In 2019, Natasha cold-called a Las Vegas hotel and pitched a weekly comedy show. She ended up flying in and out to perform, bringing brands and liquor sponsors into a venue where they wanted to reach customers. A comedian who had started looking for better places to stay was now putting business deals together.
The original problem was much less glamorous. While touring as a supporting comic, she sometimes stayed in hotels that felt mediocre or scary. Traveling alone and feeling like a broke artist wasn’t how she wanted to keep working, so she started investigating hotel partnerships.
That decision gave her something she could use well beyond a room upgrade: experience figuring out what companies needed and what she could offer them.
On Blitz Growth Podcast, Natasha talks with Jack Paxton about how those relationships developed, why she built a breakup gift registry, and what happened when she started discussing her startup before it launched. Her account includes a 14th-place finish among 5,000 accelerator submissions, an expensive company conversion, and several years of building.
If you’re a creator thinking about starting a business, there’s plenty to borrow. Especially the parts that happened before anyone was ready to invest.
Start with a problem you’re already paying to solve
Natasha’s hotel partnerships began with a recurring expense attached to work she already did. She needed accommodation while touring. Hotels needed reasons for people to notice and remember them.
She didn’t approach every property she could find. In the conversation, she warns that spreading yourself across too many partnerships can weaken your identity. Instead, she chose a hotel brand that felt like a natural match for her and her audience.
Her first move was an Instagram message.
She explains that the person running a company’s social account can often connect you with someone responsible for public relations or branding. She introduced the kind of work she wanted to do, mentioned that she toured frequently, and asked to arrange a call.
Once she had that conversation, she sent a media kit. It included her audience numbers and previous brand work, with examples of how a partnership could fit into her content without feeling forced.
That led to a national relationship with a hotel brand she describes as a Marriott extension. When traveling to a new location, she could contact the local team and explain the existing relationship. For South Beach, she called the hotel directly and asked for its PR contact.
Notice how much of this was ordinary follow-up. A message opened the conversation; a call and a useful package gave the other person something concrete to consider. The national relationship then made local introductions easier.
For your own outreach, start by identifying a company whose product already belongs in your work. A travel creator might have that connection with accommodation. In a hypothetical cooking channel, it could be an ingredient the creator repeatedly buys.
The test is practical: can you explain why the company fits without writing a paragraph of excuses? If the connection is weak, a bigger media kit won’t fix it.
A free stay can lead to work a company pays for
Natasha recorded podcast episodes on hotel properties and mentioned where she was recording. Her intention was to make the location part of the experience, so listeners would become familiar with seeing her at that hotel brand.
Free stays were the starting point. The relationship later expanded into comedy pop-up events, including events in New York, Chicago, and South Beach that also incorporated her company.
She then describes another offer a creator can make: produce content for the hotel to use on its own channels. Deliver the files in a folder, with no requirement that the work appear on the creator’s social accounts.
That changes what the company is buying. Instead of paying only for access to your followers, it can pay for your ability to make useful content. Natasha points out that a hotel might otherwise need to arrange a photoshoot and bring in videographers.
She describes the payment for this kind of work as nominal; she doesn’t provide a rate. Jack adds a separate example from brands he has worked with, where creators receive a monthly fee for deliverables such as 10 images and five videos. Those quantities are his example, not a reported Natasha contract.
Partnership format | What the company receives | What to clarify in your pitch |
|---|---|---|
Content connected to a stay | A place within content your audience already follows | Why the property fits your work and what you plan to create there |
Comedy event or pop-up | An event at the property, with potential sponsor involvement | Your event concept and what each participant would contribute |
Content delivered directly | Photos or videos for the company’s use | The deliverables and where the company can use them |
Recurring content arrangement | Agreed deliverables on a repeated schedule | The production schedule and payment for each agreed period |
You don’t have to pitch every format immediately. Natasha’s relationship expanded after she had demonstrated what she could do. Start with an offer you can deliver well, then use the actual work to support the next conversation.
Our Take
Natasha’s strongest partnership move was paying attention to the company’s needs. Your audience can open a door, but a repeatable service gives you another reason to stay in the budget.
The breakup registry began as a joke with a personal reason behind it
Before building her own registry, Natasha had spent years watching Shark Tank, including while exercising at LA Fitness. She became interested in Honey Fund and followed its progress. The idea of letting people contribute toward a honeymoon appealed to her because the gift connected people to an experience.
Then her engagement ended.
She already had a Honey Fund registry with her former fiancé. After the breakup, she changed it to feature herself, framed it as marrying herself, and sent it to people as a joke. The responses she recalls were enthusiastic: people thought the idea was funny and smart.
When the pandemic arrived, she decided to build a startup around the concept. Her interest in companies and brand partnerships also shaped the business she wanted to create. She describes building a network of partnerships behind the service so it could be free to users.
The sequence matters if you’re trying to spot an idea within your own work. Natasha had a personal experience, tried an informal version of a response to it, and heard directly from people who understood the idea.
That gave her something to investigate. It didn’t give her a finished business.
A useful first experiment can be much smaller than a platform. Say you have an idea for helping your audience through a difficult transition. Before commissioning software, you could explain the proposed experience and invite people to describe what they would need. Keep the questions specific enough that someone can disagree with you.
Natasha’s joke made her concept easy to understand. Your early version should do the same, even if there’s nothing funny about the problem you’re solving.
Talk about the idea before launch, then keep the evidence
Natasha began discussing her startup months before it launched. She calls that a frightening step, partly because creators worry someone will take an idea before they can build it.
Her position was blunt. Building a business takes effort, and another person wouldn’t have her story or make the same decisions she would. That helped her get comfortable building in public.
You don’t need to share every internal detail to learn from that approach. The useful part is giving people enough information to respond to a real proposal.
Natasha kept screenshots of messages from people who were excited about the platform or already using it. She also collected opportunities to appear on podcasts that could introduce the business to more people. By the time she started pursuing accelerators, she had material that showed reactions beyond her own enthusiasm.
She describes that material as traction and points out that traction can take different forms. Her existing presence as a creator helped her start conversations that might otherwise have been harder to reach.
For your own records, separate interest from use. Someone saying they love the idea tells you something; someone describing what happened when they tried it tells you something different. Save both, but label them accurately.
A simple evidence folder could hold audience responses, notes from product use, invitations to discuss the business, and changes you made after feedback. You’re trying to preserve what happened while it’s still easy to remember.
Then look for questions that repeat. If several people misunderstand the same part of your explanation, rewrite it. If someone asks for a function you hadn’t considered, find out what they’re trying to accomplish before adding it to your build list.
The transcript doesn’t give conversion rates or registry revenue. Keep that boundary in mind: the evidence Natasha discusses helped her explain interest and progress, but it doesn’t establish every part of the business model.
The timeline took years, including an expensive correction
Natasha’s account is useful partly because she gives the sequence. The registry didn’t jump straight from a funny message to investor conversations.
Period | What Natasha says happened |
|---|---|
2020 | She developed the concept, formed an LLC, and worked on the brand and design. |
Later in 2021 | She launched after her comedy special had come out; she subsequently converted the company to a C corporation. |
2022 | She continued building, collecting feedback, and making smaller updates. |
Early 2023 | She focused more on advanced accelerator opportunities and was fundraising at the time of the conversation. |
The company conversion was a frustration she wished she had anticipated. In her experience, starting with an LLC cost less, but converting later was expensive.
Treat that as a reason to get advice about your intended funding path before choosing a structure. Her experience doesn’t make one entity type the right answer for every creator.
Jack also acknowledges the money and time required to get a business started. Natasha jokes about being tired of funding her own work, then talks about the resourcefulness she learned during 17 years in entertainment.
Keep those details in your expectations. A launch date can look tidy in a timeline while the actual work includes paying bills, revising the product, and waiting for replies.
Choose an accelerator for the work you need to do
Natasha joined a documented, week-long entrepreneurship program that she describes as a mini-accelerator. It was intense and exhausting. She says she won its most-investable recognition, but the relationships with other entrepreneurs were especially valuable to her.
She stayed in touch with peers and discussed possible collaborations, much as she did with other comedians. The program also helped her prepare applications for larger accelerators.
Later, she says she placed 14th out of 5,000 submissions at an unnamed accelerator she describes as one of the world’s top two. That result opened conversations with funds and people she wanted to speak with about investment. She went through those finals while dealing with a broken foot.
She doesn’t present an accelerator as the required route. Some wanted companies further along, and the meaning of “further along” could feel unclear.
Before applying, write down what you need from the experience. Perhaps you need feedback on your pitch or introductions to investors. Ask whether the program’s format matches that need and whether you can handle the time commitment alongside your existing work.
An award and a strong application finish are specific achievements. Neither should be rewritten as a completed funding round; Natasha says she was still fundraising.
Do this, not that
The conversation offers several decisions you can apply without copying Natasha’s business. Use these as a check before sending a pitch or spending another week polishing privately.
Do pitch a relevant relationship; don’t contact every brand with the same offer. Natasha chose a hotel brand that fit her identity. Explain the connection to your work before listing everything you could sell.
Do describe the deliverable; don’t rely on follower counts alone. Her media kit included numbers, but the relationship grew through work such as on-property content and events. Make it clear what the company would receive.
Do share a usable explanation early; don’t wait for a finished launch to hear objections. Natasha discussed the registry months ahead of launch. Give people something specific enough to question.
Do save evidence accurately; don’t turn every compliment into a business result. Keep excited messages separate from accounts of actual use. Your future pitch will be clearer if you preserve those distinctions now.
Do pitch for the setting; don’t unload your entire business at every introduction. Natasha says a comedy audience doesn’t need every detail about her other ventures. Choose the next action that makes sense for the person in front of you.
Protect focused time without pretending your brain is a machine
Running several projects requires choices about attention. Natasha uses time blocks and maintains a growing task list with time frames in tools including Google Tasks and Asana.
But she pushes back against constant pressure to do more. She knows she can overdo it, even while trying to pull back.
Her approach leaves some flexibility inside focused time. She might intend to book tour arrangements, realize she’s ready to edit videos, and move the booking work to later. Investor follow-ups usually get attention right away; other tasks can move according to her energy.
She also considers what came before a work block. After a workout, she might expect to feel too tired to edit and move routine email follow-ups into that slot instead. Before recording this conversation, she took half an hour to meditate because she wanted to quiet her brain.
If you’re managing content alongside a business, separate fixed commitments from movable work. A promised delivery still needs to happen, but several useful tasks may fit the same open block.
Give yourself a choice between those tasks. You can preserve the working time without spending it fighting an assignment you scheduled when you felt completely different.
A seven-day checklist for your next business experiment
The following plan adapts Natasha’s approach into a small experiment. It’s a suggested sequence, not a schedule she followed or a promise that you’ll land a partner within a week.
Day 1: identify one recurring problem. Write down an expense or frustration attached to work you already do. Explain when it happens and how you currently handle it. Choose something concrete enough to discuss with another person.
Day 2: choose one suitable partner or audience group. For a partnership, explain why a specific company fits your work. For a product, identify who experiences the problem. Avoid expanding the audience until your explanation becomes vague.
Day 3: prepare a small offer. Write a short description of what you could deliver or build. If you’re pitching a brand, gather accurate audience numbers and relevant work samples. Leave out achievements you can’t support.
Day 4: open the conversation. Contact the company through an appropriate channel or share the product idea with the audience you identified. Ask a question that invites a useful response, such as what would make the proposed experience difficult to use.
Day 5: organize what you heard. Save replies and separate encouragement from concrete requests or evidence of use. Record what remains unanswered. Silence is also worth recording, but don’t guess at the reason someone hasn’t replied.
Day 6: revise one part of the offer. Use the feedback to improve the explanation or adjust a deliverable. If nobody understood what you meant, fix the description before spending time on a bigger build.
Day 7: schedule the next focused block. Choose the next action your evidence supports, whether that’s a follow-up call or a small test. Reserve time for it, while allowing room to move other tasks around your energy and existing commitments.
Keep doing the work while you wait for replies
Comedy remains Natasha’s favorite work. She also credits it with teaching her to change direction when something isn’t working and to handle the discomfort of being in front of a room.
Years of auditioning without hearing back changed how she responds to silence. She says she doesn’t sit around waiting for someone to reply, and she values people who are genuinely interested in what she does next.
That feels especially relevant when you’re sending pitches. You can care about an opportunity without letting one unanswered message hold up everything else.
Natasha’s story leaves room for ambition and the tedious work required to support it. She made calls, kept records, paid for development, and adjusted her plans. If you’re weighing your own idea, choose one conversation you can start and one piece of evidence you can collect before committing to a larger build.
Listen to the full Blitz Growth Podcast conversation with Natasha for her account of building hotel partnerships and turning a breakup registry idea into a startup.