117) How to Know if it's Time for Your Online Entrepreneur Era

Today I want to talk about why you haven’t taken the leap yet into entrepreneurship and to go after your dream of a digital nomad life of freedom. 

But here is the thing… you landed on this episode for a reason. A small part of you believes it is possible more than being scared. 

On this episode,  I’m gonna uncover some of the reasons why you have not yet taken the leap. I want to reassure you that it's not as scary as you might think, and it's actually so much closer to you than you think. But right now,  you might think that it's scary or you might think that it's inaccessible, and hopefully by the end of this episode, you will feel more empowered than ever to actually take more inspired action to start changing your life. 

We will dive into: 

• Why your curiosity about becoming a digital nomad is already a sign you’re ready
• The truth about fear when you want to quit your 9 to 5 (and why it’s not a red flag)
• How corporate conditioning keeps you stuck and what it takes to quit corporate for good
• The personality traits that make you naturally suited for entrepreneurship (hint: you might already have them)
• Why emotional resilience matters more than business skills when building a remote work lifestyle
• The biggest misconception about starting a business (and why you don’t need money, an office, or a “perfect idea”)
• How I built a million dollar business that allows me to get paid to travel and live a life of total freedom

This episode is for you if:

• You’re dreaming about becoming a digital nomad
• You want to quit your 9 to 5 but feel scared to take the leap
• You’re tired of corporate life and ready to quit corporate for something more aligned
• You want a career that allows you to work remotely and get paid to travel
• You feel like you’re meant for more, but don’t fully trust it yet

If you’ve made it this far, this isn’t random.
 You didn’t land here by accident.

Your desire for a different life?
 This episode your signal.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

👉 DM me “apply” to @christabellatravels on Instagram

🎧 Ready to take action? Watch Christa’s free training “5 Steps to Work From Wherever” — your roadmap to building a remote business: digitalnomadlifeacademy.com/biztraining

Transcript

Welcome And DM Invitation

Why Curiosity Signals Readiness

Risk Tolerance And Loving Novelty

Self-Belief After Old Labels

ADHD As An Entrepreneur Strength

Anxiety And Nervous System Regulation

Resilience Through Rejection And Failure

Skills Can Be Learned Later

Misconceptions About What Business Is

Freedom First Business Model Explained

Early Client Wins And Mindset Shift

Freedom Benefits And Final Pep Talk

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Hey there and welcome to the Digital Nomad Life Podcast. I'm your host, Krista, also known as Kristabella Travels, on social media. I always say that at the beginning of every episode because I really want to encourage you to send me your questions, send me your comments if it's a general question about digital nomadism, or if it's a more personal question about how you specifically can totally change your life into having a lifestyle of freedom. I am so here to answer that on Instagram in my DMs. I always encourage that because I get inspired to create these episodes by you, by your questions. And today's episode, of course, is inspired by some conversations that I've been having in the DMs recently. So I've gotten some DMs of people saying, hey, Krista, love the podcast, super inspired to change my life, but I'm feeling a little bit hesitant about the concept of entrepreneurship. And it's true in pretty much every single episode, I'm talking not just about creating a freedom-focused career for yourself, but doing that by means of starting your own business. I'm really taking the stand here for entrepreneurship. To me, it's just, it's like almost my favorite part of my life, you could say, is the fact that I have my own business because having my own business just means so much. It means so much about the kind of freedom that I have access to. And um today I want to, I guess, maybe ease your concerns about whether entrepreneurship is right for you or not. Um, because I think for a lot of people, especially people who land on this podcast, which isn't an accident, right? Like you took some kind of intentional inspired action to click this episode. And that tells me that you're probably curious about entrepreneurship, but you might not have taken the leap yet. And I bet you in today's episode, I'm gonna uncover at least some of the reasons why you have not yet taken the leap. Um, and I want to reassure you that it's not as scary as you might think. And it's actually so much closer to you than you think. But uh, we'll go through again all the reasons why you might think that it's scary or you might think that it's inaccessible. And hopefully by the end of this episode, you will feel more empowered than ever to actually take more inspired action to start changing your life. If you don't know me, I'm just gonna introduce myself real quick before we get into how to know if it's time to step into your entrepreneur era. So, hi, I'm Krista. I've been living abroad since 2013. I'm originally from the United States. And for the first 25 years of my life, I was super in the Matrix, if you know what I'm saying when I say that. Um, I couldn't see the Matrix because I was so in it. I got my four-year degree like a good girl. I went and uh got a good job in New York City and sat in a swivelly office chair under fluorescent lightings for years and let some other bag of stardust tell me what to do, how to spend my time when I could and couldn't go on vacation or when I could or couldn't go to the bathroom. Um, and I just really accepted that as normal for a long time because it is unfortunately normalized in Western society, um, or just the whole world, actually. But um I got ejected from The Matrix. I was like kind of starting to feel it in my third year of being in that corporate environment where I was feeling really suppressed, I was feeling seasonally depressed, um, I was feeling disconnected from nature, I was feeling disconnected from community, I was feeling disconnected from my authentic desires, from my expression. I wanted to travel the world and I literally couldn't and I didn't have the money for it. And just like, I just felt like I was kind of a shell of myself. Um, and then when I actually got let go from my job um when I was like 25, I'm I'm 38 now. When I was 25, I got left go from my job. And um, that sucked so bad at the time. Oh my God. And at the same time, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I'm not sure if I would have had the courage to leave that job, even though I knew it wasn't right for me. I knew it wasn't aligned with my higher self's path, but still I was on it because I was going with the flow of society. I was in the matrix. And I think it's worth noting that I didn't have any entrepreneur friends. I literally didn't know anybody that was living a different way. Like this is back in 2013, we're talking about, um, where Instagram was barely a thing. So there weren't other influencers talking about traveling. Um, the term digital nomad, I don't even know if it had even been coined yet at that point. And um yeah, again, I just didn't have any inspo. And so this is one reason why I'm really passionate about having this podcast and just my platform is, you know, like full disclosure, I am a coach and I do get paid to help people make the transition from nine to five into you decide, into like being a digital nomad, into having your own business. But whether anybody pays me or not, I just still feel like it's just so not cool that there are so many people that are really unhappy with their with their careers, like with their jobs. There are people that are just so suppressed out there, just like I was. And I'm just here on my platform, on my soapbox, shouting into my megaphone, shouting into the void of being like, guys, it can be another way. Trust me, okay? Like, you don't have to pay me, you don't have to pay anybody. Let me just tell you what you need to know, and then you take the steps from there based on what's right for you. So, again, this episode is meant to empower you to claim what you know is yours. And what you know is yours is a lifestyle that is better than what you're currently subscribed to. All right, so you're curious about becoming an entrepreneur and you're not sure if it's right for you. I just want to save you a whole bunch of time. Maybe you don't even need to listen to the rest of this episode because I honestly believe that even the desire or the interest or the curiosity to become a digital nomad or to become an entrepreneur or a digital nomad entrepreneur indicates that you are the kind of person that probably would do well with it. Because people that wouldn't do well with it would never even dream about it. Um, the kind of people that wouldn't do well with being digital nomad or people that wouldn't do well with entrepreneurship are people that have a very low risk tolerance. Um, for a lot of people, they could not fathom the idea of not knowing where they're gonna be next month. Or they would shudder to think about the idea that they might make a lot of money one month, but then not a lot of money the next month. Um, people that have this kind of low risk tolerance where they really love same-sameness, which, like, you know, humans are so diverse. There are a lot of people that love the same sameness. There are people that find so much comfort in, to me, what I would call monotony. I personally don't find any comfort in monotony. Um, I love novelty. I love things that are exciting and interesting and different. And so back in the day when I was like curious about being an entrepreneur, but I didn't know if it was right for me. I just wish I had known all along that the fact that I was even curious about it meant that it was the right time for me. Um, what I want you to know something about me is that there was a time in my life when I was not curious about it. There was a time in my life when I thought entrepreneurship is way too scary. And that's because at the time when I thought entrepreneurship is way too scary, I'm not interested in it. I had a lower risk tolerance. I also was much more insecure in myself than I am now. There was a long, long chapter of my life that I genuinely thought that I wasn't smart. There was a long chapter of my life where I believed what all the bullies in high school said that I was a dumb blonde, that I was a bimbo, that I was an airhead or something, which I don't know why blondes, blonde women get hated on so bad. Um, but whatever. It's it's unfortunately a thing. And when you hear the same message enough times, you kind of start to believe it. So at I would have never had the audacity to dream about being an entrepreneur because I just didn't think that I was capable of it subconsciously, right? And it wasn't until I started shifting my mindset of like, oh, okay, maybe, maybe I'm not, uh, maybe I didn't get straight A's in school, but maybe smart doesn't necessarily mean straight A's. Maybe smart means something else. Maybe smart means pattern recognition. Maybe smart means that I can think on my feet. Maybe smart also includes emotional intelligence. And it wasn't until I acknowledged these things about myself that I started to think, huh, maybe actually it could be cool to be an entrepreneur. But still I felt scared, right? I still was like, ooh, I don't know if it's right for me. But the fact that I even wanted it was a sign that I was ready. Here's the thing: doing something new, and especially doing something new and different than what everybody else is doing, which being an entrepreneur inherently means that you are doing something very different than everybody else because your business is new, your business is unique, nobody else has started the same exact business as you. That's what makes you an entrepreneur. Doing something different is always going to be scary. Always. So um the fact that you uh are scared of of being an entrepreneur doesn't mean that you're not cut out for it. That is not what it means. The fact that you are interested to me means that you probably are cut out for it. Definitely not so sure. I I don't know you, so I'm trying to make this episode to answer all of your objections and all the things that that uh freak you out. But I just want you to know that the desire to be an entrepreneur already says so much about you. The interest in it, the curiosity in it, in it says so much about you. If you are curious, to me, that says that you are someone who thinks outside of the box. You are someone who is available to be different. So I would say that if you feel that you are available to be different than everybody else around you, that's also a great indicator that this would be a great time for you to step into entrepreneurship. It's people that want to be just like everybody else that they could never, and I mean it, like they could never be an entrepreneur. Because when you're an entrepreneur, you have to come up with your own ideas. You can't be copying other people around you. Like that just won't work, and I'll go into that later. But like you need to be able to say, I have this unique idea and I'm going to act on it without the validation of others. And um we are trained from a young age to seek validation from others. So if you're someone who kind of like marches to the beat of your own drum, maybe you always have, or maybe this is an identity that you've only recently stepped into. Either way, if you're maybe like not buying all the same trends, like I actually feel like your fashion choices can even indicate if you're ready to step into entrepreneurship. Like if everybody else is buying something, the same freaking thing, and you decide, you know what, I don't need to follow that trend. I'm gonna do the thing that's right for me. I'm gonna choose the one that's right for me, not just because everybody else has it. That to me is actually a kind of an indicator that you march to the beat of your own drum, and therefore this could be the right move for you career-wise. You know who are people that march to the beat of their own drum? This is an interesting one. Um, but it's actually people with ADHD. People with ADHD uh tend to be people that feel deep down like something is inherently a little bit different about them. And um, there is something different about them. They're literally neurodivergent. Um, I include myself in that category, by the way. I'm raising my hand right now. So if you're someone that identifies with having ADHD, or you might have ADHD, um, you probably struggle with doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. You probably are looking around you, being like, um, why does everybody think that it's okay to wake up at this time and go to bed at this time? Why does everybody think that it's okay to be sitting at a desk for eight hours a day? Is everybody really being productive for all of these hours? Like, and you're also probably someone that has a lot of creative ideas. You're probably someone that, like, once you do get really into something, you get super into it, and then you're like obsessed. If you have the ability to be obsessed with something, that would make you a really great entrepreneur. I really feel like nothing can replace the ADHD tunnel vision when it comes to entrepreneurship. The thing is, people that have ADHD that are in the corporate environment, um, there's this unfortunate thing that happens. And again, I include myself in this example, is like if you have ADHD or you get hyper-fixated on things, or you're just even even if you're just like a really passionate person, you probably have an idea and you want to be pouring in all of your effort and time and attention and creativity into that idea. But in the corporate world, you're given a little slap on the wrist. You're saying, they're saying, no, no, no, don't go all in on that. We need you to do this thing and this thing and this thing. Things that you don't really care about. And when you don't really care about those things, you're probably not going to do a great job at them because your attention is still oriented towards the thing that you really do want to do. So when you don't do a great job at things, it starts killing your confidence that you're not actually good at the thing that you want to do. And therefore, you develop this belief that you're not good, that you are somehow like bad at whatever. You might start developing a belief that you're not worthy, that you're not smart, that you're not capable. But it's just because you have the ability to hyperfixate or be obsessive about something, and you have not been able to express it. So therefore, you've been operating in an environment in a corporate or work environment that's not conducive or aligned to your energy. And therefore, you have all these stories about yourself that you're not good enough. When you're an entrepreneur, your passion for life, your passion for anything quirky, your passionate or like tunnel vision, the fact that you can get like deeply interested, go into research rabbit holes, um, or develop hobbies really quickly and intensely, like all of these things are qualities that support you so much in entrepreneurship. The thing about entrepreneurship is there's a lot of novelty in the work that you're doing. Like, yes, you need to take full responsibility of all the things, and you might have to do some work that you're not good at, but then there will be aspects of your work that you realize you are really good at, or you're at least really curious about learning about, and therefore you go all in on it, you get really good, and then that's when certain parts of your business, certain parts of your career start to really shine and be very magnetic. And um, you can have so much success by having aspects of your business, aspects of your marketing be really, really magnetic. And that is on ADHD or passion. So if you're someone again that has this passion inside of you, the corporate nine to five shuts that shit down. And that's not fair. And I want you to understand that if you've been shut down, it's just because you've been a rainbow fish trying to breathe air above water. You just don't belong there. You belong underwater, you belong around the environment that is conducive to you and your energy and your brilliance. Now, when I say brilliance, I literally just got a vision of someone like turning this podcast off because you think that you're not brilliant. This is what I'm saying. Like, I I really feel like people that are interested in entrepreneurship, but they're scared of it, it's because the interest, the desire indicates that they are actually capable of it. But the fear is that they've been conditioned by society or unfortunately trained to believe that they are not good because they've been operating in the wrong environment. So these two things really go hand in hand. Like it's okay if you're scared. You're supposed to be scared when you do something new for the first time. Um, again, your interest is like the number one indicator that you would be great at this. Now, another indicator that you are really cut out for entrepreneurship is if you've been doing work around regulating your nervous system and anxiety. So, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, like there are there are quite a lot of anxiety-inducing things that come up with entrepreneurship. You might be making inconsistent money at the beginning. You have the ability to make a lot more money than you could at your corporate job, but it's inconsistent. Um, and that can really send people into some kind of like anxiety tailspin. Also, when you're an entrepreneur, you're gonna have to learn a lot of new things. Like you're almost always at the beginning of a learning curve, especially in the first couple years of your business. Like there's just so much to learn while you're getting your system set up, while you're understanding your ideal clientele, while you're refining your marketing strategy. Like you're just always gonna be at the beginning of a learning curve. And for a lot of people, feeling like they don't know what they're doing it creates a lot of anxiety and it's too much for them to hold. People that, for example, have like perfectionism. People that have perfectionism might do actually way better in the corporate environment. Um, because the corporate environment, they give you this like usually uh unreachable standard. And people that are perfectionists, they just are like striving to reach this very specific standard that someone else set for them. Whereas when you're an entrepreneur, there is no specific standard that you're reaching to because you're carving your own path. So um, you first of all, like can't really be a perfectionist, or if you're a recovering perfectionist, that's okay. You just need to be able to hold the fact that you don't know what the hell you're doing. Okay. So if you're okay at being a beginner at something, amazing. This tells me that you are so cut out for entrepreneurship because you can go into it naive and not make it mean that you're not good enough. You don't just because you don't know how to do something, you know that that doesn't mean that you can't learn how to do it. You're okay with learning. And in fact, if you're someone who loves learning, if you are just like someone who's really curious and interested and you see the world that like any new skill that you gain is a skill gained, then amazing. That tells me that you are so right for being an entrepreneur. I had a couple of jobs in my um early years of my career. Like I was working at a marketing agency, and I remember being pretty fulfilled in the first year of it. Um, I had all kinds of random ass clients. Like one of them was a foot doctor, another one was an appliance repair company, um, another one was a wedding photographer, uh, like random, random, random. Um, oh, one was a probate lawyer. I didn't even know what that was. I think I even forget now. Anyway, I had all these different clients that I was doing um search engine optimization marketing work for. And even though these clients were super random and like not necessarily topics that I was personally fascinated by, I still am the kind of person that like anything new that I learned, I'm like, cool, I just learned something new. And I love learning. And I wish I had known back then that my love for learning would have made me a good entrepreneur. But I just didn't know because I didn't know any entrepreneurs. And I also think back then I did have a much higher level of anxiety than I have now. Actually, one beautiful thing that's come out of my entrepreneurship journey is that I have become such a less anxious person because I've just gotten used to holding the um, I don't want to say instability of entrepreneurship, because like that's not really fair. Um I would say my business is really stable at this point, but there's just always things that are gonna make you need to pivot your direction, um adjust to the changes of society, of to the algorithms, of to inflation, whatever. Um there's just there's just always there's a lot of fluctuation in entrepreneurship. And I don't know if I was able to handle that back then, but because I've had my business for six years now, I've just learned and trained my nervous system to approach changes that are beyond my control of just being part of the process and not something so scary. Like I've basically conditioned my nervous system to be like, oh, a challenge. Okay, here we go. Another challenge. Not, oh my god, a challenge. Am I gonna fail? Am I gonna fuck this up? Am I gonna, am I gonna drown in my and losing all the money? And am I gonna be homeless on the streets? Like, like maybe I would have thought like that back in the day. And back in the day, I wasn't ready. But as I said again, I've I've done just like so much work on my nervous system and on being able to hold fluctuations and change in life that um that now makes me so comfortable with entrepreneurship. So if you're someone that um has experienced maybe a lot of change in your life, like if you're no stranger to, I don't know, let's say pivoting directions, or you're someone that actually thrives on change, you're someone that um has experienced a lot of highs and lows in your life, and you've come out more resilient and better and stronger than ever, and that's your mindset on change, then hell yeah, you will be able to handle any challenge that entrepreneurship throws your way because it's gonna be nothing compared to what you've already experienced. So, um, you know, this is a joke that my my friends and I say where we're like, uh yeah, like normal people just that don't have trauma, like they're just not that interesting. And um yeah, I feel like it's true though. Like people that haven't encountered any adversity in their life are frankly kind of boring. Like, you need like challenges make you more interesting, they make you more resilient, they give you wisdom. So if you are someone that has encountered some challenge in your life, whether it's a challenge with your family or with grief or with injuries or um with a natural disaster or some other kind of disaster, like if you've lived through some kind of significant experience like that, and again, you come out the other side stronger and better as a result, hell yeah. Welcome to entrepreneurship. Let's go. You are part of the club, you belong here. Um, speaking of adversity and challenges as well, I want to include the fact that if you've ever been rejected for anything in your life, and again, you've also managed to overcome it, I also think that that's a great sign that you are ready to step into your entrepreneurship era. Like if you wanted to become some pro athlete or something, and then it didn't end up working out, or you didn't make it into the school of your choice, or um, you ended up having some kind of disastrous breakup, for example. Like if you've ever felt rejected in some way and you've come out on the other side, you will be able to handle entrepreneurship. Fear of failure and rejection, I think, is a huge reason why people actually don't start their businesses. They're scared of what's gonna happen to their ego because it's probably too fragile if they get rejected. Um, like I think as an entrepreneur, you you really need to have a strong sense of self because you need to be able to say, you know what, I'm good either way. If this, if this launch works out amazing, I'll be so happy. And if it doesn't, I'm not gonna make it mean that I'm worthless. I'm not gonna make it mean that I'm not good enough. It just means that I didn't um create a conversion as well as I could. And therefore, I gotta go back to my drawing board, I gotta go back to my strategy board, and I need to tinker with a few things and see if I can solve the math equation instead of making it mean again something about your ego or sense of self-worth. So if you are okay with the fear of failure or rejection, you're definitely gonna be okay as an entrepreneur. Now, as I say that, like I don't want you to think that I'm someone that like I love being rejected or I love failing. Of course not. Like, I no one no one likes these feelings. What I'm saying is that you can hold it. And this is kind of on your nervous system too, right? Like you've done the work around your anxiety, you can handle curveballs in life, you can handle it if somebody doesn't think that you're the most amazing person on earth. Um, you can handle it if uh you are out of alignment with the thing that you that you wanted. Um, you're okay if you don't get exactly what you asked for. If that is you, you're gonna be just fine. So now that we're like 30 minutes into this episode, I just want to call out something that you may have noticed, which is that at this point, I've been mostly talking about emotions. I've been mostly talking about being able to handle the identity shifts and the feelings that come along with entrepreneurship. And that's because what doesn't matter about entrepreneurship is actually what you can literally do. Like you don't need to be super smart, you don't need to know how to do marketing, you don't need to have an MBA, you don't need to have gotten A's in school, you don't need to have a specific kind of network, you don't need to have a genius idea. You don't really need any of these practical things in order for entrepreneurship to work out for you, because all of those practical things are things that can be learned or acquired. Um and yeah, uh side note, if you want to learn any of these things, that's what I'm here for. So, like once people do end up signing on to work with me, then I teach them all the things that can be learned. Um, I teach them how to come up with a business idea that's actually aligned with their personality. I have a huge process around that. It's called my career assessment process, episode 33. Um, if you are curious, like if you are curious about entrepreneurship, but you don't have a business idea, listen to episode 33. Um, but yeah, aside from that, like coming up with a business idea, of course, you need to have one, but it doesn't need to be that deep. Like a business idea doesn't need to be the next unicorn or most creative thing ever. A business idea, all it needs to be is something that helps people. You can actually go and listen to the last episode where I talk all about like what business is and how it needs to just help people. Um, in terms of marketing, marketing is always changing. Always, always, always. Um, the way that we market now is like night and day so different from the way that we marketed in the 60s and the 70s. Um, so you don't need to go to school to learn how to do marketing. Like when you start learning marketing, you're literally just gonna be a few years behind the best marketer in the world. Like, just this can be learned, okay? So you don't need to go in with any any kind of knowledge like that. And marketing can be pretty simple if you follow the steps. It's something that you can read books about, you can go onto YouTube about, you can um take a course on, again, you can work with a coach like me. Like, there's so many ways for you to learn about marketing that you don't need to have that skill already in order to step into entrepreneurship. You just need to have the willingness and interest and capacity to learn, just like with every other aspect of entrepreneurship. If you have all the emotional and nervous system regulation things that I mentioned earlier dialed in, everything else can be learned. It can be learned as you go, which I hope that you are understanding is such good news because this means that the lifestyle of your dreams, which again, like if you're listening to this particular podcast and not just Alex Hermozy's podcast or Gary Vaynerchuk or Jeff Bezos, if he had ever had a podcast, I don't think that he would, but you're not listening to some other entrepreneurship podcast, you're listening to my podcast, which is you're creating a business, you're going into entrepreneurship because you want a specific lifestyle. So the lifestyle of your dreams is so much closer than you think if your nervous system and your emotional responses to the concept of failure and change is dialed in. If you have that under control, you are gonna be so okay. You're gonna be able to learn what you need to learn and you're gonna be able to grow and excel. You probably just need a little bit of support and guidance to again help you come up with a business idea that actually makes sense to show you how to validate that idea so that you're not just putting out a business that nobody wants, but you've actually done the research in advance to check to make sure that people like it. You might need someone to give you some guidelines on how to think about pricing your offer, which is actually way more complicated than you think. Um, I do have a whole episode on pricing your offer. Dude, you could also just binge all the recent episodes of this podcast, and you would know so much of the practical things that you need to know in order to create an online business that can completely change your lifestyle. Like, also side note, the way that I teach business, oh, this is another thing I wanted to say. The way that I teach business is I make it as simple and fast and easy for you to change your lifestyle as soon as possible. So um, the last thing that I want to say, like a big reason why I think a lot of people don't start businesses is I have all these misconceptions about what a business actually is. I I have this suspicion that a lot of people, when they think, oh, entrepreneurs, they need to rent out an office space and that's so expensive. Entrepreneurs need to have a bunch of capital in advance to invest in their business before they can make money. Entrepreneurs need to hire employees and they can't do it all themselves. Being an entrepreneur or being a business owner means that you have some kind of big idea or some inventory or that there's all these logistics that are involved. And honestly, like that is one way to do business. Like, of course, there are business owners that have offices and have employees and have needed to invest a lot of money and capital into, you know, hiring a marketing department, and they needed to invest money in advance to getting their products ready and whatever. Like, all that, like whatever you whatever you think business looks like is true to an extent. It's true for some businesses, but the important thing, the important message I want to get across right now is that it's not true for all businesses. And it's definitely not true for the kind of businesses that I teach people how to create. So, just a little bit about my business philosophy and my method and the way that I teach business. So, um, because I am a business coach that's really focused on lifestyle change, I teach business in a way that enables lifestyle change faster than the kind of business that I just described to you. The kind of business, by the way, that requires an office and employees and inventory and products and logistics and shipping and all that, like that kind of business to me does not allow you to have the lifestyle that you want. It might allow you to make a lot of money. And if and if money is your one objective, then that might actually be the right kind of business for you to create, something where it's location dependent and you have all these moving pieces and people that you can hire and delegate to. For a lot of people that want to be entrepreneurs, that is right for them. It's not wrong to create a business like that. And again, those businesses exist. But people that come to me, they don't want anything that ties them down. What they want is freedom. They want financial freedom, they want location freedom, they want creative freedom, they want emotional freedom, they want to be free. So I teach business in a way that enables that as fast as possible. Because I also know that the kind of people that come to me wanting to start a business, they are usually really unsatisfied with the life that they're currently living. They don't like their job, they don't like where they live, or they have fallen in love with someone that lives in another country, or they just got pregnant and they want to be a stay-at-home mom instead of having to go into an office once they're three months postpartum. Like people that come to me, they want freedom ASAP. So that's how I teach business. And the kind of business that I teach is the high-ticket small service provider model. And the reason why I teach this is because you actually don't really need anything other than your energy, which you have right now, in order to make money. Um, in my last episode, I talk about the beginning stages of my business and how I was able to make literally$2,000 for my first client having literally nothing physically prepared. I had done a lot of mental preparation. I had made a lot of decisions. Like I had decided what I wanted to call myself, I had decided how I was gonna go about supporting another person. I had decided the kind of person that I wanted to work with. I had decided my price point. I had decided, um, yeah, like just the the way that I was gonna, the way that I was gonna serve people. So I made a lot of decisions, but I hadn't written, I hadn't like created anything physical. I didn't even actually have an LLC setup. I didn't have anything ready, but still I was able to immediately, like within a couple of months of making my decisions, I was able to secure$2,000 for my first client. And I got my second and third clients only a few weeks after that. And literally, like I remember I had a month where I made 6k. Um, and I had only started, I had only like hired my business coach a few months prior to that. And I was like, oh my God, I literally just made more than my take-home salary at my job. And that was so easy. And like I got to do it on my own time, and I got to do it from Sri Lanka. I was in Sri Lanka at the time, and um, it was just this really mind-blowing moment where I suddenly saw that like, oh my gosh, that was really not that complicated. And I can't believe I lived my whole life feeling insecure, feeling like I wasn't cut out for this shit. Like it could have been easy this whole time. I just didn't know. Because again, my nervous system wasn't regulated. I didn't believe in myself. I had imposter syndrome. I thought that I was dumb. Like, I like all these beliefs, all these emotional things had held me back from just boom, like changing everything. And I I really have to give credit to my first ever business coach. I I I count the birthday of my business as December 4th, 2019, because that was the day that I hired my business coach. And um, it was so validating working with her because she's like, Krista, you actually have so many skills and so many talents. And I'm like, what? And she's like, Yeah, you have all this experience. You've been working for someone else for like nine years at this point. You obviously know how to do things and you have all this lifestyle experience. You have a lot of wisdom, but we got to talk about why you don't believe in yourself and why you have a poor money mindset. And she did all this mindset work with me, and that was a shift that I needed to switch me from the employee mindset to the entrepreneur mindset. And ever since I switched my mindset, everything in my life changed. And I've never looked back and oh my god, I will never be an employee again. Because you want to know why? I don't like other people telling me when I can go to the bathroom. I don't like other people telling me that I can or cannot go to a festival in Costa Rica. I don't want someone else telling me that I can or can't take advantage of a killer deal to go on a trip to China with my best friend from home. Like, I don't want someone telling me yes or no to this shit. Like it's my life. How dare you? Who the hell are you? Other bag of stardust, right? Am I right? Am I right? Do you resonate with this? Like, if you are just sick and tired of living life on someone else's terms, of working just to make someone else rich in order to make someone else have the lifestyle of their dreams, if you're freaking over it and you want to live a life where you are expressed, able to help people in a meaningful way, where you are making money on your own terms, when like the second that you get more confidence, you can just raise your prices. When the second that you get a little bit more skilled and experienced in something, you can add an extra service. The second that you make a little bit more money, you can hire somebody or delegate something. And that's how you're gonna end up scaling your business to the moon because you can when you have your own business. Financial freedom is yours. Financial freedom is possible, but really it is only when you have your own business. Working for someone else is not freedom. You might get a little bit more freedom, you might get a little bit more financial freedom, you might get a little bit more location freedom depending on the kind of job that you have. You might get a little bit more creative freedom, a little bit more emotional freedom while working for someone else, a little bit more like meaningful uh expression, but you you can never get the whole pie. You'll never get the whole pie working for someone else. And I can't say this enough. Like, people who click on this podcast and make it through this much of me talking, you know who you are. You know you're cut out for this shit. You just have to get through your own ego, you need to build up your resilience and acknowledge that you are someone that thinks differently, acknowledge that you are someone that has big dreams, and that that alone makes you ready for entrepreneurship. But again, you gotta get comfortable with a little bit of fear, you gotta get comfortable with a little bit of uncertainty, you gotta get comfortable with taking ownership of your life. But when you do that. Your whole world will open up. Anything will become possible. For me, I have literally been to every single continent, including Antarctica. I have been to every festival that I have ever dreamed of going to. I have been able to dance for days in a row. I've been able to meet the most interesting people ever. I meet the most fascinating, interesting people from all over the world on a daily basis. I've been able to learn new languages. I've been able to make a million dollars. What? I've been able to travel for a month at a time on a week's notice. I've been able to say yes to a second date in a foreign country. I've been able to live a life of magic and and say yes to the synchronistic things. Say yes to my spontaneity. Say yes to my impulses and desires, and therefore live my best life every single day for the past six years. And the most beautiful thing about that is this is just the beginning because I ain't never going back. Hell no. Why would I? Why would I go back to being an why would I go back to being an employee when I now know that I have everything it takes to be an entrepreneur? Because one, I have experience doing it. But two, even if I start a completely different business, I have the nervous system responses to hold being a complete beginner again. I know how to do that. Therefore, I never have to go back. So and by the way, I could if I wanted to, right? I bet you if I tried to get a job, I would be able to get in a phenomenal job. Because any employer who sees that an employee has entrepreneur experience, they know they know that that potential employee, that that potential hire is going to be the best employee because they are autonomous, they are a creative thinker, like entrepreneurs and people that are hiring know what it takes to be an entrepreneur. And they know what it takes to even have the desire to be an entrepreneur. A lot of employees don't have it though, and that's why people stay as employees. But if you let just anyway, if anybody came to me and they were entrepreneurial, but they wanted to work for me for whatever reason, like maybe that they want to have a period of their life or they're less stressed out, they would just probably get the best job. Um, I all all the people that I hire are contractors and therefore they are employee, they are entrepreneurs themselves, and they're the best. Because I don't have to micromanage them because they bring issues up to me because they're comfortable with any pivoting that I want to make. Anyway, I'm I'm going on a tangent now. What I'm trying to say is becoming an entrepreneur, it doesn't mean that you can't be an employee again. I just am pretty sure you won't want to, because why would you? Anyway, um, I think that's what I wanted to say in today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you are at all curious about how I could personally support you in taking your entrepreneur journey, which again doesn't just involve helping you come up with a business idea that's aligned with who you are and your life's mission and your soul's purpose, but also supporting you through all the things I talked about today, the emotional regulation that's needed for your entrepreneur journey. Like that's all included in the way that I support you in going and changing your life and your career forever. So slide into my DMs at Christabella Travels with the keyword apply. And you will therefore get an automated message that I will ask you a series of questions. I think it asks you one at a time. It's basically like, where are you from? What have you, what have you been doing to make money? Like, what have you tried before? Like I ask you some basic questions because like I do want to encourage you to slide into my DMs, but don't hit me up with some like, hey, and then wait for me to respond. I hate that shit. Tell me, tell me who you are and let's have a real conversation so that I can make this efficient and I can see if it's gonna be a good fit for us to work together or not. Because if not, like if you're not right for the program or you're not ready yet, or you need to go do other work, I will send you on your way. I have no worry about trying to get people into the program. I just I know the people that find me that are right for me come to me and they're excited to work with me because they feel the alignment and therefore I feel the alignment. So let's just check in, let's see if the alignment is there. Slide into my DMs with the keyword apply, answer the questions, and then I'll either send you a voice note, I'll call you, or we'll take it to the next step in a different way. All right, thank you so much for listening to the Digital Know My Life podcast. I will see you in the next episode. Bye.