Andy Gray: I am talking today with Natalie Sisson, who is the host of the website called The Suitcase Entrepreneur and author of a recent book by the same name. Natalie, welcome to A Congruent Life!

Natalie Sisson: Thank you so much for having me.  I am excited to be here.

Andy: So Natalie, just to get started can you introduce yourself to our listeners and talk a little bit about what you do?

Natalie: Yeah, definitely. I am a suitcase entrepreneur, so I literally live out of my suitcase. I travel the world going to new countries and exploring new places, and at the same time I run my online business which is really teaching other people how to do the same – how to build the business they can run from anywhere and a lifestyle that they love. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

Andy: Can you tell us a little bit about your story? How did you get to this place of this kind of lifestyle?

Natalie: Yeah, I’d love to say it was super straightforward. Do you know how you hear those entrepreneurs who are like, “Yes, since the age of six I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur?” But I actually went through school and through corporate jobs around eight years. So straight out of university and into my first job I was working my way up the ranks. I had a number of really fantastic jobs actually in branding, in marketing, in business development but I did notice that I never was able to hold a job for more than – I didn’t even make it to two years.  I was one of those people who learned the ins and outs of that; I did my best in the role, I took it as far as I could and then if I did’t see room for expansion or moving up the line then I’d often quit and go traveling for a little.  So I was a little bit of an anomaly like that.  I lot of my friends will be like “Why do you leave that great job?” and I was like “Well, I didn’t feel challenged or the management wasn’t great or I didn’t feel I was growing.”

And when I got to London, England – so I’m originally from New Zealand – I got a fantastic job on paper, excellent title, heading up a new department, I got to build a new team and I basically got to go into this organization and help doctors turn into business people, which is pretty cool.  But what happened instead was I got blocked internally by the very people who’d hired me to do that job and it was probably one of the most frustrating years of my life. I’m going to say it was an old boys club, there were very backwards and very traditional and completely wrong for me.  And I got sold on the job through the manager that interviewed me who was great; he was open-minded, he was forward thinking, but I think he was attracted to me as an employee because I was the same big picture thinker as he was.  And he thought maybe Natalie can come in here and rouse these people a bit more but it was just impossible and it made me so frustrated and I just got sick and tired of it.  It was actually really soul destroying. 

So I quit and I went off to Canada – Vancouver, Canada – to play on the world ultimate Frisbee championships which is something I am passionate about as a sport and I thought I will just figure out from there.  So people who are listening will go that’s great.  While I was there I just attended a ton of networking events and got to know the city and I met my business partner through a networking event over wine and cheese and we started up a technology company and produced this application called FundRaiser which is now, no thanks to me really, the number one fund raising application on Facebook. So I kind of went from this traditional corporate background to this hugely exciting fast paced world of start-ups and particularly in the technology industry.

And how I built something from there was, while I was there I actually started a blog and it was called Woman’s World at the time because I was really fascinated as to why there are only about 3% of women in roles like CEOs and COOs and you know, heading up these businesses. So I used it as a kind of cathartic tool to talk about my experiences on entrepreneurship which I was completely new to, the roller coaster ride of the startup world and then also just start interviewing some of these women and find out who they succeeded and what it took. And strike forward to today and that is actually exactly what I ended up building – a blog which turned into my business.

Andy: So we talk to a lot of people with similar kinds of stories that make some radical change in their lives and I am always curious about how did you know, first of all that it was time, you talked about your frustration and the need to do something different, but how did you have sort of that internal sense of now is the time to make a change and yes I can do this?

Natalie: Yeah, it’s a great question. I honestly was just pushed to the brink and it’s funny now because if I look back, I view those times as kind of, oh that was you know a really interesting job and it was a great challenge but if I go back to how I felt in the moment, it was just… the day that I wake up and I don’t want to go to work is a pretty major day for me.  Like I am very positive person, I am very proactive and very motivated and I just started waking up in the morning not excited about going into work at all and really just not willing to push back against people and battle the very people that hired me.  So it became this — I could just see it — this drudge to go to work and I realized that I was pretty much stuck in the right ways and that specifically so in London and in the financial area and also in some of those more traditional organization.  So that to me was a pretty big sign, I had never experience that in my life.

I had always been in jobs that I enjoyed and felt that I could grow in and so this was just – I was just actually pretty miserable for me.  I noticed my energy levels dropping, a whole lot of stuff: I just got more stressed, I was snapping more, everything – life didn’t look as rosy.  So I think that was the thing that really, I woke up to that and said, “Okay, why am I doing this? I have the absolute freedom and choice to leave this and live life on my own terms.”

Andy: So how were you able to bridge that common gap between somebody else providing you a paycheck and the sense that you know what, I really can make money in a sort of an independent way and I can do it online and I can do it on my own terms, and I can invite all these kind of freedom into my world that I want.

Natalie: I wouldn’t say it was easy but I am pretty determined. So for me I was like you ought to do this now or you do this never and I think that’s the scariest thing to people to kind of get over.  They keep putting it off until the conditions are perfect, until they have enough savings in the bank, until the right moment appears. And quite honestly you have to create that moment. So nobody is going to do it for you, nobody is going to say “Here you are, here’s your perfect life on a platform.” 

And so I guess I just really thought, you know I have amassed a lot of skills, I feel more confident in my abilities; I have been working on a startup as a co-founder for almost 18 months which is still very short to people who are probably listening to this who had been in roles for five years, but I’m like one of those people who sort of accelerates through, and I felt like I had enough for the baseline skills to go out and do it on my own but in terms of your question about how did I feel about no salary, that was a big scary thing for me.  I’ve always been very independent; I had always been good at saving, I had always had a decent income coming in and so to stop that was a very scary moment and I had a lot of moments where I would be very fearful and I’d had to push through that fear and go well, if you go back now you can always get a job, right?  That’s the thing, there’s always a backup plan so to speak.  You can always turn back to go and go back to work, you can get friends to help you out if you really need.  You know there’s always ways of being able to support yourself.

But I was determined to kind of wallow in that fear and that sense of no income coming in for almost 6 months which was pretty scary, because I thought if I can get through this, then I’m never going to turn back. You know what I mean? Like if you can get through that and keep going then you are always going to have that sense of hustle and determination to make life what you want it to be. And I think if people can push through that period, it’s pretty amazing what comes out the other side.  So that’s how I went about it personally, I decided to kind of wallow in that feeling and go “I never want to be in this place of not earning again and I never want to be relying other people to bring me in that income.” So it was just something that I decided to face.

Andy: It seems like you are involved in all kinds of things: you are all over the Internet in all sorts of different forums and so forth, but it seems like most of your work today is around sort of serving as a coach.

Natalie: Yeah, I make money through my blog and my business now in around four ways, so yes I do one-on-one coaching and all of this is online through Skype. It’s pretty neat, I have clients around the world and I also do group coaching programs that instead are a higher level, higher price that go on for a number of months, they have digital products and programs that I have created around helping people to build an online business, use social media, use online tools to do that.

I make money as an affiliate marketer. I guess I used to hate that word and I thought it sounded terrible but basically I use a lot of online tools and programs myself in order to run my business and I love them and I couldn’t do my work without them. So, I’ve become a fan of their work and I will receive a commission if somebody buys through me to use the same tools that I use. So that’s pretty cool and that’s become a pretty lucrative form of revenue over the years just because I’ve built up all this credibility and trust of my audience and they know that I wouldn’t promote anything I didn’t love.

And more recently as my community and my business have grown, I’ve actually attracted some pretty cool sponsorship partners. So those are the kind of the ways now that I make money, it’s pretty diverse and I like that. I think it’s good to have different forms of revenue stream coming in so you don’t have to rely on one or the other.  And as an online business person and somebody who lives out of my suitcase constantly traveling, it’s smart for me to have more residual forms of income that kind of happen in the background. Once I put up the upfront work and then some forms of active through the coaching. So I like the distinction between them.

Andy: So how about from a personal perspective, you are describing this nomadic lifestyle that you’ve chosen and can you tell us some of interesting stories about how that freedom resonates for you, how that as part of a sort of an authentic lifestyle for yourself?

Natalie: Yeah, well it’s living and breathing it right?  So for some people I am sure it must sound very strange to live out of a suitcase and just keep on moving but it’s something that I chose for myself because personally it’s in the truest sense of the word freedom for me.  And I’ve been doing it for around three years full time now and I’m definitely starting to figure out my style of travel and my propensity for adventure and I think it’s changing as I get older. I do believe that it’s lovely to spend a little bit more time in one place and to continually shift on but it’s more the fact that you can structure your own day exactly how you want; you can work on the things that you love and you can do that in all sorts different locations whether you chose to work from home, a café down the road, or you choose to go on you know, working in an airport or just take off for a month or two to some sort of brilliant destination that you’ve always wanted to go to and that for me is the exciting thing. That’s what I really wanted to work towards, to have a business that allows me to do that.

Ultimately I wanted to build my business to have the lifestyle that I wanted. So that was how I prioritize everything that I did. And I think I’ve done that pretty well and that what I love to help people to do as well in whatever way shape or form that looks like.  I know that everybody doesn’t want to travel all the time, they just want more freedom to do what they want, when they want, with who they want.

Andy: The mission of this A Congruent Life project is really about sharing stories of authenticity. What would you say that living authentically or congruently means to you?

Natalie: Yeah, great question. I think it me it just means being very true to your own values. I see a lot of people putting aside their values to either make money or to please other people, and for me I’ve done quite a lot of work, a lot of inner work around what do I value more than anything in life.  And I recently did this again actually and independence came out as the number one thing, creativity was second.  And interestingly, for me I thought it was quite interesting, friendships and honesty were third and fourth; and when you are constantly traveling one thing is that you start to miss is that you are not always around your friends, the people that really support you and give you energy and you can give energy for them in return.

So for me it’s always about staying very true to those values and living life in accordance with that. So anything that moves me away from those things, I tend to feel a bit icky about and definitely try and sort of move them out of my life.  So I think if you can get really clear on what it is that is important to you, that’s how you live authentically – by living and breathing the values that you are aligned with.

Andy: When you are working with people, maybe in a coaching sort of context or in other ways, do you have some recommendations on how to go about clarifying and prioritizing those values?

Natalie: That’s a really good question as well. Yeah I mean one of the best books that I ever read many years ago was Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. Have you read that book?

Andy: I have.

Natalie: Did you – I mean it was pretty profound for me, maybe it came at the time when I was really open to it and there’s a lot of value in that book but one of the things that he talks about is prioritizing your values, like what’s really important to you; is it family, is it free time, is it being grateful for things every day, is it nature, is it authority – all these things that you just don’t think about. There’s a whole list of values from memory in that book that people actually list out and he kind of gets you to go through and rank them and really look them in and say, will this is actually truly a value that is a priority to you or is it something that you think about.

And on top of that I used to ask my friends and family a lot, I am a big one for asking other people for input and feedback, I really like that kind of community feel.  Its how I work with a lot of everything I do, on my blogs and the products and things that I build; I always get people’s input. And so I guess I ask my friends as well like what they think that I represented, what were the values that I held in the highest thing that they could see externally.  So I think it’s always a work in progress but you’ll know when you are not living within your values because something would just go really horrible or on the pit in your stomach or when your gut feeling would be like “Argh, this just doesn’t feel right to me.”  And so it’s just listening into that more – your intuition or just how you generally feel like what does your body reacting to and your mind when you are doing something that’s out of alignment with your values.  So I would say Awaken the Giant Within is a great book and there are quite a few tests and things that you can do online as well.  And there’s another great book I think, it’s called StrengthsFinder 2.0 and it asks you to go through what you think your strengths are.  So for me I have a insatiable appetite for learning and I really believe that to grow in yourself and to focus on some forms of personal development throughout your life is really, really smart because it allows you to better understand yourself and by doing that allows you to understand others and for them to interact more freely with you and get a lot more out of your relationships and your friendships and everything that you do. So I would really recommend for people to do some more work on themselves because it’s something we seem to put aside a lot, I think.  We focus on everybody else and other things but we don’t focus on ourselves.

Andy: It seems like there’s some potential tension between the values that you expressed with freedom and this nomadic lifestyle and connection.  You’ve stated friendships and relationships as important, you mentioned that several times now actually. Have there been some tension for those in your life and how do you sort of balance those two things between independence and connection?

Natalie: Yeah, great point you’ve made. It’s more come to me recently, as I said this is sort of three years full time living out of a suitcase and every time I go a city or place I meet these wonderful people and then I move on.  I actually have to say that social media has been a godsend for me because it really allows me in many ways to stay connected with people from the afar and you know in an instant you can look down in newsfeed and see on Facebook, somebody has a baby, they’ve got married, they’re traveling, they’ve just got a new job, they’ve just been awarded some degree. It may sound strange but that’s kind of my immediate tool for reaching out and staying in touch with people. I also use Skype video a lot for calls; I’m connecting with my family every single week, with people in my community, with other entrepreneurs.

So I really I tend to use those tools as much as I can and then whenever I am in a new city, I make the effort to call on the people that I really want to see. And it’s just more important to me, I guess as I’ve become happier in myself and also in the work that I do to make more time out for those people, to go on retreats, to make special times of the year when you are all meet up and you hang out together.  And that’s a really good thing because you have to be surrounded with the right people.  As you probably know, there’s the saying you are the sum of the five people that you hang out with most. And for me I am often hanging out with myself and there’s not five of me, so I have to obviously go around, make sure that I am still connecting all of these people that I find really important to my life.  Did that answer the question?

Andy: Yeah, it sounds like a great advice whether or not you are traveling and nomadic or not, that’s sort of a great strategy first thing, connected to people that are important for you.

Natalie: Yeah and a flip side of that is to sort of, it may sound a bit harsh but is to move people out of your life that, vampires – you know they are sucking your energy and time.  And I think a lot of people, especially when you stay in one place you tend to sort of keep the same friends for a long time but you don’t often evaluate whether they are still being a great friend to you or whether you are you are being a great friend back; whether they are providing you with the energy and the support that you need and they are challenging you and stretching you and you know, they really make your life better.

And I think travel is a wonderful way to see that from a different perspective and I just wrote about it on the blog today, when you do travel a lot and then you go back home, you often find people seemingly have stood still and they are doing the same old stuff and sometimes that could be great and for other times you can kind of come back and go oh I feel like I’ve changed too much, I’ve grown as a person.  I’ve expanded my mind and now I don’t get on as well with these people or they don’t offer as much to me. So I think it’s really good to evaluate your friends and your contacts quite regularly on your network and make sure that you are definitely surrounding yourself with the right people.

Andy: Natalie, what would you consider to be some of your notable failures and what have they taught you?

Natalie: I have several. Failure if you can learn from it is a great thing.  Failure for failures sake is not so much fun. It’s never fun to be failing but I do think that it means you are at least pushing yourself and stretching those boundaries and a lot more people fail than we make out.

So what I would consider some of my – well one of my great failures was probably my second ever product launch and for me that was pretty critical at the time, I just moved to Argentina. So I moved away from my entire network in Vancouver that I spent years building, I decided to take my business on the road as a test and I decided to also launch a product within two weeks of arriving in a completely new continent and country, that spoke a totally different language.  And you know the launch just was really stressful, I felt very isolated and alone because I didn’t know many people there, I didn’t know the language as well as I thought, and the Internet wasn’t great.

So all these factors kind of built up to make it pretty stressful on top of the launch, which is many moving parts and there’s quite an undertaking.  And I remember, I thought it was probably one of my better launches yet, I’d done a great video – I had really taken time to put in great design, excellent content, market it well or so I thought.  And I launched it to the world and within 24 hours I think I’d made one sale and I just remember, I just remember crying.  I just actually cried and plunked myself down on the bed and I was like I can’t do this anymore.  By that stage I may have been running my online business for about seven or eight months but ultimately I’ve really just been building community for five or six of those and then expecting to launch a product and do well.

And it was really just failure within my own head because that product actually went on to become a really great selling product and I just was wanting instantaneous gratification I guess that I’ve done the right thing and that’s not how it always works. So over time over the next couple of days, more sales came in and I got great feedback but in that moment I felt like the biggest failure in the world.

And so, I’ve learned as an entrepreneur, especially as a solo entrepreneur, even though I do have a team now, I didn’t back then, you really have to celebrate anything. You know just getting anything off the ground; making one sale is really exciting especially when you are starting out. And to not be so hard on yourself, I think ultimately, people who are in business themselves have very high expectations of what they want to achieve, and sometimes it completely possible but other times there’s a number of factors that you aren’t in control of.  So I still have very high expectations of myself and others but I’ve learned to celebrate the wins and the losses.

And I’ve learned, when I launch anything or do anything that’s big and scary, I generally tend to have three goals aligned to it so must get, I would be happy with that result, and this will be blowing it out of the water and looking at that I have a kind of scale from 0 to awesome that I am happy with them.  So that’s how I manage those kind of failures or things that did’t go quite as well is managing my expectations better and being a little more realistic, having a big vision but being more realistic about what’s possible.

Andy: You recently wrote a book, congratulations on the publication of your book.

Natalie: Thank you.

Andy: Yeah, can you talk a bit about that process, what motivated you to write a book and what is it like to embark on that journey?

Natalie: Oh my God, it’s actually somebody said that it’s like birthing a baby which I have not done and I think kind of, definitely it’s a huge undertaking.  Writing a book in itself is a hugely challenging but very rewarding process and I have really enjoyed the writing process and then marketing it and launching it is a completely other dimension, especially if you are doing self publishing, which I did.  So the reason I wrote the book is I think 90% of the people in this world apparently want to write a book and very few of those people do. And ever since I’ve been a kid, I had wanted to write a book but I wasn’t really ever sure what would it be on, whether it would be fiction or non-fiction.

I felt with this business that I’ve run for almost three years, I really felt that I have come to understand what it was that I did, that I wanted to help people create freedom in business and adventure in life; that I wanted to inspire them and reach them on a bigger platform and to me a book is a perfect tool for that.  You can get it into the hands of so many more people who may never have heard of you, it can spread the message and they can consume it and hopefully it can change their life or add to it or help them to take action.  So that was always the vision for it and I finally felt that I had enough knowledge and wisdom and a story to tell on how people can do this through my brand and through my blog.

So I wrote it actually in a pretty quick amount of time compared to many other people.  I sort of started it, I mean honestly I probably started thinking about it last year when I wrote a book proposal for a publisher that approached me and their reaction was, this is great but it’s too soon.  People aren’t ready for this, this location independent stuff and I was like, what do you mean they are not ready?  Tim Ferris wrote the Four Hour Work Week right in 2007, it’s like this is already too late!

So then I decided then to self publish but it took me probably about a good another year to get onto that.  It’s a big process.  And then I wrote the book as a combination in Malaysia in February and more in the Philippines in March and then a big chunk of it in Berlin during May and June.  So it was kind of a three to four month process.  And I actually did it; I had a goal to get the draft on by my birthday which is in April and to have the entire book completed before the World Domination Summit which was in Portland in July. And I did it.  It’s great to have a goal and it’s great to have yourself accountable to it.

And for self publishing point of view, I ran a Kickstarter campaign that say, should this book be written, do you support it, is it worth writing?  And I had it 121% funded, I had close to 200 backers say “yep write this book and we are going to invest in it.”  So that was kind of my celebration to myself, these people have stepped up to support it.  I got, you know, what I would consider my publishing contract that I can go ahead and write the book and publish it and cover some of the substantial costs that are involved.

So strike forward to now, it’s been out just over three weeks I think, and it became a number one bestseller in Amazon last week and I was just blown away.  I was like, what?!  And I didn’t even know that somebody else had to point out to me, I was doing a very good job at tracking.  So it kind of made everything worthwhile and a big part of that has been my community but there’s a bunch of people who had never heard of me who are reading it who are just giving the most amazing reviews and as an author, it’s probably one of the scariest thing, is that you put your heart and soul into something and you relate it to the world and you hope like crazy that people are going to love it and value it. So I’m thrilled.

Andy: Congratulations. That’s a pretty amazing success. How are you reaching the folks that haven’t heard of you, you know, you have this new platform now.  You have quite an online community but there are a lot of people as you mentioned outside of that community who are starting to discover you now through this book.  How are you reaching those folks?

Natalie: Well my book is on Amazon, Nook, and Kobo, so I mean Amazon just allows you to reach millions of people straight off who might not have heard of you before and I guess that’s recommendations, rising through the ranks, listing in some of the categories quite high at the ranks.  So people actually find your book and Amazon is very smart platform: it will say if you are reading this, you should read this as well.  So I think I’m starting to be found in the search results there.

And outside of that I’ve done a lot of work around the launch.  I’ve been on a book tour to various parts across North America and I will be taking that further but also I’ve been guest posting on other sites with related audiences.  And I’ve been doing some advertising and some marketing and just outreach.  And the interesting thing is people who are also doing a lot of this on their own, off their own back really and they found the book and then they share it from Amazon and then they talk about it on social media and they share it out to their friends and networks. And that’s just the power of social media right there, to be able to spread stuff that matters. So part of it is me, but part of it is also, if you do something really epic and people find value in it and they are going to talk about it in their own right.

So I’m just, I’m really thrilled that both of those things are happening and people are stepping up to kind of say, hey I love this book and I get daily messages and Facebook posts and Tweets and it’s quite incredible. So I’m just trying to keep track of all that and they could note it, consume it and also share it as well.  Because social proof is obviously really important, it’s not me it’s about who can I help and who am I serving basically and those people that helping me to get that message out, that’s a pretty beautiful thing.

Andy: You had a pretty successful experience running a Kickstarter campaign to get this project underway, this book project underway.  What was your experience with pursuing financing essentially through Kickstarter, is this something that you would recommend for others?

Natalie: Yeah, I really liked it.  I’ve ended up writing a book about it, “How to Crowdfund your Dream on Kickstarter,” because as a platform it’s probably one of the biggest and I think it’s excellent for people who have a project that’s worthy of doing, that books are good and projects etc.  Even people who are creating new games.  So it’s always about something that the public going to love it, and it’s going to be useful and valuable for them.

But there are over 500 crowd funding sites, it’s pretty crazy and a lot of those are specific to certain areas.  So some of them are just great for startups and others are great for artists, others are great for musicians. I think the whole crowd funding platform itself is pretty special and it’s allowed a lot of people who never could have got access to any kind of funding before the opportunity and the tools to do it through the community.  So I’m sure most entrepreneurs know what crowd funding is but that’s exactly what it is.  You say here’s this thing that I’d love to produce and I don’t, or I need some money or support to do that and if you pledge, then you actually kind of buy in to this idea and they got rewards out of it, they get a piece of the company or whatever is produced.

So for people who backed my Kickstarter they got obviously a copy of my book, whether it’s digital or paperback they might get an autographed copy, they might get the audio book, some people got to be on the editorial team, some people are going to be mention in the book and those sponsors of the book tour and it’s just really neat.

So yeah I think it’s a hugely important tool. I don’t think it’s going to be around in the same format for that much longer.  I feel it’s getting a little saturated and people are going to have to be a lot smarter about how they use it but the ultimate way to succeed in it is it does help to have a community, even if it’s a smaller one, a community to get started and help you spread the word. It’s just much easier, it’s a community based platform. You do have to have some sort of savvy at marketing, you have to understand that you can’t just to launch it and expect it to go really well; you have to keep reminding people about it, you have to keep being in front of people, you have to talk about it all the time, you have to talk about the message and the vision that you have for it and help people to spread the word, make it as easy as possible for them with Click to Tweet or Facebook post or copy and paste stuff and you kind have to do that for the length of your campaign, whether that’s two weeks or 30 days or 60 days because you know, nobody is really going to do that for you.  And if it’s a really great project people will start to spread the word for you but it’s an undertaking, it’s almost like a full time undertaking to raise money in any capacity. So I think it’s great that we have the power in our hands to do that and I really, really like the idea of crowd funding for people.

Andy: So what’s next for you, Natalie?  You got this book published now, this big project that you’ve birthed and what are you excited about in your world now?

Natalie: That’s a great question, I am really excited about spreading the book much further, and to being able to then go on some speaking tours around that and really some more intimate audiences and some bigger ones to talk about the message of why I think there’s no better time than now to create freedom in business and adventure in life.

And later this year and into early New Year I’m going to be creating my first flagship program which is going to encompass all the digital guides and programs that I have and really create a very strong community of freedom seekers. So that’s my next step. I haven’t announced it to anybody so you are hearing it first right here but that’s my vision, it’s to have one overarching program and community that people will come to know the Suitcase Entrepreneur for and create this kind of community around the world where people who can reach out to each other and help each other to build their online businesses and also the lifestyles that they love. So I am really excited about pulling everything that I’ve worked together over the last three years into something all-encompassing and building a movement from that. My long term vision is by 2020 to have somehow impacted, either indirectly or directly, 100,000 entrepreneurs to create their own online business that they love.

Andy: Love that big audacious goal, that’s great.

Natalie: You’ve got to have them.

Andy: How can listeners engage with you, Natalie?

Natalie: They can come across to suitcasentrepreneur.com. I would love to say hello, I have all my social media links on there, to Twitter and Facebook and Google+ but that a great place to start and they can even sign up for my High Flyer where I provide weekly tips on building a business you love and obviously a life in your own terms. But really just to come across to say hello, read – I have a lot of free content in my blog posts, my videos, my podcast, and come in and say hi, it’s a pretty cool community there.

Andy: Is there a final thought that you would like to leave our listeners with about authenticity?

Natalie: I love the quote from Oscar Wilde which is “Be yourself, everyone else has taken” and if there’s one thing that I have learned on my journey, when I am being absolutely, honestly, brazenly myself that’s when the best things happen.  So don’t hide behind anything else, don’t compare yourself to other people, just be truly 100% yourself – quirks and all, and that’s how people actually come to love the work that you do and what you stand for.

Andy: Well Natalie Sisson, thanks very much for spending this time with us and congratulations on the publication of the book.

Natalie: Thank you so much, it’s been so much fun.