100) The 6 Freedoms That Change Everything (Q: How Big Would You Dream If You Had All 6?)

Today marks the 100th episode of the Digital Nomad Life Podcast, and I want to celebrate by talking about my favorite subject: abundance.

I’ve traveled to over 66 countries before the age of 30, hit the million-dollar mark in my business just four years in, and now I’m living out my dream digital nomad life in Bali as an entrepreneur. But it hasn’t always been this way…

In this episode, I’m sharing what my old life looked like in New York—stuck in a cubicle, working for horrible bosses, and living in an apartment with no sunlight. I’ll talk about the people and moments that helped shift my mindset from scarcity to abundance—and most importantly, the 6 types of freedom you can unlock with your very own digital nomad business.

We also cover:

• How to recognize and rewire limiting beliefs around money, success, and possibility
• The simple, scalable business model I teach inside the Digital Nomad Life Academy
• The MAGIC of making unlimited income from your own energy and creativity

Message me on Instagram: @christabellatravels
CODEWORD: Apply

🌞 Endless Summer Sale is ON!
Join Digital Nomad Life Academy now and get:
✅ Big tuition savings
✅ $2,500 in bonuses
✅ Access to exclusive June events

📩 DM @christabellatravels with “endless summer” to claim your spot.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Abundance Mindset
• 11:55 Discovering Bigger Dreams Is Possible
• 21:19 Building a Freedom-Based Online Business
• 32:48 Location and Financial Freedom Explained
• 43:03 Time and Creative Freedom Unleashed
• 52:42 Emotional and Relational Freedom
• 1:15:39 Digital Nomad Life Academy Community

Transcript

Speaker 1: 3:39

Hey there and welcome to the Digital Nomad Life Podcast. I'm your host. Krista, also known as Krista Willa, travels on social media and I always hit my handle at the beginning of every episode because I want you to know that I am so here for you if you have any questions, episode requests or if you just want to talk about the content of this episode which, by the way, this episode. I'm just feeling really jazzed to record this one because I'm here to talk about my favorite subject ever, which is abundance. Abundance doesn't just mean an abundance of money or an abundance of anything in particular. Actually, I love the concept of abundance because I really feel that this is the way that I see the world, which has enabled me to live a life that is pretty wild. Like. If you don't know much about me, just some quick fun facts I've been able to travel to 66 countries, 60 of them I hit before the age of 30. I've hit over a million dollars in my own business, so that's money that I literally have generated just through my own actions, not because anybody else guided me, but because I made it happen. I, like created it, and I live a life where I wake up when I want, I work out when I want, I'm in the best shape of my life, I get to spend time with people who inspire me, and it's just like so many aspects of my life. There's just like. It's just like extra, it's just like so good, so abundant, and this really is the reason why I'm so passionate about this podcast and about what it is that I do. So I want to take the energy that I have around this abundance mindset and I want to send it over to you in celebration of 100 episodes of the Digital Nomad Life podcast. Essentially, I want you to be able to come to this episode anytime that you feel like you need to be reconnected with your dreams or reconnected with a dream.

Speaker 1: 5:38

Oftentimes, I hear people talking about how they feel really disconnected from their purpose. They feel disconnected from their desires. They don't really know what they want out of life, and I happen to think that a big reason why people don't know what they want out of life is because they're not entirely sure what's actually possible. So I'm here to give you a ton of examples that I have from my own life about what could be possible for you and how. These things are not actually that outlandish. They're not that crazy. They're not wild dreams. They're possible.

Speaker 1: 6:13

I want this episode to open your eyes to what your dreams could be, so that you have something to look forward to, something to work towards, something to dream about as you fall asleep at night, something where, when you close your eyes, you actually have visions of yourself doing these things. That is how you are ultimately going to be able to manifest the most ultimate life that you could probably not even imagine at this point. So, without further ado, I think I will just dive right in to talking about what is possible for you when you have your own online business, because that's what this podcast is all about. It's about having your own business, it's about making money from anywhere. So, what is actually possible for you when you do have your own business and can make money from anywhere, how amazing could life even be? How dreamy could life be? How big could life be? How amazing could life even be? How dreamy could life be? How big could life be? How abundant could life be?

Speaker 1: 7:07

As you listen to this episode if, by the way, if you're a listener, you know that I love giving little exercises and journal prompts and and I love giving metaphors and visions for you. So the little thought exercise that I want you to do in this episode is actually, as you listen, see if you can turn on the visual part of your imagination, and as I explain these different scenarios like different things that could be a part of your life if you were to have the freedom that a remote business allowed you. Can you see yourself in these scenarios? Business allowed you, can you see yourself in these scenarios and, if so, can you make that scenario even more colorful and more detailed? I really want you to implant yourself into the visions.

Speaker 1: 7:55

That is what is going to get you so excited and so motivated to do the work that it's going to take in order for you to live out your dream life, because I'm not just here to be a manifestation coach. I'm not just here to help you be having a bigger imagination. I'm here to actually show you the path. I'm here to give you the roadmap. I'm here to give you a practical, step-by-step strategy for you to achieve your dreams, and I do that via helping you build an online business. And there are so many other episodes that I have, in fact, the most recent episode about how long it takes to build an online business Like I have so many episodes like that what that will teach you the practical thing. But the thing is, about all of this business content that I do post on this podcast, it doesn't even matter if you don't know what it is that you're working towards. It's so important for you to have a really crystal clear dream. That is going to be the thing that keeps you going on those days that entrepreneurship gets you down because it does get you down sometimes. But we're not here to talk about the negative. We're here to talk about all the exciting, amazing, abundant, wild, unfathomable, dreamy things that can come when you have your own online business. Let's get into it.

Speaker 1: 9:11

So I think the way that I want to approach this episode is, of course, I will be speaking a lot about my own experiences as someone who has lived a very abundant wild life, and I'll share a lot about how the things that I experience in my life are totally possible for you. But I'll also bring in examples of other people that I have met that have really deeply, deeply inspired me, and let me tell you, over the 13 or so I don't know how many, how long it's been, however many years it's been that I've been abroad. I have met so many characters. They're so great. I can't actually wait to introduce you to some of the characters that I that are living in my memories, people that have just inspired me to dream so much bigger than I ever thought, and actually maybe I'll even take you on a journey of how I managed to grow my dreams. You know, I think that's actually going to be a way more interesting way to think about this.

Speaker 1: 10:07

So, in that case, let me take you back in time to a time when I had a really different set of dreams. When I was growing up, I had these dreams of having a quote big girl job, like I knew that I wanted a career. I knew that I wanted to feel successful, and when I say successful, what I thought that that meant genuinely was wearing pencil skirts to work and heels and taking the subway and maybe making like $80,000 a year. I don't know, for some reason, $80,000 was like my pipe dream salary and something about the corporate fashion I just thought was really cool and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to live in New York City. I thought it would be so cool to like live in an apartment building and of course, I wanted to travel the world. I mean, ever since I was a little girl, I was always really inspired to travel. My grandmother, my nanny, she was such a world traveler and she really inspired me when I was young. So I was like, yeah, I want to travel the world.

Speaker 1: 11:10

And I just figured that I wanted to travel the world by the time I was 65, because that's what you do Like literally in my limited worldview. I thought that the biggest dream that I could dream was to move to New York City and travel, you know, at least to one new country every year, and then maybe by the time I'm 65, I'll have been to like 40 something countries. Wouldn't that be so cool? And now, when I'm 65, I can travel when I'm retired and have the best retirement ever, like I'm going to be such a cool retired person. And genuinely that was my dream and that's a fine dream. I think a lot of people have that dream or like that dream might feel like a really big dream to them, but here's when my eyes started to open up to the fact that I could dream bigger. So the first time that I was like, wait a minute, what, like, what is possible Was I had been working in New York City for a couple of years.

Speaker 1: 12:11

At that point, I had saved up like some disposable income, and when I say disposable income, I mean I think that, aside from me paying my rent and my necessities, I probably had like $1,000 or something that I could spend on a trip. So my boyfriend at the time and I decided we wanted to go to Greece. So we're so excited about this trip to Greece and I used up all of my vacation time that I could possibly use, which was 10 full days, yes, 10 full days, starting in Athens, and then we went to Santorini, and then we went to Mykonos, and then we went back to Athens for a day and then we flew back to New York and I was stoked about this trip. Okay, I was like oh my gosh, this is the longest trip that I've ever taken. This is going to be so cool. I'm so excited, and I was so.

Speaker 1: 12:57

One day, my boyfriend and I were sitting at a table in a restaurant and, um, this, these nice dudes next to us uh, they were Australian and you know they were just chatting us up and they're like oh, what are you guys doing here? Are you on your honeymoon. We're like, no, we're just traveling because we're cool travelers. And they're like, oh cool, like you guys are just traveling, that's awesome, how long are you here for? And we both look at them and we're so proud and we're like 10 days.

Speaker 1: 13:24

And I just remember the Australians being like 10 days in Mykonos. And we're like, no, like 10 days in Greece. And their responses, their, their eyes boggling in their head. They were like you came all the way from America to Greece for a 10-day trip. Like their energy was like what the hell is wrong with you guys? Are you absolutely insane? Like why would you do that?

Speaker 1: 13:52

And I remember receiving that really shocked response and being like kind of defensive. I was like I feel like 10 days is a lot, like I was proud of 10 days. First of all, shut up, rude. But second, if you're so shocked, does that mean that there's another way? Like is there another way to be in Greece for more than 10 days? And I just was actually mind boggled by this reaction from them and it was one that really stuck with me for years at that point.

Speaker 1: 14:26

So I still stayed working in corporate America for, I think, two years after that experience, but I never forgot this shocked reaction from these Australian guys. Like I don't think we actually got to talk to them much longer after that, but I just always thought it planted this seed in my head that I was like, is there another way Interesting? So now, if we fast forward like 15 years after that experience, I obviously know a lot more now than I did back then. And what I know now is that if you have a corporate job with a nine to five and a certain number of vacation days and you're American, then 10 days actually that might be as good as it gets for you and then in that case like it kind of sucks. It's going to like hurt your heart for you to dream bigger than having 10 days off because you just cannot like. It's like actually not possible for you if you're going to have a nine to five job. But what if you didn't have a nine to five job? What if you worked for yourself?

Speaker 1: 15:31

Now I will say that what I used to understand about people who worked for themselves was that they were super busy and they actually had a pretty restrictive life and it seemed like really stressful to work for yourself. My aunt and my uncle they had like a pretty restrictive life and it seemed like really stressful to work for yourself. My aunt and my uncle. They had like a printing business and with a with a storefront and everything, and they just didn't really have a lot of staff because they couldn't afford staff. So what they would do is they both would take turns, working shifts, and they were actually never even able to come to our house, which was like two hours away, because it was always that one of them needed to be working. So my limited perception of people who worked for themselves was like my aunt and my uncle again and I thought, wow, they really can't even take off 10 days Like they. They can't take off anytime at all. They can barely take off a weekend.

Speaker 1: 16:20

And then I think other people that I saw working for themselves. They might have been on TV and the bosses that we see on TV are people that are really stressed out. They might be like big shots, right, like people that are running these big corporations or these big companies, and I just never related to that archetype of person, even though I've always cared about having a career for me, it's never been about status, it's always been about actual fulfillment and purpose. So when I saw other people working for themselves that were running big companies, I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to be a manager, I don't want to be a boss. That is not of interest to me.

Speaker 1: 17:00

And I guess, if I'm honest, my perception of people who worked for themselves at the time just ended there, and I really never questioned it beyond that, because I had heard over and over and over again that you know, 80% of businesses fail, that the thing that you really want to have in life are benefits and a 401k, and you don't get those things if you work for yourself. So the idea, the concept of being an entrepreneur for me, just like, was literally never interesting, and I think that's why, when these guys were like, oh, you're only traveling for 10 days, I was really triggered by it, because I was like there's literally no other way for me to do more than this unless I quit my job, and I can't quit my job because I'm living paycheck to paycheck. So I just perceived that as super rude. But again, now I understand that if you do work for yourself, you can have more vacation days, and working for yourself is totally different, or it can be totally different than those two images that I just conjured up for you, those two images that I just conjured up for you. For me, I don't. I'm not a boss, right, like I. I don't have anybody that is my employee. Yeah, I hire some people to support me in my business, but I wouldn't say that I'm their boss and I don't want to be their boss. That's just not the kind of person that I am. It's not the way that my brain works. I don't want to be managing a bunch of things I like being responsible for myself. That's cool, but for lots of other people, no.

Speaker 1: 18:28

And this whole thing about, like, if you have a business, if you work for yourself, then therefore you need an office or some kind of physical location that you go to every day. Oh, my gosh, absolutely not. You're listening to the digital nomad life podcast, right? Like, we are here for location independence and that is actually what's really possible if you work for yourself. So, backing up and talking about what is possible when you do work for yourself, when you have your own business, considering the fact that you're going to build a business, which is the kind of business that I suggest and if you're new here, I will explain what that is in a minute.

Speaker 1: 19:06

But the kind of businesses that I suggest it's not. It's like very low overhead, it's completely remote, it's very individual and when you build a business like that, you can actually be anywhere in the world and run your business. You could be running your business from your business. You could be running your business from your bedroom. You could be running your business from a cafe down the road. You could be running your business from the kitchen table of your long distance partner who lives on the other side of the country. So you go there for a week every single month. You could be running your business from a beach in Nicaragua, from a mountain in Nepal, from the deserts of Morocco, from a bungalow in Thailand, a catamaran in the Mediterranean, a villa in Bali, from the dog park in your city, your grandparents' backyard, from the parent hangout area at your kid's nursery school, etc. Etc. Etc, etc. Literally, literally, the possibilities are endless.

Speaker 1: 20:03

When you build the kind of business that I suggest, that people build, you can be anywhere in the world. And when you can be anywhere in the world, guess what? You don't have to wear pencil skirts and heels to work. You can if you want to. Of course, no one's stopping you, but you're probably not going to wear these are really tight, restrictive, uncomfortable, usually colorless and patternless clothes. You're probably going to wear something that expresses your personality a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 20:34

Side note, I actually think that the fashion that I get to wear as a remote worker is so fun. Like I am someone, I've actually wanted to be a fashion designer since I was a little girl. I think someday I probably will launch a fashion line. I already have a whole concept and everything like it's happening, and that is one of my bigger dreams for the future is to be a fashion designer, and this is a lifelong dream. So, anyway, the point is that I've always been into fashion, or been into clothes, if you will. I don't care about labels, I don't care about designers, but I love the expression of being able to dress in a way that actually reflects who you are inside.

Speaker 1: 21:15

I remember when I was living in New York City, I would wear these pencil skirts and heels to work and I was uncomfortable, and then I would go out for like a happy hour after, or I would go on a date, for example, and I would meet these guys and they would see what I was wearing and immediately put me into some kind of box when I was like I'm actually so fun, first of all, like what I'm wearing. It does not reflect the fact that I'm one of the most fun people that I know, but this is what I'm wearing because I came from work and maybe it's not just that I'm fun. Like some days I feel fun, but other days I just feel like a big hippie and I don't want to wear shoes and I want to wear ripped jean shorts or a long flowy skirt and a crocheted top, and I'll have little braids in my hair, maybe even a little flower crown, and some days that's what I want to wear. Other days I want to do a double session of workouts. I might want to do Pilates in the morning and yoga in the afternoon. So why would I change out of my workout clothes?

Speaker 1: 22:16

Well, now, I don't have to Imagine you listener, right? What if you could wear whatever it is that you wanted to wear, and maybe you didn't need to fit into a specific category or a specific archetype? Maybe some days you want to get dressed up. Other days you want to dress down. Some days you don't want to wear anything at all. Maybe you want to wear a bikini to work. And maybe you want to wear a bikini to work because you're working by the pool, so you take a zoom call, you do, you write an email or two and then you go take a dip, you lie in the sun, dry off and then back to the shade typing away. Or maybe you're one of these cafe people who maybe you still want to live in New York city you just don't need to go into an office all the time. And maybe you want to wear something that reflects your street style because maybe one day you're feeling extra feminine and you want to wear all pink or you want to wear a long skirt. Or maybe you're a dude in Thailand and you've just decided that you're not wearing shoes all weekend.

Speaker 1: 23:16

True story One time I literally didn't wear shoes for an entire weekend because I lost my flip flops, because they were the only shoes that I brought to this island that I went to and I actually remember, cause that was the first year that I lived abroad. I was like this is literally hilarious that I haven't worn shoes in 72 hours. And whoever you are listening to this, if you're like that's raunchy, krista, guess what? That's the point. That's the point. Sometimes I just want to be fucking raunchy, like I just want to be a dirty hippie. That is literally a part of my personality and I love that part of my personality. I don't care. If you don't want to be a dirty hippie, you don't have to be a dirty hippie. You can go do whatever you want. If you want to wear Louboutins every single day, be my guest. The point is that when I had that weekend where I lost my shoes and then I literally didn't wear shoes the entire weekend, I was like this is the funniest boycott for me ever. This is the biggest, most hilarious, like middle finger to my previous life where I had to wear the most uncomfortable shoes running down the subway every day Like ugh. So anyway, I just felt very liberated about that and I wonder if you had the option to not wear shoes for an extended period of time, would you take it?

Speaker 1: 24:32

Maybe you're actually going to live on a catamaran, as I said, and if you're living on a catamaran, you don't want to wear shoes on a boat. It ruins the boat. It's not good. You always put your shoes in a little box. And if you were actually living on a catamaran, let's say you were sailing around the islands of Greece which, by the way, it takes hours and hours If you ever go to Greece, like it takes so long to go in between the different islands, so you might spend like two, three days on end never actually getting off your boat, and then, in that case, you are going to spend a few days where you're never going to wear shoes but you're doing a bougie. Right, you're on a catamaran, okay? So, just so you know, you don't have to be a dirty hippie Like I want to be. You can be bougie and, by the way, I also love to be bougie, and that is something else that I wanted to share with you, okay.

Speaker 1: 25:17

So when I was in New York city, I was like 23, 24. And I was totally in my like hot girl era. I met all these promoters, and the promoters be like oh, why don't you come, take your girlfriends to the club and you can all get bottle service for free. So I was like, oh, cool, free drinks, amazing. And that was really my focus, because I was heavily drinking at the time and I didn't have any money.

Speaker 1: 25:43

So I was taking what I could get and I would go to these clubs and I would drink for free and I would be at this table and I remember being at being at this table in this club where, like, a drink is $25 a drink or something like that, like for a freaking vodka soda and I'd be looking around me being like who are all these people that are paying all of this money for a table? And like what are they doing with their lives and why are they choosing to spend their money in this way? And you know, a table might be like an $800 to a $2,000 purchase, depending on the club and what bottles you got, etc. Maybe it's more than that. I actually don't really know what bottles you got, et cetera. Maybe it's more than that, I actually don't really know.

Speaker 1: 26:29

But the point is that when I was in New York City, I was exposed to people that had a lot more money than I had been used to having or that I had been used to even being around, right, like growing up in Massachusetts, like there were definitely people that had money around me. It's not like I was always around broke people, but personally I didn't have any money and my friends didn't have any money and it just was really normal to be in settings where everybody was broke as a joke. But living in New York City, where I think there are more millionaires per capita than any other city, or maybe it's like one in 10 people actually make a million, you know what? Let me pause and find that statistic Sorry, I was way off. Well, kind of it's one in 24 New York City residents are millionaires. It has 385 millionaires, making it the city with the most millionaires globally. Okay, so, anyway, that's freaking crazy.

Speaker 1: 27:23

The point is, I was around millionaires all the time and I'm sure that my boss was a millionaire and, yeah, I think that when I was first in New York and I was super broke and all my friends were broke it was normal to be broke. But then as I started meeting more and more really successful people because they were just around all the time everywhere that I went I started to feel like I was the weird one for being broke and this did something to my brain. So you'll hear in like many episodes that I used to have a whole complex around, not feeling smart enough and definitely not feeling worthy. But then, at the same time, I feel like I have this other part of myself, like maybe it's my higher self, who's like who the hell are these people Like and what makes them so special? Because you know, sometimes I meet these people and sure, they're really successful, but they're also like kind of assholes and I know that I'm not an asshole. So then I'm like, okay, like what's going on here with this imbalance of just who are you and how did you end up being this successful? And I think I just part of me was like, okay, who are you? If you can have that kind of success, why can't I? And when you start thinking that way, when you're like, okay, I are you, if you can have that kind of success, why can't I? And when you start thinking that way, when you're like, okay, I see these other people having success, why can't I have that success? You start to normalize the fact that you could have success. So I do think that being in New York and being around so many wealthy people, so many successful people, was something that really opened up my mind and helped me believe that big success was a possibility for me.

Speaker 1: 29:09

Remember earlier I did I say this earlier that I used to have this pipe dream of making $80,000 a year, like when I first graduated from university and I was going to get a job in public relations my first job. Literally. I was making $35,000 a year and I negotiated for that. They were originally going to give me 30. So for me, the jump to go from $35,000 a year to $80,000 a year, it was like so insane. Like I was like, okay, if I get a 5% raise every year or whatever, or maybe I get a promotion or whatever, yeah, maybe I could be making 80 K by the time I'm 45, or something like that. Um, and then I could have like a bunch of years where I'd make $80,000 a year and that was my pipe. I don't know why it was 80 and not 90, or 80 and not 70. Who knows where this number came from.

Speaker 1: 30:01

Um, the point is, once I was in New York City for a while, I was like, oh interesting, there are people that are making way more than $80,000 a year. And who are they? Who am I? How come I can't do that too? I have no idea how I would do that, but it did help me dream bigger that maybe there could be a day where I could make way more than $80,000 a year. And guess what? That day has come.

Speaker 1: 30:26

I am so proud to say that last year I hit a million dollars of revenue in my business and, granted, that's like total revenue over the course of four years, but like if I were making, let me just do the math. Let me just do the math here. Wait, you know what I'm just going to actually ask chat GPT. Here's my prompt. Do you guys ever use the type? The speech to text feature is literally so life-changing. Okay, let's 65, how much money would I be making by the time I am 65? And how much money would I have been able to make total? Okay, so chat GPT says if I started with a $35,000 salary at age 24 and received a 5% raise every year until 65., by the time I was 65, I'd be making approximately $258,720 per year. Okay, so, like 250k a year, it's good when I'm 65. That means that over the course of my entire career I would have earned a total of $4.4 million out of my entire career, and literally just in the last four years of my business I already made a quarter of what I could have made total in my entire lifetime as a professional employee. So I'm just going to brush some dirt off my shoulder with that. I feel like so proud of myself for that, and I love seeing math like this because, you know, sometimes I get down to myself and I'm like, oh, my revenue was down for this year than it was last year, or whatever.

Speaker 1: 32:16

But honestly, it's fucking magic to be making your own money. It's magical, it's like it's like I don't even. I can't even express this to you. It's like the definition of magic to be having something that you created with your own energy. Right, like everything that you see in this world is a manifestation of someone's idea, like this bookcase that I'm looking at, that cute mirror, the pretty chair, my purse, my shoes, my bedspread, this laptop, this podcast, all of it. It had to start as an idea and the fact that when you have your own business, it starts with an idea and then you end up manifesting that idea in reality. When I say manifesting, I mean you're like creating it, like creating it into something physical. That is magic. So this money that I made, this million dollars that I made in my business, I generated that from my own energy because I had an idea. And is it a wild idea? No, my business idea was literally I want to be a coach and like there's so many coaches out there. There's so many coaches out there. I wanted to be a digital nomad coach I had a niche, sure, and then I wanted to be a business coach Okay, but there are so many business coaches out there too. Like I get paid to be myself. I just think that's. I just think that's magical.

Speaker 1: 33:49

When I was getting paid before, when I was making $35,000 a year, first of all, I was so stressed. I had some random man telling me what to do every single day who was making me commute underground for like an hour every day, like a half hour each way, and this was not a comfortable commute. It was like drippy under there, it was hot, it was freezing, it was like not temperature regulated, it was just gross. And there were all these like really unhappy looking strangers all around me at all the time and I was doing work that was just boring as hell. Like my first job, I was doing search engine optimization, content writing, and my clients were an appliance repair company, a probate lawyer, a foot doctor and a wedding photographer. That was a cool client. But like I wasn't doing cool work, right, and I was again, I was getting paid $35,000 a year. How I was able to survive on that amount of money. I don't doing cool work right, and I was again. I was getting paid $35,000 a year. How I was able to survive on that amount of money, I don't know, but, like I told you, I was living paycheck to paycheck.

Speaker 1: 34:51

The point is that I just want you to understand that whatever amount of money that you are making right now in your job, you can do better. Okay, can do better. I don't care how much you're making in your job. When you have your own business, you can do better. Now, if you're listening to this and you're making like $250,000 a year, um, you're going to need to create a specific kind of business that will yield you a bunch of money at the beginning. But if you're making that kind of money, you probably have some savings or some assets that would give you a runway to build a really big, booming business and you could invest in your business and you could be making more. But let's say that you're making under $100,000 a year. If you're currently making under $100,000 a year at your job, I guarantee you. I like you. I know you can't make guarantees, but I do guarantee you that if you went all in on the business strategy that I teach you would be able to replace that income within within a year, if not less, you could.

Speaker 1: 35:59

I guess I'll just take a sec to talk about what the business model is that I teach, just in case you are new here, so that you're not like totally mystified for the whole rest of the episode. But yeah, my philosophy is that the fastest and most fulfilling way to have your own business when you've never built a business before, is to start with the high ticket, small service provider model. Now, what that means is that you are leveraging some aspect of your personality, a skill that you already have, some kind of knowledge or wisdom that you have acquired over your life, something where it's like something that you can share with someone via your energy, right Like writing, photography, editing, coaching, consulting, systematizing something, planning something for someone, organizing something for someone all these things where it's like you're putting your energy in, in contrast to a product-based business, like I'm not asking you to create an Amazon storefront or a digital product-based business. I'm talking about an energy exchange. What is an energy that you have inside of you that you could perform or do for someone else that is willing to pay for it and when I say, willing to pay for it. You obviously want to come up with a service that a specific kind of person finds very valuable, and they're like oh yeah, I want you to do this for me because you can do it better than me, you can do it faster than me, or you can just do it instead of me because my time is better spent somewhere else. If that person feels that you can do something better, faster or instead of them, and it's going to help them save money or improve their life, somehow they will be willing to pay you for it. If you're going to improve their life, they're going to give you money, or they'll be okay to give you money for it, and therefore you can package up your offer in a way where you can reasonably charge a thousand dollars or more for it.

Speaker 1: 37:59

Now, before you're like oh my God, a thousand dollars, that's a lot of money. Okay, a thousand dollars for what? Like a thousand dollars for one hour, or is it a thousand dollars for 10 hours? Either way, a thousand dollars is a thousand dollars. So, but the point is, if you're collecting a thousand dollars from each customer, you don't need that many customers in order to be making a hundred K a year, like if you had a service that you were charging $1,000 per client. You would literally only need eight clients per month in order to hit that 100k salary.

Speaker 1: 38:32

Now if you were able to package up your offer and make it even more valuable so that you could charge $2,000 or $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 per client which I know some of you listening are going to be like oh my God, $10,000. That's so scary. But some of you out there are going to be like oh yeah, I could easily charge $10,000 for this service that I offer. Um, then you literally only need 10 clients for the entire year in order for you to make a hundred K and 10 clients from the entire year. You could probably find those people from your personal network. You wouldn't even need to use linkedin, you could probably. You wouldn't even need to use instagram. You could probably just get them. Get those clients by meeting them at a conference or at a cocktail party or something, um. But obviously you can do some marketing and be clear in your messaging and get more clients like that from your network.

Speaker 1: 39:26

But the point is, what I'm trying to say here is that no matter who you are, what your background is, you can follow the methods that I teach in terms of business, and you don't need to have a huge marketing machine. You don't need to be an expert at marketing. You just need to be really clear about what your service is, who you're offering it to and why it's valuable to them, and then you package it in a way where, again, you can charge a high ticket price. That's how you're going to be able to set yourself free. Now, if I was saying this message to young 24-year-old Krista, who her standards were currently $35,000 a year, like that would be not fathom the fact that I could have my own business and it wouldn't have to be this like big company or whatever.

Speaker 1: 40:31

Just I hope that whoever you are listening to this, this is a landing, that having your own business it really is not that outlandish Like you, and and that making a really good salary like making 100k with this model when you're a pretty much not a complete beginner, but like when you're in pretty new it's so possible. And then from there, sky is a limit, because once you learn how to make 100k in your business, now you have enough neural pathways in your brain about entrepreneurship that you will be able to take. Whatever it is that you learned from that experience and you will turn it into more businesses and more money. You will be liberated to make as many businesses as you want because you will understand the fundamentals of business and then you might be able to go make a million dollar business or a billion dollar business. Every person who ever has a business, they have to start from scratch. Nobody's coming out of the womb understanding entrepreneurship, right.

Speaker 1: 41:32

So anyway, I wanted to share that with you, that that is how I teach people, and there are so many things that I really love about that business model, and it's not just the fact that it's really simple and straightforward, but it is that it comes with all of the freedom. So I recently made a TikTok talking about the five different kinds of freedom, and those are financial freedom, location freedom, time freedom, creative freedom, freedom and emotional and mental freedom. But I actually think that outside of the five types of freedom that's like what's in all the personal development books there's another type of freedom that I think is really important to mention here, and that's relationship freedom, that is, freedom to spend time with the people that you want to spend time with. Let's go through these six types of freedom and how what your life might look like if you had all of these types of freedom, and I'll also talk about how this business model that I just described to you enables you to have every single one of these six types of freedom. Okay, so, first of all, location freedom, obviously, like we're talking about the digital nomad life, so that is my favorite kind of freedom when you can just be wherever it is that you want to be, and I kind of already mentioned that, that there's like a million places where you could be running your business, from, whether it's a cafe, a bedroom, a basement, a bungalow, a mountaintop, whatever. You can be wherever you want. And I just want you to think about if you could literally be anywhere in the world at any time.

Speaker 1: 43:16

What aspects of your life would you change? Are there certain events that you would say yes to? Are there certain events that you would avoid? Are there environments or climates that you might spend more time in? Are there environments that you would stop spending time in? If you're anything like me, you would probably cut out the commute. You would probably cut out the office and the cubicle and all the icky things that come with the office and the cubicle. Like, oh my gosh, those long gray hallways with no artwork, literally just a gray carpet, white walls, white doors with a little number next to the door. Like white walls, white doors with a little number next to the door. Like that, that icky subway, the commute and the traffic, the horns, the honking, the angry people, just the desk chair at your office. In general, personally, I like working from a couch, I like being, I like being in a squishy seat when I work, and that's something that's a way that I'm able to exercise my locational freedom. Even if I'm working from the same city that my office was in, I literally get to sit on the chair that I want to sit on. So, yeah, if you had complete location freedom, what about your life would change? What would stay the same, what would you do and what would you never do again?

Speaker 1: 44:39

Okay, now let's talk about financial freedom. This one, I think, is the type of freedom that most people are so drawn to, and it's also the most elusive one. So, if you're anything like I was, financial freedom feels like something that is so far away. Like if you're making $35,000 a year, you're not going to be wondering what it's like to be financially free. You're going to worry about what it feels like to be financially stable, like to not be living hand to mouth, to not be living paycheck to paycheck. But what if you had enough money to cover your needs, your desires, all of your future goals and then some plus? You have no stress about money. You're not worried about where the next paycheck is coming from. You're not worried about overspending, because your bank account is fat enough that it would be really hard for you to dip into it and actually spend all of it. Fat enough that it would be really hard for you to dip into it and actually spend all of it. How would your budget change? Would there be anything that you spend more on? Would there be aspects of your life that you would upgrade?

Speaker 1: 45:45

If you're like me, you would probably upgrade from an apartment in New York City that literally didn't have any natural light in it. Like I kid you, not. In this apartment, the last apartment that I lived in in New York city, I could turn off the lights at midday like noontime, wave my hand in front of my face and not be able to see my hand, because there was actually no windows in our living room, because it was me and two other girlfriends and it was a two bedroom apartment and we built a wall through the living room so we could have a third bedroom and that we could afford this apartment. It was in West Village. Oh my God, I actually thought it was so cool at the time because I didn't have very high standards, obviously.

Speaker 1: 46:24

But now anyway, the house that I live in is like almost entirely glass, like it's like almost literally a glass house, and I just love that. Like there's so much natural light, I never have to worry about seasonal depression Again. I'm like, literally, I'm like too tan. Anyway, that has nothing to do with financial freedom, it's just like well, I guess it does, because I can afford to live in the home environment that I want to live in. I'm not forced to live in a literal shoebox because I can afford something better, in a literal shoebox, because I can afford something better. So, um, I'm not suggesting that you live in a shoebox right now, but maybe you do. I don't, I don't know you, um, but you know, whatever, whatever your home life is like, would you upgrade it If you made more money? Would you travel more? Or would you travel more in style Like would you want to take a long haul flight to the other side of the world in business class instead of middle seat economy? Because let me tell you, once you go business class, it's very hard to go back.

Speaker 1: 47:25

I already talked quite at length about how making money in your own business is actually not that hard Like it's. I'm not. I'm not trying to diminish the work that it takes to build a business, but I just I. What I want you to understand is it's it's not like you need some kind of rocket scientist brain in order to make a bunch of money Like the. The kind of business that I teach is very straightforward. It's very simple. As long as you know what service it is that you're providing and you can do a little bit of market research to make sure that people want it like, you can absolutely figure out a way to make a hundred K in that business in under a year, pretty much no matter what your starting point is. And again, if you're someone that does have a lot of professional experience like shoot for the moon you can make way more than a hundred K Like I make way more than a hundred K. Now, I never thought that that would have been possible years ago. But here I am and, uh, I'm not that special Like I mean, I'm special, we're all special, but I'm not special like that, you know. Like if I can do it, you can totally do it too.

Speaker 1: 48:30

So what would your life be like if you actually had financial freedom plus location freedom? Right, these freedoms that I'm talking about, let's stack them on top of each other. So, first of all, if you had location freedom, how would your life change? But what if you have location freedom and financial freedom? Now, what will life look like? So you could have location freedom and financial freedom and you could be having both of those freedoms without your own business. Like you could accomplish location freedom and financial freedom if you had, for example, a well-paying remote job. If you had a well-paying remote job which actually my last job that I had was a well paying remote job so that was pretty cool. I couldn't afford business class, but like I was doing pretty well for myself. But what I didn't have at that job was creative freedom. Now, that's the third type of freedom that I wanted to talk about, and creative freedom for me is like the most fun kind of freedom. Oh, I also didn't have time freedom, I think I went out of order. Anyway, we can talk about both of them together.

Speaker 1: 49:41

So when you have a job, when you are employed by someone else, that is, some other human who is no better than you, is no more worthy than you, by the way, telling you what to do and if you're like me, you can't stand authority and you can't stand being told what to do, and I tolerated that for so long and it always just kind of like irked me that I had to. You know that, oh my gosh, this last job that I had in New York City, literally they would make me write down the time that I showed up into the office and I would always be writing down 905. I'm a compulsively late person. It's like I don't know if it's my ADHD or if it's just my relationship to time or that I just actually didn't want to be there and I was like secretly procrastinating, like self-sabotaging, um, but I would be getting in trouble all the time. I also got in trouble all the time for being late for high school. Like I just I didn't have that time freedom and it just deeply bothered me so much and I also didn't have creative freedom. So this last job that I had, um, was a marketing job.

Speaker 1: 50:47

I'm a creative person. I think I'm inherently very creative. I have a very visual imagination, I have a lot of big ideas, I have a fountain of ideas all the time and that is an asset to a company. But the thing about a company that is tuning into and taking, you know, taking advantage of slash, paying me for my creativity they're just going to take what they want. So it's like I'm leveraging my creativity and giving it to them, but they get to keep some and reject others. And when your creativity is constantly being rejected, it stifles your freedom to feel creative. No-transcript work that I was doing and therefore constantly had this feeling of being stifled like, of being suppressed, of feeling like I wasn't really being heard or listened to or that anybody even cared what it was that I that I had to say. I felt very unseen, right.

Speaker 1: 52:16

And then the thing about time like for me, why does it freaking matter if I'm there at nine or nine oh, five, like? Is that really going to hurt your productivity? I'm sure lots of people have lots of opinions about why, like, everybody needs to be on time for something, but the point is I just didn't want to be. I didn't want to be there on time and I didn't think that I should have to be on time for something. But the point is, I just didn't want to be, I didn't want to be there on time and I didn't think that I should have to be on time, so I was doing something against my will. And how are you going to be relating to your life, relating to your career, if you're constantly doing something against your will?

Speaker 1: 52:55

I think one of my favorite aspects about my life now is that I have time freedom and the only things that I could possibly be late for are like dinners with my friends and luckily, my friends all know me and they all tell me to be there 15 minutes before they actually want me to be there and that I might be there on time or only 15 minutes late. But like I have people around me that just understand me and accept me and they're not going to reprimand me. And like I get to wake up when I want to wake up, which I have an inconsistent sleep schedule Like I go to bed sometimes at 1 am 2 am, because I get these creative bursts late at night. I'm literally recording this episode. Right now it's 9 53 PM and like this is when I have energy to be creative, so why wouldn't I leverage that?

Speaker 1: 53:43

But if I had a job that was making me only use my creativity during nine to five which, by the way, like I'm not a morning person, my brain is not active at nine, it's not usually active until like 11 am Then I'm just not being able to leverage my natural talents. I'm not living out to the best of my abilities. I'm not living out my best life because other people are telling me when I have to be there and when I need to be creative, when my brain needs to be turned on. I love and relish in the fact every single day that I can wake up at nine, I can go to Pilates at 10, I can go grab a breakfast or come home and doom scroll for a little bit because that's what I do sometimes and then I can open my laptop at noon and I can work from noon until 7 pm if I want to do a full day. Or I can not open my laptop until 4, and then I can work from 4 pm until 10 pm, and sometimes I will do that, like I'm literally doing that right now.

Speaker 1: 54:48

I love that about my life and I wonder, listener for you life, and I wonder, listener for you, if you had complete time freedom? What would you do differently with your time? Like, let's say that you just, whatever it was that you were doing, you trusted yourself and whoever else needed you trusted you, that whatever work you were responsible for, it would get done, and they don't freaking care when it gets done, just as long as it gets done. Nobody cares about when it gets done, you don't even care about when it gets done, just the fact that it gets done. So when would you wake up? When would you go to bed? When would you work out? Would you work out? Would you do something else? Would you actually just be spending all morning with your kids or with your dog? Would you be joining run club? Would you actually just be spending all morning with your kids or with your dog? Would you be joining run club? Would you be the one to volunteer at the local soup kitchen on a Tuesday, because that day is the hardest day to fill, because most people have to work Monday through Friday? How would you be using your time if you could use it completely freely? What hours do you think your brain would be most active? And if you could work during those hours, how much more would you get done if you were all in during the hours where you're most productive, where you're most creative, where you're most turned on?

Speaker 1: 56:09

And speaking of creative, if you had full creative freedom, meaning if you got to do work that felt really meaningful to you, aligned to you, aligned to your personality and your passions, and you were not boxed in by a company or a job description or some other company's rules or values, what kind of work would you be doing If the only work that you had to do was work that you actually liked? Like? You never had to do the bullshit, you never had to answer to anybody, you just got full creative freedom to do the projects that you liked? What kind of projects would you be working on? So many big questions. I wonder if you have actually thought about these answers before, like what if you did have freedom? How would your life look different?

Speaker 1: 57:02

I actually believe that a lot of people are scared to ask these questions because it feels like they're going to be rejected, if they dream about the possibility of them having that freedom but then not actually knowing how they can achieve it. And when you don't have a roadmap on how to achieve these levels of freedom, it can actually be triggering to inspect what your life could look like. But I just, if there's anything that you get from this podcast, from my free trainings, anything that I post online, I just I really hope that you're understanding that it so is possible for you to have your own business that awards you all these different kinds of freedom that you can be doing, work that you like, that inspires you, that allows you to feel creative, that also allows you to feel fulfilled. And that leads me into this other type of freedom, which is emotional, mental freedom. To me, this one is the most important kind of freedom because really, we can be so trapped within the confines of our own mind. Anybody who's ever experienced anxiety knows exactly what I am talking about. Mental and emotional freedom allows you to fall asleep at night feeling good about the day that you just had, and unfortunately, I feel that there are so many people that don't feel good about the day that they just had because they just spent their day kind of being like a bit of a slave to the system. I really hate to be so dramatic, but I don't know. I just have a very visual imagination and this is just how I see the world Like.

Speaker 1: 58:42

If you are having to clock in at a certain time, doing work that doesn't fulfill you, being tethered to a specific desk or office environment, having someone else control how you spend your days, you are just, you're not free. And when you are not free like that, in all of those ways, when you go to bed at night, you're probably not going to feel amazing about your day, or you might actually just not be feeling amazing about yourself. But we tolerate these situations so often and we have to ask ourselves why. Why are we tolerating ourselves being in a situation where we don't feel happy, where we feel suppressed, where we feel like we're not able to leverage our creative talents, our skills, our best abilities? Why are we abiding by somebody else's schedule, abilities? Why are we abiding by somebody else's schedule? This is where the lack of mental and emotional freedom comes in.

Speaker 1: 59:43

So if you had emotional freedom, you wouldn't be questioning if you're good enough or worthy enough to go find greener pastures. You wouldn't be worried about what other people think. If you changed your career, if you started showing up online, if you had emotional freedom, you would be marching to the beat of your own drum. You would just be starting a business because you'd be unafraid to fail. You'd be charging high prices right away because you would know that you are worthy of them.

Speaker 1: 1:00:13

Now the thing about entrepreneurship it is such a vehicle for growth because when you go to launch your business, when you go to scale your business, pretty much every activity that you do in your business it's going to ask you to confront one of your demons. For example, if you want to raise your prices in your business, that can be triggering because you might end up turning on yourself and saying, oh my God, but am I worthy to collect these higher prices? Now, if you're an average person who doesn't have emotional or mental freedom, you might end up in some kind of shame spiral and getting an anxiety attack about how you're not worthy. And so when you're an entrepreneur, you might still end up in that shame spiral of being like, oh my God, I'm not worthy. But the thing is, you can also be grateful that you were given an opportunity to see that you had a wound around being unworthy.

Speaker 1: 1:01:11

And now if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you have two choices Either you wallow in your unworthiness and you don't make money, or you figure that shit out and you start inspecting why you have the worthiness wound to begin with, and then you figure out how to heal it. So if you haven't done any kind of emotional work, any inner work, any shadow work, you might see a trigger as a bad thing and you might, as a result, try to avoid any situation where you do get triggered and that's fine. That can get you so far in life. That's where, like, anger management comes in. It's like you know that you have a trigger and you're just like trying not to react, right. Or it's where the whole fake it till you make it thing comes in, right.

Speaker 1: 1:01:54

You it's where the whole fake it till you make it thing comes in, right. You don't feel worthy, but you know how to position your body language and hold eye contact, and so you learn all of these masking behaviors. And that's how you can cope in the normal world, like, and a lot of people do cope in that way. But in the normal world a lot of people are not acting super authentically when you're, you are forced to confront that shit. I mean, you can wear a mask but honestly, like when you're an entrepreneur, you're going to be constantly put into situations where you will be triggered, but then you can look at those situations and be like, wow, I'm so grateful that I realized that I get triggered around that thing, because now that I know that the trigger is there, I can intentionally do work in order to clear that thing. And then, when I clear it, it will no longer be an issue and I can move forward with ease and grace, which is one less ball and chain for you to drag around.

Speaker 1: 1:02:52

If we're going with the prison of your mind theme, when you have emotional and mental freedom, you've already done the inner work to free yourself from self-doubt, from fear, from all of your limitations. You start trusting yourself. And, by the way, it's also worth mentioning that when you have emotional and mental freedom, you're also no longer driven by people-pleasing perfectionism or any of your past pains. You get to step fully into your own authenticity and start living life in a way that is aligned with how you actually feel, with what you actually value. So I want to ask you a question If you had emotional and mental freedom, how would your sleep be? Would you be falling asleep at night easier? Would you be tossing and turning less? Would you have more self-acceptance? Would you post more on social media? Would you have already built a business by now if you had that kind of freedom? Well, let me tell you that emotional and mental freedom is the best. If there's only one kind of freedom that you want to go for, this is the one.

Speaker 1: 1:04:09

And, just FYI, if you do join the Digital Nomad Life Academy, we talk a whole lot about this topic. It comes up on pretty much every single coaching call which, by the way, if I didn't mention this about the coaching calls inside of the Digital Nomad Life Academy, I'm live like three times a week, sometimes four times a week, and we talk about all different kinds of topics related to entrepreneurship and marketing, market research, building your offer, et cetera, et cetera. But pretty much at every single stage of entrepreneurship all of those different things that I mentioned people's shadows and their triggers do come up. And you know entrepreneurship, especially business building, and the way that I teach it. I've said this many times now in this episode. It's not for rocket scientists, it's actually really simple and straightforward. But the reason why it's hard is because we are not always mentally and emotionally free when we are new entrepreneurs. So we talk about that a lot on the coaching calls and that really is what makes the program so transformational.

Speaker 1: 1:05:13

But anyway, I want to talk about the final form of freedom. This is the one, as I mentioned. It's not in all of the personal development books. I just really wanted to make sure that I added it so that you can understand how different your life could really be if you did work for yourself, if you did have a location, independent income. So that final type of freedom is relational freedom or relationship freedom, and I just want you to think about the fact that if you have a job right now, or if you have some kind of home or accommodation that you're not obsessed with, that you're currently committed to, who are all the people that you have to spend time with? That you wouldn't spend time with if you didn't have to, and these might be people that you wouldn't spend time with if you didn't have to, and these might be people that you interact with intimately. It might be people that you just see in passing, it might be people that you never even speak a word to, but if you're like me and you had an underground subway commute for an hour every single day. That is a whole lot of people with very sad faces that I had to see for an hour every single day. That's five hours of my life every single week where I'm just like in extremely close proximity with a lot of burnt out people.

Speaker 1: 1:06:36

And if you're like me, you're probably empathetic and you can actually really pick up on the emotions and feelings of the people around you. Like, when you walk into a room or a subway car, you can sense the energy, and when it's 5 pm on a Monday, that energy it just doesn't feel good. So whose energies are you being influenced by in your day-to-day life? And if you had it your way, whose energy would you love to be influenced by? Maybe there are people that you know, maybe you have again, maybe you're in a long-distance relationship or something and you really want to be with your partner all the time. Well, you can when you work for yourself. Or maybe you currently have an office where you just like, don't really love or vibe with your coworkers. Well, those people, you're giving them a lot of your time and energy and you wouldn't have to if you worked for yourself. But if you like being around coworkers, what you could do is you could go to a coworking space or I mean, if you're like me and you want to build your own business, you could actually just hire your best friends to work with you.

Speaker 1: 1:07:49

Literally two of my closest friends are both coaches inside of the DNLA and they've been with me for years and I love that about my business. I love that not only do I work for myself and I'm no one's boss and I don't have a boss, but, like, the people that I interact with on a regular basis, who are helping me and supporting me with my business, are my actual besties. So actually, one of my closest friends, julia, who's also the community manager inside of the Digital Nomad Life Academy we used to do an hour call every week just to talk about business, but then we just were always catching up about our travel plans and people that we were dating and just what we were doing for lunch, etc. So now we have an hour and a half call every week and the first half hour is us just shooting the and catching up as girlfriends, and then the other hour we talk about the business and that is a part of my work day and I just think that's so cool. That's like water cooler chat that I get to have, even though there is no water cooler anywhere remotely in sight. There is no fax machine in sight, there is no. I don't even know other things that come with an office.

Speaker 1: 1:09:03

Like, I just get to make my business exactly the way that I want it to be. I get to work with exactly the kind of people that I want to work with. I work with people that I genuinely not just like, people that I fucking love, like. Shout out to Marie, my podcast editor. This girl is so fucking cool, love her and I get to work with her. That's so cool. If I'm going to text anybody, why wouldn't it be people that I like?

Speaker 1: 1:09:27

Anyway, when you work for yourself, it's not just the people that are helping you or supporting you in your business or you're not just running away from weird coworkers or annoying bosses. When you work for yourself, it's also, again, the people that are in your environment. Now, not just people in the subway, car or not just the people in the cafe or the co-working space, but when you work for yourself, you get to be naturally around other people that think like you. So, if you are a traveler, if you love traveling, just like I do, then when you work for yourself, you can naturally start gravitating towards communities of people who also love traveling. But let's do a different, random example. Let's say that you are obsessed with kite surfing.

Speaker 1: 1:10:17

I know so many digital nomad kite surfers and I've been to so many kite surfing destinations and I know that it's like this cult thing, like people that are kite surfers are kite surfers and they will travel all around the world to the top kite surfing destinations and because these destinations are usually in really remote places, they want to go there and they want to stay there for like months on end. A couple of years ago, I went to a place in the Dominican Republic called Cabarete. Oh my gosh, it's such a cute little town. It's on the other side of the island from Punta Cana and if you ask the average American because, like most Americans know about the Dominican Republic, it's just like your really big travel destination. But I bet you that the vast majority of them, while they might know about Punta Cana, the majority of them do not know about Cabaret Day.

Speaker 1: 1:11:06

When I went to Cabaret Day, I wasn't just meeting Americans, I was meeting international people, people from all over the world. But the thing that they had in common was that they loved kite surfing, because Cabaret Day is a super windy place and it just naturally attracts kite surfers. So people that are obsessed with a specific sport like, let's say, kite surfing, they are highly, highly, highly motivated to work for themselves or to work online because they want to be able to pursue their passion and they want to share their passion with other people who also love it too. So there are so many people, like expats, that have moved to Cabaret because of their passion of kite surfing. Are they able to get a job in Cabaret in the Dominican Republic? No, that requires a completely different kind of visa and, honestly, it probably wouldn't be approved anyway.

Speaker 1: 1:11:56

It's like not really very cool to take jobs from the locals, but when you are working for yourself, when you work online, you're not taking a job away from anybody. If anything, you're actually adding to the economy of that place. You're bringing your outside money to that place without taking anything away from that local destination. So for all my ethical travelers out there, like when you're a digital nomad, when you have currency arbitrage, you actually could be really economically contributing to the place that you're visiting. But back to this relational freedom thing. Like, if you love kite surfing, don't you want to be around other kite surfers and don't you want to kite surf? Like, don't you want to spend your afternoons kite surfing? Don't you want to like, close down your laptop whenever the wind picks up and then go out, grab your board, go out for a couple of hours and then come back and finish your workday, because you would get to do that and you'd get to meet probably lots of really close friends out there who also obviously have the same values as you, people that have also chosen a freedom-focused life because they share the same passion that you do.

Speaker 1: 1:13:06

Also, I think we need to talk about friends. I think we really need to talk about friends. I kind of mentioned it earlier on in this episode, but I have this term I use a lot to refer to friends that have just been in our world for a really long time. I call them legacy friendships. Like we have a legacy with people that we went to kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, college, even with, depending on how old you are, like if you graduated college 10 years ago, and all those people that you partied with you, that used to get drunk with on a Thursday night with like you're still friends with them even though you actually have nothing in common anymore. That's what a legacy friendship is. Okay. So, people that you were friends with when you were a little kid, it's like you're still friends with them now as an adult. Amazing, congratulations, good for you that you could hold down a really long-term friendship. That is actually amazing. Friendship that that is actually amazing.

Speaker 1: 1:14:07

But also I think it's important to note that not all legacy friendships continue to add value to your life or they don't add new value, and you really don't need a lot of legacy friendships. You need some. It's really nice to know people that have like kind of been a part of our lives for decades or who knew us when we were really young. But also I believe that the most valuable friendships are people that grow with us, people that match our current level of consciousness, our current level of ambition, that match our energy, that share the vibe, that can relate to us because they are going in a similar direction in life. That's what real valuable friends to me are. And when you are the only one in your friend group that has entrepreneurial ambitions or that has these work from wherever, ambitions. I just I need you to understand that that's a lot of energy that you are giving to people who are not helping you grow as a coach. Honestly, you would not believe how many conversations I have had with people where they are afraid to announce their business on social media because they're scared of what their best friend will say, or they're worried about what their closest friend group, how they will all gossip about the person behind their back, or they're scared to announce what it is that they're doing because they secretly are getting the judgment from their parents or their grandparents or their old colleagues.

Speaker 1: 1:15:37

Like relational freedom is being able to not only choose who you spend time with, but it's being really conscious of whose energies you are allowing to influence you. And when we have an office to go into day after day, when we are living in the same town that we've been in for however long, when we haven't made new friendships who have met us where we are currently at, that deeply, deeply, deeply affects our lifestyle and it affects our ability to grow. So when you are able to work from wherever, you now get to choose your environment, you get to choose what collective energy you surround yourself with, you get to position yourself in places where you can make friends that match your vibe and you don't have to be giving your energy to anybody who doesn't actually have your best interest in mind. And that's on relational freedom. So I want to ask you if you could work from anywhere in the world, are there any people or relationships in your life that you wouldn't be giving as much attention to, and are there any kinds of people that you would love to be friends with? Like, maybe you want more spiritual friends, more athletic friends, more party friends, whatever it is, because you could make those friends if you were able to go freely to all the places where those people are hanging out. And when I say freely, I mean because you work from wherever. So, yeah, those are the six different types of freedom. I hope that you have been inspired.

Speaker 1: 1:17:15

I want to just plug the Digital Nomad Life Academy again one more time. If you're still here listening to this, you probably are someone who would be a really, really good fit for the community. At the time of me recording this, there's about 100 or so people in the community. These are people from all over the world who are all working on building the same kind of business that I mentioned earlier in this episode the high ticket small service provider business. Now, just because some people are building editing businesses and other people are building consulting or coaching businesses, people are all building different businesses, but at the end of the day, the model itself is all the same and that's why, when you come to the coaching calls, you get to listen in on other people being coached, you get to ask your questions and everybody benefits from hearing each other, because everybody's on the same path, on the same trajectory. Not to mention, we also have a live map where you can pin your location as you move around the globe and you can meet up with other people in real life. That's something I really, really, really encourage our members to do and actually shout out to Julia Cole in the DNLA, who said she's on track to meet her 12th member of the Digital Nomad Life Academy in two years. That's like over a 10th of the entire community that she's been able to hang out with in real life, and this is again such a global community, so I just think that is so cool.

Speaker 1: 1:18:40

I made the DNLA because it is exactly what I would have needed when I was starting my journey, when I was confused about what I wanted to do in the first place for remote work, when I felt alone and lonely because I didn't have other people who were not just meeting my vibe. But I wasn't inspired by anybody else. Inspired by anybody else when I was able to live my time freely but didn't know how to spend it or who to give it to. The DNLA teaches you everything that you need to know about how to build and market a completely remote business and introduces you to the best, most inspiring, coolest group of international people you can imagine. Pretty much every single person that is a part of the DNLA has been an avid podcast listener, so just know that like attracts like.

Speaker 1: 1:19:30

If you're still here listening to this episode, it's probably just a matter of time before you join the DNLA, so why don't you come and meet your friends, future family members and come hang out? If you're curious about the DLNA I know you heard me say that you're probably a good fit, but let's find out. You can slide into my DMs at ChristabellaTravels with the keyword apply and when you send that word you will get an automated response where I will ask you question by question. You can just type out your answers literally right there on Instagram and then, when I see your message, eventually I personally will come back and I will read the messages and I'll be able to respond to you and say, hey, I read your message about that. I see that you have this situation or this job, or that you have this question, and we can send voice notes back and forth and I can answer any of your questions and get you to a point where joining is either a full hell yes, and answer any of your questions and get you to a point where joining is either a full hell yes, or it's a hell no. And if it's a hell no, that's fine. This is a highly curated community and I just again, really only want people who are the right vibe in it, but that probably is you. So just saying, slide into my DMS at Christabella travels with the keyword apply and let's just have a conversation. If this freedom focused life is right for you, all right well.

Speaker 1: 1:20:49

Thank you so much for listening to the Digital Nomad Life podcast. You're welcome to scroll into the show notes. I have a lot of goodies down there. If there's anything that catches your eye, just grab some of my free trainings, check out the brochure for the DNLA. Or again, just send apply at ChristabellaTravels. Thanks so much for listening to the 100th episode of the podcast. I will see you on the next one. Thanks, bye.