One of the most vital skills in entrepreneurship is the ability to push outside of your comfort zone and keep learning. Whether it’s a new technology changing your industry or a novel approach to marketing, it’s important to keep your eyes open, take in these changes, and allow them to inform your offerings and your business.

It’s even better if you can absorb these ideas and teach your peers about them – positioning you as a thought leader in your industry, even while you’re still learning and growing alongside everybody else. We also touched on this idea in the previous episode with Michael Roderick.

Sometimes, it’s best to educate people who are just a few steps behind you in business, rather than those who are just starting out. You can teach others as you’re learning, stay ahead of the curve in your industry, and build a dedicated community around your ideas and knowledge.

Natalie Sisson has been practicing this approach by educating fellow entrepreneurs since she started her business ten years ago as a suitcase entrepreneur.

She's been on a quest to discover what freedom really means for almost a decade.

After 8 years in the corporate world, and two years as co-founder of a tech company, she turned her blog The Suitcase Entrepreneur into an online education company where she created online courses, coached, taught workshops, and held international retreats to show people how to build a business they loved, from anywhere. She did all this while living out of a suitcase for 6.5 years and traveling to 70 countries.

Then in 2016 she moved home to New Zealand to live a more rooted lifestyle and pivot in her business. Now, she does strategic consulting with impact-driven ventures, coaches purpose-driven entrepreneurs, and builds online learning solutions to help people thrive in the future of work.

Natalie has had such a fascinating career and is a true lover of learning. We talk about how she grew The Suitcase Entrepreneur while traveling the world and helping other business owners create more lifestyle freedom through their work.

Natalie also highlights the importance of continual learning and why positioning yourself as a “leading learner” is often more dynamic and fulfilling than claiming to be a “guru” or “expert”.

We also talk about how she transitioned her business as her life became more settled, how she navigated re-branding herself and her work, and why she didn’t want to scale everything up. And, we discuss the fascinating future of work and how technology is becoming more integrated with what we do – and how to prepare for the changes that are already on their way.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• How Natalie built a thriving online business around her desire for freedom and travel.
• Why she prefers the term “leading learner” to titles like expert or guru.
• How Natalie transitioned her business and scaled things back so she could establish a more rooted lifestyle after moving back to New Zealand.
• Why it can be more effective to educate people only a few steps behind you rather than complete beginners.
• How Natalie used the tools she uses with clients to redesign her business and get excited about entrepreneurship all over again.
• What the future of work looks like and why the special skills humans have will only become more important.

What Mastery means to Natalie:

Fully comprehending a concept and being able to teach & apply it with real insight.

Turning point:

When I designed my business around my lifestyle and created more time, money and freedom as a result.

Natalie’s Core message:

That we have so much more potential than we often realize and it's up to us to unleash it.