0:06

What if the thing you've been called to build has been quietly revealing itself through your whole career? Today I'm joined by someone who brings energy, strategy and heart into everything she does, Natalie Siston.

Caroline 0:22

This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we're here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out on what only we can give. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who've navigated big career transitions themselves so you can see what it's really like to make bold changes and feel inspired to create your own version of authentic success, one that is aligned, meaningful, and truly yours. Natalie is a leadership expert, keynote speaker, certified coach, and the lead global presenter for Positive Intelligence. She's also the author of the bestselling book, Let Her Out Reclaim Who You've Always Been. Her career spans higher education, Fortune 100 leadership, coaching, content creation, and her story is a beautiful example of how curiosity, clarity, and small decisions can lead to powerful transformations over time. In this conversation, Natalie and I talk about how growing up in a town of 600 people shaped her leadership style, the breadcrumbs that led her from psychology to coaching, to entrepreneurship. What it was like to walk away from a stable corporate job to pursue her vision, how Positive Intelligence transformed her life and helped her step fully into her mission. The origin of her book Let Her Out and why Permission Granted is her next calling. This episode is for anyone who's quietly been building something and is ready to give themselves full permission to go all in. Welcome, Natalie, to Your Next Success. I am so thrilled and excited for this conversation that I'm getting to have with you in this moment. So thank you for being here.

Natalie Siston 2:53

I'm very excited. I think we're gonna have a very energetic and information filled and hopefully very inspirational conversation for your listeners.

Caroline 3:01

As you know, part of my desire for this podcast is to help people understand the story behind the story of people's careers and their journeys. So I'd love to kind of understand from you, tell us how your journey began. Where did you grow up? What were you interested in? What did you think you wanted to do?

Natalie Siston 3:22

Oh my gosh. I think this is gonna come up throughout because I think we're all dropping breadcrumbs our entire lives and it almost takes you being in a career for 20 or 25 years to zoom back and be like, okay, I see it and we'll talk a bit about my book. And that was really the inflection point for me to look back at all the breadcrumbs I've collected. But I think where I grew up is extremely important to the story of my life. I grew up in a town called Republic, Ohio, USA for those who may be listening internationally, and that is a town of 600 people, Caroline. It is the place where everybody knows everybody and everybody's business, and I learned from an early age that there are typically two types of people growing up in that type of town. They hate it because they don't want people all up in their stuff and knowing their business and being told on, and tattled on 'cause this is back in the day when you had a party line phones and no, you know, no digital device or wifi. And quite frankly, where I grew up, like only recently got like high speed internet because that's how rural it tends to be. But at any rate, I was on the opposite spectrum of that. I really appreciated growing up in a small town. I appreciated knowing people. I appreciated people knowing who I was, who my family was, what was happening. And I've carried that with me throughout my life and my career like so much so, I live in a brand new neighborhood. My husband and I built a house two years ago, and they're still building around us. And a family moved in down the street a couple months ago, Caroline and I have not yet introduced myself to them, and I feel horrible. Every time I go by, and it's like, I feel like our world has turned to this place. Like, oh, I don't wanna impose when I know for sure that those people are probably, would gladly, you know, open the door of their home. And so I've made it my goal, like this month I will make sure I do that, because it's important for people to know they're welcomed. But that's where I grew up and it's created a lot of who I am. It took me living in a lot of different places, different sizes of cities, geographies, working with different people to really appreciate it.

Caroline 5:22

Fun fact, I grew up in Danville, Ohio, at least from first through sixth grade, so that was, I think right around a thousand people. But I appreciated that small town environment. For me, they were very welcoming. I also learned very quickly you had to be careful of who you decided to maybe complain about because it's somebody's cousin, like everybody's somebody's cousin. They're all related. You have to be very positive, upbeat all the time, and deal with any conflict internally.

Natalie Siston 5:55

Or just be ready for the backlash if you indeed stepped on the toe of the town sheriff or something like that. You know?

Caroline 6:02

Absolutely. So that's cool. And so when you were growing up, what kinds of activities, what kinds of things did you do? Or did you have a thought that when I grow up, I want to X, Y, Z?

Natalie Siston 6:15

Yeah. So let's start dropping the breadcrumbs for your audience 'cause we'll get through the, the path as we have our conversation today. I was always interested in human behavior from the time I was a little kid. And what I also learned growing up in a small town is when you don't see something you don't know it's possible. So growing up. I thought that I would be a teacher, or I thought I would be a lawyer, or I thought I would be a newspaper writer. These are all things that I wrote for my local paper growing up. I shadowed an attorney. so I saw people doing this thing and I thought, okay, these are the boxes I need to go into. So going into college, I thought I was gonna be pre-law with a journalism major and political science. That was my, like, I was gonna do this and. It didn't take me long to realize that I didn't wanna be an attorney. I worked in the state government in Ohio for a while and realized things move really, really slowly there and I don't want to live a slow life. and so I pivoted and I put a double major in psychology into place because back to your question about growing up, did I know? I did science projects every year and that was a big deal growing up. Like your science project was the whole thing and you had to come up with what your hypothesis was and what your study is gonna look like. And then you presented in the school gym and if you do well enough, you get to go onto the district science fair. And I, aside from the one project I did about composting, which I think my parents hated 'cause I had little boxes of composting around our entire house. I started doing human behavior projects. I did things like sibling psychology. Does the number of siblings you have affect your whatever and fill in the blank? And then color psychology. does the color you're aware the color you're studying or sitting under have an effect. I did something on age and psychology, it's funny to me looking back like, well, didn't you, I should have known obviously that I would major in psychology from the work I did as a kid. 'cause no science teacher was saying, Hey, do these psychology based projects, they.

Caroline 8:14

I didn't even know, honestly, I was probably in my thirties before I realized that there were things that were science beyond the hard sciences that I chose. Literally, I did not know. I think I had such an aversion to maybe dealing with some of the things that I had kind of blocked. I never took psychology, I never took any of that. you know, I thought genuinely, because that's kind of in the environment that I grow up with, that anybody who had maybe mental challenges were challenged people. Not that every person has this thing. So the fact that you also grew up in small town Ohio, science was pretty, It was imparted on me, at least in mine, that, you know, this is something girls can do. This is something girls would be able to do. Recognize that for a long from a young age, but I didn't know. I didn't know that softer sciences are still science and it's all just one big experiment.

Natalie Siston 9:12

It is, we are all living one giant experiment is how I like to think of days that feel particularly hard. Maybe that's my coping mechanisms, like this big experiment and what variable are we gonna test today, right?

Caroline 9:23

Yeah.

Natalie Siston 9:24

What I also appreciated about growing up, I have one older sister and I have two parents working full time when I grew up. And we always had dinner together in the moments we could. 'cause, you know, as we got older and busier, it didn't always happen. But my parents always talked about their work and I was a geek like

Caroline 9:42

they do?

Natalie Siston 9:43

my mom was, she started off as like a secretary and admin at a bank and then moved on to support our churches regional office, and then her ultimate career, she spent her last 20 years at the local public library. Where she started in a, like a fiscal administrative position and she ended up, I call it the COO position for, it's like, that was, it wasn't her title, but that's what she did. And so it was really cool to see my mom, you know, with a two year college education, do that kind of work. And then my dad, always worked in like factories. you know, assembly based work? And my dad was in and out of work growing up and that I didn't realize until I got older about how much of an effect that had on me. because I learned a lot about what's hard about work from my dad's stories. We can come back to him a little bit in our conversation today, but I just, I was always interested and intrigued about the colleagues and the relationships. And so when I took my first organizational behavioral psychology class in college, I was staying after one day to, I don't know, like just use the desk to write notes. And the teacher stayed and he's like, you know, you're really intuitive about this. You really get this stuff. And I wish, Caroline, so if there are moments, so for all your listeners of like, they're the moments where people are like, okay, that's. The day she decided she was gonna do this, I didn't. I ignored him. I just took the compliment and I put my head down because I'm like, who am I to receive this type of feedback? I was scared, I think, because I didn't know what that meant, because what he was suggesting was not on my path. I was a senior in college. I was engaged to be married. I was preparing to move across the country, and I was like, I can't have a variable thrown in right now. I have so much. And so I just took that for what it was and got a great grade in his class. Really enjoyed it. And then, you know, a less than a year later, married my college sweetheart. He was in grad school at Stanford. So I am 22 years old, moving across the country in 2002. So this is post whatever recession that is into Silicon Valley with not a tech degree. So I sat on the couch for about eight weeks after I moved there, not eight, yeah, maybe eight weeks waiting for one of the many, many jobs I applied for to come to fruition and I ultimately ended up getting a really cool job at Stanford's Alumni Association. So I'm the type of person where, my parents didn't graduate from four year colleges, so my sister and I are first generation college grads and I like, loved her, watching her experience at a very small liberal arts school in Ohio called Baldwin Wallace. I went to The Ohio State University, so at the time, the largest campus in the country to talk about opposite worlds from small town to the biggest college. so I'm, you know, going across country as a 22-year-old, no job, brand new husband. We were actually living in his advisor's house, house sitting, so we didn't even have our own place. I'm like, oh my gosh, what's happening?

Caroline 12:38

How amazing is that though, because that's a lot better furnishings than you

Natalie Siston 12:42

True. True True. true, Yeah. Yeah And then when I got the job, we then quickly started to go furniture shopping and like use their front room to like store things in. Yeah. We laugh a lot 'cause I consider myself to be very successful and very fortunate. Same with him. And we've joked with our kids a lot. We're like, you know, when we, when we got married, we had two things. We had love and debt. You know, so we're like, everything we have built around us, we have, we've built and we're really like proud of that. And so at any rate, I ended up working, at the Stanford's Alumni Association while my husband finished his degree. And I had an amazing time. I mean, if I could go back and relive a job, that would be it. Just because of the people I was surrounded the fun work, it was always intellectually stimulating. So that's, that's what I did for my, the beginning of my, my career.

Caroline 13:31

It's amazing. And then how did that transition leaving the Stanford position and or how long were you there and then what'd you do?

Natalie Siston 13:41

Yeah. And once again, good questions to ask and for people seeking mentorship and such. So because college was so crucial to where I feel like I ended up in my life, I thought it was just natural that I work in higher education. So at this point I thought, well, my husband will always work in higher education as a professor, so I should, I'll naturally just always work at the college where he is. And so this was just what I thought. I was planning to go get a masters in higher education. And I was talking to one of my mentors from undergrad, Felix, and he said to me, he's like, just time out. He said, I would actually encourage you to get a different kind of master's degree. And I said, oh, well say more 'cause you have that degree. What? And I, it's funny to hear you say, he is like, I would recommend you get an MBA. And I said, oh, okay. Tell me why. He's like, well, you can always work in higher education with an MBA, but you can't always go work in business with a master's in higher education. And I'm like, okay. And at the same time, the CEO of Stanford, the president of Stanford's Alumni Association, he said to me. You know, have you thought about getting your MBA? And I had not. That was never, nothing ever on my list of thinking about getting an MBA and so I actually, started applying to MBA programs as my husband was getting ready to graduate with his PhD and ended up getting into my alma mater Ohio State on a full fellowship and then stars aligned and he actually got a faculty job at Ohio State, which is where he still is. And this is very unusual. Most people do not go back to their alma mater to teach. And so we're we just, we have pinch me moments quite a bit.

Caroline 15:11

What does he teach? What is his, his area?

Natalie Siston 15:13

He's the chair of the mechanical and aerospace engineering department.

Caroline 15:18

So cool,

Natalie Siston 15:19

Yeah.

Caroline 15:20

So cool. Okay, so you're at Stanford. You get these seeds planted that maybe you do wanna go back to school. Stars align. You get to come back to the area that you know and love. You go to grad school to get your MBA. He starts a faculty position and life is amazing. Then what?

Natalie Siston 15:42

So then I jumped right back into almost where that conversation left off with that professor who said, you know, you're really good at this stuff. And so I really jumped back into the organizational behavior. I thought I would go into HR. I thought I would go into some type of people ops role, and here's what I learned in my MBA program. No one hires interns for that. And if they do, they either pay very little or pay nothing. And once again, remember our conversation. My husband still, and I had love and debt and I'm like, this is, this is ridiculous. My classmates are getting $10,000 a month internship offers. And I'm being told, oh, you go, we'd be happy to have you, but we can't pay you. And I'm, and I still, to this day, it drives me crazy. I want people to earn their worth. You should not be doing free work unless it's for a very specific reason. So I ended up taking a marketing internship over the summer for a big brand, and I was so good at it, Caroline, so good at it, and I hated it. I hated it. I mean, they were like.

Caroline 16:47

You can be successful by all external measures and still not be happy that or fulfilled and when you hated it, help me understand like, what did that feel like? What did that look like, and did you listen?

Natalie Siston 17:02

Oh yes, I, well, thankfully I did listen and I'll tell you where I ended up and why that was a great decision. I knew, I hate, and it's hard to say 'cause if anyone who I worked with at that period of time, like lovely humans, they were working. I don't know, 12, 14 hour days, and I don't know what it was. It's always something about me has been I need work life balance. And I know we throw that term around a lot, but to me that means I am not chaining myself to a desk for 12 hours. I'll happily go home, get back online if I need that type of thing. But I saw people in the office when I came in. Still there and sending emails two hours later. I'm like, hmm, that's red flag number one. Because I was also, my husband and I were planning to start a family soon, and we knew that that would be hard. And then just the, like, the work, I didn't enjoy the work. There wasn't a calling there.

Caroline 17:48

Okay.

Natalie Siston 17:49

Yeah, so at any rate, I got a great offer. They were like, we love you. Will you come work for us full time? And that's the dream, right? That's why you do an internship in an MBA program is to get a great job offer so you can just enjoy the heck outta your second year of the program.

Caroline 18:02

Yes.

Natalie Siston 18:03

And I sat on the offer because I knew it wasn't right. And then a financial services company in Columbus was starting a rotational program that year called in a group of people to interview and I was like, you know, I have nothing to lose. And so I went in to interview and because I knew I had nothing to lose, I already had a great offer, even if it was doing work I didn't wanna do. So I went and interviewed and I was my full self. I just, I was authentic. I didn't...

Caroline 18:29

amazing.

Natalie Siston 18:31

right.

Caroline 18:32

and you're 20 something and you decided already to go ahead and just be your full self.

Natalie Siston 18:35

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this didn't always happen. Like I was, yeah, I was 28 when I graduated with my MBA, and so I ended up taking that position and I worked at that company for 12 years and I honestly could still see myself working at that company if it were not for coming across the work I'm doing now in coaching, in speaking, in just helping other people find their best and highest self.

Caroline 19:02

So what was it that made you leave?

Natalie Siston 19:08

Yeah.

Caroline 19:09

established place that you'd been for 10 years

Natalie Siston 19:11

Yeah.

Caroline 19:12

What was going on and then. How did you make the decision to do that

Natalie Siston 19:16

Yeah.

Caroline 19:17

next step from there?

Natalie Siston 19:18

I get this question a lot because I think a lot of people outside looking in are like, oh, Natalie, I wanna live the life like you live. I wanna know how did you make the leap? Right? How did you make that decision? And so for me, it wasn't a magical wand moment. It wasn't an overnight knee-jerk thing. What happened for me and I think it's worth kind of explaining a few different steps in this process is I attended an event for high potentials at my company, and it was, I was almost 35 and I was sitting by our facilitator at lunch and she had this way about her who just made me feel like I could share anything with her. And she's like, Hey, you know, tell me more about yourself. What's going on? Like, yeah, I'm just like, meh, you know, meh. And she's like, I know. She's like, actually, when I'm not facilitating, I'm a coach and I help people get through their meh. Do you wanna talk about this? And I had never heard of this thing. And so I had a call with her and nervously, nervously, I went to my manager and said, Hey, I met this person. And I had a very good close relationship with my manager. We were very transparent with her about stuff. I said, would you sponsor coaching with this person, and she said, yes, I will do that. So step number one, knowing I was at a good company, they were willing to invest in my development, but I had to ask. So if anyone listening here is like, oh my gosh, I would really like to do this, but I don't know that I can afford it. Ask your manager. You never know what they're gonna say. Just please ask. And then from there, I had an amazing transformative experience and she said to me, she's like, what were things you enjoyed doing as a kid that you don't do anymore? And I said, well, as a kid, I was always writing and speaking. I grew up as a lifelong 4H member and other kids raised cows, and I did public speaking. I've been doing public speaking since I was eight years old. She said, okay, well then go start doing that. And so our coaching ended up being a plan to map out what do those, what does it look like to do that? How do I actually take the steps and feel confident to do that? this was 2016, so I said I wanna speak external to my job every quarter. And I did that, like easily got those slots filled up, just coming up with topics that I was excited about and going to the local chamber of commerce or the women's group in my town. They were always happy to have someone come in and do that speaking and a little bit past this experience, I was talking to a a colleague at my company and he said, well, you seem like someone who would be a great coach yourself. Have you thought about doing coaching school? And I said, no. Like, no, like once again, this disbelief. So other, you know, signs here like this, this is like the third time in my life. I'm like, what? Who, who am I to? Right? So I always like to just walk, you know, hold people by the shoulders through the screen and say, who am I to? "You are, you're made for this." And he said, we have found a way for the company to cover the tuition of this coaching program. And this coaching program is not inexpensive, like it was a five figure investment. And it was time. It was time away from my family. It was time to study. It was time to practice, and so I went for it and I got my coaching certification in 2017. Started coaching clients. The day after I got done with my coach training, someone reached out and I was like, I can coach you. And so I just started building a coaching practice and I started getting paid for my speaking while I was working full time. And I always was very transparent with all of my leaders about what I was doing. It was never in conflict with what my day job was there because I loved my jobs at the time too. I was doing relationship management, business development work. and my last role at the company was as director of sales coaching and development. So talk about nothing would've ever happened if I hadn't followed these breadcrumbs. And so what, what ultimately, like where I took the leap and made the the pivot. happened in 2020. I like to tell people I quit my corporate job with a pension before it was the cool thing to do in the pandemic. I had been building my business so much. I had set a date late 2019 that my quit date was gonna be March 13th and that my last day was gonna be April 4th. I had this,

Caroline 23:23

Wow.

Natalie Siston 23:24

Written down, I think like at the time, I changed all my passwords to like April 4th. 'cause I wanted that to be reinforced to me every day. And then on the morning of March 13th, I was in our home gym with my husband and he said, do you think today's the day to do this? And I said, I've been working so hard, I can't keep doing all the things. He's like, no, no. I mean like, you're gonna do this, but today, like the day our governor is gonna shut our state down, like is today that I'm like, oh, I see what you're saying. I said, okay. Maybe not today. So I held out for a couple more months, and I'm glad I did because this is where Positive Intelligence came into my life.

Caroline 24:01

Oh, do tell. How did that...

Natalie Siston 24:03

for anyone who has not listened to Caroline's episode on Mental Fitness, pause right now. Come back to this, listen to that episode and come back. 'cause then you'll understand you'll fill the gap for yourself. But in January of 2020, I was invited to take the Positive Intelligence app guided mental fitness program with one of my coaches that I was working with at the time. He interviewed Positive intelligence's CEO. Shirzad Chamine on his podcast. Shirzad so gracious. He always is like, Hey, have people experienced this work? And I said, well, I think this feels like I, you know, it's something I can do for my job 'cause it's coaching. So yeah, let's do this. And Caroline, if I can tell you within two weeks, like I felt different as a human would be an understatement. I just felt an immediate transformation. I mean, I listened to yours folks. I'm just gonna give you the punchline. Caroline's like blood pressure went down 20 points after doing this.

Caroline 24:54

Yes. Yes.

Natalie Siston 24:55

does that?

Caroline 24:56

and I did it because I was transitioning from stable established career into taking this leap that I felt like I was made for, and that, you know, gosh, God, why? Why didn't you make somebody who could support candidates all throughout their careers? Why didn't you do that? And it was like, ha ha ha because I made you. And I was getting that message very clearly. And then I saw this advertisement for coaches and a coaching grant. And I was like, grant? yes. Sign me up for this grant. Why not? And I'm thinking, I'm just gonna take a couple month program and have some more, you know, accolades of things that I could pull from. And it changed my life profoundly. So much so that I thought. This is the missing link. This is the thing. And I had had such an aversion to mental anything aside from using my mind to do things. And my head had been disconnected my connected, yet disconnected. And then this was finally integrating more. So I had done some therapy and things for years, but I didn't have as much of you know, recognizing there was something you wanted to change logically knowing that you could, you know, could change something, but then actually having the practical tools to do it make new neural pathways in your brain. Wait, what? that alone, not medicine changes, not anything else. My top number of my blood pressure had gone down 20 points. And of course then, know the the beautiful thing about having a grant and allowing coaches to experience this is then they do want to sign on and have all, all their people to do it too. Okay, so you do this program, you realize it's amazing. How did you then become part of that program?

Natalie Siston 27:39

Oh my gosh, just luck meet meeting opportunity, right? In the early days of the pandemic, well, I was doing weekly videos, so part of my whole like path toward my own self-employment was I was a massive content creator, because that's what I could do in my fringe hours, working a full-time job and so. One of the content I did was I did a weekly video and my weekly video at the end of March, 2020 was What's Getting Me Through the Pandemic? And I said like, oh, taking midday walks with my kids, watching slapstick guinea pig videos on YouTube. And I held up the Positive Intelligence book and I said, in doing this work, 'cause it's not reading the book, let's be clear, doing the. Not the work doing the work is the work. You and I know what the work is. It's not hard work, it's just you gotta do it. And so I said I notice on days when I'm doing the work, I feel better when days I don't. And I tagged Shirzad and Positive Intelligence in the post. And at this point, the company's still really young and the coaching grant program had just started. And you know, I'm the leader of a coaching department at a big Fortune 100 company, so they reached out to me just to be like, Hey, can we talk about your experience and I formed a really amazing relationship with Bill Carmody, the Chief Coaching Officer, and he allowed me to have my coaches that I led at the time experience the program and then. I kept telling him like, Hey, listen, you know, try not, I don't want you guys to think you're the into this company because I'm planning to leave. It's just this pandemic has kind of put the brakes on it. He said, well, why don't you come work for us? He's like, I know you're building and you're creating on your side. Just come work for us part-time. We really need help. And I said, okay, well what do you need help with? And what would that look like? And he's like, really? Anything. So. Amazing

Caroline 29:19

Is that?

Natalie Siston 29:20

And so what I ended up doing is over the past five years, I have touched about every single area of the company. I came in and I helped them build out their coaching program and on the back end of that, hired a coaching operations leader, and then in 2021, I stepped in to help build out their B2B part of their business and led client success. And have done, I mean, just tons of things. So I see, I tell people, I'm like, I was there when the Zoom screen had four people on it with like the leadership team meeting. And now when we have an all hands meeting, you know, it's anywhere from 50 to 70 people depending on who can come live because we have a global team. And so I have been working with them in different capacities for the past five years and this year I stepped into my dream role for them, which is their lead global presenter. So I have literally gone internationally to present on the behalf of Positive Intelligence for companies, organizations, conferences, who wanna hear this message, and then hopefully from there have their members or their team experience the work, the Positive Intelligence work. So I'm doing that in combination with all of the work that I started on my own in 2020, which much like you is coaching. So I do, you know, I have a, I hold a small coaching portfolio and then in 2020 I also wrote a book. So I had written the book. The book was, the draft was done when I started working for and with Positive Intelligence. And so I kind of lived these like parallel lives over the past five years. It's been this work that I've done to help build mental fitness 'cause it's so compelling and so important and it's so intrinsically connected to my body of work which is the book I wrote is called Let Her Out: Reclaim Who You've Always Been and even listening. Yay.

Caroline 31:01

Here's the book.

Natalie Siston 31:02

Oh, and even listening to you, Caroline, on some of your podcast episodes, it's so tightly connected to the work you're doing because at the end of the day, and it goes back to where you said, you know, what did you do as a child? What did you know? How did you. How did you know who you really were? And I think so many of us in the grind of the day to day in the desire to provide for our families in the, you know, was living up to other people's expectations versus our own. We typically lose that person. And that's where the idea for this book came from. It was actually a failed TEDx talk. I presented it to be at a TEDx conference and it was rejected. So I said, okay, I'll see your TEDx rejection. I submitted to other conferences, got accepted. All those events were canceled because of COVID. I said, okay, well I see you canceled conferences. I'll just write a book.

Caroline 31:52

It's gift an opportunity. Every circumstance you can accept it or convert it. So you, because you had maybe been doing this thing. Was that part of the resilience, or you just had always been resilient? You tell me. No, I'm gonna find a way. Yes.

Natalie Siston 32:09

I think I inherently, I've always been resilient, but I think there was always this part of me that needed a little more external validation. And I think in 2020 is when I decided to let that go.

Caroline 32:21

Okay.

Natalie Siston 32:21

I think that was really where I said, because it, you, you know, you've done the, you've done the work it to let go of a very secure job and I don't know what job is secure, right? Like. I'm

Caroline 32:33

Yeah.

Natalie Siston 32:33

inclined to believe that more and more, but I feel like I was in a place that I could have made a 30 year career. But there was just the pool and the call and it came from no one else's validation except my own to say, I know this is possible. I see a vision for myself and for the work that I'm doing. That's, that can't happen in parallel with working a full-time job. I have been able to make that happen. And so it's just really, really cool to see the work of both Positive Intelligence and Let Her Out almost five years later be in this really blossoming state where I would not look back five years ago and think this is what has happened now. There's so many things that have happened in the last five years that there's no way any crystal ball I would've ever looked into would've displayed these things.

Caroline 33:24

And so now from this vantage point, what do you want your future to look like? Like where do you go from here? You're already, you've got amazing clients position, bestselling book, super helpful, impacting so many lives, helping with Positive Intelligence. Like what else is on your horizon of thinking what you'd love your life to be like and how your career can fuel it.

Natalie Siston 33:47

Oh, that's a great question. I feel like I'm being coached right now, Caroline. No, it's great. It's great. This is 2025 has been a pivot year for me, and I'm not sure if this is something I'm intending to do every five years because that's. Sort of when I was 35 is when I hired the coach. 2020, when I turned 40 is when I left the corporate world and did all this. And now I'm 45 and 2025. So who knows if I'm an every five year person, but I decided intentionally that 2020 was gonna be another, not a pivot year. Another level, as I call it, my level up year. I actually have my, I'm looking at it, my level up one week, one day at a time plan in front of me. But this year I hired support. So I brought on an amazing online business manager. She's more than a virtual assistant. She's amazing and I have a very amazing coach who I work with. I firmly believe all coaches should be coached themselves, and I've just decided that, you know, okay, I have. I've proven what's possible. I've also gotten myself out of all the administrative, managerial, operational tasks of both my own work and that of Positive Intelligence and that has taken a while because when you're building all of these things, you need to be in it. You need to see how things work to then train up and hire behind you. But I've done that for my own business and so you will see a huge new rebrand coming this summer and a new keynote coming out in September and other programs and offers being put out into the world for people who are like, Hey, I wanna kind of experiment on my own. So it's a fun, I'm back in creation mode, Caroline. And that's what's exciting for me because I've been in the grind again over the past couple of years. That's where I've needed to be. And now 2025 is all about back in creation and above all things. It's about being of service and being in collaboration, whether that's speaking to somebody like you and making sure this gets out into the world, or just having those conversations about what could it look like to fill in the blank. I've been very open to that dialogue with so many different people this year.

Caroline 35:49

Can you tease, is your company name changing or what is the...

Natalie Siston 35:53

Yeah, I, well, so I'm actually going to who I am. I, when I started my business in 2016, I called it Small Town Leadership, and it comes, goes right back to where we started this conversation. Everything I learned to be successful as a leader came from growing up in a town of 600 people and I, that platform was so great for me for the last 10 years. It created so much blog content, connections with people, really reaffirming who I am as a person and a leader. And now I've quite frankly, outgrown that. I don't want my identity to be about small town anymore. And so I am just gonna be at NatalieSiston.com

Caroline 36:28

Nice. Yeah. You are the brand. That's what so many people say, like you are the brand. So NatalieSiston.com So who works with you? How do they work with you? Help us understand that and where can they find you?

Natalie Siston 36:41

Yeah. There are two main audiences I work. One is anyone who's planning an event where my speaking services could be of value, and so I work with a lot of women's associations, women's conferences. I'll come in and keynote or workshop about Let Her Out. Of course, I'm delivering mental fitness keynotes and webinars and workshops on behalf of Positive Intelligence and then. Okay. I'll just say what my new keynote's gonna be here. Caroline, I haven't shared this with anybody yet but,

Caroline 37:07

we are so lucky.

Natalie Siston 37:09

it's, but my new keynote is called Permission Granted.

Caroline 37:13

Oh, I love it.

Natalie Siston 37:14

And it will flex to the audience that it needs to flex to because it could be a sales team saying, Hey, I want our sales team to really feel like they've got full permission to go be creative in how they explore our market, how they explore new markets. It could be a career development day where it's, how do I really know that I have, I am the only person who has to give my permission about my career. So I'm very excited because what I found over the past several months and definitely, but even the past couple years, so many people either come to me as a coaching client seeking permission, and they don't need my, no one needs my permission. You don't need my permission. But inherently, many of us have wired ourselves because of our saboteurs, our negative mental thinking patterns that we need to have that permission. And so I want this to be a body of work that will really unleash to people to say, You are the only person who needs to give yourself permission. So the plan is for this to turn into also my second book and other types of fun. I've got a lot of, I have a high restless saboteur. So for those of you who are like, what are these words you're talking about? Go listen to the other episode. But it means that I can be a bit of a swirling dervish, but it also means when channeled right. My capacity and creativity are just on fire, and so I'm so excited about Permission Granted, it was a light bulb moment that happened when I was working with a branding coach, and it was just like electricity happened in the room and we said, this is it.

Caroline 38:40

Oh, that's so amazing. This has been such an exciting, wonderful conversation. I've learned so much more about you and, and even more depth behind the story. So I definitely appreciate that.

Natalie Siston 38:56

Yeah.

Caroline 38:56

I'm big on authentic success and authentic success, I believe is however you define it to be. how do you define authentic success in this moment?

Natalie Siston 39:08

Authentic success is when you can show up to whatever space it is that you're occupying, whether that be your professional space or your personal space, and you are completely who you are. There's no false front. There's no shaking your head yes when inside your screaming no. it's, you are aligned. There's no inconsistencies. It's like if we were to put a litmus paper in your body, it would just be white. There would be no red or blue happening. It's like, okay, you are neutralized across yourself 'cause you're not pretending to be somebody who you're not.

Caroline 39:42

Oh,

Natalie Siston 39:42

I

Caroline 39:42

love it.

Natalie Siston 39:43

cool.

Caroline 39:43

You've Let Her Out.

Natalie Siston 39:45

Exactly. Yes, yes. Yeah. And for people who are interested in like, how can I work? How can I do that? Grab the book, grab the audio book. It's a four step process to help you Let Her Out. and if that's not your cup of tea, you know, Caroline's your person, like she's got an amazing roadmap and process for you to do this as well.

Caroline 40:07

I appreciate you so much. Thank you, Natalie, for all of your time, all of the wisdom, and the links will be in the show notes everyone. So be sure to check out Natalie's work, get her book and look for her next Permission Granted work. So thank you so much, Natalie.

Natalie Siston 40:22

I appreciate you. Thanks, Caroline.

Caroline 40:24

Thank you. Natalie's story is a reminder that transformation doesn't require a dramatic break. It can unfold through consistent action, clear intention, and a deep trust in what's possible. You can explore her work at NatalieSiston.com. Get her book Let Her Out, and be on the lookout for an upcoming keynote and her second book. The links are in the show notes. If this episode spoke to something in you, if you are standing at your own edge, wondering what might be next, download the Free Navigating Career Transitions workbook at Nextsuccesscareers.com. It's designed to help you clarify what matters and take the next aligned step. Thanks for listening. Until next time. You already have the experience, the insight, and the creativity to build What's next? Your next success is waiting to unfold. Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.