Imagine waking up tomorrow with no monetary constraints, no limitations at all, and the freedom to choose your perfect day.

What would you do? What would it look like, exactly?

It's harder than it seems, isn't it?

Most people I speak with can't describe in detail how they would spend their time if it was really up to them. A lot of people are letting life happen to them instead of thoughtfully creating the life they really want.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped chasing our dreams, we stopped imagining what our perfect day looks like and we started handing over control to others who told us what to do and how to live.

In today's podcast, I talk about just that and share the TEDx talk that I did in June this year at Royal Tunbridge Wells. I share my story on how I created a life of true freedom by building a business around my life - not the other way around.

Listen in to this episode to learn about:

• The surprising truth about freedom
• How to break through limiting thoughts
• What it means to thoughtfully create your perfect day
• How to challenge the status quo and dream big
• What having true freedom means

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

[Tweet "What does your perfect day look like?"]

Key Resources I mention or add value to this podcast:

• The Surprising Truth About Freedom TEDx Talk
• Visualize Your Business Future With The Power of a Painted Picture
• Perfect Day Exercise

Want reliable hosting for your blog and website at 50% off?

HostGator is your one-stop shop for all things web hosting. From design and marketing services to easy-to-use website builders, they are with you every step of the way.

Thanks to their 24/7 - 365 days a year live support - which you can get via chat, phone and email - any and all questions you have can be answered in no time at all.

They offer unmetered disk space and bandwidth, an easy to use control panel, 4500 free website templates, and one-click WordPress installs.

HostGator has partnered with me to help my listeners get started. Click the link below to get 50% off any new hosting package.

Visit Hostgator.com/Suitcase

There will always be things that we need to do. There will always be errands to run, meetings to attend, and personal care to check off.

But, how we tackle our to-do list every day can make a HUGE difference in how we feel at the end of the day.

Are you in control of how your day goes or do you feel like you get swept away by the busy experience of life?

Do you feel stressed and exhausted or accomplished and relaxed?

Are you moving your goals forward or just spinning your wheels?

In today's podcast, Erin Wells and I talk about how to move from being busy to being effective. She shares the SWABS method for organization, how to find clarity by decluttering, and how getting organized can increase productivity and effectiveness in your business.

 

Listen in to this episode to learn about:

• How to transform busy-ness into effectiveness
• The first step to decluttering for clarity
• How to avoid getting swept away by life
• Why creating your vision is key to productivity and organization
• How getting organized can make you less busy and more productive
• How to make peace with your to-do list

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

[Tweet "Is your busy-ness getting in the way of your productivity?"]

Key Resources I mention or add value to this podcast:

• The Excellence Assessment
• The Energy Project
• Definitive List of Tools To Run Your Business From Anywhere
• How To Take Control Of Your Time
• Productivityist
• Asana

Want reliable hosting for your blog and website at 50% off?

HostGator is your one-stop shop for all things web hosting. From design and marketing services to easy-to-use website builders, they are with you every step of the way.

Thanks to their 24/7 - 365 days a year live support - which you can get via chat, phone and email - any and all questions you have can be answered in no time at all.

They offer unmetered disk space and bandwidth, an easy to use control panel, 4500 free website templates, and one-click WordPress installs.

HostGator has partnered with me to help my listeners get started. Click the link below to get 50% off any new hosting package.

Visit Hostgator.com/Suitcase

Do you find that no matter how much time you have, it's nearly impossible to get everything done in a day? Or maybe you get a lot done but you spend the day stressed out and running around?

The way we manage our time can make or break not only how successful we are but how much we enjoy our day-to-day life, which is why I place so much importance on getting super clear about what your perfect day looks like.

Craig Ballantyne is a productivity and success transformation guru that's written a book all about The Perfect Day Formula. So, of course, I had to speak with him.

In this podcast episode, Craig shares how to get more done, make more money, be more successful and still get home in time for dinner. From workouts to sleep habits, we chat about how to identify opportunities and obstacles to create your perfect day.

Listen in to this episode to learn about:

• How you can improve your life using your Perfect Day Formula
• How you can create rules for your life
• The 5 pillars of personal transformation
• The #1 action step you can take today to take control of your time
• How to identify opportunities and obstacles to own your day

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

[Tweet "Take control of your time and own your day!"]

Key Resources I mention or add value to this podcast:

• Early to Rise
• Perfect Day Formula
• How to Increase Productivity in Your Business From Anywhere
• 24 Ways To Be Uncommonly Productive Today

Want reliable hosting for your blog and website at 50% off?

HostGator is your one-stop shop for all things web hosting. From design and marketing services to easy-to-use website builders, they are with you every step of the way.

Thanks to their 24/7 – 365 days a year live support – which you can get via chat, phone and email – any and all questions you have can be answered in no time at all.

They offer unmetered disk space and bandwidth, an easy to use control panel, 4500 free website templates, and one-click WordPress installs.

HostGator has partnered with me to help my listeners get started. Click the link below to get 50% off any new hosting package.

Visit Hostgator.com/Suitcase

Absolutely anything and everything we could ever want to know is at our fingertips. As online business owners, we read, listen, watch and learn from others.

This is incredibly powerful but the tricky part is making sure that we're building our business on our own terms and creating freedom in our businesses and lives that works for each of us.

We don't want to get trapped into somebody else's blueprint.

Creating freedom in your business is up to you and that can, will and should look entirely different than what anyone else is doing.

Maybe it means taking a digital detox once a year.

Maybe it means always taking weekends off.

Maybe it means working from your laptop in Spain or getting to be there to pick your kids up from school every single day.

Whatever it is, it's yours.

In today’s podcast episode, I talk about how my freedom plan has been evolving in my business and how to make sure that you're keeping your own freedom plan clearly in sight while you work towards your business and life goals.

Listen in to this episode to learn about:

• Why keeping your vision in the forefront keeps everything else in check
• How reclaiming your time is the first step in creating freedom
• Why having a freedom plan is so important
• Why it's so important to build your business around your life, not the other way around

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

[Tweet "What is your freedom plan?"]

Key Resources I mention or add value to this podcast:

• How To Fire Yourself as CEO From Your Own Business
• Visualise Your Business Future With the Power of a Painted Picture
• Creating Freedom in Your Daily Routine with John Lee Dumas
• The Importance of Finding Your What with Steve Olsher

Having your blog found by a big publishing company and being offered a book deal is a bit like being discovered by a fancy Hollywood producer to be the next big movie star.

It doesn't happen very often.

It did, however, happen to today's podcast guest, Srini Rao.

Srini didn't consider himself a good writer but by developing a daily writing practice and committing to it over time, his writing started to measure up to his quality of thinking, and that got him noticed by Penguin Portfolio.

He now has a two-book contract and some awesome tips to share about working with publishers and how to stand out in a noisy, noisy world.

Listen in to learn about Srini's story and about how to create and leverage your book and how being unmistakable is your biggest strength.

What you'll learn in this podcast:

• How Srini Rao turned his blog into a two-part book deal
• Why you don't have to be a good writer, at first
• The difference between self-publishing and working with a big publishing house
• How to use your book to leverage a path to speaking engagements
• What the timeline of a traditional book contract looks like
• Ways to promote your book as you write it

Key resources:

• Unmistakable Creative
• How to Reclaim Your Happiness with Raj Raghunathan
• How to Write, Publish and Sell Your Fiction Book From Scratch

Want reliable hosting for your blog and website at 50% off?

HostGator is your one-stop shop for all things web hosting. From design and marketing services to easy-to-use website builders, they are with you every step of the way.

Thanks to their 24/7 – 365 days a year live support – which you can get via chat, phone and email – any and all questions you have can be answered in no time at all.

They offer unmetered disk space and bandwidth, an easy to use control panel, 4500 free website templates, and one-click WordPress installs.

HostGator has partnered with me to help my listeners get started. Click the link below to get 50% off any new hosting package.

Visit Hostgator.com/Suitcase

 

You know you want to write a book but it always seems to get pushed to the end of your very long to-do list.

Maybe sometimes you think you'll set weekends aside to get it going or dedicate evenings to sit down to write.

But, it just doesn't seem to happen. The days roll by and you're no closer to publishing your book than you were six months ago.

Trust me, you are not alone.

So many people I speak with struggle with making it happen and that's one of the reasons that I decided to dedicate all of June's podcast episodes to helping you write, publish and sell your next book.

Today's podcast guest, Jesse Krieger, created a publishing company he wished he had when he wrote his first book and has a ton of resources to help you do the same.

He shares some awesome tips on how to actually get pen to paper, how to break down the content into manageable pieces, and how to show up daily to do the work.

What you'll learn in this podcast:

• Whether self-publishing is the right route for you
• How to get a book written without the blinking cursor curse
• The art to warming up your subconscious to improve your writing momentum
• How to leverage a book to build your business and brand
• An alternate approach to book writing that requires very little actual writing

Key resources:

• Check out Jesse's site for more awesome resources
• Book, Business, and Brand Building Summit
• Evernote for capturing and organizing notes
• Scrivener - an author's best friend
• 750 words to work on your daily writing habit
• My cool online community, The Freedom Collective (sign up for two weeks for free and get access to my expert training, Beyond the Book: How to get your book published, build a platform and turn it into Multiple Revenue Streams)

Want reliable hosting for your blog and website at 30% off?

HostGator is your one stop shop for creating your online presence. From creating a website to promote yourself or your business, or even to talk about your favorite hobby, to creating your Facebook pages and marketing website; HostGator can help you do it all.

HostGator has partnered with me to help my listeners get started. Use coupon SUITCASE to get 30% off any new hosting package.

Visit SuitcaseEntrepreneur.com/HostGator today.

You may have noticed that freedom is my thing.

I work hard to have freedom in my life, I create things for you to help you find freedom, and I want as many people as possible on the planet to know what true freedom feels like. (So much so that I've started the Right2Freedom, a global study on freedom)!

But, why?

Well, simply put: happiness.

We all want to be happy and, to me, freedom plays a huge role in how happy I am in my life and I know I'm not alone.

You can imagine how excited I was to come across Raj Raghunathan's work on happiness.

His whole thing is to study and teach happiness and fulfillment in an academic but light-hearted way. He teaches it, he writes about it, and he makes it fun! He's managed to take an academic approach to a universally relevant topic and make it accessible to everyone in his new book, If You Are So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?

In today's podcast, Raj and I jam on happiness, freedom, abundance and why some of life’s worst events are the best things that can happen to us. 

What you'll learn in this podcast:

• How we often sacrifice happiness in day-to-day life
• Why defining happiness for yourself is so important
• Why we're hard-wired to focus on the negative and what you can do about it.
• Why the top 1% of most successful people may not be the top 1% of the happiest people
• Why the worst things are often the best things
• How you may be getting in the way of your own happiness
• How to avoid a scarcity mindset

�Some people are born writers.

They write stories as soon as they learn how to put pencil to paper and they daydream in fantasy and complex story plots.

Angela Ford started writing at the age of 12 and between then and age 18, she wrote 5-6 novels over 70,000 words each.

She's recently undertaken a huge project that will have her publishing one book per year for the next 10 years.

But, what about the rest of us?

What about the people who know that there is a book inside of them but don't know where to start?

Angela may have been born to write but when it comes to the rest of the book publishing process, she had to use good old fashioned hustle!

Angela knows that when it comes to publishing a book, writing is just one piece.

You have to write, assemble it, and get it in front of people, and when you're starting out with no audience or a very small list, that can be even more daunting.

In this podcast, Angela shares everything from killer writing and mindset tips to her top strategies for making sure your next book sells.

What you'll learn in this podcast:

• How to make your writing consistent by breaking it down into bite-size pieces
• What to do when you have a small audience to market to
• When and what to outsource for your book
• What realistic timelines you can expect from idea to published book
• How to set smart goals for your book development and launch
• How to make your book available for a pre-launch through Amazon
• How to keep your launch simple and strategic
• How to use ThunderClap to promote your book, for free��

In life you have two options:

1. To take what's been handed to you, or
2. To create a lifestyle where anything is possible

While the second option sounds amazing, the journey to get there can be rocky.

Enter today's guest - Steve Olsher.

Steve was in search of finding his purpose over and over through his journey and in his 25 years of experience in creating businesses - including owning Liquor.com.

He went on to discover a process anyone can follow to find their calling in life and actually pursue it.

He's the host of the popular podcast Reinvented Radio and the author of the New York Times Best Selling book "What Is Your What" which helps you discover the one thing you were born to do.

What you'll learn in this podcast:

• The downside of mainstream personality tests that leave you asking more questions than you initially had
• Why understanding the "tripod" can help you realize what you were meant to do
• The problem with following everything you know, and how to get beyond those limitations when it comes to pursuing your dreams
• What to do if you're unsure of what direction to go in your life
• Why some people seem "magical" to the masses (and the process they use that you can follow to appear the same)
• What to do if you feel you can't change your circumstances into something you truly desire

Finding freedom in business and adventure life isn't just a tagline.

It's not fancy marketing.

It's the filter that I use to run all my ideas and potential projects through. If something doesn't create more freedom or adventure in my life or help you to achieve more freedom and adventure in yours then it's a non-starter.

Last week I asked you some big questions: What does financial freedom mean to you? What does it really look like? And how will your business look in five years with that in mind?

This week (in the last Fresh in Fifteen episode before I take a break for the summer!), I look at an important part of financial freedom - how to fire yourself as CEO from your own business.