The Remote CEO Life Podcast

S305: Go From Employee To Entrepreneur: Establish An Online Business To Start Living Your Dream Life

• Sophie Biggerstaff • Season 3 • Episode 5

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To go on the journey from stuck employee to thriving entrepreneur requires not only practical steps but also an “I can do anything I put my mind to” mindset. 

I’ve been taking a step back from The Remote CEO podcast the past few weeks as I’ve been busy BTS re-working my business from e-commerce consultancy to empowering entrepreneurs to build online businesses that work for them and the lifestyle they want to achieve, instead of one they work for - for ultimate freedom and life fulfilment.

If you want to discover how aligning your mindset with your goals can lead you to the life you desire. Join me as I introduce my new offerings, including my free “Find Your Freedom Model” masterclass, and inspire you to take action to achieve your dream lifestyle through entrepreneurship.

#howtoestablishanonlinebusiness #freebusinesscoursesonline #toponlinebusinessideas #howtogetwhatyouwant #mindsethacks #businessmindset

About The Remote CEO Podcast:

This podcast is for freedom-seeking online entrepreneurs, offering practical, actionable advice to help you step up into your new role as CEO by building an online business that works for you - not one you work for.

Hosted by Sophie Biggerstaff, an online business mentor, e-commerce founder, mental health advocate, and full-time digital nomad. 🙋‍♀️

👆Want to start an online business? Take my quiz to help you get started

👆 Want to achieve more freedom in your life? Find out how you can make it happen in my free masterclass.

👆Need online business advice? Get my best business tips directly in your inbox by signing up to my newsletter

👍 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share to hear more conversations about starting and growing an online business.

🔗 Stay Connected:

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🗣️ Connect on LinkedIn

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Sophie (00:01)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Remote CEO podcast. I'm Sophie, your host. And today I just wanted to one, show up because I haven't been showing up on my podcast the past few weeks because I have been very busy behind the scenes revamping my entire business basically. So if you have been around for a while, you will know that previously the past four and a half years, I was running an e-commerce consultancy business.

This year, I am shifting my business completely into more focused on building online businesses that are going to generate somebody the freedom that they're desiring in their lifestyle. So when I say freedom, freedom could mean anything. It could mean you want more financial freedom to be able to just spend without having to worry about bills that you've got to pay. Or it might mean that you want more time freedom, for example, to be able to go and pick up your kids from school every single day.

Or you might like me, want location freedom where you can pick up your life and go and work and live from wherever you want in the world. Now, or you might want a combination of all of those things, right? Now I strongly believe that online business can help you achieve all of those things. And what I have been doing over the past four months is shifting my existing business, which was e-commerce consultancy. did mentoring, had online courses, I had memberships.

for people in that e-commerce space because e-commerce is also part of online business, right? And I'm moving that more towards like focused around some of the experiences that I've personally had in the past, well, actually nearly five years actually, if we come into April, it's gonna be my fifth year in business of starting my own service business, being a freelancer, starting my own online courses, selling my own digital products.

I want to be able to utilise that five years of experience and not just offer e-commerce support but also offer support from other areas as well. The reason I came to that decision was because actually that was naturally something that I was doing in my day-to-day life anyway, was helping people achieve those things, whether I realised it or not. It just made more sense at this time of my life to shift into this new world. The reason why I haven't been showing off my podcast in the past couple of weeks...

is because I have been busy working on these new offers that I am going to be presenting to you very, very soon. Now, I'm really, really passionate about the message that I'm putting out there of the fact that you don't have to sacrifice your life to be able to build a business. You can achieve freedom. You can achieve financially, time and location freedom, depending on what your goal is, by building your own thing. Now,

Entrepreneurship is absolutely not for everybody. I would not even recommend it for everybody, but freedom is achievable by anybody that really wants to do it and put their mind to it. Now that can look like so many different things. And I think so much of it comes down to one, expanding yourself into believing something can be possible for you. So seeing that it's possible for somebody else to achieve those things that you want.

and then realizing that you can actually have those things as well. So for example, I have built this life where I travel, I work remotely, I have multiple businesses that I run online. Also coming out of like this long nine to five corporate career, right? Like I built my way up, I worked my way up a career led, so I decided I didn't want it anymore and then shifted my reality into something completely different. Now, has that happened overnight? No. Has that happened by luck? No. I actually took very strategic actions.

to get there, do I have some privilege in being able to do that? Yes, absolutely, I'll be the first person to admit that. But I also have got the right mindset in place for me to be able to achieve that. Now, I feel like when you have the right mindset in place, you can put your mind to anything and it might take you longer to get there, it might take you quicker to get there, you never really know depending on somebody's circumstances.

But I feel like if anybody has the right mindset and they want something badly enough, if they want that freedom badly enough, because it means that they get to spend more time with their kids, it means they get to go out and see the world, it means that they don't have to worry about money struggles, then that motivation is what is going to help you get that end goal, right? Now, everything that I do now...

I strongly put it down to the mindset that I have built over the past five years. I didn't come into entrepreneurship with the mindset of like, I can tackle any problem. Actually, I came into the mindset, into entrepreneurship with the mindset that, I've got a lot to learn. Like I'm a beginner here. Like I am going to have to fake this till I make it. And I'm not saying I've made it by any means. Like I still have so many goals that I haven't actually achieved, but.

I am way closer because I took certain steps, certain measures in my life to be able to get me there. Now, like I was going back to what I said about like expanding yourself into seeing something to be possible for you. That's what I want to do for you. If this is a desire of yours, and I don't mean coming and being a digital nomad, like that's not my goal here is to inspire people to be digital nomads because that is not everybody's dream or desire. And I don't actually think everybody has cut out to live this lifestyle either, but

Everybody wants their own version of freedom. Everybody has a version of freedom that they would like to achieve in their lifestyle. Now that could mean whatever freedom means for you. I'm not going to put a label on what freedom means to you because it is going to be unique for every single individual person. But everybody can, if you can start seeing something to be possible for you, start seeing that somebody else has achieved that level of freedom that you are desiring.

you are going to start thinking, hmm, OK, if they can do it, why can't I? And that is what I want to inspire you to start thinking about. Like, if you've come from that corporate world, which I came from, right? Like, I worked my way up in a very corporate ladder very quickly because I didn't go to university. By the age of 26, I was a buying manager at Burberry managing a 380 million pound business. I then completely took a risk, threw all of that away, everything that I had built, and

took a risk and went into entrepreneurship and started my own thing. And now I am able to live the lifestyle that I do because I took those risks, because I had that mindset of like, I can do this. Now again, it didn't happen overnight. And it was strategically planned and I put specific actions in place, but my goal, my desire, my dream for that freedom was strong enough that allowed me to get through any challenges, any hurdles, anything that was presenting in the way for me.

I was able to overcome it because I had this goal. I had this vision of what I wanted my life to be like. Now, that is what I would like to encourage you to think about is if you want this freedom, like what does that mean for your lifestyle? Like what does that mean that you are going to be able to do or be able to achieve? Like what does freedom actually look like for you? And the reason I want to ask you that is because if that dream is so strong for you, if that dream is like, my God, I have to have that thing.

You are going to find a way to get your life into a situation where you are able to achieve that one thing. If that desire, if that one is there strongly enough, you are going to overcome any challenge that gets in your way because you are hungry for it, right? Like super, super hungry. And I want to give you an example of something that I, of a girl that I met a few years ago whilst I was traveling. Now she's from India. She came from a very, very poor family in India.

They had nothing, right? Like they literally, they had a house, but from what I understand in a very rural area in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't anywhere near conveniences. She wasn't near school. She wasn't near university. She didn't get put into school because she was a girl. So she was like, but she met, she started meeting people that were traveling through India and was like, oh, I can see that they're well educated. I can see that they've been gone to university. I, and I want that for myself. So she,

would travel like five, six hours into the city every day to try and surround herself with the right people to be able to expand herself into believing that to be possible for herself. In which case she started reading books, she started studying of her own accord in her little village until she was at the point where she could start applying for university on scholarships because they had no money, right? They weren't just gonna go and get.

grants or loans or payout right for university. She had to get in on a scholarship because that was her only option. So she did everything possible for herself to educate herself well enough to be able to apply for that scholarship and get into university on that scholarship. So she had this vision. She wanted what she had seen other people achieve. And she was going through all means to be able to achieve that for herself, even though no one in her family had previously achieved this for themselves.

Nobody that she was close to had even achieved this for himself. She'd only seen this in like her peripheral vision from other people that passing by, but she had this desire so strongly and she's come from nothing. And she finally managed to get a scholarship into university. It was actually a university in the US. So she was able to go to the US, study, get her, I can't remember what she studied, but get her diploma, whatever we want to call it.

And then she actually has been traveling the world since she got a job in finance. She's lived in London, she's lived in Bali, she's lived in Costa Rica. So she has been all over the world now as a girl that came from a tiny little village in India with absolutely nothing. She had this desire so strongly that she was able to build something for herself from absolutely nothing because she was expanded into a world of opportunity and showing what could be possible for her.

if she put her mind to something. So I just wanted to give you that example because I know that I speak from a very privileged place and I've come from a supportive family. I don't come from a huge amount of money. Like I don't have a family that gives me money or anything like that. I've always worked for my money, but I was fortunate enough to live close enough to London to be able to get a good job and get paid very well. So I've always had a backup reserve amount of money. For example, I've always had supportive family members there if I really needed to fall back on it.

So I understand that I'm speaking from a point of privilege, but I want to share that story for you to show you that it can be possible to come from literally nothing and make yourself into something, whatever it is that you put your mind to achieve, like this girl did that I've met. Now, this is all coming down to a mindset and a desire, such a strong desire to achieve that freedom goal that you want for your lifestyle, right? And I believe if that lifestyle freedom goal is strong enough,

That is going to be what is your motivation to keep you going to actually achieve the goals that you want, right? And you're gonna find a way to make that happen. Now, my tool to help you make that happen is to help teach you how to start an online business that is working for that lifestyle goal that you want to achieve because you might have this lifestyle goal and let's say for example, you want to achieve all three freedoms, time, financial, location, freedom. Amazing, that's my goal as well.

by starting an online business, you can free yourself up for quite a lot of those freedoms if you set your business up in the right way. And I say the right way because again, I've meet a lot of entrepreneurs in this lifestyle that I live and I meet a lot of business owners also through the work that I do. And so many people don't factor in the lifestyle goal that they have for themselves when they're starting their business. They think, money, let's go.

I want the financial piece first and I need the financial piece to achieve all of the other things. And you're not wrong, but ultimately if you're wanting to achieve a lifestyle, but you build a business that makes you have to live a completely different lifestyle, you're actually going on two separate paths, right? Your life that you want to achieve is over here and the business that you've built is over here. And then at some point you're going to be like, okay, this isn't working for me.

I'm really not enjoying what I'm doing in my business because it's not giving me the lifestyle I want. I'll quit because actually this is too hard. I can't figure out a way to get me over to this lifestyle goal that I've got over here. So my goal is to show you how you can build an online business that allows you to achieve that lifestyle goal. So what I have done over the past few weeks where I haven't been recording the podcast, I have built out of absolutely free

masterclass which is going to show you how you can achieve different freedom focused lifestyle goals based on your own skill set, your own passions, your own desires and which online business to start to allow you to have that freedom goal. Now so many people want to start on their businesses or start their own thing because of that freedom goal that they have but they're not necessarily sure which route to go down or where to start so

This masterclass is essentially your starting point. It's completely free. There's no obligation for you to move any further along the process. I have an online course that you can buy into if you do decide that you want to go into online business that's going to follow on from that masterclass and teach you the step-by-step process of actually how to set it up. But actually, what you might find is that you get enough knowledge from this free masterclass that you don't need to move on to that online course. Or you might take on those next steps and say, I need a step-by-step holding hand process.

to actually build my online business. So that has been what I've been working on over the past few weeks where I haven't been showing off my podcast because I really felt like this is the time for me to be able to share everything that I've learned because I've gone through this process myself, right? Like I went from living this like corporate nine to five life, throw myself into entrepreneurship, still living in London. And I built this business that was great for a London lifestyle where, you know, social life is pretty non-existent because it's so expensive to leave your house.

and we were in lockdown, so I was working like 10 to 12 hours a day because there was absolutely nothing else to do. I built this business off of all of those bases. I then come and live the digital nomad life and that model does not work for the lifestyle that I now want to achieve. And I found myself frustrated, I found myself disappointed, I found myself disheartened by everything that I'd built because I was like, I'm not enjoying this anymore. So I had to pivot along the way and figure out how to make my business work for the lifestyle goals that I wanted to achieve. And that is...

why I want to share this because I feel like I've got myself to a position where I can honestly say I live a version of my dream life. Is it going to be my dream life forever? No, because my goals are constantly evolving, constantly changing. I'm going to want different things at different phases of my life. But actually, for the past few years, I have been living my version of that freedom goal. And I have been able to do that because I put my mind to something. I stepped outside of my box and took a couple of risks.

made an online business work for me, one that actually wasn't working for me initially, but I pivoted and managed to find a way for it to work for me. And I did that all based off of my passions, my skillsets, and the things that I enjoyed doing. So I really want to share everything that I have learned with you and be able to inspire you and encourage you to go on your own path if you have this freedom goal to be able to achieve that for yourself, whatever your current circumstances are now.

Again, I say this from a place of privilege and I come from a place where I was always encouraged to go after the things that I want to do. And even if you haven't had that encouragement in your life, I really want to be that person for you to be able to encourage you to go after that freedom goal that you have, the desires, the needs, the wants, and build something, even if it is alongside your full-time job for now, or even if it is starting really small and working its way up.

chances on yourself, find the motivation through that desire of the thing that you want to be able to take the action to get yourself to where you want to be. And hopefully through these masterclasses, through the courses that I'm about to bring out, I can inspire you to do that. So I just wanted to give you a quick update today on where I've been, why I haven't been sharing any podcast episodes. In that meantime, I have actually...

banked up quite a few episodes now, which I can now schedule out over the next few weeks. And I have got some super inspiring guests on the podcast coming out over the next few weeks, all of who have started their own online businesses because they had this like freedom focused goal.

And I want to share more stories like that with you so that again, you can become more expanded. So this podcast going forward, everything that I do online going forward is here to expand you, inspire you and motivate you and hopefully educate you also on how to achieve and do the things that you want to do in life, whatever that version looks like for you. As I said, I'm not trying to target digital nomads here like in isolation because digital nomad life is not for everybody. I can do another episode on my...

personal experiences or digital nomad life. But I just want to show you what can be possible for you if you put your mind to something. So what I'm gonna do is the masterclass is now fully available for you to sign up to. It is completely free. I'm gonna drop the link to it in the show notes below. So if you are interested in exploring what might be possible for you to achieve if you put your mind to something and...

start an online business using the skills and passions that you already have to achieve that freedom lifestyle goal that you have for yourself. I will put that link below. You're welcome to join and check it out. I also have a quiz if you're not quite sure what online business to start based on the freedom goal that you have because you want to make sure you get it right first time around and don't have to pivot like I did to start something on your own. I have got a quiz there which I will give you some guidance on which routes might be good for you.

based on that freedom goal that you have. So all of the links to that are gonna be in the show notes. I cannot wait to go on this new journey to help you start an online business that's gonna help you achieve that freedom life goal that you have for yourself. If you have any questions, don't forget you can always message me on Instagram. And I'm really excited to share with you what I have been working on. It's been a long time in the making and that's why I've been a little bit inconsistent over the past few months with the podcast, with social media, all of the things, but.

It's now in a position where I'm actually able to share it and I cannot wait to share it with you. So stay tuned here, stay tuned on my social media, it's at It's Soapy Bigger Stuff if you haven't followed me already and I will catch you very soon.