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Natalie Sisson is known as the Suitcase Entrepreneur, but as you’ll hear, this has nothing to do with her trotting around selling suitcases.
Natalie is an incredibly successful online entrepreneur who makes a six-figure income while traveling the world, living an adventure filled life. Starting with a simple blog five years ago at age 32, she built an online business to support her dream lifestyle, including such highlights as going on a charity bicycle ride of six and a half thousand kilometres down the African continent.
Fresh out of school, Natalie was not content to complete just one university degree, she decided to do two, one in Tourism and Travel and one in Information Systems. Perhaps not so coincidentally, her degrees combine the two worlds that Natalie lives in today – travel and tech.
When Natalie decided to leave the safety and security of her corporate paycheck behind, she was headed for Vancouver to play in the Ultimate Frisbee World Championships. In Vancouver, Natalie co-founded a tech company that was building an app for people to make payments on Facebook.
Her role in the company was to get investors on board, figure out a business model and build a customer base from zero with a budget of zero. It was a learning curve for Natalie and she relished the challenge, delivering results and learning many skills she would later use as the suitcase entrepreneur.
How Natalie Went From Zero To $15,000 In One Month
Many successful entrepreneurs don’t know how they’re going to do what they set their sights on – they just go out and do it. Natalie learned best from diving in the deep end and being forced to swim.
Whilst helping build the tech start up, it became increasingly apparent to Natalie and her business partner that her strengths were in social media, marketing and building community. It also became increasingly apparent that Natalie’s heart really wasn’t in working for someone else. Creating her own business was the only way forward.
To begin her entrepreneurial journey, Natalie went from zero to $15,000 in one month by running social media boot camps for entrepreneurs. Natalie then headed for Buenos Aries in Argentina to live and began turning all her skills and knowledge from her live workshops, into audios and videos that she could sell from her blog.
During this time Natalie was learning all the steps that go into building an online information publishing business. This included how to do a sales page, build a membership site, how to make videos and embed them, upload files to servers and set up basic Paypal for her payment process. Every thing was new to Natalie, but taking a step-by-step approach worked well.
A major tipping point for Natalie came after reading “Turning Pro” by Steven Pressfield. She had been blogging consistently and getting some traction but revenue wasn’t consistent and nothing was coming easily. Steven’s book made Natalie step up and recognize that she truly was qualified to be doing what she was doing.
Another massive turning point for Natalie was when she made the conscious choice to surround herself with people who were smarter and more accomplished than her in order to lift her own game.
Lifestyle, Business and Financial Freedom
Natalie has now travelled and stayed in 69 countries and has an online business that has seven income streams (at the time of writing this!). These revenue streams include digital products and programs, affiliate marketing, live events, workshops and retreat style events.
Natalie’s focus, and at the heart of her success, has always been to find the sweet spot. This is the intersection between what she’s good at and what people will pay her for. She strongly advocates that you must listen to your heart to find out what you love doing. Then you merge all these elements to figure out what you should blog about and what you can create to monetize your blog.
I really enjoyed interviewing Natalie because of her sense of humour, passion, and love of the internet as a pathway to freedom.
I hope you enjoy our interview. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment reply.
Yaro Starak
EJ Podcast
Relevant Links
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Natalie is a terrific teacher and marketer. We listen to her podcasts all the time and learn a lot.
Suggest you check out her other products also.
Dale.
Wow thanks so much Dale. So great having you in my community and always commenting – I appreciate your support and glad you’re learning a lot!
Yaro this was such a fun and entertaining podcast interview to do. I loved how we dived right back into my past to show how each facet of your life eventually comes together for one purpose so that you can do the work you love and live the lifestyle you adore. I believe everything happens for a reason including the people who come into your life. It’s an entrepreneur’s journey for sure so thanks to you for sharing mine and others so that others can be inspired to go on their own.
Thanks for joining me Natalie. I really do love the entrepreneurs background story style of podcast, you really get to dig into the steps that led to the success from a distance, rather than just what is working today.
It helps to know the longer entrepreneur’s journey, if you are just starting your own.
Yaro
Very interesting story indeed
Great story. I also graduated in Information Systems and do IT work. This story does give me a lot of hope that this is very possible to making a living through blogging! Thanks for sharing!
Yaro, I’m probably one of your worse subscribers. I followed you religiously about 5 years ago, took your online class, and then never ever did much with it. (I live in Colorado and got discouraged with Amazon’s “Colorado Rule” which prohibits affiliate associations for residents of Colorado) But, I’ve continued to subscribe and occasionally will read a post. And, I am so glad that I just happened to pick this post at this particular time. It was awesome. I have a 26 year old daughter who loves to travel, lives to travel, and I intend to share it with her; with hope that Natatlie’s story will prove to her that she can do it too. Thank you.
Good to see how Natalie has made his journey from Zero To $15,000 In One Month. It’s very inspiring for me.
Thanks Yaro.
Ooooh $29 isn’t that bad of a price for a premium plugin. I’m VERY tempted to buy this as I’m more interested in the social slider than the email part of the plugin.
I am more inspired and motivated to push through on doing an online business since me and my wife loves to travel the world and we just need that one mobile money making machine so that we won’t worry of going home just to work again. Thank you Yaro And Natalie for this.