When you travel as much as I do, each time you visit a new country, you kind of know what to expect, where to look first, what services are most important to sort out, and how to get your bearings.

But travelling the world differs from changing your world completely by relocating to another country to live. There are millions of adventurous expats who do this every year. Whether it's for work, family, a new found love or just a fresh start. 

Expats face different challenges to world travellers though, and if there's one man who knows about them it's John Falchetto, Expat Life Coach.

Originally from Canada he now lives in the South of France ensuring expats have all the support and advice they need when they land in their new `home away from home'.

Not only that but John is an incredibly cool guy, a great communicator, an excellent blogger and a community builder as you can witness by visiting his blog and reading through the many comments his friends and fans always leave.

He's lived and worked in Canada, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and describes himself as a`serial entrepreneur with 15 years experience working with executives, small business owners to large multinationals all over the world'.

He is wise beyond his years, as all that travel and work has shown him that fulfillment isn’t about money.

Fulfillment is about creating a lifestyle which suits your values and ambitions.

You need to sell your services or your products AND you also have to stay true to who you are. My thoughts exactly.  He's even created the Expat 30 Program which is a complete roadmap to successfully reaching your goals, picking-up new habits and kicking away overwhelm.

In this podcast interview with John Falchetto you'll learn:

• What are the most common challenges expats face and how to deal with them
• Top 5 tips for preparing and organizing your life before and after moving to a new country
• The importance of having a purpose and a goal on your expat journey and prioritizing your values
• How John challenged himself to 30 days to learn a new habit including doubling his blog traffic.

Steve Kamb Shares His Entrepreneurial Journey As A Fitness Nerd

Posted on 22. Nov, 2011 by Natalie in Suitcase Entrepreneur Podcast

If there’s one person who makes me realise my epic bike ride of 6,445km to Africa is totally doable, it would be Steve Kamb of NerdFitness, because this guy exercises anywhere at anytime and makes it fun.

Like me, Steve is traveling all over the world, going on crazy adventures, and he’s helping other people level up THEIR lives along the way. He has also flown 35,000 miles for $418 all around the world.

I can’t really sum him up any better than his Twitter bio which states:

Rebel leader of NerdFitness.com, Google guest lecturer, epic quester, adventure-travel hacker. I help nerds and desk jockeys lose weight and live better. Win.

Yes that is exactly what Steve does, but he also does it in style and his story is a pretty incredible one. Of a blogger struggling to make sense of all the effort he was putting in, when he knew he had a greater message to share.

Who then decided to turn what he was doing on its head, and in doing so turn his blog around and create a thriving army of nerd fitness geeks and superheroes and an amazing business in just 9 months, including a clothing line. And by the looks of his epic quests, he’s not stopping there people. No siree! This guy is on a mission.

In this interview with Steve Kamb you will learn:

• What he achieved with 9 months of publishing 5 articles a week to his blog
• What one critical thing he focused on after 9 months that improved his blog performance 10 times and allowed him to build a raving community and huge subscriber base.
• How he’s grown his free message boards from 20-30 active members into 3100+ members.
• What his primary goal was with launching his 3 ebook for beginner rebel fitness guides
• How he’s managed to increase his profits month on month to 5 figures with no advertising on his site

Become Rebel Fit While Travelling The World

Check out Steve’s awesome books too, especially if you want to be a `fit as’ Suitcase Entrepreneur on the go.

Rebel Fitness Guide, the Rebel Strength Guide, and the Rebel Running Guide…all of which are written as beginner guides to their respective subjects – getting in shape, getting stronger, and running without injury.

Do you ever meet the kind of person that makes you stop in your tracks? That person who blows you away with their love and gratitude, their generosity and their sense of purpose in life?

Well Farnoosh Brock of Prolific Living - Smart Habits for Rich Living,  does that just via Skype, Twitter and email, so I can’t imagine what it would be like to hang with her in person? Oh wait I get to do just that when she arrives in Wellington just after New Year!

Over on her popular and engaging blog she talks about living life on your own terms, something Farnoosh struggled with during her own life, and about

“Being fearless and fabulous, about being your own master rather than a constant victim of circumstance, about doing what you love and escaping the corporate rat race but creating wealth and abundance doing exactly what you love.”

That’s why it was such a pleasure to talk with her about her journey and how she is inspiring others to live their own life in a way that stimulates your mind instead of dulling it and breaks boundaries rather than stops at the limits.

Powerful stuff right? So without further ado ….

In this interview with Farnoosh Brock you’ll learn:

• How Farnoosh left her high paying executive role to pursue her dreams
• The only way to live life on your own terms and be fearless
• How she created her first ever digital product and the product launch process (plus tips from me!)
• Why LinkedIn is such a powerful platform for connecting with people and how to get business leads and partnerships from it
• Why Facebook is great for traffic and how Twitter has helped her to meet people the world over
• Plus much more!

Listen to the Suitcase Entrepreneur Podcast with Farnoosh Brock
Listen and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes 

Top Tools Farnoosh Recommends

Freshbooks to track expenses, create time sheets, and get paid by clients
Things by Cultured Code (sadly there’s no PC version yet)
Mindjet Manager (for both Mac and PC)

The Fear-Crushing Travel Guide

While I may be a fearless traveller (well most of the time), Farnoosh and I know that not everyone is. And that travelling can in fact be a really scary or daunting experience, especially if you’re not used to it.

That’s why I’m incredibly happy to highly recommend her Fear-Crushing Travel Guide that I’ve read. It’s clear Farnoosh designed this guide to enable and empower you to crush your fears and anxieties on leaving home behind and embarking on that journey – be it a hop around a few cities or a journey over oceans and continents across the globe.

Generous Offer

Farnoosh has been extra generous and by giving my tribe 50% off if you use the codeSuitcase at checkout, but only for the next 3 days. So go ahead and pick up your copy of the Fear Crushing Travel Guide

One lucky person will win it for free by answering this question on my blog:
When did Farnoosh launch her first ever product? Leave your answer in the comments below .
Have engaging conversations on Twitter with Farnoosh @prolificliving

http://suitcaseentrepreneur.com/business-travel/crushing-your-travel-fears-and-living-a-prolific-life-with-farnoosh-brook/

You can't help but like Sean Ogle. He has an infectious energy, a great attitude to life, and it's true to say he's popular with the ladies (all his friends say so at least). More importantly he's a location independent rebel and blogs about it to his adoring community.

We met at the World Domination Summit and instantly found common ground discussing our nomadic lives and love for freedom. He's spent the last two years of his life learning how to travel and work from anywhere in the world too. You could say he's the male version of me....Sean might put it another way but hey, this is my blog!

Even though he graduated with finance degree and had a job as a finance analyst for 2 years, he hated it and knew he wanted to be entrepreneur. So during this day job he started creating a website listing his 'bucket list' to the public. He also taught himself SEO and from that he managed to quit that job, and build a lifestyle business consulting to small and large businesses. He has never looked back.

At the time I interviewed him, he was just off on a delicious sounding trip to South East Asia, which I must admit I was slightly jealous of as it's one of my favourite regions to travel to. Just before he left Sean had launched his latest online program Location Rebel, where he teaches people how to turn their skills into business, and had sold out all 24 spots at $297 each, in less than an hour!

So let's find out the real story behind Sean's location independent lifestyle business and pick his brain on how you can do it to - if you're up for it.

In this interview with Sean Ogle you'll learn:

• What his defining moment in life was that made a difference to where he is now
• How much effort he put into his online business before he made his first sale
• His secret social media tool that has doubled his traffic!
• The trick to outsourcing effectively, regardless of timezone

Top 3 tools that revolutionized the way he works

• Google docs for all his project management
• Dropbox for online cloud storage of his digital products etc
• Spotify - to listen to while being productive

Plus Sean, like me, uses Basecamp for project management and Skype has his key communication tool

Sean's Top Social Media Tips

Too many people use it as a one way stream of communication. Sean likes to use it as a two way conversation starter, often using his updates to ask questions to communicate to his audience. He also hearts Twitter as one of his key tools. Oh and you have to listen to the podcast to find out his favourite tool that drives him a ton of traffic.

Want to live a ridiculously extraordinary life? Then you should meet Karol Gadja as he the kind of guy you will want on your team. Yes he is a he and you pronounce his name Carl Guy-Duh. Right now we have that sorted let’s get on to why I wanted to interview Karol for my Suitcase Entrepreneur podcast.

It’s probably pretty obvious. Karol believes in ridiculously extraordinary freedom so he’s my kind of guy. He does what he wants, when he wants, and has several profitable online businesses and projects that allow him to do that. He is into fitness, health, travel and did I mention freedom?

He favours minimalism, mini lifestyle projects and has a love of very fast rollercoasters – which instantly endeared me to him.

Having first seen this giant (ok very tall) guy at BlogWorld and barely saying hi across a table full of bloggers, I managed to not speak to him properly once again at the World Domination Summit in Portland this year.

So finally, after his road trip across the USA and a Skype connection we managed to talk about who he is, what he does and how he lives his life.

What you’ll learn in this interview:

• Why Karol embarked on a cross country USA rollercoaster tour and what stopped him in his tracks
• How he's building a new business with Kindles and digital products
• Why he doesn't use social media for business
• Why he recently took all his products off his blog and ways to work with him...

Podcast: How Corbett Barr Builds A Thriving and Profitable Audience Online While Living Abroad

Posted on 12. Sep, 2011 by Natalie in Suitcase Entrepreneur Podcast

You may just have heard of Corbett Barr. If not I’d question where you’ve been hanging out on the web. Aside from being a really down to earth guy, who’s kind and generous in his knowledge, he’s also built a 6 figure a year business doing what he does best.

His favourite coined phrase and one philosophy he lives by is to write epic shit and I couldn’t agree more! It’s certainly done wonders for him.

You see Corbett is a staunch advocate for us entrepreneurs, especially those starting out with new websites or blogs who want to build up traffic and understand the principles of marketing in building solid foundations online. He’s done an incredible job of building a huge amount of traffic for this own sites and then showing others how to do the same.

Over at ThinkTraffic.net he teaches people how to build a thriving and profitable audience for your website or blog. He runs Traffic School – a great program I’m part of where you build on all the principles of how to write great blog content, drive traffic to your site, reach out to other bloggers, understand guest posting, use keywords wisely and more importantly track your progress.

He keeps the creativity flowing by introducing fun yet extremely valuable initiatives like like The Million Dollar Blog Project and manages to write moving and motivational posts on his own site geared towards adventurous entrepreneurs – now you can see why he’s my kind of guy.

What I like most about his set up though, is that Corbett and his lovely wife take regular 6 month sabbaticals to live in other countries and take real time off. A lot of his business ticks along nicely in the background because he’s set it up that way.

In This Interview You’ll Learn

• How Corbett built his business from the ground up and his startup background that led him to be a serial entrepreneur
• His top tips for forming deeper connections with the big bloggers and which platforms to focus on first
• How and what to outsource on your blog and what you should always do yourself
• Why it’s so great to take off to exotic places and live in different countries each year

Click here to listen to Podcast #9 Corbett Barr Interview
Or Listen and subscribe to my podcast on iTunes.

(PS The iTunes podcast with Corbett will show up soon I promise)

Key Tools Corbett Uses:

• Currently using Wedoist.com – light project management tool at $5 pm for project
• Uses Virtual Stafffinder from Chris Drucker http://www.virtualstafffinder.com/
• Uses elance.com too find staff for certain contracts or work on his websites
• His virtual assistant does: Transcripts, video editing, writing content and publishing content

Podcast: How Jodi Ettenberg Dared To Become A Legal Nomad

Posted on 29. Aug, 2011 by Natalie in Suitcase Entrepreneur Podcast

I had the pleasure of meeting Jodi Ettenberg, a pint-sized powerhouse and chief adventurer at Legal Nomads, at the World Domination Summit in Portland this year.

She was a key speaker up on stage, captivating the audience with her stories on how a dare ensured she wound up in law school and how that trend of accepting dares led her to her current wonderful nomadic life on the road.

I can’t really sum her up better than she does. So stealing from her website full of amazing photos, exploding in colour and richness from the page, as well as her beautifully crafted writing style, capturing her international travels, here is her bio:

I am a former lawyer from Montreal currently eating my way around the world, one country at a time. Marshmallow enthusiast, volcano climber and cave spelunker – and also a geek.

Culture, food and travel pretty much make up Jodi’s life and she now makes a living out of doing the things she loves most. Her story is quite unique in that there was no clear path to where she is now. She has simply lived her life based on her own values and, in return,  it has rewarded her honesty, integrity and bravery to do her own thing.

What you’ll learn in this interview

• How you can create an amazing life from accepting a dare
• Why leaving your chosen career path to a road less travelled can be a great move
• How to make the most of opportunities that come out of doing what comes naturally
• What you can learn from travel, photography and a love for international cuisine
• How to build a cool community and keep your finger on the pulse with social media

Click to listen to my interview with Jodi Ettenberg
Or Listen and subscribe to my podcast on iTunes.

Key Tools Jodi Uses:

• Tweet deck for managing Twitter and other social networks
• Evernote for clipping just about everything on the web
• Summify that she hooks up to Google Reader to summarize her RSS feeds
• Quora for asking and answering intelligent questions
  
  
  Here’s Jodi’s own HipMunk cartoon for kicks.
  
   

Podcast: How To Reach One Million In Sales While On A Tropical MBA

Posted on 15. Aug, 2011 by Natalie in Suitcase Entrepreneur Podcast

In this week’s podcast I speak with someone living the dream. A tropical one at that.

I was inspired getting off this interview with Dan Andrews, of Tropical MBA fame. He’s got a great outlook on life and is truly motivational with his entrepreneurial insight and current business on track to do $1 million in sales this year.

Coming from 60+ hour work weeks in the corporate world to redefining the life he wanted, Dan currently lives in beautiful Bali and runs a team of  people around the world including offices in the Phillippines and San Diego.

Dan has mastered outsourcing the right stuff so he can focus on what he does best – runningpool parties, connecting entrepreneurs and sponsoring 7 aspiring entrepreneurs internships! 

He has lived in Boracay, Dumaguete, Manila, Cebu, and Puerto Galera, Phillipines and Thailand and clearly shows no signs of slowing down or living a life less rewarding, enriching and full of fun.

Dan and his friend Ian run the very popular Lifestyle Business Podcast for lifestyle designers and lifestyle entrepreneurs that you should definitely check out.

What you’ll learn in this interview

• How you can leave the rat race and work smart to build a thriving business
• Why outsourcing is the key to living your ideal lifestyle
• The power of an entrepreneurial community to achieve your dreams and purpose
• The key tools Dan uses to run his business – it’s more simple than you think

Click to listen now to the Podcast Interview with Dan Andrews
Or Listen and subscribe to my podcast on iTunes.

Feel free to leave a review if you like what you hear too.

Key Tools Dan Recommends

• Market Samurai for SEO keyword analysis (they have a free 30 day trial)
• Google Keyword Analytics (free)
• Boomerang for your Gmail inbox management

Dan’s $80,000 Savings Tip

As you’ll hear in our conversation Dan used to pay someone $80,000 to project manage much of his work and fired him when he realised that by simply doing a 30 minute weekly review with each of his team members was getting better results. They also write a brief report he reads through each Friday.

Each week they drill down into exactly what’s happening with the business – revenue, traffic numbers, keywords, any challenges and also the big wins. This alone has allowed him to focus on the most important stuff to drive his business forward.

What are you doing to make sure you’re focusing on the right stuff in your business?