Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy. I'm Gary Michels, your host today we have Natalie Byrne, founder of Blank Space communication firm and a legacy impact and brand purpose strategist. So I want to dig right in because tell us a little bit about what Blank Space is, and how did you arrive at that name?
Ok, well, I love this question right off the bat, and it's just so great to meet you, and it's great to be here and with your audience, I'm, you know, I'm someone who thinks about legacy all day. So this is just, this is so exciting and blank space actually came to me. I was in the private sector. I was working with big brands and Unilever before I started my
firm about seven, eight years ago. Actually, it was a time when we were really thinking about, what is a business bigger than any product, what is its value system, what is its purpose? So I was working with brands on their brand purpose work, and working with founders on their legacy work. So thinking about who are they, beyond just one business, what is their philanthropic interests? What is their mission? And how can we really build this life of legacy for
both a brand and a founder? So that's how I started the business and and blank space, the name really came from the idea that I don't think that we need to put, you know, categories into what we do. This is where I make money. This is where I give it away. This is who I am in my community. I really think of the blank space as this future that we can all be in, where we are in our true lane. We are doing good while we are making money, we are supporting our community and our
family and everything that we do. So the blank space is this idea of kind of wiping clean everything we've known to create something new and and our own legacy.
Right on. Do people when you tell them what blank space is, are they surprised after you explain it? Or, okay, that makes sense. How do most people respond to that?
They actually get really excited, because it's a method we have, the blank space method. We've started doing blank space workshops all around the country and thinking about, what is your blank space? So I actually think it's fun, because it opens you up to something bigger than just, okay, what am I doing as a company, or what am I doing as an individual? It's it's a new way of thinking about things and being really in your lane.
So the mission of blank space is to create a legacy of impact. Before we dive in deeper to this topic, what are each of those words, legacy and impact mean to you?
Oh, that's a great question. In my work, I really think that words matter, so I like the challenge of defining them right off the bat. Impact we can start there is slightly overused, if I'm honest, but I've been working in impact and thinking about positive impact, social impact, a company's impact and a family's impact for a very long
time. And so I think that with impact, it's really important that we think about how we show up, what we're doing every day, to make a difference and at the same time, you know, drive our business growth. So I don't think of those two things as separate, which is different than other people who would say they work in the impact field. It's not necessarily about
philanthropic endeavors only. It is truly how you show up every day and legacy that could be everything from as simple as the way you make someone feel when you're ordering your coffee at Starbucks. Are you the type of person who's in and out and not making any eye contact and running from thing to thing? Or are you present? And you know, blank space also has a lot to do with being present, being fully present in your life, so that
your legacy isn't something that happens after you die. It's something that you can actually create in the way you show up every day.
It's, it's like when someone says, Are you present? See how are how you doing? And and they come, fine. No, no, no, no, how you really doing? Yes, which I think people are in such a fast paced world that often people don't do that. It's almost like the thought of slow down to speed up.
Oh my gosh. I completely agree. I was working with a big grocery retailer brand the past few years, and we were thinking about your neighborhood grocery store is really like a community hub, whether you're in line next to a neighbor, or maybe your other neighbor is behind the deli counter, helping you, you know, choose what, what you're going to get for your lunches that week. I love the idea that we can just be, as you said, more present, more in our true self,
too. And you know, in the world that we live in today, on our phones, heads down, running around it is, it is hard to do that, but that's exactly what we try to do with the blank space. So I wanted to just note that, because you are how you make other people feel.
Now you you created a legacy roadmap which helps clients rethink what they do, why they do it, which is really important, and how. They can move towards a more legacy driven way of life. Can you tell us a little bit about that roadmap?
Oh my gosh, I would love to you're talking about all my favorite things. You know, when you have a north you know, on the compass, or a North Star, or I even think of it sometimes, when I'm working with a really big company, this is a cruise ship that's carrying a lot of different people, and you want to make sure it's pointed in the right direction, and that's what a legacy roadmap is all about. What are we
thinking about now? So when we get to these times in our life that might be more challenging, or we might have to make big decisions, we have this really grounded sense of our value system, is probably where I would start. And so we do like an assessment of where you are, you know, where the business is, where the family is, and thinking about, Okay, so we're here, and this is our value. So as we think of our big, big goals and where we want to go, the way we can measure that
along the way is by being very value centered. You know, this is it's interesting, because we've seen some big companies in the past few years in the headlines, making huge mistakes. CEOs ousted based on values, where they've skewed so far away from what the company's mission is and what they are trying to do for both their employees and their consumers and their shareholders, that they've lost their values. They've lost what's driving them, and I think that's the same in our own
lives. An example that comes to mind is like Boeing, right? This is a company that's been around a long time, so the CEO definitely inherited a set of values. But if that has been done correctly, what we as we would say in the business, it's evergreen. It doesn't change. You don't change your North Star, but if you haven't done the work. So sometimes I'm coming in and helping businesses who have been around for a long time that have never asked these questions, why do we do what we
do? Who are we actually serving? What is our bigger mission, and you know, beyond just the products that we're releasing? So to so I think that to your question, there's a yes, and we
want a value system to last. I don't think that if family and community is important to you, that shouldn't change in 10 years, and if your roadmap has gone off, then that's where you can counter and say, Wow, we're spending all of our investment in this one area, and yet this isn't a part of our core values at all.
Not at all. You've also created an exclusive Legacy Council. Can you tell us about the council a little bit?
Yes, I'm so excited. You mentioned this, and this is a cohort of eight individuals who are really thinking about their leadership in these places. So you know, whether they're scaling their business or launching a foundation, or maybe they're ready to write a book about their story. You know what they've brought to the table?
This is going to be a cohort of eight people together, which is so exciting to me, because there's so much peer to peer advisory too, that that I see, and I've been working so for so long behind the scenes with these big companies that in order to make this group that can work on their legacy together and go behind the scenes at some of these big, big places where it comes to life, I am so excited by the legacy Council. And then year over year, that group just gets
bigger and bigger. So you have this whole network of other people who are value driven, who are thinking about thought leadership, or they're thinking about their values, and they're thinking about how their businesses and philanthropy and lives are really all representative of that. And the thing about these eight people is they're bringing so much to
the table. So there is an opportunity for so much shared life, understandings and learnings and growth, and the curriculum involves everything from you know, what is your authentic voice and what rooms you should be in, how you say no to things that are outside of your lane, looking at planning through transitions, transfer of wealth, scaling your venture. Post m a next gen legacy conversations, there's a lot about narrative, which we even started talking about in the
very beginning of our chat. So I feel like there might be some people in the audience who could be a good fit for this. And everyone gets to bring something to the table that they're working on, so they get the benefit of the advisory of the firm, but in this much more fun and accessible way, there is sharing out to the group and accountability, and then working with me privately so that everyone knows that what they're building on their side is moving forward.
Sweet. Love it. So you've personally been honored to be a White House delegate under President Obama, traveling with him to Kenya for the global entrepreneur summit as a speaker, that's awesome to be honored, to be able to do something like that.
Well there's nothing like connecting with people's hearts and shifting minds and, you know, speaking and bringing these messages to groups. So I love that. It's a passion of mine. I started as a journalist, so listening and speaking and and, you know. Helping to drive these narratives is so important to me. That was one of the biggest honors I've ever had. It was his, if you remember, it was his homecoming trip to Kenya. And we actually gathered entrepreneurs
from all over Africa to come together to Kenya. And you know, these were entrepreneurs of all ages. You had young entrepreneurs. You had so many different countries represented, and it was, it was, it was awesome. You got to see the innovation and creativity that is driving this continent. And the continent is a lot younger than what we see in Europe or even here in the United States, so you have a lot of young
innovation. And it was an exciting time. So we did mentorship, we did speaking, we did round tables, and we talked about how entrepreneurship can just drive so much for a country forward. And I take that with me. I love working with entrepreneurs. I think you could probably hear that from like the legacy Council and the different work we do. Think founders have that certain passion in them that they're they're leading an organization and a family all at the same time. So it was a
really special trip. And Africa is such a special continent, and I just was so honored to be a part of his delegation.
What do you think it is that drives people?
Hmm, you know, I feel like there's so much more that connects us than keeps us separate, and you wouldn't know that by turning on the news today, because it's just a lot of a lot of fighting and a lot of disagreeing. And I think that there's so much more that brings us to the table. So when you ask what drives us, I think that's such a personal, heart centered value driven. People want to provide for their family. They
want to feel safe and secure. They want to feel healthy, so they want to have access to these basic things, like, you know, good food, good water, clean air. They want their kids to have access to a really good education. I mean, these are
your universal desires for for people and families. And when we get into what we're talking about with legacy, I think it also matters how we're being perceived and what we're leaving behind, even if it's something so small that no one really knows, because it's just the way that you are maintaining a local garden. You know, on the weekend, there is just this
feeling of pride of contributing. When I talk about careers and what we do, I actually think of it as how we contribute to the world around us, and how we serve, how we use our gifts. And I think that we're missing that in a lot of these conversations.
Absolutely. Well, you've also, I mean, gosh, you've accomplished so many things in your life, and I'm glad that we were able to have you on the show, working on so many projects with the United Nations too, which is such a huge important role in our world.
One of my favorite initiatives was actually bringing business leaders in some of the things that make you really good at business, risk taking, creativity, innovation, thinking fast is not things that the UN does well. So the idea that we can learn from, you know, we think sometimes as a speed boat and a cruise ship, I go back to that we can learn from each other. You know, you move fast on a speed boat, but a cruise ship brings a lot of people with
it. So I think that there's such an opportunity at the UN for shared learnings. Some of the initiatives we've done are around women and climate. We've also done peace conversations based on supporting local businesses. When you support local business growth in some of these countries that are facing a lot of difficulties, a lot of challenges, things that we aren't seeing here at home, you actually help the community to thrive. And once you can make a living and your kids can go to
school, you'll see an economy transform. So I thought that that was really, really uplifting. And idea of investing in other countries really also helps us thrive. This has become something that's quite a hot topic currently, and with the United Nations, it's just so inspirational to see how many people come together to make the world a better place. There's so
many youth driving this. There's so many youth here in the US that come together at the UN and are meeting on things that are, you know, that seems so such big challenges for us, but for them, they're like, We got this. Our generation is stepping in. We want to collaborate. We want to think big. And I find that really inspiring.
So with legacy being such a big focus, what legacy do you hope to leave behind through your work in your organizations, professional, individual? A big legacy that ties everything together?
Oh, that's such a good question. You have all the good questions. I think for me, my legacy is for people to know that what they do matters, and sometimes we feel like we have no impact on the world around us, and it's a scary place. And I think that if everyone had takes a second to go inside, and I am the leader in this own place, in my world, and I can make a difference in his own, own little pocket of the world.
Um. Um, that what I would like my legacy to be is just inspiring and lighting a spark in everyone, that what they do really matters. And it can matter to your neighbor, to your kid, to your spouse, to your boss, to your teammate. This is the type of world that I want to live in. And I'll take the other
thing you brought up earlier in being present. If we could all just be present with each other a little bit more and listen a little bit more and open our hearts a little bit more, I think we would solve some of these big problems pretty quickly.
Is there anything like in your personal life that would be different?
Well, I I'm really passionate about the time I spent at the stables. I love riding horses.
Love it. Me too. I used to ride all the time. Hunter jumper? What do you, what did you do?
I'm a trained hunter jumper. Now, you know I'm I'm not doing that competitively or anything, but time with horses, time at the stable, it's so grounding. I've these animals teach us so much. And I actually just got certified in eques leadership development.
That's awesome. There's nothing like just with the touch of your hand and your seat, and to be able to get a horse to jump over a four foot jump, it's, there's nothing like it, right? Or it's, it's crazy.
Talk about being present, right? I mean, you if you are ahead of that jump or behind that jump, then you are falling off that horse.
I've got stories. The horses are, they're, they're such smart animals and calming. And there is so much to be learned that's awesome.
Yeah, one of the things I can leave you with around that too, is, you know, you know this because you ride, their nervous system is so much bigger, and the way that they self regulate as a herd, so they are constantly in communication, even a couple football fields away, through their nervous system and their heart and how fast it's beating and what's happening. And is there anything to be afraid of out there in the
in the woods, outside of the field. So they really teach us how to come into ourselves, how to connect with the people around us, and I think, just to make, actually, a lot better decisions in our everyday and in our business lives. That'll be part of my legacy. I'll have a ranch one day with my horses.
There you go. So what's next for you, and where can our listeners learn more about what you're doing?
Well, if they're interested in the Legacy Council, please reach out. Blankspaceworks.com, and I think what's coming up next right now is I'm working on a book around being in your heart, being present, moving everything out so that you could be in your lane. I think that we're in a
world where we're saying yes to everything. We're being overwhelmed with opportunities and information, and the more you can be in the blank space, the more you could be in your lane, the better everything gets, the more success you could bring in because you're focused.
Absolutely. Well, gosh, it's been awesome, and I'm sure people will be reaching out to you.
Yay. Yes, okay, well, you and I have to meet in person at some time with a bunch of horses around us.
Absolutely, absolutely.