The Suitcase Entrepreneur: Create Freedom in Business and Adventure in Life - Softcover

Sisson, Natalie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501178172 ISBN 13: 9781501178177

Verlag: Gallery Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Now in its third edition, The Suitcase Entrepreneur teaches readers how to package and sell their skills to earn enough money to be able to work and live anywhere, build a profitable online business, and live life on their own terms.

After eight years of working in the soul-crushing bureaucracy of the corporate world, Natalie Sisson quit her high-paying job and moved to Canada, started a blog, and cofounded a technology company. In just eighteen months she learned how to build an online platform from scratch, and then left to start her own business—which involved visiting Argentina to eat empanadas, play Ultimate Frisbee, and launch her first digital product. After five years, she now runs a six-figure business from her laptop, while living out of a suitcase and teaching entrepreneurs worldwide how to build a business and lifestyle they love.

In The Suitcase Entrepreneur you’ll learn how to establish your business online, reach a global audience, and build a virtual team to give you more free time, money, and independence. With a new introduction, as well as updated resources and information, this practical guide uncovers the three key stages of creating a self-sufficient business and how to become a successful digital nomad and live life on your own terms.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Natalie Sisson is a global adventurer and digital nomad who is on a mission to create freedom in business and adventure in life for herself and other entrepreneurs. She has worked with thousands of clients to design a profitable lifestyle business they love. She has inspired millions of people through her popular blog, podcast, and lifestyle video series, as well as through events, retreats, and speaking engagements. Originally from New Zealand, Natalie has citizenship in the United Kingdom and permanent residences in Canada and Los Angeles. She has travelled to sixty-nine countries and has lived on five continents. After mastering her marketing and business development skills for eight years in the corporate world, Natalie went on to cofound a technology start-up in Vancouver in 2008, which is now the number one fundraising application on Facebook. She’s been featured in Yahoo Finance, The Guardian, The Age, New Zealand Herald, Huffington Post, Forbes, American Express Open Forum, Mashable, Visa Business Network, and Social Media Today. She is the author of The Suitcase Entrepreneur.

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The Suitcase Entrepreneur

CHAPTER 1

My story—From Broke to $15,000 in One Month

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

—HELEN KELLER

My working day is a little . . . different. I don’t go to an office. I rarely if ever go to meetings. Although I run my own business that allows me to travel all over the world, my schedule is mine to do with as I choose.

And I don’t choose boardrooms, clock-watching, time-card stamping, or those endless gray meetings in gray boardrooms with gray, desperately unhappy people.

Since you are reading this, then I bet that’s not the life for you, either.

Instead, you might want to spend your days like I do: cycling through Africa, throwing yourself off the Victoria Falls Bridge, Zambia, riding a motorbike through the hills of Thailand or hiking the famous W Trek in Patagonia.

Instead, you may want to spend them reading a book in a hammock in your garden, playing with your children or pets, or spending quality time with your partner and then heading off to a midafternoon movie, followed by dinner and dancing.

That’s what I do, and all while my business works for me. The good news is, you can do the same. You can run a thriving online business from your laptop, from anywhere in the world, on your own schedule. Let me show you how.

HERE’S MY SECRET

I choose freedom as my highest value in life. I do everything in my power to have more of it. This means that every single decision I make is based upon staying true to this value. If it doesn’t fit, I don’t do it. BG.

In pursuit of freedom I became a homeless vagabond (or a world citizen) and lived out of my suitcase full-time. I had no address and no home base, but I had the ability to truly live life on my own terms.

Now that I have my own property and 2.5 acres of land, I have a different type of freedom, which I relish. A loving partner, chickens and an adorable dog, a local community and adventure and nature on my doorstep, as well as regular travel.

While this is very different from the life I led, it is just as freeing, for very different reasons. I choose freedom on a daily basis.

There are two types of reactions when I tell people what I do.

The first is “Wow! That sounds amazing. I’d love to be able to do that one day.”

The second is “Are you crazy?” followed by “How do you live out of a suitcase? How on earth do you manage that?”

So am I crazy? Perhaps a little—I’ll let you be the judge.

WHO IS NATALIE SISSON?

I grew up in New Zealand, one of the most beautiful countries in the world, where my European parents had settled after a world tour honeymoon.

I spent my childhood outdoors, playing sport. Dad worked hard so we could enjoy as many vacations as his job—as an insurance salesman—would allow.

I started to travel with the family at the age of two. By the time I turned six, I ended up having to repeat a school year because our family had taken too much time off to travel.

Fast-forward to when I was twenty-seven and was still struck with the travel bug. In fact, I found myself with a strong urge to leave New Zealand . . . possibly indefinitely. I packed my bags in February 2006 and spent the next three hundred days living out of a suitcase.

In fact, I’ve been almost permanently in a state of pack ever since.

I started by traveling across Southeast Asia and ended up arriving in London, England, on my twenty-seventh birthday, where I stayed for two and a half years. Since then I’ve also called Vancouver, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Berlin home (even if just for a few months).

On top of all of these nomadic pursuits I have managed to build a successful online business and a movement of Freedomists at SuitcaseEntrepreneur.com that I’m privileged to lead.

LEAVING TRADITIONAL WORK BEHIND

If you’re wondering how on earth I achieved this, then know that it all comes down to one simple philosophy: a true desire to live my life the way I want to, no matter what. This true desire is what people are missing when they detail all the reasons they can’t possibly live the life they want.

My way of living hasn’t always been like this. I spent close to nine years of my life chasing the corporate dream, working my way up through high-paying jobs in marketing, brand management, and business development across a diverse range of industries in both New Zealand and Europe. Working for someone else really taught me important lessons about what works and what doesn’t, especially from an operations and management perspective.

Looking back, I always chose roles where I was offered a lot of scope and flexibility to work on my own initiatives, and where I was able to take charge of making them happen. This was a good thing because I hate authority. Most managers realized this quickly, but not before they had hired me.

I am a self-motivated person and often started in a defined role only to turn it upside down. A nine-month contract with a global pharmaceutical company saw me travel all over Europe, working with key opinion leaders and local sales teams, but also saw me reinvent its entire brand positioning including the core message, the marketing, and the communication strategy. This bull-by-the-horns approach earned me a lot of respect and a big bonus.

By June 2008, though, I had had enough of the nine-to-five. My high-level job in London, where I was at the time, pushed me over the edge. On paper it looked amazing: great pay, head of a brand-new department, the ability to build my own team. But it was with an old-school firm that was archaic in its thinking, smothered in bureaucracy, and drowning in office politics. My lack of progress was slowly killing me. I was battling against the very people who had hired me to do the job!

So less than a year after starting that particular job—in fact just after I had received a raise and a solid performance review—I quit. My friends thought I was crazy, as I’d just bought a house in London, too. But I was sick and tired of working in organizations where I had no freedom to make a real impact or to influence the outcome.

FIXING MY ENTREPRENEURIAL WINGS

Less than two weeks after quitting in London, I bought a one-way plane ticket to Vancouver (Canada), represented New Zealand at the Ultimate Frisbee Championships, and started a new life.

I had invested most of my final salary payout and pension plan into my property in London, but had enough money left in the bank for just a few months of living costs in Vancouver—one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Lesson 1: To make a real change you need to get uncomfortable.

If you’re going to make a significant change in your life, consider making a big move, like taking a trip to a different part of the world or at least to a new location within your country. This helps you to get out of your comfort zone and take a different perspective. After all, if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.

After my nine-to-five experiences in the corporate world, I was determined to start my own business in my own way and so was hitting up every networking event available in order to make strong connections. As luck would have it, I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Gallery Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1501178172
• ISBN 13: 9781501178177
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Indigo Musikproduktion + Vertrieb GmbH; https://www.indigo.de; ; Schlachthofstr. 36a; Hamburg; 21079; Deutschland