Why Being Boring Online Is Working Better Than Ever With Natalie Dick

How many certifications do you have?

If you've been in the coaching world for a while, I bet the answer is "a lot." And I bet at least one of them is sitting between you and the people you want to work with.

Natalie Dick came to me for coaching when she was feeling stuck in her business. She told me on the podcast that what drew her in was my steady consistency, without the spike-and-launch energy she saw everywhere else. Now she's a business mentor who helps leaders get clear on their signal. She created Signal Work, which distills your brand messaging down to the simplest version of you so you reach the people you're meant to work with.

What a signal is

I asked Natalie to break it down for someone who has no idea what she's talking about.

Her background is in energetics. She believes every person has a unique core energy that lives in the heart space. Her work gives language to that and brings it into every part of your business, so your business feels like a transmission of who you are instead of a templated system.

When the templates work and still don't feel true

Her clients usually come to her frustrated. They're highly credentialed and trained in a bunch of different modalities. They've poured what they know into other people's templates, and it worked, but it doesn't feel true enough. There's a gap between who they are and how their message lands, and sometimes the wrong people show up because the language isn't clear enough for the right ones.

One of her clients holds a doctorate in depth psychology, is a sexologist, and is trained in somatic experiencing. She kept trying to figure out which credential to speak through. Natalie's approach is to put the credentials behind her as backup and bring who she is to the front.

I asked if she sees people hoarding credentials. She said yes, herself included. She's trained in psychosomatic character therapy, somatic work, and NLP, and she used to wonder which language she was supposed to speak.

To Natalie, standing behind credentials creates distortion. Your message goes through something that was never yours, so it doesn't land.

Pretending to be someone else can feel good at first because you have something to follow. Then a real human shows up, and you don't know how to respond, because they were never the right person in the first place.

Wrong-fit clients and saying no

Natalie described the difference between a client who amplifies your work and one who pulls on you until you're drained. When your messaging isn't clear about who you're meant to work with, you call in more of the draining ones.

I've had clients who seemed to switch identities after they applied. You get on the Zoom call and think, "This is not the same person."

Sometimes people push hard to work with you when you know it isn't a fit. That's when you find out if you can say no to the sale, or if you'll take everyone on and wreck the next three months of your life.

Natalie believes that saying no to the wrong client opens doors to the right ones, and she's watched it happen many times in her business.

The sale that felt awful

Natalie spent tens of thousands of dollars on programs and funnel systems that broke her financially. In one setup, people came through a webinar into her funnel, and she sold high-ticket offers on close-the-sale calls without qualifying anyone.

She landed a big sale and felt awful. She didn't know if the woman could afford it or was ready to do the work. Three days later, the woman asked for a refund. Natalie's policy said no refunds. She gave it to her anyway, because integrity is one of her biggest values.

She tells her clients that if you hook into someone's pain so hard that they hire you out of desperation, that's not someone you want to work with. She'd rather call people forward into an identity shift that feels doable.

We agreed you could fill a program with angry women who got burned by bad marketing. Neither of us wants to be part of that, and it wouldn't help them.

How we both got here

Natalie and I took pretty similar paths.

After my son, Maddox, was born 17 years ago, I lost 90 pounds by doing simple things, and people kept asking how. I got certified to personal train, had a little gym in my basement, and designed meal plans. When Gracie came along, I stopped. I missed it and wanted to bring it online, so I bought a course on getting your business going in 30 days. I'd gone to school for business, and I loved that part so much that I put health coaching aside and went all in on business coaching in 2015.

Natalie worked in business development for L'Oréal in Vancouver, then moved to Montreal. She couldn't sell in French, so she went into personal training, Pilates, yoga, and holistic nutrition, and built her health coaching business online. Later, in Chicago, she studied psychosomatic character therapy with a mentor for three years. People kept asking how she built her business online, and the business mentoring grew from there.

And yes, we both did MLMs. I did Beachbody, doTERRA, Arbonne, and Wild Tree. Natalie did doTERRA and Arbonne. For a lot of us, that was the gateway to building something online. We both hated the part where you tap into your whole network, because it felt like targeting people.

Who told you that you had to launch?

Natalie's old pattern was launch, push, collapse. She grew up in a chaotic environment and ran her business on chaos for years. She says entrepreneurship is the fastest personal growth you'll ever do, because how you do one thing is how you do everything.

I remember standing at the stairs one night after everyone was in bed, telling my husband I had to start a challenge on Monday. I wasn't ready, and I had a client call at 5:00 AM. He asked, "Who told you you had to launch next week?" I said, "I did." He said, "Exactly."

These days, neither of us can say the word "launch" without cringing. Natalie calls herself the path of least resistance girl now. Her business is simple: one low-ticket offer called Find Your Signal, plus private counsel with leaders and Signal Work. She also has a full-time job, so slow and steady is her pace. (She asked me who she learned that from.)

She can't schedule content, either. She tried for her whole career and it never worked, because her best posts come from inspiration. I have a couple weeks of reels sitting in my drafts right now, and I made them when I wanted to. Nobody made me sit down on a Tuesday and film five.

Be boring online

Natalie's clients struggle with visibility because they don't know what to say. Once the messaging is clear, showing up gets easier.

People are searching for comfort, and a recognizable background is comforting. The calendar behind me is still on June. Almost every reel I make is in the same spot or on a walk. I'm the most boring person in the world, and people still want to be around me online and buy what I create, because I'm myself.

Natalie said she learned from me to share small sneak peeks of my life, one story here and one quick visual there. People notice those things. And when you go through something hard and share a glimpse, people show up in your corner.

Real people win

Facebook is full of AI content right now, including fake accounts selling supplements and a "62-year-old" who looks 28 with two babies on her hip. We both use AI in our businesses and love it. The problem is everyone using it to look the same, like the AI photo of yourself surrounded by books with weird titles.

The more AI content spreads, the more people will look for real humans. This is certainly the best time to be boring and be yourself.

Find Natalie

Start with Find Your Signal, her low-ticket entry into her work. Or pop into her DMs, say hi, and tell her you heard her on the podcast.

Lindsay Maloney