The Blank Space of Leadership: Alignment, Legacy, and Living Your Why, with Natalie Byrne
In this episode of the Spirituality and Leadership podcast, host Andrew Cohn sits down with Natalie Byrne, founder of the impact and communications firm, Blank Space. Natalie shares her unique approach to helping brands, philanthropists, and leaders align their values with their work, whether it's launching a foundation, shaping a brand's legacy, or navigating a company through big transitions. Her methodology, “Blank Space,” is all about clearing the noise, getting centered, and building from a place of deep intention and purpose.
Natalie and Andrew explore how spirituality, personal alignment, and humanness play a powerful role in leadership today. From her work with global companies to advising families on their philanthropic efforts, Natalie emphasizes the importance of living your legacy every day, not just leaving one behind. The conversation flows with warmth, humor, and authenticity, touching on everything from meditation and embodiment to corporate strategy and systems change. If you’ve ever wondered how your values can fuel your work in meaningful ways, this episode is full of insight.
Key Takeaways
Blank Space Is a Leadership Practice: Creating “blank space” means removing the noise, making room for clarity, and allowing alignment and intuition to guide action.
Legacy Starts Now: Legacy is not what you leave behind. It’s how you live every day. Whether you’re a parent, philanthropist, or executive, you’re always building it.
Alignment Beats Overwhelm: Saying no to what doesn’t align with your values opens up the space to do what matters most with impact and ease.
Language Shapes Leadership: Words like “climate change” or “diversity” carry weight. Reframing with inclusivity can unite rather than divide.
Leadership Is Human: Congruence across our spiritual practices, business lives, and everyday actions is the future of meaningful leadership.
In This Episode:
[00:00] Introduction and setting the stage
[03:16] Natalie’s path and Blank Space origins
[06:39] Leadership and societal impact
[08:32] Spirituality, alignment, and everyday practice
[11:09] Defining Blank Space
[14:23] Blank Space in action and methodology
[16:28] Blank Space method: process and application
[19:45] Legacy, storytelling, and brand language
[21:34] Overcoming resistance and creating alignment
[23:26] The power of language and framing
[25:12] The role of saying no and strategic focus
[28:29] Client examples and impact stories
[33:18] Spirituality, values, and inclusive language
[36:13] Humanness, nature, and reducing categories
[38:02] Opportunity for reflection and kindness
[40:25] Alignment, embodiment, and leading with heart
[41:21] Closing and where to learn more
Resources and Links
Spirituality in Leadership Podcast
Natalie Byrne
Website: https://www.blankspaceworks.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliebyrne
Andrew Cohn
Music:
Kodiak: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rURKtnJr3jeHvZ0IVRQCe
Watch our Podcast episode
Transcript
Natalie Byrne: How are you using your values and your family's values to just create this? As we say, go into the blank space to really create the world that feels good to who you are.
Andrew Cohn: You're suggesting that the space between the spiritual friends and green juice and your PR firm is blank space. So that leads me to this question of what is blank space, and how did you come up with the name?
Natalie Byrne: What I wanted to do was think about, okay, why does this work for me and how can I help more people access that? Not just the results of the work, but the work in action. And so that's what blank Space is.
Intro: Welcome to the Spirituality in Leadership Podcast. I'm Andrew Cohn. Spirituality and leadership is a platform for conversations with leaders at all levels about bringing our spiritual dimensions to our leadership, our teams, our workplaces, and all areas of our lives in order to achieve greater success and fulfillment and build and sustain healthier organizations.
If you'd like to connect with me to talk further about these topics and or about individual or team coaching leadership workshops or team alignment, please go to my website lighthouseteams.com. Enjoy the podcast.
Andrew Cohn: In this episode of the podcast, I'm really pleased to speak with Natalie Byrne.
Natalie Byrne is a consultant, communicator, brand builder, community builder based in Southern California. She is a founder of a firm called Blank Space, an impact and communications firm where she works with mission driven brands as well as CEOs, celebrities, philanthropists to create meaningful legacies.
And it's a very interesting conversation because Natalie operates at some very high levels, global levels, the White House, etc., as well as working within large corporations about their brands, integrating and leveraging the wisdom of founders of different brands.
Her firm is called Blank Space. She talks about going into the blank space to create the world you want to create and how leaders, actually people at all levels are showing up in these places, in these blank spaces, knowing what is my why, if you will. Why am I here? What do I want to create? What do I want my legacy to be? How can I create greater alignment with different areas of my life? Whether it's personal meditation practice, something outside of work with what I'm doing in my organization and the impact it's having.
And I was very struck by the integration, the coming together of dimensions in Natalie's work, and it was a very interesting conversation, I appreciate it. I look forward to speaking more with her and I hope you enjoy it.
Andrew Cohn: Welcome back to the Spirituality and Leadership podcast. Today we go out to Southern California to speak with Natalie Byrne, a friend and colleague with whom I connected through Equus here in Santa Fe.
And Natalie is a brand strategist. She founded an impact and communications firm called Blank Space that I'm sure she's going to tell us about. And what I appreciate about Natalie's work is that it's really at this intersection between branding and personal development and social and societal change. And I don't even want to try to explain any of this, but I look forward to your doing so in ways that you see fit, which I'm sure will be a clear and compelling and inviting message.
Natalie Byrne, welcome to the podcast.
Natalie Byrne: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. It is fun to do a podcast with someone you consider a friend and colleague, and I'm excited to let us even off road a little, if you will, and talk about what comes forward.
Andrew Cohn: Let's do it. Let's just keep cleaning the windshield as we need to with our off roading. And maybe we could start a little bit with these two big questions, but I'd love to hear you describe what you do and what your path has been, or how you got into this work. And you know what this podcast is about. You've heard some of the episodes, we've talked about it, so I don't need to set you up that way. I'd love to just ask you to start with what you do and what your path has been to get into this work.
Natalie Byrne: Those are two very big questions. So I can start with Blank Space, which is my firm I've been running now for about eight years, so it's been a really exciting journey as an entrepreneur. And what we do at Blank Space is we really look at building a future we all want to live in, and at having these lanes of business, philanthropy or who we are as leaders in our community, in our own lives.
To say that in another way, we do strategy with some of the biggest companies in the world on how they're representing their values, on what the C-suite is leading on, around mission values, their products and services, but really how they're affecting their employees and the communities they're in.
We worked with folks like Unilever. We worked with people like Kroger on the future of food and health and nutrition access. We worked with Weight Watchers during the pandemic on thinking about how can we really think about nutritional value for all of us, especially in a time when so many people were hungry? So it's really looking at what business does and how it's also this source of good and impact and leadership.
We also work with high net worth individuals. This kind of ties in the other question. Before I started Blank Space, I was inside of Unilever doing work with brands and founders. So we would have a new brand come into the Unilever family and post M&A. We would think about this is the brand's purpose. This is the brand's value in this new chapter. And now this founder who's in a new chapter themselves. How can we think about their thought leadership? And I developed this founder's coalition there, where we could really top the expertise that entrepreneurs carry, like risk taking, creativity, decision making, leading teams and help that then translate bigger for the world.
So doing things with different partnerships. We did a big talk at Cannes Lions about the importance of founder-driven and entrepreneurial mindsets around making change. So I worked for a long time with big brands and with high net-worth individuals. And that's how I started Blank Space all those years ago. So we still do both those things which I love. Which brings me into the family foundation and philanthropy world, and being able to really be strategic about how we use that money. I think that some people still think of, again, the lanes. We make money here, we give it away here. And they're not taking that investment. Capital is something that can really drive economic value in your own community, that can change people's lives, that now can have a return through all these social entrepreneurial partnerships.
So it's been an amazing journey both in business and philanthropy, advice. And there's all sorts of new stuff popping up that we could talk about later on, but hopefully that gives you a sense of what we do here.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. And there's a huge description of the leadership piece and the founders’ role I'm hearing in the world of leadership that I live in. I'm hearing leadership in terms of leading a brand, perhaps in its next chapter in the case of an MA or something, leading the brand itself and the brand's purpose and the brand's value, etc., and also leading in a broader societal sense.
The United Nations work you mentioned had to do with the sustainability and development goals, right? And some of these broader societal things. So there's leading internal to an organization, brand related money there's and everything that comes with that. And then there's leading more broadly socially, societally. Am I understanding that right?
Natalie Byrne: Yes, exactly. And where we are today, I've taken some of this work that is on the macro and thought about how individuals can do this work in their own lives.
What does it look like both in your role? I call it how you contribute to the world. I don't think of our careers as jobs necessarily, as much as what are my skills and how am I giving them to the rest of the world? How am I contributing, and how can that be aligned with my bigger purpose? And then if you don't have a family foundation, you may still have a role in a community. You have causes that you care about or organizations, or maybe even your kid's school. Like, how are you using your values and your family's values to just create this? As we say, go into the blank space to really create the world that feels good to who you are. And in the time we're living in now, when there's just so much chaos and kind of confusion at the top, I think that there's such an opportunity for all of us as individuals to just clear the way. We've talked about my meditation practice before we get into ourselves, quiet the noise and be really, how am I showing up in all of these different places in a way that feels really aligned?
Andrew Cohn: And maybe that connects for you a little bit with this notion of what some people might call spirituality, which as from this podcast is very broadly defined by different people.
But that certainly sounds like you're scraping that area, as I understand it, and then bringing that dimension of your life and of your practice into your work.
Natalie Byrne: Yeah. The name of my company is Blank Space, so you can already get the sense that we're talking about something bigger. And we use that lens in all of the business work we do and the foundation work we do. So we're working on really big systems. And yet coming from a lens of alignment, I also really believe that the intention behind resources and money matters. So what we're thinking about, why we're doing something, why we're showing up where we want this money to go, the positive builds and opportunities that it unlocks. This all really matters when you're building these strategies. So no matter what someone's belief system or spirituality is, that feels right to them. There's a certain part of the process of aligning and aligning to what drives you and what you connect to in a bigger way, and just having access to that in our working lives.
I live in Los Angeles. Here where I live, there is such a growing trend of the meditation world and yoga practice, and the spiritual world has become almost like a social group here in LA where how people identify and I still see this separation between, oh, now I'm doing my meditation practice, now I'm showing up with my Yogi friends, drinking my green juice. And over here, I can act a different way because I'm in my pure firm or I'm in my accounting job. And that's really something that I feel is a disconnect and an opportunity to come into the blank space that you'll keep hearing me say. And look at the way that we show up in all of our lives. Like the way that you order your coffee at Starbucks and the way that barista feels. Just connecting with you is part of your legacy. And I talk a lot about living your legacy.
Andrew Cohn: Now, you've just said a lot, but part of what you just said reminds me about what I've heard many people say that how you do anything is how you do everything.
What are we bringing? What am I doing over here? Do I want to keep it separate? And that's in fact part of what this podcast is about. But you're suggesting that the space between the spiritual friends in and green juice and your PR firm is blank space. So that leads me to this question of what is blank space, and how did you come with the name? Because it clearly still resonates for you. So I want to hear more about that.
Natalie Byrne: Going back to your last question, my process for how I've been successful in, you know, these really large organizations and huge institutions like the UN or the White House has been around knowing my why and my center. So taking some of my own practices that keep me aligned and realizing that when I apply them business, it is hugely transformational and successful. And some of these campaigns that we've built have taken off like wildfire because they reach people's hearts and they shift minds. What I wanted to do was think about, okay, why does this work for me and how can I help more people access that? Not just the results of the work, but the work in action.
And so that's what blank space is. And for some people that might be looking at a blank page and being creative and allowing something to come forward. I think one of the cases that I find most valuable is thinking about listening, and that blank space of just quiet and taking someone in. I find it to be a little bit of even a wink to the expansiveness of space and everything that is holding this planet we're on around us. What can we do that is so much bigger than anything that we've thought of before? Some people call this like a moonshot practice. Throw it way out there and like, what's the really big idea, the 10 x idea. You've heard coaches also talk about. And for me, it's just getting out of your own way. So yeah, I don't know if that helps explain it a little bit more.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. What I hear you saying is getting out of your own way so that something can come into that blank space.
Natalie Byrne: I've seen the blank space in sports, too.
You hear people like Michael Jordan talking about his process, and when you are so in your zone and you're so aligned with what you want to do and your goal on the court, time slows down, things move out of your way. You see the shot coming in. You're in a dance with your teammates. That's the blank space. It's like everything else is out and you're just moving forward towards your goal.
Andrew Cohn: It's interesting to hear you use the word blank, but it's so rich and it's so full and yet it's blank at the same time. That's very Zen.
Natalie Byrne: You're reminding me of one of my first conversations with the IP lawyer. It was hilarious. I don't think I've ever told this story before publicly. And it's me saying, yeah, so I need to register blank space. And then the IP lawyer's saying, that's not possible. And I'm like, what do you mean? That’s the name of the company? And a response along the lines of it literally means nothing. And I say, no, it means everything.
And we're like nothing. Everything. And we ended up in this, like, really hilarious existential dialogue about the name. And I'm like, Apple is Apple. So I say that with a little bit of jest because the name is cheeky. And sometimes really powerful people at the top that aren't used to that sort of. They're like, why is it not? Not only Burns firm, and it's just I'm here to help create a feeling and maybe to make people think twice about the why. So yeah, that's part of the fun.
Andrew Cohn: It wouldn't be the first time I've conjured up conversations with other lawyers or remembering those. And speaking of which, could you talk? I'd love to hear more about what you do and specifically about leadership, but I'd love to. Maybe you could start with, could you talk a little bit about what is the blank space methodology and when, what's its connection to a particular leadership? And I'm always listening and wanting to talk about ways that listeners can use some of what we're talking about, right? Otherwise, it's just a conceptual thing.
But what is the blank space methodology? Is there something in that?
Natalie Byrne: Yes. I love this already. So we've been hinting at it, right? I work with big companies, high net worth individuals and big funds. I believe that capital can do good, can even do good. And what its job is, it's not even about giving it away. So I start with what I've been doing for the entirety of my career. And I got to a point where I realized, similar to what I was saying before about my own practice, that the getting there, the process that we take companies and leaders on is something that is valuable for everyone.
So we took some time over the past few years to really articulate that into the blank space method. And we're now teaching workshops and doing individual work. I'm actually writing a book that helps break down what does it look like to come into yourself? Get really aligned. And then how do you use that to evaluate these spaces in your life? And if you're a company or a philanthropist using that to launch really big initiatives and initiatives that catch fire, right, that have that thing that bring so many people together that are coalition building, the method is really the practice that we do, and what's been behind the scenes for so long that we're now sharing more broadly.
Andrew Cohn: Can you give an example of what that is for a leader or brands owner or creator to they come into a room with you, they have a conversation with you. What's the invitation? What kinds of questions are they reflecting about, or what kinds of processes are they stepping through?
Natalie Byrne: So the first step is usually taking a look at your body of work where you are to date. Often we're called into times of transition. So as I mentioned earlier this could be post M&A when a brand or a person is starting a new chapter. We've worked on the transfer of wealth. There's a huge transfer of wealth happening in this country right now. For the first time in history to women. So thinking about how women are showing up at the homes of these resources, that's a lot of the time that we get called in. Companies sometimes make mistakes. We've seen it. We've seen it very, very boldly in public. I was called in to speak, actually on air, a little bit about what was happening with Boeing and how the CEO could make adjustments and if it was even possible, and was it coming from their why and their values and who they are and how they show up as a company in the world? That's how we usually come in.
It's either in a moment of reflection or the start of a new venture, or maybe transition, and we work with the body of work to date, and doing a nice landscape analysis and looking for what is working and not. And often we find that people are just doing way too much. There's often just so much saying yes to stuff or throwing something here or trying this that most likely the first step we're taking is a huge anchoring into the why and the value system and creating a North Star for the organization or initiative or person that is evergreen. And what I mean for maybe a listener who's not used to some of, you know, the corporate terms that we get used to, if it doesn't work in perpetuity, if it doesn't work in ten years, then it's not right. This isn't a trend. This isn't reacting to what's happening culturally and saying, oh, we have to make a statement. It's actually about who are we? What is that conversation all the time? And then building a big strategy that comes from the why and the values.
So that gives you a little bit of the beginning phases. And then we continue to do leadership and team coaching around this. We built a roadmap that includes this long term strategy with all the metrics we bring in partnership development, communication strategy, narrative. For me, this kind of goes back to an earlier question that I think we kind of breezed past around how I got here. I started as a journalist. I'm a writer. So for me, words really matter. And thinking about the power of those words and what we're saying and not saying. So again, with the blank space method, you will not be surprised. There's a lot of editing and a lot of throwing things out that are not necessary. We need to clear the way to do what we're really meant to do.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. So I'm hearing it's very reflective and introspective looking at your whole body of work. So there's review, but there's not so much planting the seed as much as recognizing what's already there and getting some of the other crap out of the way, perhaps.
Natalie Byrne: Well, putting a seed is in phase two, because once we clear the way, then we figure out what we're doing and doing it in the best, biggest scalable way possible.
Andrew Cohn: Okay, so there's a bigness to this.
Natalie Byrne: Yeah.
Andrew Cohn: There's viciousness. There's a line. There's a moonshot, as you talked about, perhaps. Okay.
Natalie Byrne: Got it. So some of the work we do with families. We focus this roadmap around legacy, right? So with leaders and individuals we can look at your legacy roadmap. So looking at how you live your legacy every day. This is not something for after you have passed on. This is definitely not just putting your name on a building. It's looking at what am I here? What do I care about? How does that become a brand? Because it does. We don't really choose what our legacy is. It chooses us. That's actually one of my favorite stories is a conversation where Oprah was talking to Maya Angelou and said, oh, this girls’ school–I don't know if your listeners are familiar with Oprah has a girls’ school in South Africa.
She does incredible work, and she often speaks of these students as her other daughters. And so it's very important to her, and it's really tied to her heart and her mission. And she said to me, this is going to be my legacy. Maya said, oh, you do not get to choose your legacy. We do. And Oprah's legacy. Or if we even talk about her blank space is the way she makes people feel is the way she connects people together no matter what she's doing, if it's on air, if it's in a magazine, if it's in a company. It's this feeling and this ethos of Oprah. And that is just such a great example of how when you're living your legacy in the moment and you're really doing what you're truly meant to do it all unfolds from there.
Andrew Cohn: And if leaders, particularly leaders in business or founders are coming into this space, I'm curious to know to what extent you experience some resistance or reluctance. Do you find that you're stretching them into some new areas with some of what you're talking about more broadly and societally, and alignment and some of these terms and blank space? Wait a minute–this is business, and I'm curious to know. So do you get some resistance and how do you manage that?
Natalie Byrne: Yeah.
Andrew Cohn: We support them through it.
Natalie Byrne: 100% and it's so exciting. You and I have talked about this before, just in our conversations outside of this one, around the power of transformation and how sometimes you don't even realize that that's what's happening, which is the whole key. What I would say is there's a couple of things. You know, when you're working in a bigger system and you're working with a team, not everyone on that team was part of the decision of bringing you there, right? So of course, you have to really look at team dynamics and moving that. I usually come in though with the top sign off because that's the type of work we're doing. If the cruise ship, which is a corporation or a huge institution, has to head in the right direction, you need the captain with the boat going. So if it's happening on the sidelines, I can't do my job to work across an entity.
And the second phase of the work is so much communications and telling the story that you need all of the other stuff in alignment for that to work. That's like an easy answer. I would say using new terms that make people question things is the best way to go. I mean, some of the brands I work with make up a brand vocabulary. That's all there is. These are words that don't even exist. And then they become things that people say every day. And I love that. And I figured there was something else you said that I wanted to touch on. And now I'm forgetting the second part of the question. So forgive me.
Andrew Cohn: That'll come back. But let me put you on the spot a little bit. Could you tell us what, like a story or an example of what some of this new language might be? What does this look like? What does it sound like without disclosing anything confidential? But could you give me an example of what that looks like?
Natalie Byrne: I think it would be interesting, maybe for everyone with what's happening in this like drought around words like die right now, climate change.
So these are words that create certain reactions depending on, again, your belief system or where you grew up or your political leanings. And to me, those words are putting the work in silos anyways. You can zoom out the bigger why and what we're trying to say. And as soon as you are talking about nature and you start talking about health, that's something that everybody all over the world is like, yeah, sign me up. I care about nature and I care about health. So then you look at climate change, which is a word that is ruffling feathers, and then you talk about nature and health. And the same initiative is getting funded because of the wording. So that's just an example of how much the framing can matter. And I have found that that's been a really hard journey for many people. They're very much holding on to words because they are identified with them. And it's creating a block, right? When you think of the blank space method, the first thing we would do is put all of that aside and have that blank space in front of us to be like, what are we trying to communicate and how can we do that most effectively?
Andrew Cohn: And I hear that as a focus on identifying what's most important, starting where it's important to start, what's most important.
If you have the opportunity to have a blank space, what are you going to put in, especially first? If you'll forgive me, it's trite. What are the big rocks in the jar? First, what are they? And it sounds like you're approaching it that way. Terrific. Very cool.
So how do you talk with leaders about the benefits of this work? How do you frame that, especially at the outset where they may be like, I don't know what this is about. Tell me what it's about.
Natalie Byrne This actually goes back to the second part of the other question I wanted to answer is it's perfect. You're right. It's right up. I have many clients who call me their no person, which I absolutely love, and I don't know how they all came up with that on their own. So now I own it. I am your no person. I am the person that will say, you need to say no to 90% of the things in order to say yes to the big stuff that you're meant to do.
So that's a little bit that comes up in the uncomfortableness and then the feeling of relief once you stop trying to do everything. It is so much easier to do what you are great at and what you're meant to do. And I mean that even out in the world. So you can imagine if you are a philanthropist and your incoming requests are from your neighbor. They're from the school, they're from your family, they're from your community, they're from the political candidates. I mean, you would just have an inbox full of requests. Where is the strategy for their legacy and what they want to do and accomplish, and how are we goal setting around that? So even anything that feels uncomfortable at first, immediately doing this strategy work, and I can just hand you a roadmap and walk away and never talk to you again, and your whole life will be easier.
Andrew Cohn: Well, I feel like I need to give that a minute to sink in, and it takes me back a little bit to, I don't know if you know, David Allen, best known for the Getting Things Done methodology and personal effectiveness and personal organization.
And David talked with me recently, actually, on the podcast about how the Getting Things Done methodology is about getting clear about what has my attention and clearing out of the way what I can so that I can put more energy towards my intention. Yes, so that we're similar that way. It sounds like you're doing a lot of that.
Natalie Byrne: Oh my gosh, I need to talk with him because that is so great.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. And I also think, I'm sorry, I'm flashing back to a Lyle Lovett song called the Queen of Know.
Natalie Byrne: Thank you.
Andrew Cohn: I think you may want to, although that's more about how his partner knows. She just knows everything. She's the queen of know. She's the queen of knowing what I need and knowing what I'm thinking and whatever. And you may be that kind of queen of know as well. Not just the noise.
Natalie Byrne: Yeah. And I appreciate that. And I have from some of my longest clients that I've worked with, they trust me because when I say yes or I say, look at this, they know that I'm coming from such a focused place of their intent and interest.
But yeah, there's so much editing to get out all the noise, and I'm really happy that there's other people, like the dear friend that you had on your podcast, around attention and intention is the idea of even clearing your space, like what you're saying, this is everything. And how do all these facets of our lives, like come and a life that we can live the life we were meant to live?
Andrew Cohn: So how would you feel comfortable? Would you be able to share a few examples of the types of clients that you work with, the types of processes they might walk through, and the type of impact that they're having? Particularly again, for the focus of this podcast in terms of their leadership, I know that's a broad question, but just anything from your library of experiences that might be a good illustration.
Natalie Byrne: Okay. Let's see. One of my favorite humans on this planet is Jane Warren, who is the co-founder of Logica with her husband Raymond, and they are entrepreneurs in their second chapter.
They partnered with Unilever for their acquisition. So this kind of gives you all the different ways I've known them over the years, and we worked on their blank space. And what was their mission beyond the company in the second chapter. Logica is headquartered in Los Angeles, and they live in LA and have raised their daughters here.
So they really wanted to think about the city that gave them so much. So we did a lot of work on getting super focused. What is it that aligns with their purpose? And so as the founders of Logica, which is the number one professional skincare brand that's sold in salons all over the world. You know, women-owned small businesses is what brought them to the party and helped create their success over the years.
So we're looking at Los Angeles. We're thinking about women, small businesses. We're putting– you can see we're putting all these different pieces from parts of their lives up on the blank space board, and we really can hone in and say, okay, why don't we support this pipeline of small businesses here in Los Angeles? These mainstream businesses that are vocationally trained, often people such as the cafe or the restaurant or the salon or the pet grooming store or the florist, these are, as Jane loves to call them, these are the invisible entrepreneurs that you see every day. This is the reason you move to a neighborhood. Take that walk to your main street and go to a bookstore. And we're losing that across America and globally, realistically. And now you have all these huge companies that are selling products. And what does it look like to support the small business entrepreneur and women minority immigrant owners. And so we built a big partnership here. That is a loan fund that helps them grow their businesses. We built a community called found LA. They found businesses that they get together, they learn from each other. We have partnerships with local universities where MBA students come in and help them on where they need to scale and things that they just, you know, a lot of these small businesses. So it goes on and on. And now we're taking that blueprint and sharing it with other cities with other successful entrepreneurs who might say, hey, you built your business in Detroit. Do you want to give back to these small businesses and keep these streets of Detroit full of this vibrancy? So that's a great example of looking at legacy, looking at the business they built, looking at their passion and coming up with something.
And then like another big company example I mentioned earlier with Weight Watchers who became WW and they rebranded and they were really becoming a modern company in this new era. It's so, so cool what they've done. And I came on to really think about our impact and how health and nutrition and good food is for everyone. And what does that look like? And this was– we started working on this before the pandemic. So when the pandemic hit, this is a perfect example of how we didn't have to react.
We already had who we are and our place in this space. And then we were able to really activate. We created the Healthy Living Coalition, which was 30 plus brands, everyone from JPM and Bank of America to Beyond Meat and then Butchers Box. So you have people who are competing in the marketplace coming together around food insecurity, coming around about food and nutrition. We did a lot at the white House. We actually, at the end got legislation passed that shifted something called the Emerson Act, which changed how corporates could be litigated around donating food.
So you have all these big companies that have all this food to donate. But the way our system is and our regulation, it was really dangerous. So if Starbucks had some croissants they wanted to give to a local shelter, they could be sued for it. So we actually worked on that. All these companies came together. So that's another example of really doing the work and not being reactive and being able to really gather people together around a mission much bigger than your company.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Beautiful. Do you ever–this is going to seem like a pivot, but I do think it's a continuation of what you're saying–do you use the word spiritual and is it something that occurs to you to use? And is it like that? Because I'm always interested. If you listen to the podcast, I'm always interested in how people talk about things that are deeper, broader, more universally true, more significant, below the tossing waves of trends and things to the deeper, more meaningful some people would call spiritual.
There's a lot of ways to frame these things, but are you careful with the language that you use? It's already a leading question. Forgive me, but how do you introduce different language so that it can be inviting, it can be inclusive, you're not alienating? And you're out there, as you said, you've got your spiritual and green juice friends. And I'm joking and smiling, but also nodding. I do too. Not all of your corporate clients are going to be the spiritual green juice people. How do you talk about some of what you do in ways that they're still invited, and they want to play in your sandbox?
Natalie Byrne: Well, that's what Blank Space is trying to do every day. Blank space is a nod to that as well. And what I think of why spirituality exists for individuals and the collective, and how we want to align to something bigger. We want to let values lead our life. We want to question, you know, how we're showing up and integrity to those people that we love.
And that, to me, is how you leave your business. This goes back to these not separate lanes. What your belief system is. To me, it doesn't matter as much as how you show up in those beliefs and values. And I continue to push the business world and the philanthropic world and the investment world. I work with a lot of funds, and I love them because you're working with a whole collection of brands and founders. It's a family. So I want to include all these different capital models and frameworks that I work in around that alignment, that mission, that value, that why. And then on the other side of it, I would love to see the world that is thinking about these things, the spiritual world, the people who are out there questioning religion or what fits for them or doesn't or might be thinking about space and the greater exploration of physics and quantum physics excites me and all of the energy behind things and nature and all this stuff. So you have these things, and I just want to find a place where we're just so much more aligned and living in truth of our own truth and purpose that it's just not categories that we need to have here or there.
And I feel that some of the conflict that's on our planet today based in spirituality because of religious differences and othering, when you actually just get to the essence of values and beliefs and love and loving your family and loving your friends and your community, you just find so much more common ground than potentially a label in the greater world of spirituality would create. So I know that's probably not the direct answer to your question, but that's how I approach it.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah, it's definitely answering the question. Thank you. You've also a word that hasn't come up in this conversation, but I've heard you used before is humanness and breathing okay. So that's resonating with you. So talk about humanness and its role in the work that you do.
Natalie Byrne: Oh gosh that's so great. Humanness I think we sometimes get caught up in all the things that are human. And again, when we're in alignment, when we're doing this work, it just becomes easier. I also do work with animals. You and I met through this amazing horse coaching program, where we're both on our way to facilitating other leaders in this work around what animals can teach us, what nature can teach us.
So I do think there's a humbling that can happen around humanity in general. I also noticed when we talk about climate change a lot, we're always just talking about what's going to happen to humans in that. And I always find that to be quite funny, because if you go back far enough, you could just ask the dinosaurs, what did it look like for them? I think being human and getting caught up in our world and now humanness like in my phone, like it becomes this whole other life people are talking about their life. On gaming and the AI world, your digital footprint. I feel like all of this is just putting us in more and more categories, and I like to see less and less categories.
Andrew Cohn: Yeah. Amen to that. So far I haven't spoken in the podcast with anyone's avatar, but they also haven't specifically requested it. We'll see. It may come to that.
Natalie Byrne: I don't have an avatar, so unfortunately you just got me the human maybe?
Andrew Cohn: No. And I'm glad we do.
And maybe it would have to be my avatar speaking with their avatar just so we can meet each other at the same level, I don't know.
Natalie Byrne: Yeah, that would be cool.
Andrew Cohn: What else is important? Do you feel it's important for you to talk about what you do that we haven't already touched on, that you'd want to bring into the conversation about what's important, maybe about correcting misconceptions or maybe even what's occurring for me about the opportunity related to the work that you do.
Natalie Byrne: There is such an opportunity right now for everyone to go inside and figure out what they want, and I can't say that enough. When the world feels so noisy and there's a lot of anger and not a lot of dialogue that has what I like to refer to as like a bridge. I try to show up as a bridge as much as I can in times like this. So we're not othering. I don't believe in cancel culture, for example. It essentially says that someone can't learn. So you make a mistake and then you're just canceled.
And as we go back to humanness, that is what we're here to do, is to learn and grow. That is what we do throughout our whole lives. And I am much more interested in conversations around how we can do things better, how we can learn from each other. Then, hey, you said that wrong. You're now canceled. So I think back to your question. The opportunity is to listen. The opportunity is to slow down in our own lives. I feel overwhelmed all the time by my inbox, by my texts, by the news. And I just have to make these periods of time like spending a whole Saturday offline in a blank space that I've created to get stuff done that really matters to me. I think that taking care of self-care is more important than ever. And kindness. We really need kindness right now. How does that resonate with you too?
Andrew Cohn: It does. It resonates a lot. I feel like we could pause here, because I feel like anything else that I would ask would be circling back into a much narrower track than what you're talking about and where you've led us in the conversation.
And I just appreciate this isn't a question. It's an observation and it's an acknowledgement. I just appreciate the way you talk about alignment. I hear it in some of the other work that I've done and in men's groups and otherwise in the word congruence. Right. But that alignment is broad in terms of what we're bringing in both my business hat, my functional hat, my job, my role, my legacy, etcetera. And all that doing stuff and then the being and the beliefs and the practices. So those are sort of the wings of that, but also there's a depth and a deep rootedness to this alignment. Right? Because if one is aligned, she's not Tumbleweeds across the landscape. There's a depth and a groundedness to that. That's what I hear in the way you describe it.
Natalie Byrne: Yeah. Even in my own meditation work, my own practices, I do a lot of embodiment work. Like, how am I in my body? How am I grounded? I spend time riding horses and being with horses.
I spend time walking on the beach. I live on the beach here in the Marina in Los Angeles, and just making sure that not everything is about checking out and going out. It's really about coming in and being more here and being more in our hearts again, and being in our hearts as leaders. And if I had to say that that's my mission, right? Not only is it bringing the blank space to the whole world, which I want to do. It's being in our hearts and leading in business and philanthropy with our hearts and in our families. And I just think that there's just such an opportunity to bring all that back into capital and into our own lives.
Andrew Cohn: Thank you for that and for the work that you do. Where can people learn more about the work that you do?
Natalie Byrne: Well, we have our website which is blankspaceworks.com and I try to be on Instagram and LinkedIn but it is because I travel so much for work so I tend to forget. And then I'm like, wait, I got to share this with everyone.
This is so cool. What's happening? So you can follow me there. Yeah, hopefully I'll be able to come and meet some of you in person and do a book tour once I get on the other side of that really soon. So I hope to be out there in the world more as well.
Andrew Cohn: I hope so, and I look forward to following you as you do so. blankspaceworks.com. Thank you. Anything else you just want to put into the recording? You've got such a breath in. So much to share.
Natalie Byrne: Just thank you so much for inviting me on. What this intersection that you're discussing is so important. I really try to bake it into everything I do. And it's just so nice, you know? Be in this bigger tribe together and make the difference in places. We can't just thank you for your friendship.
Andrew Cohn: You know, you're very welcome. I'm glad to be right there supporting you. And you let me know how I can help. I'll be there.
Natalie Byrne: Okay
Andrew Cohn: I love you so much, Natalie. Thank you.
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