Natalie Dawson

Last week at Milken, I was in a 40 person room with Jensen Huang.

Here's what surprised me: it wasn't his intelligence. It was his warmth. The way he made eye contact. The way he asked questions like he genuinely cared about the answers.

I've been around a lot of successful people. And the ones who stand out to me are never the loudest or the most aggressive. They're the ones who are kind when they don't have to be.

It was a great reminder that success doesn't have to look like being a jerk. The best version of winning is when you're still the person people want to be in a room with.

The hire that changed everything wasn't a VP. Not a C-Suite.

It wasn't a rockstar salesperson or a genius marketer.

It was an executive assistant.

I know that sounds small. It's not.

At $30M, I was drowning. Running operations, managing 80+ people, and still scheduling my own meetings. I thought hiring an EA was a luxury.

It was the highest-ROI hire I've ever made.

Within 30 days, I got back 15 hours a week. That's 15 hours I reinvested into strategy, team development, and the decisions that took us from $30M to $225M.

Here's what I learned:

The bottleneck in your company is almost always YOU. Not your team. Not your product. You.

And the fastest way to remove that bottleneck isn't hiring another salesperson. It's freeing up the people making the most important decisions to actually make them.

Stop wearing "busy" as a badge of honor.

Start asking: What am I doing today that someone else could do 80% as well?

Then hire for that.

What's the one hire that changed your business the most? Drop it below.

You WANT people problems.

When you’re early in business, you think people problems are a bad sign — like you hired wrong, or you’re not cut out to lead. So you chase the “perfect” hire, the one magical person who’s going to fix everything.

But here’s the truth: unicorns aren’t real.

Every challenge you face with your team is a mirror. It reveals a system gap, a communication breakdown, or a lack of clarity in your leadership. People problems aren’t setbacks — they’re signals.

Over the years, I’ve realized that people are your gateway to solving problems and uncovering blindspots you can’t see yourself. My best hires have done that for me — they’ve challenged my assumptions, exposed weaknesses in our processes, and forced me to level up.

That’s how you build a company full of leaders — leaders who develop other leaders.

If you want to scale, stop avoiding people problems. Start seeing them as your fastest path to growth.

I failed at YouTube for 5 years. I’ve been posting consistent content since 2018 with little to no traction. It took 2019-2024 to get to 100k subscribers and in 2025, I jumped to 940k.

Yesterday, I was walking in Paris and a woman stopped me to thank me. She shared a specific system I shared in one of my videos from years ago that she implemented. She 2xed her revenue last year.

That is worth showing up for. That is worth being consistent for. That was a reminder that the 5 years of effort and time spent wasn’t wasted.

My takeaway: the things we commit to over a long period of time require exponentially more effort but create exponentially more reward.

What are you committed to that’s worth it?

I watched a scene in a show recently where a character is about to go to prison. In the days before, he starts noticing everything. The car ride to get coffee. The alarm going off in the morning. The way the sheets feel.

It hit me because I'm at a point in my life where I want time to slow down. I'm genuinely thrilled with where things are right now. The work. The people around me. The small stuff.

Assume the future is a foregone conclusion. If you knew it was, you'd appreciate the now so much more intensely.

The alarm going off tomorrow morning? That's a gift. The boring Tuesday meeting? Also a gift. The drive to get coffee that takes 12 minutes? Gift.

Last weekend, we had John Maxwell at our event.
And the one thing he said that hit every business owner in that room differently?
Leadership isn’t a title. It’s a decision.
So many of us are waiting. Waiting to be chosen. Waiting to feel ready. Waiting for someone to hand us the seat at the table.
But John reminded us that the most powerful leaders don’t wait. They show up before they feel qualified. They lead before they have the audience. They decide who they are before the world confirms it.

The owners in our community aren’t building businesses to one day become leaders. They already are. They’re just learning to own it louder.
If you were in that room last weekend, you know what I mean.
And if you weren’t, this is your sign to stop waiting for permission.
The decision is yours. Make it.

I was walking through an outlet mall I hadn't visited in five years.

Five years ago, there was a Bottega Veneta store with zero customers. Miu Miu had a small section inside Prada. Nobody cared about either brand.

Fast forward to today. Both are some of the hottest luxury brands on the planet.

One great collection. One right creative director. One right product. Everything changed.

I think about this a lot when I talk to business owners who had a rough quarter or a rough year and feel like the world moved on without them.

It didn't.

You might be Miu Miu in 2015. Give it time. Reinvest. Reinvent. Take another shot.

Don't let last quarter's results dictate the next five years. You have more longevity than you think. One right move and the whole thing shifts.

Respect isn’t given. It’s earned.

And not through grand gestures or titles — but through the tiny actions you take every single day.

When you show up prepared.
When you follow through on what you said you’d do.
When you make decisions that align with your values, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Those small, consistent movements compound. They build rapport with your team — and more importantly, they build trust in yourself.

Because real leadership isn’t about demanding respect.
It’s about demonstrating the behaviors that earn it.

Being successful is important.

People talk about success like it is selfish. Like wanting more is somehow at odds with being a good person.

I think it is the opposite.

The more you build, the more you can contribute. The more you earn, the more you can give.

The more I grow, the better the rooms I get to walk into and the bigger the impact I get to have.

This weekend I was at a charity event at Mar-a-Lago with Elena Cardone and some amazing women. We raised money. We were in a room full of people who understand that building wealth and giving back are not two different things. They are the same thing.

Success is the goal to the extent you use it as a tool.

And if you are not building, you are limiting your ability to ever give anything of real value to anyone.

Hey LinkedIn fam — I’m thrilled to announce we’re hosting a Money Matters event in Arizona, designed specifically for young women who want to lead with confidence through communication + financial literacy.

We believe leadership starts with self-empowerment. 💡 When you understand your money, you speak up more, make bolder choices, and unlock opportunities others won’t see and they don't teach in school.

If you know a young woman in Arizona who’s ready to step into her power — send her my way. The event is for her voice, her future, her financial freedom.

👉 Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eNmYHEPy

(Feel free to tag her or DM me — I’ll personally make sure she gets a spot.)

Let’s build a wave of badass women who lead with confidence and dollars. 💼

✨— Natalie

#arizonacommunity #azbusiness #arizonateens #arizonaschools #arizonaevents #arizonaentrepreneurs