Nathalie Ekobo
When you meet AZHCC member Nathalie Ekobo, you might think she has a certain savoir faire. This is probably because Nathalie is French…ooh, la, la! Born in Strasbourg but having lived in Paris for twenty-five years, she considers herself mostly Parisian, although she calls Phoenix “home” and has lived here for fifteen years.
“I first saw the Grand Canyon when I was about 13 years old and I thought, ‘I want to live here’. In my thirties I came to the U.S. on vacation every summer for four years, seeing the national parks. Then we spent a week in Phoenix at the Pointe and it was a revelation to me. I thought summer was about fifteen days long like it is in Paris, but here it is six months long!”
Being in the desert expanded her horizons. “Everything in Paris is small,” she explains. “It’s beautiful but too constricted. To expand your thinking, you need to move to where you have expanded vision; and that’s not possible in Paris.” Nathalie began to dream of owning a French café in the Phoenix or Scottsdale area.
Then one day, she said to herself, “You know, that’s it. I need to follow my dream or shut up about it.” And so she came and opened her restaurant on 44th and Camelback, across from where A.J.’s is now. “I had the restaurant for four years and we won all the best awards, but the location was not on the street. In France, the hidden location would have made it trendy and sought after, but in Arizona, it only made it hard for people to find. Americans and French,” Nathalie admits ruefully, “we may look alike, but we think totally differently.”
However, Nathalie’s business was very successful in that she married her chef, Jean, and they now have a seven year old daughter, Maya. “I loved being pregnant at 43 and I love every minute of watching her grow. It keeps me young!” Maya goes to France at summer break to visit her family there – her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and so on. “Jean and I go to visit there sometimes too, or to visit family in Cameroon. It’s fun but after about ten days we say, ‘Let’s go back home’.”
Nathalie came to Phoenix with the equivalent of an MBA from the Sorbonne. She worked as an International Marketing and Sales Director in a few small businesses and had also done multi-level marketing training in Paris. When she decided to open her restaurant here, she thought “It’s my ticket to Arizona and then I’ll find my true calling, but at least I’ll be where I want to be.” The restaurant was converted into a catering business and her husband went on to culinary fame, becoming for awhile the personal chef for Mohammad Ali in Phoenix. But Nathalie still had to find that “true calling”.
The door opened when she discovered energy work. At the beginning, the restaurant was struggling and Nathalie describes her mindset as “open-minded and desperate,” so she had several sessions with an energy worker. “I started to feel better, and the business expanded. It was too cool to pass up. I needed to learn how to do this.”
“Energy work helps you to reach higher levels and remove past lives. I thought that I could help small businesses play in a bigger, more authentic role by mixing energy work and business principles together. I’ve been doing energy work for twelve years now and taught it for ten years, and I’ve refined the process.”
At first, Nathalie called her business Be Magnifique!, but few people could spell it. Then three years ago, her Masterminding group brainstormed and came up with her current business name, International Alchemist, because Nathalie is about turning your business into gold. “It’s constantly evolving though,” she smiles. She doesn’t know what her new tagline will be, put she thinks it will involve the word “potential” because “what I’m doing is about opening you up to higher potential.”
“Most entrepreneurs,” Nathalie claims, “are just getting by without clearing the blocks that keep them from reaching their full potential. Entrepreneurs – they are the solution to the economic crisis. They can keep this country moving forward if they choose to go to work on the self more. Look at your patterns and see how they are changing and evolving. When you remove the old stuff, then you can step forward into the spotlight.”
“When someone comes to work with me, I say, ‘Tell me where you are and where you want to be. What do you think blocks your flow and what do you think you need to master?’ People have a definite idea what is stopping them but that isn’t always what it actually is. We have an expression in France – you cannot see the woods behind the trees.”
Once the blocks are identified, Nathalie works with her clients to craft solutions based on their budget and goals. She works with people both one-to-one and in small groups.
“It is a unique approach, looking at all aspects,” she explains. “For instance, a client says they want to have more clients. So I ask, are you calling your old clients back? That would seem like an easy fix. But then we have to ask why are you not calling them? I go to the soul level – to the root cause. Often there is a little diffused voice in the background giving messages of unworthiness or shame. It’s almost never in this lifetime, but from the past. I don’t dwell on the past life. I can do a 15 second past life regression and then it’s gone. Then the person is unstoppable.”
Nathalie creates strategies customized for her clients. For instance, she uses her business intuition to help clients decide which partner to work with, who to hire or which venture is best for them. “I see each business as a service, so it’s a disservice to not sell what you have to offer right now. But I want to help people sell with ease – with the flow and grace that comes from being authentic. It makes sense for people to invest in you. It’s not right to just survive. The Universe wants us to be abundant so we can give back.”
She also teaches group classes. One is called Speak and Attract Money, which is about how to present yourself when you are in the spotlight. “I want to show people how to tap into their own magnificence because when they do that, others will want to be around them.”
Nathalie is currently working on a variety of programs clients can use on their own. One is called Money Magnet Mastery. Another is 88 Soul Secrets and Shortcuts, dedicated to effective business growth by tweaking soul programs. She also has a multi-media package in the works that will show people how to clear blocks by themselves.
Nathalie does believe in miracles. She and her husband came to the U.S. on an Investor Visa. It’s a difficult visa to get and it has to be renewed every five years. When her daughter, Maya, was two, Nathalie and her husband were told that they would have to return to France to renew their visa. So, they scheduled a week and a half there to visit family and friends, not expecting any problems. Unfortunately, when they went to the US embassy, their application for a new visa was denied because their businesses were not showing “enough profit”. They tried several approaches, but nothing was working. “What will we do? We have a home and two businesses there and our daughter is an American?” they asked.
“I always believe Louise Hay’s saying that when things aren’t going as you would like, there is a bigger gift in this,” remembers Nathalie. “I knew there had to be a bigger gift. Then out of the blue, our previous immigration attorney called us and she suggested that we apply for an Exceptional Competency Visa which is reserved for the top 5% in the world in a given professional field. “My husband qualified as the best chef – he got exceptional competency. And the gift is that now we have resident status so we can apply for citizenship in a few years. We couldn’t do that on the Investor’s Visa.”
Nathalie says with a smile, “I used my clearing gift on that situation. I had seen what it had done for clients, but not for me. What a treat to see power like that!! And I always tell people to look for the bigger gift and hang onto that when things aren’t working. The result is going to be better and brighter!”
What is something you might not know about Nathalie? Would you guess that she has an M.A. in Russian, also from the Sorbonne, and that for ten years she sang soprano in a Russian Orthodox Choir? “I loved it,” she enthuses. “There were no instruments; just the fusion of voices. We toured in France and sang in Moscow and St. Petersburg. My favorite was singing opera at the Salle Pleyel, a famous classical venue near the Champs-Elysees in Paris. We did Prokofieff’s (also spelled Prokofiev) music from Ivan the Terrible.”
And what would the woman married to an exceptional chef choose for her last meal on the planet? “It would depend on my mood,” she admits, “because I love many foods – Indian, Thai, this Polynesian dish I had yesterday, and, of course, beef bourguignon from my husband. I would not want to put in my order too far in advance. My love of food is very eclectic. Oh, but for dessert, a rhubarb tart or pie or a French lemon meringue pie. And good water…I love water.”
Nathalie rediscovered the AZHCC through one of her best friends, Kathleen Malone. She served on the Board for most of 2012, contributing her business expertise and selecting presenters for the Signature Luncheon and Sampler Platter events.
Nathalie is offering a very special deal to Chamber members – a free 45 minute consultation. She calls this the Clarity Consultation which is a $350 value. That is definitely one of many reasons to seek out Nathalie at an AZHCC event or through her website, www.theinternationalalchemist.com or by emailing her at Nathalie@nathalieEkobo.com. If you register at her website, you’ll also receive free her video e-course, The Alchemists Secrets: How to Create More Money, Time and Fun. How’s that for a “smokin’ deal?” C’est si bon!