Natasha McCrea is an actor, author, speaker, multi-passionate coach and the founder of Love CEO Institute, a personal development lifestyle brand which aims to give people the tools to find out more about themselves.
McCrea is best known for appearing on TV shows such as Criminal Minds, CSI and Lucifer but she also fits in running Love CEO Institute because she strives to be able to be multi-passionate and be able to do it all, with a little bit of help.
The coach revealed what the company is and what its values are, explained when she set it up and spoke about her multi-passionate mindset.
Could you tell me about what Love CEO Institute is and what its value are?
Love CEO Institute is the place I wish I would have had back in the day because I spent so many years just full of self-doubt, full of not really knowing my value, not really understanding the concept of self-love and that bled into all of the relationships that I would get into, how my business ventures were, or the lack of.
And so, I created a space where we could dive the concept of love intelligence, I developed a methodology called love intelligence and when you dive into that you really dive into you, you dive into self-love and what that does is helps create a magnet for all the things that you want. So, Love CEO Institute is that place where you get the tools, I would consider us a personal development lifestyle brand, so you get the tools to really awaken your intuition, you get the tools to dive into personal self-care, you get the tools to learn about the method of love intelligence so then you can in turn design the life that you want and live your best life possible.
Because I found that when I was building my business and doing everything I would run into organisations or people where everything was very compartmentalised. It was like learn about marketing, learn about social media and you’re doing all of these things but if you aren’t really taking care of you as the vessel, all those other things they’re kind of hit or miss. So, Love CEO Institute is that place where it’s your sanctuary to come back into yourself, to rediscover yourself again.
When did you set the institute up?
I think God had it in the works for quite a bit. When I was 18, I became a Mary Kay (beauty) consultant, my Mom was in Mary Kay and everything about Mary Kay was positivity, mindset, comradery, self-love and so at that point I knew that I wanted to encourage and empower women, I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I had stopped being a Mary Kay consultant in my 20s but that thought of encouraging and empowering women was still there, I just knew I wanted to do that.
And then fast forward, I’m an actress in Los Angeles, I have a one woman show. I launched my one woman show and at the end of it we would do something called a talk-back, in theatre people ask questions about the show, and I thought they were going to ask questions about how I directed it, how long I took to write it. But they were asking questions about how do I love again, how do I find forgiveness; how do I get past family drama and past hurts, how do I start dating again after divorce, how do I start believing and having confidence to date after divorce?
So, all of those things became like group therapy in the theatre. I would come home and I would have emails and it would be late at night and I would answer any questions. They would say well I’m dating this guy and he’s doing a, b and c or I’m not sure if I even want to get out there and date again, how do I do it? So I would just reply to all the things that I did, like I was in therapy, I did it all.
I was giving the tools that worked for me and at the same time this online coaching world was coming into my consciousness, I was like I know these things have worked for me and they’re helping these people that I’m emailing at 3am, and this was when it was MySpace and email, Facebook and Instagram weren’t even in at this point. That’s when I decided you know what, I’m going to start a business where I can teach women the tools that connect them to their most authentic selves, where they can build genuine confidence and create the energy to call in the love that they deserve. And that’s how Love CEO Institute came about.
Do you think the pandemic has helped the online coaching world?
Yeah, I think the pandemic and going online has opened up people’s minds to this concept that online is okay. If someone was saying, ‘Oh, do I want to do online, do I not?’ If they were ever in that space, the pandemic showed everybody online is okay and I feel like people need it more than ever. If there’s a way that you can connect to individuals by being online, because it’s sometimes like oh online is disconnected, but there’s a way to connect to people and if you can do that it can be beneficial. I think that most people before the pandemic weren’t thinking, ‘Oh my goodness I might need to get a coach online,’ or ‘I might need some extra help,’ because navigating life alone can be painful.
If companies or people or individuals have done what I’ve done which is create a community around the online world, then it can be very beneficial. But it’s opened the doors for the other side of it too, I hate to say it but there’s a flip side of people who are really capitalising on people’s shortcomings versus finding a way to give them their own personal strength. I don’t coach my clients into me being a crutch for them, that doesn’t serve me at all. What serves me is to be able to create a space and give people tools so that they can be empowered by themselves.
Is it important to you to keep acting despite running Love CEO Institute?
I’m what I coin as multi-passionate, I’m a multi-passionate CEO. I’m developing a whiskey brand right now and I think for women like myself so many times society has wanted to push you into a box that you have to choose this thing and do this thing over here, and all this has to either be a hobby or you can’t do it. That’s very painful for people like me but when I meet them, I’m like yes sister I see you, we can do it all! We can enjoy our lives because they make us think that we can only do one thing and some people are made for that, some people grow up knowing they’re going to be an engineer or knowing they only want to act, they’re not thinking about business and they do that and that serves them.
But for individuals like me who are multi-passionate, different things feed our soul and feed our spirit. My objective is to never compartmentalise myself and so it’s very important that if my soul is being called to do something, it’s very important for me to do it, no matter what. So, the type of women who I end up coaching are also multi-passionate, so it is very important for me to continue to do these other things, to be an example for them. I don’t stop growing just because I’m coaching. Where I am today and who I’m coaching today in two years I want them to be here and me to be at another level. So, unless I’m just going to coach myself out of clients and I don’t want to ever grow and I want to stay here then okay, but my objective is to continue to grow because my clients are catching up to me. With that being said I have to be this example and I want to do the things that bring me joy and if I’m telling them design the life you want, do what brings you joy and I’m over here boxing myself up, like that’s not going to work.
It’s very important for me to act, very important for me to direct the documentary I’m doing right now, it’s very important for me to serve my community in the Love CEO Institute. They’re all equally important, at different times one might take a little more of my day to day time, it might be spent on my Love CEO event and then I’m only doing auditions. And if I book something and I’m on set doing something then my assistants have to manage the day to day on Love CEO Institute. So, for women one thing I can truly say, and I say women because I speak to women, but for anyone it’s to learn how to delegate and understand you’re not doing it on your own. People look at what I’m doing, and they think, ‘Oh she’s doing so much,’ but they didn’t see that I spent three hours going through my morning routine and my yoga and I stopped working at 4’oclock because I have two assistants, that’s the only way I could do it.
Words by Lucy Roberts for Female First, who you can follow on Twitter, @Lucy_Roberts_72.
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