no one in HR told me if your FMLA is not approved, we're going to turn all of this time that we told you to take off into untimed paid off. So that's what ended up happening.
And my OBGYN was like, I'm not willing to perform the surgery that it would take to fix your issue because you've never born children. And I was willing to sign an affidavit saying I don't want children and she still wouldn't do it. So because society says that 20 year old women have to have children, the imaginary children that I didn't want got put above my current health and my current body.
And so because they wouldn't approve my FMLA without the surgery and she wouldn't do the surgery because of my age and not having children, all that time got rolled back. And I got pulled into HR and they said, if you miss one day, if you are more than five minutes late, we will terminate you. And one day my car wouldn't start. And they terminated me.
And when I got home, my boyfriend had another woman in my apartment. And I saw my life flash in front of me, because I know that's how people crash out. So I put him out and he started making my life a living hell. And I ended up filing bankruptcy and sleeping on a friend's couch at my brand new job at the bank.
And I'm like, I don't understand. I'm a straight A student. I'm a good college student. I have a degree. I worked a full-time job, I worked a part-time job, I have my own apartment and my own car and a 700 FICO score. I don't understand why I'm still poor. I don't understand why I'm still struggling so hard. I don't understand why I'm making $2.13 an hour waiting tables at Cracker Barrel or $12 in call centers. Like I don't, I don't get it, you know?
And so I said, you know what? I just feel like this whole thing is BS. Like I'm a really smart, capable person and I did what you were supposed to do and I still got nothing. So like, clearly this is not like real. So I said, you know what? I need to have a lot of savings. Like there's a very popular financial guru whose name we will not mention, but he tells you to eat rice and beans and beans and rice and work until you die basically.
Rachel Anzalone (12:02)
Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (12:09)
And so I actually had savings. I had about 10,000 saved, but because of his system, I spent down all but a thousand of it to pay down my debt. So when I lost my job, I only had a thousand dollars to my name and my rent was $454 a month. So I had no runway. Had it not been for this guru, I would have had eight, nine months of runway. I spent down my runway to pay off the debt.
And you know, that kind of trauma definitely like feeling like you did the right thing and like listening to somebody that America says is some kind of like, Financial guru who's filed bankruptcy themselves by the way. I didn't like it. I wasn't a fan and so I said, you know what? I don't know what the answer is, I don't know what the solution here is but I can tell you, I'm never gonna get caught with my pants down again. I'm never gonna have less than ten thousand in savings ever again and that is something I have never broken to myself since and I'm gonna enjoy some time off. I'm gonna take a vacation even if that means staying in my house and eating grapes and not answering my phone. I'm gonna take whatever vacation I can afford, because at the end of the day, nobody really cares about you.
If you don't care about yourself, then there's nothing left. yeah, sitting in the bankruptcy attorney's office thinking about how you haven't lived. Because when I hear about bankruptcy stories, it's people with $100,000 in credit card debt. They've been to Maui and the Maldives, and they've got seven kids and a Rolls Royce. Like I was driving a 12-year-old car. But there was nothing luxurious about my life. I was just low income.
And it just, it sucked, you know? I just, I don't know, I felt like I deserved better. So, that did it.
Rachel Anzalone (13:41)
Yeah, you talk about earning power being the foundation of wealth. And you just mentioned that this idea of like your, like having a capped earning power and that, that's something that you really need to change in order to build wealth. Before we go there, I actually would love for you to chat a little bit about what's the difference in your mind between wealth and financial security or earning revenue, and actually building wealth.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (14:12)
I think there are phases, I guess you could say. Wealth is subjective. Let me start there. So like what I think is wealthy and what you might think is wealthy might not be the same thing at all, which is fine, you know, totally fine. But I think there are six stages. One is survival. Survival is I'm struggling to cover my basic needs. I am paycheck to paycheck. If I miss one check, something's not going to get paid. We have no savings, right? The average American doesn't have a thousand dollars in savings. So a lot of us are in survival.
A step up from that, I would say is stability. So stability is like we have some savings, the bills are going to get paid on time, but like you're managing, like you're getting by. But there's not like surplus.
And then I think security is a step up from that. That's when you start paying down your debt. You're not just making minimum payments. That's when you've got a solid amount of money set aside. You're putting money in your 401k. You're putting money in your IRA. Like you have a positive net worth. You've got a fully funded, maybe sinking fund. If something comes up with your house, if you have a $20,000 repair, you can pay it, you know?
And then maybe growth or comfort is kind of next, is what I would call like maybe mass affluent, people making 150, 200, 250, $300,000 in pay, not revenue. Because most people are like actively investing, buying real estate, maybe hiring help, you know, a nanny, an au pair, a home manager.
And then I will say wealth and legacy is last. And that's when you've got money that outlives you.
Rachel Anzalone (15:36)
Mmm.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (15:51)
So I think there's a spectrum. I don't think revenue has anything to do with it because I know people, I know revenue is completely out of the question because there's so much variety in how people choose to spend the revenue in their business. I know people whose business makes 250 and they pay themselves 150 and have very low expenses and $50,000 worth of profit and they're very happy with that. And they're doing better than people who have seven figure revenue.
Rachel Anzalone (15:55)
Oh for sure. Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (16:17)
You know, and I know people with seven figure revenue who barely pay themselves anything. Like their personal net worth is not growing at all, you know? So that's very subjective.
But I think on the personal scale, I spent a lot of time just being stable and just being grateful that I was stable. But if I had a higher paying job, I would have been able to move up those rungs a lot faster.
Rachel Anzalone (16:26)
Yeah, and you said something about women being taught this sort of like just enough, which is something I talk about a lot, I see it a lot in the world of women entrepreneurs of, I want to have a business that makes just enough. I don't want to charge more than I need. I want to make sure that I have like just enough to take care of the things, just enough to be comfortable, just enough to be secure.
And one of the things I love about your perspective and what you share is this idea of unapologetic wealth, of like I don't need to apologize for wanting more than just enough. And so many of us were raised in that culture.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (17:14)
Yeah. Well, it's a lie. I don't actually believe people when they tell me that.
Rachel Anzalone (17:20)
No, I agree. I think it's people, it's settling. It's acceptable for me to say that I want enough. It's not acceptable, yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (17:26)
It's not acceptable to tell the truth. So they lie and they go, well, you know, cause I'm sorry. I don't believe you. When you tell me, I just want enough to be able to put gas in my car, buy some groceries. I don't believe you. I don't actually believe anybody wants to work full time for part time pay. I don't believe any mother wants to be away from her babies for any period of time, let alone a period of time where she's not getting compensated fairly.
I don't believe you. I don't believe anybody wants to live in a house that they can't afford to repair in a timely manner. I don't believe that anybody wants to live in a house in a bad part of town or that has property tax they can't afford. I don't believe anyone wants to drive an unreliable car because they can't afford a newer one or a small car when they have a big family. I don't think anyone wants to have fewer kids because they can't afford to feed them, not because they didn't actually want them.
I don't think anyone wants their skin to be bad because they can't afford a facial. Like I just, I-I don't believe anyone wants to file an extension with the IRS because they don't have the money. I don't believe you. Like I just don't.
The outcomes that happen when you don't have enough money are markedly uncomfortable, unbearable even. Like it's okay to desire to be rich. Cause here's the thing, and I'm writing a book and this is going to be in it. Men's desires don't get diminished. If a man buys a Rolex, a $100 cigar, not box of cigars, one cigar, that he's gonna smoke into stinky ash. One cigar, that's $100. No one bats an eye. Men buy yachts and Porsches and all kind of stuff when they have midlife crisis. If I go to Sephora now, I'm a bad person. Don't let me go to Nordstrom and want to buy $2,000 Chanel bag. Now I'm materialistic. It's very double standard.
So, you know, I always ask myself what would Nathan do? My dad is Nathaniel. So if I were Nathan, would anyone question it? Would anyone call me bossy or money driven? Would anyone bat an eye if I were Nathan? If I had a penis, would anyone care that I'm trying to do what I'm trying to do? And the answer is no. Unequivocally no.
Rachel Anzalone (19:27)
One of my favorite things that I read that you wrote is this idea that money making is a radical act. And what you're talking about in terms of men and women and what our expectations are and what's socially acceptable for us to say we want or to actually pursue and how we go about pursuing those things.
One of the most eye-opening things to me in the last couple of years was, I spent 15 years in this world of being self-employed in online business and entrepreneurship. And most of that time was around women, women coaches, groups of women, which is great. And there's so much benefit to that. But I spent time in one group where it was mostly men. And holy shit, those guys. Nobody's tiptoeing around money. Nobody's tiptoeing around what their goals are, their responsibilities.
And the contrast was shocking to me that these guys will just be like, yeah, my goal is to close a $50,000 sale this month. And women, they're just so careful about like not saying the actual number and not wanting to make somebody else feel bad if they're making more. So this idea of it being unapologetic and being radical in our actions around money, I think is super exciting.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (20:44)
It is. I mean, I come from a male dominated space. I used to sell life insurance. I've been in sales. I've been a telemarketer. I was in banking. So I've never really been in a female dominated industry, I guess you could say. So trust me, going online was very jarring to me. It was very strange to watch people talk themselves out of making money.
Rachel Anzalone (21:06)
Talk more about that.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (21:08)
Yeah, I don't actually get it. Okay. So I watch, I Love Lucy. My mom had a rule. My mom had me later in life. She's very strict. Her name is Annie Fleming. She's the best parent that you could ever have. And as a reward for my good grades, she let me put a TV in my room, but I had a rule. If I wanted to watch the TV that was in my room alone, not the TV out in the family room, I could only watch child appropriate shows that she decided we're either shows on Nickelodeon or black and white movies and TV shows. So if it was in black and white, it was okay.
And so I started watching I Love Lucy when I was really young. I didn't know Lucille Ball was dead. All right? Because I watched it so often, I thought these people were still alive and they just shot it in black and white. I didn't realize black and white was a technological barrier, right? She didn't say watch an old show, she said watch a black and white show. So whatever. Lucy didn't work. With the exception of a couple of episodes where she tried to beguile Ricky into buying something and he wouldn't do it.
So it made sense that Lucy couldn't open her own bank account. It made sense that Lucy couldn't get her own credit card because her husband made 100 % of the money and 100 % of the financial decisions. Well, today a white woman has a 25% chance in her household of being the breadwinner. For black women, it's 40%, four in 10, two in five. So if you are going to be the breadwinner, how can you not like bread? That's just bizarre to me.
So I'll see women who are in business, so they say, and they spend all of their time tangled up in how they're not gonna make money. They don't want to sell, they don't want to market, they don't want to put themselves out there. They don't want people to renew, they don't want to be too pushy, they don't want to send DMS. They don't want to send emails. They don't want to send SMS messages. They don't want to charge more. They don't want to show up more. They don't want to be on podcast. They don't want to have a live event. They don't want to run ads. What is left? What do you mean? Like are you going to starve to death?
So like I always think to myself, if you really want to impact what you say you want to impact, why would you be okay with statistics like the average woman-owned business is only making, for black women, $39,000 a year? That is a horrible, crappy statistic. If I was the president of the feminism club, I just wouldn't rest. What's that statistic out there, right?
Did you know that the wealth gap gets larger when women go into business for themselves?
Rachel Anzalone (23:30)
I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised because what I see is a lot of women who are very successful then start their own business and then settle for that just enough.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (23:40)
That’s just embarrassing to me. I just can't see myself doing worse than I was doing in corporate.
Rachel Anzalone (23:44)
All right, that is so interesting. Let's unpack that a little bit.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (23:47)
My lived experience is that women in corporate will say it is the white man's fault. It is men's fault. It's HR, it's corporate, it's the man. There's some nebulous or maybe not so nebulous force that is underpaying them. And then they go into business and their first order of business is to pay themselves even less. Who can you blame? Who is to blame for a woman who pays herself nothing in your business?
Rachel Anzalone (24:06)
Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (24:09)
I just always wonder like what is the force pushing down on women's earning potential?
Rachel Anzalone (24:15)
Well, I mean, I, objectively there are forces and also there's this element, what you talked about before, this wealth story. If you have spent your life in an environment where the story has been ingrained in you, that you have to work really hard and it's going to be difficult and you can't, and then you go start your…
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (24:33)
These people aren't even working hard. So what is their story? Is their story like Pretty Princess?
Rachel Anzalone (24:38)
Hahaha
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (24:43)
What is their story? Because they don't do anything. They just want to show, I just want to help people. Okay. So like, how do you eat under the I just want to help people model?
Rachel Anzalone (24:49)
Yeah, it's a tangled web. One of the things I see in that world that you're talking about is this idea that somehow my idea, my intention, the impact that I want to have is so pure that if I dirty it up with money, then somehow I've messed it up. Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (25:12)
I see, yeah, yeah, that's valid. I could see why people would like, I'm blessed in that I wasn't raised that way, but I could have just as easily been raised that way. Like you don't choose how you're raised. Your parents do that. You don't choose that and you don't choose your parents. So like, I don't know. I am very realistic. And in my realistic world, we have bills and the bills have to be paid with money. I did try to pay my bills once with goodwill and charisma.
Rachel Anzalone (25:25)
Yeah, it didn't work.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (25:43)
You know, I made a good effort. But in general, you really have to show up and we need to stop telling ourselves that money is bad. Money is a tool and it helps us accomplish what we want to accomplish in a really effective, efficient way.
Now, maybe this comes from working at the bank, but for me personally, I love that money is available for us. I know that there were barter systems. And I know that there were things like maize, you know, corn that was actually being distributed. And there are things like gold bars. But when you think about efficiency, being able to say that something is worth a standard value that doesn't move and you know what you can buy with this value, you've got a $20 bill and you know about what $20 will buy. It's so efficient and effective. It's such a smart thing to do. Like fiat currency is just so wise.
To me, I just couldn't see myself saying I'm going to try to opt out. And if I were, I would be honest with myself, if you're listening to this right now and you're one of those pillow princesses thinking, that sounds like a lot of work you over there doing that, I don't want to be bothered with it. Like maybe your current lifestyle isn't for you. Like maybe being minimalistic is your thing. You know, like my husband thinks I'm very materialistic. Like my husband has maybe one fifth of the possessions I own or maybe one tenth or maybe one 20th. Like he does not own a lot of things. So for him making a lot of money is not super important. It's having a lot of space and time with your loved one. So like maybe you need to reassess kind of what you want out of life.
But if you're gonna run a business, a for-profit business in the United States, it's got to have profit. That's the IRS's rule, not mine. You can lose some money sometime, but not every year. You gotta make some money eventually. And maybe like entrepreneurship isn't the best way for you to hit the target that you want and that's okay. I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of people trying to twist themselves into entrepreneurship when it's really not in alignment with what they want for themselves. Like what do you want? What kind of free time do you want? What kind of money do you want? What kind of lifestyle do you want? If entrepreneurship in your current model doesn't do that, then it's okay to let it go. Like I think there's such a toxic culture. It's like a cult. Once you get in cults of entrepreneurship, you're not allowed to leave or you're failure.
Rachel Anzalone (27:56)
Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (28:00)
And I just think that's really harmful and dangerous for us to believe or to say. I think it's untrue. But if you are going to stay in business, you have to accept that there needs to be an exchange of money for goods and services and that that exchange needs to happen on a very frequent basis and that there needs to be profit in every transaction. And you've got to decide, am I the kind of leader that is dedicated to making that happen or not?
Rachel Anzalone (28:00)
Oh, that's so good. I think that one of the issues in the entrepreneurship world is the idea that there's a way and that often sort of the light, loudest, shiniest people are teaching a way to do it. And you mentioned this earlier, like you could have a business where you're doing $250,000 a year, you're paying yourself 150. It's really simple. It's you and a VA and it just is like nice and you get to enjoy it.
But there's this story that you have to scale and you have to build a multimillion dollar business and you have to grow, grow, grow at any cost. And it doesn't take into account what you want, what you want to be experiencing and what you want your day-to-day life to be like. And to your point, I mean there are definitely people running two, five, $10 million businesses and they're still only paying themselves $150,000.
So if you don't want to be managing a huge team and you don't want to have something really complex, you don't have to. You just have to figure out what it is that you want first and then build a business that really supports that.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (29:30)
Yeah. Well, it's part of why I've pivoted my services. You know, I used to do a lot of sales coaching and I would help people to sell better, sell more of what they sell, sell it faster, sell it to better qualified, more warm prospects. But I'll be honest with you. Most people don't need to sell better. They need to either sell something different or they need to sell themselves on the idea of what it is that they're going to do anyway.
Because if you're not all the way in it, like all the way bought in it, you're always going to sabotage yourself a little bit. You won't promote as much. You won't charge as much. I had a client who was charging 10k for three months of one-on-one coaching. She had been charging that 10k for like two years. That was just her price. It was a comfortable price for her. It was an easy yes. People said yes. She could say it in her sleep. And I listened to one of her sales calls and I was like, do you really want to coach these people? And she was like, yeah, of course I want to coach these people.
And I was like, oh okay, so I listen to another one of the calls and I listen to her podcast and I was like, when I listen to your podcast, you're talking about X and you're emphatic about it. You're really excited about this thing. But when I listen to your coaching calls, you don't talk about any of those things at all. And when I listen to your sales calls, you're like halfway zoned out. You're barely even listening to these people. So I wonder, why does your passion project, like why is the thing you love talking about not reflected in your work? Cause she's like, oh well, you know, this is what people pay me for.
And I was like, people would probably pay you more for the thing that you're actually really lit up about because that thing you could do way better than the thing you're kind of lukewarm on. Even though the lukewarm thing is paying your bills, it doesn't mean it has to. So instead of working together to try to optimize a model she didn't even like, we repositioned and created messaging that made people want to pay top dollar for the other thing. The thing her podcast actually talked about, her zone of genius. And we landed her a client who paid her 25K for three months of coaching.
So it's not so much the business model that was flawed. The model was fine. The price was fine. She didn't have many expenses. That 10K was profitable. So it was really like, what's stopping you from doing the thing you want to do? And most of us have a reason why we think that what we want is not possible. We've already justified with ourselves, and we fight for our limitations. So like most of us have a limitation and we're willing to dig in our heels and go, no, no, no, you cannot take this limitation away from me. This is my limitation. Okay. I believe this wholeheartedly. You can't take that away from me.
But having somebody else be a mirror and be like, right, but is this what you even want? This thing to fight for?
Rachel Anzalone (32:02)
Yeah, so it comes back to rewriting that wealth story. It's really then it's about your, why do you want to be? And do you want to, yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (32:11)
Right, who are you and do you want to do this? Right? Like most of us really don't know who we are and there's ancestral stuff, especially if you're a person of color, like for black women, we've never been safe to say who we are. We've been assigned something. We've been told what we were, what we were worth. Right? Slaves had no say. They couldn't even read. My mother drank out of colored only water fountains. My biological mother. We're not nearly as far away epigenetically as we think from these horrors that kept us behind.
So it's very common for us to be like, well, you know, I would like this, but it's not reasonable. It's not realistic. We already have these constraints, but I know coaches killing it. I have a friend who charges $750,000 for six months of coaching. It's to ultra high net worth persons, obviously, but like they exist and they're paying it, you know?
So I mean, anything you think is ridiculous, impossible, crazy, there's somebody doing it, right? Like I wanted my book to be called Audacity like Brad, cause I don't think they'll let me put Audacity of a white man on a bookshelf.
Rachel Anzalone (33:02)
I think you should though, I would buy that.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (33:21)
I know, but I don't think anyone would let me publish it. I don't think I can get that traditionally published. But like Audacity like Brad. Like I feel like a lot of times women kind of think, and maybe it's a rejection sensitivity thing, we think, well, I don't want to ask for too much, don't want to be too much. I don't want to do too much. But like, I want to support people who are too much. I love too muchness. I love that. I love people who are too loud, who have too many ideas. I love people who are too smart. And I love that. I love excess, I love that. I want people who want too much money, I want people who want too many clients, I want people who want too many leads, I want people who want too many kids, I want people who want too many pair of shoes.
Like whatever you got that feels big and expansive, I wanna be that coach. Cause I feel like there's a whole lot of people telling you that what you wanna do is completely ridiculous. I feel like that's been done. Very few people are telling you, you can have absolutely anything you want. We just need to create your next best step. And that's what we do.
Rachel Anzalone (34:20)
I love that. I think that's fantastic. Figuring out what the thing is that's right for you, that suits you, what it is that you're really excited about, what it is that you're really passionate about, that you want to do, the contribution that you want to have, and then how to bring that to life in a way that works for you. In your life, in your lifestyle, and helps you to create the life that you want to be having along the way. Getting out of these ideas that there's a way that it has to be done. These old stories, and whether those stories are generations old, or those stories are from digital marketers from 10 years ago, or five years ago, they're still stories. There's such a push for people to get away from doing one-on-one work to get into doing higher leverage stuff. But it's like, I want to have the conversation with you.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (35:07)
High leverage doesn't mean a group coaching program. So yes you need some leverage, but leverage could be a paid newsletter. Leverage could be a $27 subscription of all of your old Facebook lives, now that Facebook's gonna delete them after 30 days. Leverage could be retreats that you do every year, that you pre-sell people into. I'm having a conference in the fall.
Rachel Anzalone (35:28)
Yeah, that's absolutely a high leverage thing. You get a lot of people in the room, but you're still having like that energy exchange with them. Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (35:30)
Exactly. Right, like I just I don't know I feel like there's a huge disconnect when people say leverage they try to push you into…
Rachel Anzalone (35:43)
digital products.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (35:58)
Right. And that works for some people, but you need a digital product strategy, digital products don't just sell themselves. So don't think you're just gonna create a digital product and it's just gonna sell itself like that's, that's not what's gonna happen like that's not real and I think it's important for someone to come out and say, you know what, the worst thing about my life is I have to tell people the truth all the time.
I feel like I'm always the person on Facebook saying, well, actually that's not true at all, you know? I don't know. I just wish somebody else would tell the damn truth sometimes. I just feel like I've been like the de facto truth teller for like a decade.
Rachel Anzalone (36:19)
Yeah, you are. I appreciate that. Yeah, usually I see what people are doing and I'm just like, ugh. Then I'll have those conversations in private. But don't want to get in the argument with the person on Facebook The energy exchange doesn't feel to me like it's worth it, to go, here's what's wrong with all these things. And yet there is so much wrong with all those places. You've inspired me speak out a little more.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (36:45)
Yeah, I want people to speak out more, but I will say, you know, I think that God gives us what we need to be successful at the game He wants us to play. So God gave me a big voice. He gave me a lot of voice. He gave me a lot of authority so people listen to my voice. And He gave me a lot of confidence. So I feel secure in my voice. So it's important for me to speak up for people who don't feel like they have those things.
Rachel Anzalone (37:05)
I love that. I love that.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (37:10)
Even when things won't affect me. I run a high revenue business. I am a coach who benefits from the coaching industry propaganda. 100%. I will never dispute that. And my business has made over $1.3 million in the last three, three and a half years. So I'm certainly not struggling, but like you could be, it could have been you. So it's very important for us to speak out for people who don't feel safe to be able to speak out and use what we have in a beneficial manner.
Because it could be us. Yeah my business made six figures the first year and and I think a lot of that was luck I think a lot of it was timing for sure think a lot of it was my own idiosyncrasies. So I'm an introvert believe it or not, even though I talk a lot I like to be at home under my pillow fort reading a book quietly by myself. So if you invite me out somewhere, I'm probably gonna sneak off and call you from the car and be like, well, that was fun. That was great. I had to leave abruptly, but woo, that was a great time.
But like, I knew volume low ticket couldn't work for me because it was gonna force me to talk to thousands of people and that gave me anxiety. So I had to charge more upfront. You see what I'm saying? Like my first coaching program was a four digit number, the first one ever.
I never started off a hundred dollars a month because I did the math on what a hundred dollar a month was going to look like from a calculation perspective. I'm like, this has to be like a thousand dollars a month. Like pretty much my first coaching offer was a thousand dollars a month or 2,500 for three months. Like it had to be higher from the beginning because like I couldn't justify anything less.
So does that mean I'm a better, better business owner? Or does it mean that like I'm afraid of people? You see what I'm saying? Like sometimes you have to write
Rachel Anzalone (38:47)
Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (38:49)
things, you know, so like, think the gurus want to take all the credit. And that's what makes me wary of a leader. When I listen to people, I want to hear you admit where things worked out and you wouldn't expect them to work out and where things didn't work out and you had really kind of needed them to work out, you know, and I think that's where I gauge the genuineness of people. I think I out earn people because I just don't go through the attempts at artifice that most people do, but I admit that I would make so much more money if I did.
And like I said earlier, you really have to ask yourself what you want. If you really want to make a lot of money, then there are some unscrupulous tactics that you can employ that will help you make more money. I don't want to be the highest paid entrepreneur. I want to be the highest ethical, like the highest integrity entrepreneur. And I am okay with the trade off that maybe I'm not going to make money in certain circumstances, but that I'll make the right money and make the right impact for the right people.
Rachel Anzalone (39:43)
I love that. On that note, do you want to talk about sales for a minute and ethical sales? Because I know you're very passionate about it.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (39:49)
Yeah. Yeah. I do like when people give me money. You caught me.
Rachel Anzalone (39:59)
It's no secret that a lot of people think that sales are yucky and they're afraid to do it or they don't want to do it. They don't want to be perceived as pushy and all that stuff. So what do you have to say to those people who are like, I don't like doing sales?
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (40:16)
I probably shouldn't say this, but that's never stopped me before. If you are thinking about having a physical relationship with someone and that person does not consent, you did not have a physical relationship with them, you committed a crime, right?
So if you're trying to sell something to someone and you didn't get consent, you're not selling to someone.
Rachel Anzalone (40:39)
You're manipulating them.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (40:41)
So we have to stop calling that sales. If we wouldn't call grape sex, then we can't call manipulation sales.
That's how I feel. So that's the part that gets me. We say sales is manipulative and it's yucky and that's not sales. That is not sales. That is not selling. That is coercion. That is manipulation. That is spam. That is harassment. A lot of things.
Selling is when you have an offer of value and you present it to a person who has a reasonable need for this value or you uncover a need with their permission. That is what sales is. So if you didn't get permission, if you didn't uncover a need, you spam them, you harass them, you beg them, you did not sell anything and we need to stop calling all these other things sales. It's not fair to sales for sales to get lumped into all of these unethical practices.
Rachel Anzalone (41:44)
Oh my God, you just blew my mind. Like we talk about like, pressure sales and hard sales and that kind of stuff, but we sure as hell don't talk about pressure sex.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (41:50)
We need to stop. There is no high pressure sales. That is high pressure manipulation. We need like, sales is consensual. That's like sex. It is consensual. If it wasn't consensual, we gotta put another name on it. We cannot lump it in with the good stuff. If it's the bad stuff. Like we can't do it. If you say you don't like sales, I can't take you seriously in business. Because how do you have clients?
You have to have sold somebody something at some point. Right? Like you have clients right now who are paying you. If you didn't sell them, who did? Did they sell themselves? Did Jesus do it? I mean, I'm just trying to figure out who sold the clients that you have in your current offers. And this is when you get this entitlement. This, well, we do word of mouth and we do referral. We, you know, we just kind of wait for people to send us business and...
Rachel Anzalone (42:28)
Alright.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (42:40)
So you want other people to be really gung-ho about your service and send you business, but you're not willing to be gung-ho about it and send yourself business? I expect my clients to be my unpaid marketing department. Now, if they want to talk about how great I am, I am honored and I am thankful, but I would never rest on my laurels thinking that that was gonna be enough to keep my business pipeline full. And it might be, but it might not. So like we have to be out there. I am emphatic about the work I do. It is so important. It is life changing, the work that I do. It is so incredibly difficult to find a person who is ethical and decent, who is a woman, who is black, who has a finance background, securities licenses, and knows how to sell. I am really that girl. I believe that 100%.
Rachel Anzalone (43:26)
Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (43:31)
So how could I not tell everybody that might be qualified about these services? How could I not tell people that my conference is gonna be the event of the year and you need to be in the room so that you can uncover who the wealthiest version of yourself is and step into that shit for once and for all? Like if I really believe in what I'm doing, wouldn't I be remiss to not tell every damn body about this conference and I tell everybody about Cashmere Club and I tell everybody about Unapologetic Wealth? Like for me to just be like well, I'm gonna kind of let you figure it out on your own, that really? Cause we go after everything else that we want. Literally. We find the perfect hairdresser and haircut and clothes and shoes and nails. We go after everything else that we want. The only thing that people want to kind of come to them by osmosis is business. Y'all ain't nothing else. You shoot your shot with men. They be super pushy about everything but payment. That is societal training. And I just want you to know you're not making that choice. That choice has been made for you. And that alone should make you angry.
Rachel Anzalone (44:30)
I love this reframing of sales from I'm going to go get it at any means, at any cost, any manipulation, any pressure, to sales as a consensual exchange of money for goods and services that we agree on in a healthy way.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (44:45)
That's what it is.
Rachel Anzalone (44:49)
It’s beautiful.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (44:48)
Yeah, it literally is.
Rachel Anzalone (44:49)
Okay, to wrap us up here, I would love to know what your goals are around the impact that you want to create in the world through the work that you do.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (45:00)
By the time that I die, I will have eradicated homelessness in the city of Mobile, Alabama. That's my hometown. Every single person who wants to be housed will be housed. Every single person, whether that's fully funding homeless shelters, whether that's building tiny homes, every single person who wants a home will live in a home. So like, that jumps out at, at minimum in my mind. I would love to have a thousand doors of real estate. I would love to have a scholarship at my alma mater, Alabama A&M University, where at least one student per year will grow that as the legacy grows, can get a full ride because I got a full ride at Alabama A&M and I think that's important for me to pour back.
I want my parents to want for nothing as long as they continue to live. I haven't decided if I'm gonna have children or not, but they will be trust fund babies if I do. I would love to have 10,000 women who have seven figure top-line revenue businesses as a result of having worked with Unapologetic Wealth.
Rachel Anzalone (45:58)
Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (46:01)
Wikimedia is in my will. I would love to partner with them more deeply, whether that's bringing encyclopedias to schools. I definitely want to fund some creative arts programs, because I came from a really great creative arts program. I want to own every imaginable pair of fly ass shoes you've ever seen. I want a closet like Mariah Carey. I want dual citizenship, probably with France. I want a lot.
I have a plan. I have like a decade by decade plan. I did genetic testing and I have a 50-50 chance of living to age 100. So I filled it with a lot of stuff.
Rachel Anzalone (46:35)
I love that. I love that. And just for our listeners, the reminder that that is a big vision and that big vision requires money. And that's why we need to make money. And that's why we need to be profitable so we can go do all these incredible things that are, what light us up and what are the reasons for us showing up and doing the work that we do in the world.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (46:55)
Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. Why not me? You know, like I think a lot of times when we want these things, well then we say, well, you know, that's not possible for me. But like, why not? What is it you inherently believe about you that disqualifies you from the success you deserve? Like, seriously, like the next time you want something, because there's always going to be a reason you can't have it. If I say I want to be a billionaire, someone's going to say, well, that's not reasonable. Why? Why? Why, what’s unreasonable about it? It's unreasonable that Jay Z became a billionaire. He grew up in the projects. Statistically, there's nothing logical about that.
So, you know, I feel like it's important for us, but like, again, that's where this wealth mindset comes in. Because at that point you're like, well, you know what? If I don't hit it, I'll come close and I try instead of not starting. A lot of us don't succeed because we just don't try. We might do the motions, but we don't believe it up here. And if you don't believe something's gonna happen, it's probably not gonna happen. Even if you put forth the steps. I can tell you that like, you can eat right and exercise, but if your mindset says that you don't deserve to look better or you don't feel good about you, that weight will stick around. Like it will defy the biology and keep the weight on you. The stress or the guilt or the cortisol will keep the weight on you.
So that's really what I want to leave people with is like, do whatever you got to do to convince your brain that you deserve it, because everything's going to follow behind your belief system. You have to believe that you are worth whatever the objective is. Everything is going to fall behind that belief. You will only achieve the level of your beliefs. You'll never achieve more than that.
Rachel Anzalone (48:35)
So we talked a lot about wealth and profit, and we talked about impact. And the third element of my trifecta is pleasure. So I would love to know, what do you do to keep yourself happy, nourished, soul aligned? What are your pleasure practices?
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (48:54)
I really love to sleep in. I'm basically Garfield the cat. You know, if I had some lasagna, I would eat it in bed. Like I'm just, I sleep a lot. I love that for me. I love that. I would sleep 10, 12 hours. Like I am a really well slept person. Like I have a whole thing, but my eye mask and a cool room and a humidifier and nice sheets and firm mattress and, pillow mist, like I go all out. I got like the sleep routine of all routines. I have really nice skincare, even though my skin is not agreeing with me right now, that doesn't matter.
Every morning, I cleanse, tone, moisturize, treat, and every evening, I cleanse, tone, moisturize, wear my sunscreen. I've gotten into really loving my hair. Going shopping is really pleasant for me. When I do have money, I shop for other people. So that always makes me happy. So if you're ever like, I have this event, this black tie, and I don't know what to wear. Shoot me a DM, I'll find you a dress, I'd love to. So, you know, like that makes me happy being able to dress people and spending time with your loved ones and I think just not rewarding yourself with pleasure.
I think we've done a bad job with kind of, oh, I had a good day, so maybe we'll have sex. Or like, oh, I closed a sale, so I'll have a fancy dinner. Like, why can't you just have a fancy dinner cause you want a fancy dinner, you know?
Rachel Anzalone (50:13)
Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (50:16)
Like, I've decoupled pleasure with some type of earning. I've got to do something first to earn it. Oh we have a successful launch. So now I can go have some champagne. Or it's the first of the year. So now I can have champagne. If I just want champagne, let's just buy the champagne and let's just have it on a regular Tuesday because we want to have champagne, you know? So that's what I've been in, you know. Pleasure for me used to be super literal. It's like, we having fun or we having sex, we getting drunk. Like we're doing the thing. And now it's like, am I well rested? Am I happy?
Rachel Anzalone (50:44)
Yeah.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (50:45)
Am I serving the clients that I want? Do I have expansiveness? Do I have a team that supports me? Do I have a hobby that has nothing to do with monetization that nobody knows I have but me? Like I read books that I don't tell anybody I write. I used to keep a Goodreads and a list and I used to share it with people. Now figure out your own book recs. I read the books for my pleasure, they're for me, and I enjoy them, and I don't have to justify to other people why I read them or what I got from them or have people grill me like a book report on the internet.
So I think for me pleasure has just been like doing less and not attaching something I want to do with having to have earned it first.
Rachel Anzalone (51:26)
Mm, I love that.
Before we go, is there anything that you wanna share about what you have coming up or how people can get in touch with you?
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (51:34)
Hmm. You can follow me on Facebook. I'm the only Natalie Bullen there. You can go to unapologeticwealth.com to find out more about what we have going on. Cashmere Club is our private sisterhood for affluent women who want to make friends and up-level their peer group. Ain't no coaching, ain't no masterminding, none of that. We there to have a good time. So if you want to meet some people, have a good time, the doors for Cashmere Club open four times a year.
And my live event Unapologetic Wealth Live is September 17th through 19th, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. It's going to be great. Like we're going to go deep into the kind of things we've been talking about. Like how do you decide what your new wealth mindset is going to be? ‘Cause if you're a hardworking provider or a pretty princess or some other identity that's not currently serving you or maybe got you to this level, but can't get you to the next level. Don't you want to uncover that in a room with really impactful, important, ethical people? So if you're interested, you can go to the site, unapologeticwealth.com, and can learn all about it. I'll probably talk Rachel into going, so you might be able to.
Rachel Anzalone (52:43)
I know, I'm filing that date away and putting that on the calendar.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (52:46)
Listen, listen, always be closing.
Rachel Anzalone (52:48)
Yep, always be closing. Thank you so much for being here, Natalie. This was fantastic.
Nat Bullen, Wealth Coach (52:53)
I appreciate you having me.
Rachel Anzalone (52:55)
Thank you so much and thank you all for listening. Until next time, remember your pleasure is your power. Take care.
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