Although Natasha Graziano’s rags-to-riches story may not be unique, her methodology and willingness to share it may be. At her lowest, Graziano was a homeless single mother. Now, she counts an Instagram following of more than 11 million and is a successful mindfulness and entrepreneurial coach, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author and the head of a multimillion-dollar empire.
How? By using the methods she espouses on stage, with clients and on her podcast. “I knew that if I continued working and had all the right tools, techniques and accountability partners, I would keep leveling up,” Graziano says of her success. “I knew how to make money. I always said, ‘Put me in the jungle, and I’ll come out in a suit.’”
Graziano has built her business by teaching others how to build their networks, raise their income and take their ideas and companies to the next level. She works individually, through guest-speaking at motivational conferences and other events, and offers programs through her website—including her free Five Pillars video series. In August, she co-hosted Brain-A-Thon, an online event featuring mindset experts like herself.
With only $150 in her pocket and a son to care for, Graziano steeled herself, moved in with her mother and did a lot of research on both mindfulness meditation and how to attract social media followers. In 2017, she bought an Instagram account from a fashion blogger (she had been a model right out of high school); at that point, she already had half a million followers of her own. Her modeling savvy helped her get there. “I went into charity shops, asked to borrow clothes and then asked people on the street to take photos, and I posted them,” Graziano says. She then made deals with clothing designers to wear their new lines. Her following grew.
The leap from clothing ambassador to mindfulness coach came through that same medium. Graziano (who before her marriage was Natasha Grano) decided to add targeted inspirational messaging to her images.
“When you post on social media, you have to ask, ‘Am I adding value in any way to somebody’s life?’” she says. “If the answer is ‘yes,’ keep posting. If it’s ‘no,’ you’re not going to grow your business. Why are people following you? You need to know why and provide that. Each of us has our own gift, but not one of us has the same gift.”
Her inspirational messages not only increased her audience and set her on the path to becoming a mindset coach, motivational speaker and podcast host but also became the basis for her first book, The Action Plan: How to Implement the Law of Attraction into Your Life in Under an Hour.
Graziano’s mindset coaching is based on a breathing and meditation method she developed and calls Meditational Behavioural Synchronicity (or MBS). When she was 18, her parents sent her to a Buddhit monastery in a village in Cyprus as a solution for rebellion and her struggles with anxiety. She resisted being there, but in her wanderings to escape from the monastery, she became fascinated by an old man who performed daily breathing exercises. Eventually, she says, he invited her to sit with him and taught her the technique that had been handed down through generations of his family, which became the basis for the technique she teaches today.
The breathing dropped out of her life at some point, but she picked it back up in her lowest times, when she was once again struggling with anxiety and panic attacks—and going through a divorce. She found a meditation coach and began breathing exercises again, this time during pandemic-required Zoom calls. Graziano says she began to heal.
“The ancient breathing techniques combined with neuroscience and meditation allows you to get into deep altered states and rewire your thought process,” she says. “I was able to remove my negative beliefs and be my authentic self.”
Research suggests that meditating increases self-compassion, mindfulness and metacognition, as well as reducing stress responses and helping to regulate negative emotion. Graziano took that increase in self-compassion and positive energy and used it to continue to grow.
While her first book was a compilation of her Instagram captions, her second—Be It Until You Become It: The Law of Attraction Explained Through Neuroscience and Ancient Wisdom, released this past August— dives deeper into her life’s philosophy. Through this book, Graziano hopes to reach a wider audience and address those who question the validity of her methods. It contains the results of talking with neuroscientists, doctors and other successful entrepreneurs, some of whom have appeared on her podcast, The Law of Attraction.
She also tries to maintain a rich family life. Last June, she married Michael Graziano, founder of the Canadian public relations firm Mindful Media, in a tiny wedding attended by a handful of people. They followed that up with a ceremony on the audio-only social media app Clubhouse, where they met. The family, including Graziano’s now 6-year-old son, Rio, splits time between Vancouver and Los Angeles.
Graziano brings her son to work with her when she can so that he can see her in action. She says she faces the same challenge as most working parents. “I try to balance being a mommy and a businesswoman,” she says. “I believe in quality over quantity. When I’m with my son, I’m with my son.”
Her quest for growth is far from over. Graziano thinks big. “The goal post is constantly moving,” she says. “I am a big-picture thinker, but then I break it down into small goals.”
The big picture certainly is grand. She is aiming to reach 1 billion people through her website and her Instagram account. She talks of building an orphanage, completing a scientific research study using MRIs and EEGs to show the benefits of her breathing and meditation program and getting more doctors and other practitioners involved in MBS. Her speaking engagements, coaching, social media and podcast endeavors are moving full-steam ahead as well.
With uncharacteristic understatedness, Graziano summed up her entrepreneurial style: “I don’t work at one thing at a time.” Except, perhaps, when she’s meditating.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2022 Issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photos courtesy of Natasha Graziano
Shor is a freelance writer and what one niece dubbed a “free-range person” or digital nomad with a blog, of course.
