Camille Miller With The Natural Life Business Partnership

Intro: We’re broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Camille Miller with the Natural Life Business Partnership. Welcome, Camille.

Camille Miller: Hi, Lee. Thanks for having me today.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about natural life business partnership. How are you serving folks?

Camille Miller: So the Natural Life Business Partnership is a global professional organization for the soul aligned entrepreneur. So part of what we do is bridge that gap between business success and spirituality. So we always say the inner work helps your outer success. So what we do is we’re an organization that brings professionals together that just lead from a different way, do business differently. We say you live in a higher vibration, you have an alternative approach to business, and you’re here to help repair the world. And it’s just a safe space to build businesses in a way of kindness. And that’s very authentic to who people are.

Lee Kantor: So what was the genesis of the idea? How did you think of this and how did you get this kind of off the ground?

Camille Miller: Yeah, so my background is in not for profit strategy. I was an executive in a not for profit world before I created this. I was CEO for the Northeast Organic Farming Association in New Jersey, later became president of the Northeast. And it put me in Washington working in our health care system and on our organic label. But I met people that were like me that had these professional roles and professional look about themselves, we could say, and that were totally different in their personal lives. Right? And that’s kind of who I was. I was very spiritual. I believed in alternative medicine. I ate organic food, I was very healthy. And I definitely had an alternative approach to business. But in that role, I got to bring my whole self to work so I didn’t have to worry about who I was professionally and who I was. You know, back at home, I wasn’t putting on this role of a professional, and I was hanging around with the doctors, the scientists, the schoolteachers, the Wall Street executives. And because I led the organization, we had deep spiritual conversations and deep business and strategy conversations. And I just kind of loved it. And we came from a place of abundance and believing that we’re enough. And I was kind of a different way of looking at business. So that job was defunded in 2015, and I found myself kind of figuring out like, what am I going to do next in life? I felt so fulfilled and I love advocacy work.

Camille Miller: So as I was looking for my professional tribe, I came up a little short when I went to places like a Chamber of Commerce or any other networking organization, a business organization. I felt that it was very egocentric. It was very like people stabbing you with your card. If if they couldn’t make a sale, they were moving on. It wasn’t really a personal environment. But then when I went to a, say, the holistic Chamber of Commerce or a more of a holistic way of doing business or organization, I found that it was way to woo woo for me. So I wanted to find something in between. So I started this coffee club and telling people like, Hey, we should have our own professional organization. Why don’t we? Where would we go? What would we do? And I wanted something very grounded in business principles. I had built many companies and I felt that the strategy was important and I really wanted to help people bring their gifts to the world. And that was the main strategy. So it was how was I going to help people bring their gifts to the world, teach them how to do business? Because I do believe people are doing great things in the world. They just don’t know how to run a business. So it started as a coffee club. We were in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut.

Camille Miller: We went all along the Northeast. That’s where I’m from, New Jersey. And then at the end of 2017, I got a phone call from someone in California saying, Oh my gosh, I can’t wait for you to get out here. And I knew in that moment I did not have a sustainable business model or scalable in any way. So I’m a single mom. I had three young kids at that time. They were all high schoolers, and I couldn’t travel anymore than I already was. And I heard about this thing called Zoom, and in the beginning of 2018, we opened up as a no chapter virtual professional organization. And I taught people how to use Zoom and meet people around the world to really grow their. Business. So the next year we became international and in 2020, obviously there was a global pandemic and everyone started using Zoom and we didn’t have to pivot or change because we were already who we were. We’ve grown completely by word of mouth, and now in 2021, we rebranded and went. We trademark the word soul professional. And now my whole goal is to tell people there’s an alternative way of doing business and we and we can do it and build wealth from a place of kindness and generosity and consciously care about everyone that works for the company. So that’s what we’re doing. Now, that’s a little bit about the background.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you came up with this idea and you, you, I guess you experienced firsthand a spectrum of people in business, right? You have the cutthroat dog eat dog. It’s me or you, and only one of us is coming out of this alive kind of mentality on one side and then on the other side, this, you know, maybe some negative connotations of business that it’s greedy, exploitive. And there’s some, you know, some some of that going on as well. And you’re trying to thread the needle. It sounds like to me with business can be good and you can feel good doing it if you’re kind of in and around the right folks with the right mindset.

Camille Miller: That’s part of it. But I think also that we whatever we do in life, right, if you’re an accountant, if you’re a doctor, if you’re a lawyer or whatever you are, whatever you train to do, you did with good intentions, thinking that you are going to love this work. But so many people, especially in my age, I’m in my mid fifties. We maybe got the paycheck right, Maybe did all of the work, but it didn’t make our heart sing right. We got to a place, We climbed the ladder, we did something or we were in the daily grind. And you’re like, This is not what it’s about. It’s paying the bills, but it’s not really giving me the creativeness that I’m looking for. It’s not really what we say making my heart sing right. This is not really what I signed up for. It’s not really what I want to do. Maybe regulations had changed, the job had changed, but whatever it is, it changed a little. And we’re here. And most of the people that I work with, I call myself personally an alternative business engineer. So you can do whatever you do, whatever your passion is, but let’s do it a little differently, right? So if you don’t like social media, don’t do it right. If you don’t like live videos, don’t do it right. If you don’t like going to networking, don’t do it. Like do it a different way. It’s not that I went to business school. They taught us Disney. They taught us McDonald’s. Right. But they didn’t. At the time, teachers had to be entrepreneurs. Now, I graduated business school in 95, so 1995. So that was quite a while. Now they do have entrepreneurship. But no one was taught to build a business around their lifestyle.

Camille Miller: So when I built this business, I said, What am I really good at? What I love and what do I hate? Right. I hated working with board of directors being a not for profit executive. I didn’t like working at nights. I don’t like going to an office. So I built a job that allowed me to be totally me, be authentic all the time. I love strategizing and building companies. I can’t stand running them. So I built a role for myself that allows me to help people strategize. I don’t do one on one work because it’s not my thing. I like groups, I like masterminds. I like running things at a higher level. And as I grow, then I can offer more things to more people. So my gift is building community. So that’s that’s my lane of joy. That’s where I stay. So really, this community is about staying in your lane of joy, doing what feels good to you, you know, and you’re more attracting the money and all the good things to you instead of like feeling yucky and selling them to people, if that makes sense. So people usually come to find us or they’re out there searching just like I was. I was searching for my people. A little bit of both. I want to be a professional, but I lead from my heart. I do things a little differently and that’s okay. Maybe I look a little different or I wear different clothes or whatever that is, and it’s all okay. It’s not what it used to be. And I do believe that there is an evolution happening in the world and we’re all kind of looking for our purpose beyond our profit now.

Lee Kantor: So what does the ideal member look like for you? Is is it are they solopreneur hours or are they owners of small to midsize firms or runs the gamut?

Camille Miller: It runs the gamut. So we have people just starting out and trying to create something. It could be from a hobby. It could be that they’ve retired from their position. It could just be they’re worn out and they want to try something else. We have found since the pandemic that many people chose not to go back to corporate and how are they redefining themselves. So we do have the soul openers that are just trying to figure it out. We have many that have very successful careers, and maybe they don’t want to staff, maybe say like a coach or something and they’re the center of it. But then we have other people, we call it our soul leader inner circle that built their own brands from this level of consciousness and are building past that million dollar mark. So we have like our own CEO we call our inner circle, but it’s our own CEO roundtable. You have to have a company over 250,000 with at least two employees to even be a part of it. And your main goal is to leave the day to day operations. So if you’re a coach and you’re doing all the coaching, you can’t be in that call because you’re not a CEO, right? It’s a real CEO. So it’s all levels, but at every level you mentor the level behind you.

Camille Miller: So it’s all about giving back. It’s it’s not about the competition because we believe everyone is different in their own way, and it’s really about giving back and teaching. So when you become a part of our organization, it’s a membership based organization. When you come to be a part of it, you’re getting mentorship and you’re getting mindset help. So we can teach you. We call it woo and wealth, we call it we teach you business finance, we teach you messaging, marketing strategy, but we also teach you self care. We have a class called Soul Curiosity just to ask questions about your spirituality or what you think in the world or this other level of consciousness. And we have mindset mastery. So we believe it’s both of those things that make success. I would say the inner work creates the outer success. It’s getting rid of blocks and all the reasons you’ve told yourself you can’t do it or what society has told you it should be done this way. We’re trying to erase that and say, Nope, let’s let’s do it on your terms. How do you want to do it? So it’s really dovetails with your lifestyle. That’s the most important thing. It’s almost like lifestyle business. I don’t know if that’s a word.

Lee Kantor: But it’s a combination of education. It’s a collaboration, like you said, mastermind kind of group thing happening as well. So it’s kind of checking all the boxes that some some organizations have already, but it’s aligned with people who are kind of with the same mindset around this kind of soul affirming why first mentality.

Camille Miller: Yeah, yeah. It’s we call it purpose beyond profit and it’s all levels and it’s really just about doing things a little differently. So when I look. And can’t find it. I just create it. That’s how a lot of our micro community started. So curiosity. Well, I didn’t have a great amount of knowledge in it. So we ask other people to mentor us, right? So it’s really about everybody else. It’s not the organization. I’m just the community curator. It was the legacy I want to leave in the world. But, you know, as I grew, grew my own business, I needed to surround myself with people that were also had the same core values and were also growing their business. So. And I found once you hit the three 350 mark in your business, a lot of the masterminds that I could have bought into all went kind of like in that ego way. Again, they were running things based on numbers. And not to say that that’s not important. I’m not saying that you still need all of that, but it’s also about allowing does this feel right? And my mission creeping is this really who I want to serve, how I want to serve? And it’s not about just selling. It’s more around the purpose. And I couldn’t find it, so I created it. And actually it’s the number one way that we bring in members right now is inviting them to our inner circle because it doesn’t exist out there the way we do it.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned at first it started in person around coffee, then it evolved into Zoom. What is it today? Is it a combination? Do you have chapters or is it primarily zoom?

Camille Miller: We do everything on Zoom. Everything is open to everyone from all over the world. So it’s just based on different time zones. Our masterminds are all in different time zones, so you can come to different ones. You can come to the one for the, you know, North America or you can come to one for Europe. It doesn’t matter. But everything’s on Zoom. And we do we have what we call member gatherings where we may all show up in a city, but there’s no structure around it. We might just go for a hike or to go do something. Usually we stay at a hotel and we just kind of hang and get to know each other. And we have online member mingles that socially, everyone makes a drink and an appetizer at home and they show up. So everything’s virtual, though, that we do. That’s not to say, though, we have members, especially in New Jersey, because that’s where it started. We have a ton of members. They may all show up for happy hour or may do something, but it’s not really run through the organization as much as the members just doing it.

Lee Kantor: Now, any advice for somebody who is new to community building like this? What are some of the do’s and don’ts to get a community off the ground and get that escape velocity?

Camille Miller: Yeah, I think the most important thing is to listen to your community. Don’t create products to sell and then try to create the community around it. It’s create your community. Listen to what they need. They will always, always tell you what they need. That’s how we build and grow. If enough people ask for it, I’m like, Oh, obviously they can’t find it in the world. Let’s create it. And we choose not to really compete with anyone. We used to have like a low level membership. We got rid of it because so many people are doing it. They’re doing a good job doing it. So I’d rather say, Hey, go over here and do it and when you’re ready to come to us.

Lee Kantor: Now, tell us a little bit about tell us a little bit about your new book, The Ultimate Guide to creating your solo Line business.

Camille Miller: Oh, yeah. I show it off. Oh, wait, this is Radio. Yeah. The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Soul Line Business. That is a collaborative book. So it’s not only my story about why I created this, and then if you wanted to find a job or even change your own career that’s more aligned with who you are, It’s a book of stories of people that have done it and the strategies they took to take it. So it became an Amazon bestseller in six categories, and we ranked number three behind the Bernie Brown and Joe dispenser in women. I want to say it’s women’s spirituality or something. I’m honestly, I forget the title, but yeah, and I’m working on the second book right now called The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a six Figure Soul Professional.

Lee Kantor: Now there’s the first book, The Ultimate Guide to Creating Your Soul Line Business. Was that with some of kind of the early members were kind of sharing their story about how doing this together impacted them and their lives.

Camille Miller: Yeah, so some were they’re not all they weren’t all members. It’s really a cross-section of people, very people that have done it, that are that are pretty successful. And they and they just told their stories or some and I think it covered five different countries. So we just chose a bunch of people and they wrote about their stories and, and I didn’t actually read it because we have a publisher and an editor and all that. And so before it went to print, obviously because it had my name on it and reading it, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so much better than I had thought. And it was very clear that we all had a common thread. It was all that decision of This doesn’t feel good and I want to do this instead. It was like that aha moment of, I’ve had enough, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m going to do this instead. Growing your business is the next book because it’s one thing to just decide it’s a whole nother thing to make money doing it.

Lee Kantor: So for you in this journey, what’s been the most rewarding part of this adventure?

Camille Miller: Oh my gosh, so many things. Meeting people all over the world, seeing what it’s like for them, co-creating, you know, watching people have their aha moments of having a hobby and me saying, Hey, do you want to make a career out of that? You know, let’s let’s put that blueprint together for you, you know, and then watching them do it, you know, this week, usually between Thanksgiving and the New Year, I check in with people to kind of see like, where are you this year? How are you doing? Especially if I haven’t seen them in a while. And it’s always amazing to hear their stories about what they’ve been doing and watching them grow. I think I think that’s a that’s a big one when people say, you know, I just want ten clients. We have one one member just won ten clients. And then it was like, okay, my practice is full. What do I do next? Well, we make a wait list and now she has books out and our practice is full. I talked to her this week and she’s like, I am making more than enough money. And I was like, okay, now it’s time to bring in associates. Now you’ve got to grow your practice, you know? But it started out as a little hobby, so that’s kind of amazing.

Lee Kantor: Now, were you surprised that this many people are kind of resonating with the message and the big why behind this? Or is this something that you were hopeful that this could be?

Camille Miller: So? It’s a little bit of both. And I’ve been doing this for seven years, so it’s actually taking me a little time to find the exact right path and what I’m doing right, because the same people that were in that coffee club, some of them are still with us today. We’ve had people with us the whole time, but we’ve morphed a little bit until I could really figure out exactly who are we, and it had to do with my own growth. I would say after the pandemic, like especially last year, is when I was really surprised, like I felt the world needed it. And I last year I was really surprised with how. Now, because I always say our people hide their in every single profession, but they’re hiding. They’re not talking about that side of them, that holistic ness, that that spirituality, that piece of them. It doesn’t come up in your professional world. We don’t talk about it. It was kind of like eating organic food. No one talks about it. So I feel like during the pandemic, it kind of broke that that shield that we were all hiding behind to say it’s okay to be authentic, it’s okay to be me, it’s okay to be different. I’m just going to follow what makes my heart sing, what makes me happy, what brings me joy. So now I’m seeing more and more and more of them. And I’m like, Wow, There are thousands and thousands and thousands. And that was the big decision for us to go so global and rebrands and everything last year and start to trademark things because it’s more than a coffee club now. So we spent all of 2021 just doing the back end work to make sure that if 100, 200 people join in the next few months. Which we expect. We’re ready to handle it. So now we’re ready to handle it. So that’s a yes and no.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website? What’s a coordinates? Best way to do that?

Camille Miller: The best way to do it is go to soul professional dot com. We have lots of free stuff that you can come try out see for a good fit. We have meet and greets that we just talk about what is the so professional movement. Everything is no pressure. You either belong or you don’t. You’ll know and come check us out. If we sound like your people, come check us out.

Lee Kantor: Well, Camille, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Camille Miller: I appreciate that. Thanks, Lee.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor will show next time on Association Leadership Radio.