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{ PREMIER ISSUE 2018 } KHARISMA MAGAZINE
61
HOMELESS; so it’ s much more accessible for you to be able to access people in India, and the Philippines and Germany and Brazil and be able to work with teams across the world, using things like Skype, which is amazing, Gmail- you know, Google dropbox and then sharing all your files, et cetera, and have kind of an international team that you can access at anytime, you know.
That used to be incredibly difficult and a lot of people weren’ t keen to work with cross-cultures, but now it’ s so much easier because all these tools help connect us so much more quickly, and with a lot of reliability and security.
WHICH IS NOT WHAT EVERYBODY WANTS TO DO
These are all just a couple of reasons. I think I touched on a little bit more than that but these are some of the more exciting things that I know people are aware of, but I sometimes wonder how aware we really are of the advances in technology and the knowledge that we are acquiring; it’ s just going to open up so many doors.
Kharisma: It is indeed, especially as you said, with everything changing so rapidly and, social media and all these various online tools makes it really easy to do that, so since you have a number of individuals out there listening, want to do the same thing, want to create more freedom in their lives, but yet still have a successful business, what would you say it would really take to do that?
Natalie: I think it takes you getting really clear on what that lifestyle looks like as we talked about but they’ re all more of your perfect days, but what it really takes is belief in yourself, as I’ ve found, as I said before, everybody has a skill – set or talent that is valuable to somebody else where they can package their knowledge and skills in a certain way that will allow them to make money, and be able to do that from anywhere. Within reason, I think almost anybody, and people can push back on me on that, but I think it’ s really true.
So then, once you have those kind of abilities to be able to do that from anywhere, what a lot of people struggle with is this mindset of,“ Can I do it anywhere? I’ ve always been known to be working in an office and work between these hours and people expect to see me face to face. I have friends, and family, and community that I need to be around.” And my challenge back to you is, well, why?
Because that’ s kind of what we’ ve always grown up with, but it’ s changing so rapidly, you know, you don’ t have to be in the same locations as your team, you can continue to have relationships with your friends and family from afar, thanks to all these great tools, and you certainly don’ t have to be in an office; you don’ t even have to be inside to be able to work successfully. So really I think the biggest pushbacks that I see from people, or the biggest challenge is getting past that, which is what I’ ve always done, and moving into the newer times where anything is possible.
Kharisma: Awesome! Now, Natalie, as you know, Timothy Ferriss, he is the author of the book called The Four-Hour Work Week, and in that book, he talks a lot about outsourcing. Why is outsourcing so critical to being a suitcase entrepreneur?
Natalie: It really is! In fact, I actually don’ t think it’ s really just for a suitcase entrepreneur, I truly think that as‘ solo-preneurs’ we tend to take on so much and we’ re never really going to grow our business, or be able to have more freedom in our lifestyle if we are doing everything.
So regardless of being a suitcase entrepreneur, outsourcing workers helped me to get rid of certain tasks that I am capable of doing, but it really was not the best use of my time, or tasks that I can’ t stand doing, or tasks that I’ m actually not that good at, and handing them over to people who excel in them, which makes so much more sense, and usually can do it in half the time that I can and for a lot less money that I would be charging myself out of personally.