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Bulletproof RadioNatalie JIll #320didn't recognize who I had become. I had the bags under my eyes. I was overweight. Mydaughter was now a few months old. Things were hanging on me. I just didn't recognize who I'dbecome and I felt so alone. I thought, "I don't want to be this person anymore."I tell everybody now, the very first step in changing your life, whether it's weight loss or yourcareer or relationship, is you have to make a decision. You have to decide. You have to decideit's possible. I always hear people say, "Oh. I tried this," or "I don't know," or "I might," but theyhaven't decided. When I decided I'd had enough, that's when everything started to change. Iwent home and I just said, "Okay. I don't know how I'm going to get out of this, but I'm gettingout of it. I'm deciding." I made a vision board. That was the very first thing I did. I did thatbecause I wanted to be able to look at images of possibility. I thought, "If I could just look athappy couples, or look at fit people, or look at money," or just things that I thought would makeme happy at the time, maybe I could start acting towards those feelings. That was literally myfirst step. I didn't have this grand plan to be in fitness or nutrition or inspire others. I just wastrying to save myself and I new I had to decide and create a vision. That was literally the firststep.Dave:That's a pretty powerful story. You learn a lot from a process like that versus like, "Oh. I decidedI was going to start a health marketing and I'll market the American food pyramid." You get adifferent level of authenticity. I think that's why you have so many followers on social toobecause you're really open. I respect that about you.Natalie:I never had the idea of starting a fitness business, but what happened was I neededaccountability somehow and I couldn't tell my friends, and I didn't want to tell my family. I didn'tknow who to talk to about what was going on, so I . This is when I had no followers onFacebook, I had my high school friends. When Facebook was first .Dave:Both of them .Natalie:Yeah. I remember the first thing I started doing was I was going to pay attention to what I waseating and I had started researching online about food and nutrition. I already knew some stuffabout being gluten-free, but I didn't understand really that whole unprocessed food and what Ineeded to balance things out. I thought, "I'm just going to start preparing meals based on whatI'm learning and I'm going to take a picture of them and share them because I want other peopleto see what I'm doing." It was really my own accountability that if I tell people I'm going to postmy meals everyday, I have to do it. I can't reach for the chips or the junk because I'm going topost my meal. I started sharing and what was really amazing was that was the first experience inmy life of being truly authentic, of telling what I'm doing without an agenda. I had so muchsupport. It was amazing. People were like, "This is so wild. You're sharing your meals." I had noagenda.Dave:You're telling me you didn't photo-sculpt your guacamole into a perfect dome via Photoshop ormedia?Natalie:No. So funny because I think of my cookbook now which is like food stylists and everything.Remember Blackberries? This was my Blackberry phone. Things looked like puke quite frankly. It6

Bulletproof RadioNatalie JIll #320was like, "What is this?" I didn't know about that. I was doing it for my own accountability and itwas very real.Dave:People are mean on social. You're like, "Okay. Here's a picture of what I actually eat," andthey're like, "It doesn't look pretty." I'm like, "Here's the deal, most of us don't eat food-sculptedfood every meal." It's just a thought, but yeah .Natalie:Now we do with Instagram and Pinterest. At the time my accountability on Facebook, no I justput it out there as my Blackberry photos. It was really amazing to me that I was just sharing andpeople were interested. They were like, "What is this? What are you putting in here?" I just wastalking to people. That was it. There was no grand business plan. I was just talking to them.Dave:How did that lead to the "7-Day Jump Start?"Natalie:This is actually really funny. People liked my meals and they started asking, "Hey. This is reallycreative. Can you put together a recipe book for us?" I thought, "A recipe book? I don't know thefirst thing about that." Somebody told me to make an e-book. I remember Googling "What is ane-book," because I didn't know what that meant. An e-book is an electronic book. Then, becauseI'm a fast-acting . Like that ADD personality, I just do things. I don't really research enough onceI decide. I didn't look up how to professionally do an e-book. I just did one myself on a worddocument with my Blackberry pictures being inserted. So, I took one weekend and I put all myBlackberry pictures in and I wrote a little description. It was this complete ghetto-style . It wasnot even a PDF, like a word document. I decided I was going to charge 10 for and I put it out onFacebook and I'm like, "Okay you guys I put my recipes together. Here they are. 10 if youPayPal. Here, I'll e-mail it to you." That's how it started.Dave:Nice e-commerce platform there.Natalie:Yeah. I didn't know about internet marketing or sales pages or any of this stuff. I just knewpeople are asking for recipes. While they were liking my recipes and I was doing this, my bodywas changing because I was really getting excited, I was connecting with people, I was workingout more, I was starting to become the person I wanted to be and I was sharing that. I wassaying, "I went to the gym. I did this workout," and people started to see my body change, sothey said, "Hey. How do you put this together in a meal plan?" So, I took another weekend and Iwrote what's now, it was a very different version at the time, but my original "7-Day JumpStart." I wrote it in a weekend. I didn't proofread it. It's embarrassing now, but it worked. It waslike I put together what I explained to you, my goals, how to do a vision board, how I put a mealtogether and how to use recipes in a little cookbook. I decided to sell that for 35 and peopleloved it.It was I'm being real and I'm connecting, I'm not marketing, I was being real connecting withpeople. They loved it. They would send me in a message and say, "Oh my gosh. This Jump Startwas awesome. I lost 5 pounds. I'm feeling great. Thank you for creating this." I would ask them ifI could screenshot that and share it and they'd say yes and I would say, "Oh my gosh. Look atDave. He just sent me this. It made my day." I made it about him because it was about him. Helost weight doing this. This is amazing. I always said, "Who is next?"7

Bulletproof RadioNatalie JIll #320It just started to grow. It started to grow and what was amazing, it wasn't so much the moneybecause, yeah money started to come in, but what was amazing to me is that my rock bottomplace that I didn't understand why it was happening to me was now changing the lives of otherpeople and getting them encouraged and motivated and I felt like I had a purpose now. It's like,"Wow! I have a purpose and I'm helping these people." It was amazing to me. I wasn't settingout to be a social media expert or a fitness guru or any of that. It just happened from me beingreally real and sharing and listening.Dave:It's amazing. You just went and you did it. When I started out, I spent 5 years writing a book,"The Better Baby Book." I wrote the book before I talked to publishers. I had no idea what I wasdoing, but it's an important book. I wrote it actually based on my own program for my ownfamily to not have kids with autism because it kind of runs in my family. I kind of had Asperger's.I say kind of because I wasn't formally diagnosed with it, but it runs in my family and I had all thesymptoms of it but by the time I was diagnosed with stuff, I'd already changed my biology sodramatically that I'm neurologically different. We'll put it that way.I did all of that work. That's 5 years where I probably could've been sharing knowledge andinformation and just talking about it, and you just like went for it. I brought the book out andbecause I hadn't done the things that you've done, it only sold like 5,000 copies. It's actually gotway more science in it than "The Bulletproof Diet," which sold hundreds of thousands of copiesbecause I learned how to do it right. Along the way, as the traffic started to grow for Bulletproof. I did come out with an e-book briefly, but it was once of those things where I spent a longtime on it and I'm like, "It's just not good enough." I set the bar so high that I made it more workthan it needed to be, and here you are and you're like, "I'm just going to go for it." So, kudos fordoing that because I didn't do that and you're making me wonder why.The very first e-commerce ever on the internet, you totally reminded me of it, was a t-shirt thatsaid, "Caffeine, my drug of choice," out of my dorm room. I posted these little forums called"News Groups," on something called, "Usenet." This was before the browser existed. It was like,"If you want one of these t-shirts, you can just send a check to my dorm room and I'll send you at-shirt." It was so ghetto, but we didn't have anything better at the time. It was actually, it turnsout, cutting-edge. That quick start ability to just go out there and say, "I don't really know, butI'll figure out how I'm going to do it," that's a real asset. You're making wonder why I didn't domore of that in Bulletproof.Natalie:I'll tell you where it came from because that wasn't the old me. The old me in corporate Americabefore I went through all this was into perfection. Everything had to be perfect. This was . Ididn't care anymore. I was so down on my luck and feeling so bad that I had nothing to lose. Ithought, "I'm putting myself out there and I'm just being real," and what I was learning was themore real I was, the more I was connecting with people. It's funny to me because I have so manypeople, especially in fitness and nutrition now, they come to me and they say, "Oh my gosh.You're this big social media . " or "You've been successful," whatever, "Here I have thisbusiness plan." I'm thinking, "You're missing the whole thing. That's not what I did at all." I builta following really just talking to people and being real. That's where I got my product ideas. Itwas completely the other way around.8

Bulletproof RadioNatalie JIll #320Dave:The authenticity and connecting thing . I started writing with . I already had a job. I was a VPat a big company. I didn't expect to build a business out of it like that. I wanted people to readthe information, but I'm like, "I already have a paycheck. I'm OK. I'm not wealthy, but I'mcertainly comfortable. It's all good." That level of startup, same thing, people coming all, "I havethis big idea and I'm going to exploit the market." I'm like, "Actually no one's going to listen toyou because you . "Natalie:Where's your platform?Dave:Yeah. Well even if you build a platform, it's like to build an authentic platform of people whocare, you have to care and you have to really bring it everyday. People have BS detectors thatare really strong and if you set that off because you're not authentic, it doesn't matter if youmeant to be authentic, either you are or you aren't. I don't know how to teach that, but youcertainly put that in early because you put all of yourself into your business. You've also evolvedyour thinking. So, you started out with this, I'm just going to call it a ghetto e-book, and nowyou've got like a "real book." How did you change how you lay it out?Natalie:My ghetto e-book evolved as my business grew and I have 19 e-books now which is funny. Everysingle e-book, every single DVD I had made, every single thing I've done is because my audienceasked for it. I never just had the idea. It was like they are saying, "We want workouts," or "Wewant this," and I created it based on what they were asking me for. Once I was actually makingmoney and I was able to start an actual business and my following was growing, it was time tomake that "7-Day Jump Start" better. Then I really did invest in getting help and making it moremeatier, more information, some newer recipes. So, the e-book was doing great and I didn'ttweak it much after that because my gosh, we had helped tens of thousands of peopletransform and it was working it was amazing.What happened was I wanted to get out to more of the masses. I feel like my message and whatI went through was strong and I watched all of these diets come and go that I was not believingand not following, there was definitely a handful that I did, but there's a lot that I think is justgarbage out there. I thought, "I just want to get my simple message out there," and I knew therewas only so much I can do myself on social media and through my website. I just thought, "Ihave to get this in a hard copy book and I have to get it in bookstores because 1) I'm going toreach more people, and 2) It validates it more," because you and me might think information'sgreat in an e-book, but there are people that want a hard copy, they want to know it's apublished book, and I get it.So, to me, that was sort of the next step. I don't need to prove that this works, I just want to getit out to more people. That's when I did talk with several publishers and ended up working withone on turning this into an actual book, and what I wanted to do with that was make it differentand better than the e-book. I felt that I wanted this to be a Part 2 to people that have alreadydone my e-book, but also something that the masses would really enjoy. Things like putting 84brand new recipes in it, so it could be a recipe book, adding workouts to it. Just making it a lotmore meaty.9

Bulletproof RadioNatalie JIll #320Dave:So, how did you lay it out? It's laid out pretty cleanly. What does the 7-Day Jump Start Plan looklike?Natalie:The beginning of it is first, literally . It gets more into my story and sharing some other peoplesstories and also talking about that first step because I think it's so important, about becomingyour authentic self, creating a vision, and writing out goals. I don't care what the diet is, if youdon't have that dialed in, you can't stick to it. It's so important. You got to get your mind right.So, I really dive deep into that where I think a lot of diet, or nutrition books, out there, they liketap on that but they don't really dive into that. I actually have things you have to do, like littleworkshops that you have to fill out just to get in that right mindset. Then I explain. I don't lovejust giving a plan without explaining why things are happening, and I didn't want to explain it tooscience-techy because there's people like you that can do that amazing, that's not my strength.Dave:It's also boring if you do it too much. I had to take it out of "The Bulletproof Diet." I'm a geek,right, but most people are like, "Tell me what to eat already. For God's sake, shut up." You mighthave fueled the people better.Natalie:No. I just didn't want to put anything in my book that was not backed by research. So,everything is backed by research. I wanted to get to the point, and I wanted to remember who Iwas talking to. I'm talking to the person who was where I was, the person that is 30 - 50 poundsoverweight, who's eating processed food. They don't understand this really amazing nutrition,they're just learning to un-process their diet. I wanted to talk to them, so I explained things. Iexplained what happens when you eat artificial sweeteners, what happens to your body whenyou eat too many starchy carbs, what happens to your body when you don't eat enough fat. Ijust explain it so they understand and that helps them understand why they're doing thingsbefore they're following a meal plan.Then I actually lay out a 7-day meal plan and it's optional. I say, "You can read the rest of thisand do it yourself," or some people want the black and white tell me what to do, or "You couldfollow this." I really break meals down just very simple: fats, carbs, and protein. Teaching whatthat is and everything is based on a food that once grew. So it's real natural foods. I don't putany rules about time of day. I know some people want to do Bulletproof in the morning and noteat food until a lot later, and that's fine. I get that people want to eat their meals every fewhours versus spreading them out. I explain why I don't do the every few hours, but I let peoplechoose because it's beginner steps first. Let me teach you how to un-process your diet, let meshow you how great you're going to feel doing that, and then we can get into the moreadvanced stuff.Then I have 77 recipes to show people that un-processed food can taste amazing, you don'tneed ho-hos or Twinkies. You can have real food that tastes amazing, that's good for you. 7guilt-free desserts. Then I have 7 body weight workouts that are 7 minutes each because I alsowanted to show people that you don't have to go to the gym and beat yourself up for hours.Dave:Are you like a Black Jack player?Natalie:No, I'm not. I'm Roulette, I put everything on -10

Bulletproof RadioNatalie JIll #320Dave:You're like, "3 times 7 is 21." I'm like, "Where did the 7s come from?" There's got to be an anglehere.Natalie:Well 7's always been my favorite number, I don't know why, but because I called it "7-Day JumpStart," I just liked the whole sticking with 7.Dave:You just tripled down on the 7s. I like it. It's got the . It's fascinating.Natalie:I didn't want to call it like, "666." I got to stay positive.Dave:I'm telling you, if you went with the evil diet, you'd probably have a really big brand. I'm justsaying.Natalie:I honestly wanted to call it just, "Un-Process Your Diet." That was the name I wanted becausethat's really what it is, un-process your diet. We went with "7-Day Jump Start," because that'sthe book I initially did that had so much success, so everyone felt it best to keep it branded withthat.Dave:Let's talk about what un-processing really is because cooking is kind of a process.Natalie:Yes. Totally. So, you'd probably not agree 100% with my definition -Dave:We don't have to agree. I just want to talk.Natalie:Again, I'm talking to the masses. So, yes, technically un-processed is raw, natural, you're pickingit off the tree and you're eating it. That could be -Dave:You have to be naked in the sunshine and

media things like that. None other than Natalie Jill, author of the new book "The 7-Day Jump Start." Natalie, welcome to Bulletproof Radio. Natalie: I am so stoked to be here. Seriously, my life feels complete that I get to be on Bulletproof Radio today. Dave: Aww. Thanks. Natalie: I'm stoked! Dave: Hey, Brock we got to send her a lot more .