47) How to Live Authentically in Your Life and Career

Today let's talk about living outside societal expectations and if you are actually living your true authentic life?

I have had many moments in my life when I was not living authentically, from going to college with an undeclared major to trying to fit into the corporate "Sex In The City" lifestyle in New York. Frankly I was lost and miserable and life doesn't have to be this way. You can live the life you truly dream of, forge your own path, and step off society's "conveyor belt." 

This life is possible and becoming a digital nomad is how you can have that freedom and possibility. 

In this episode we dive into:

• How my life completely changed once I started living authentically 
• The unlimited ways you can make money online
• How to find a career that is authentic to you
• Are you in control of your life or is someone else steering?

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CODEWORD: Authenticity Podcast

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Transcript

Christa Romano: [00:00:00] Hey there and welcome to the Digital Nomad Life podcast. I'm your host Krista, also known as Krista Bella travels on social media. Always feel free to slide into my DMS on Instagram, by the way, tell me that you're a listener, ask your questions, get some free advice up in there. I genuinely love to connect with you.

Christa Romano: And when I say I love to connect with you, honestly, that's why I'm creating this podcast. That's why I do what I do as a digital nomad coach. So when I say get some free advice, I mean it like come slide in and tell me that you're here.

Christa Romano: I feel so blessed to say that I genuinely love my career as a digital nomad coach because I feel very mission-driven in it

Christa Romano: because essentially what I'm doing as a digital nomad coach is helping people discover their authenticity. And that's what this episode is going to be all about today. Authenticity for me is one of my absolute biggest values alongside freedom, which makes a whole lot of sense considering the fact that I've been living as a digital nomad for the past 10 years.

Christa Romano: and why ultimately I became an entrepreneur [00:01:00] rather than someone who was just working in the rat race. I have a lot of memories of times when I felt that I wasn't living an authentic life and maybe some of my examples will resonate with you.

Christa Romano: My first example goes all the way back to when I was a child growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, standing on the hard, cold wood floor of my house and asking my parents, why do we live here when we can just live in Florida or we could live in California? It's so cold. I hate that it's so cold. I just want to live in a place with palm trees and white houses and orange roofs and really just going off on how I couldn't understand how anybody survived in Boston.

Christa Romano: Now, today I get to live in Bali, Indonesia, in a tropical place where there are palm trees. And I live in a white house with an orange roof and it is my dream. And I really feel that I'm living in a place that feels super authentic to me. The next time that I was feeling really inauthentic in my life was when I was in college, which by the way, I joined my university [00:02:00] as an undeclared major.

Christa Romano: That's crazy. Like why was I going to college when I didn't even know what I wanted to study when I didn't even know what I was going to get out of it? Why was I pushing myself to operate as a student on a very specific timeline of, as soon as I turned 18, as soon as I graduated high school,

Christa Romano: if you ever joined a college or university or some other kind of educational program where you didn't actually really know why you were there. And when I say why you were there, I mean, why you were there. Like, did your parents know why you were there? Yeah, sure. Maybe they knew. Did your friends, did your society know why you were there?

Christa Romano: Yeah, sure. They knew because they expected you to go to college. They expected you to go to university. But what about you? Anyway, what I'm saying is when I went into college and I was an undeclared major, Part of me was like, why am I even doing this? Well, I guess I'm just going to put on my little robot outfit and keep going because everybody thinks that this [00:03:00] is what I should do.

Christa Romano: And if everybody thinks that I should do it, then therefore I guess I have to do it because I don't really have free will over my own life. Obviously, I've come up pretty far since then.

Christa Romano: Side note, if that's resonating, I have a whole episode on, do you really need to go to college or university to become a digital nomad? Spoiler, the answer is no. But listen to that episode if that resonates. Another time that I was feeling deeply, deeply inauthentic in my lifestyle

Christa Romano: was after I had been living for a few years in New York City. So I graduated from a university, and ultimately I graduated with a journalism degree, which did feel good. I liked writing a lot that felt authentic.

Christa Romano: But then I moved to New York City with all these big dreams of living a "Sex In The City" life and making a lot of money and having an amazing career wearing pencil skirts and high heels to work.

Christa Romano: So at first when I was doing that, it felt authentic. But eventually, I realized that actually my values were in a pretty different place than most of the other people that I was [00:04:00] around and I started to feel deeply unhappy. I started to feel like nobody around me really understood who I was.

Christa Romano: And honestly, I didn't understand who they were either. I really didn't get why everybody that I worked with all seemed to come from the same kind of background and they had the same kind of goals. And for me, I was like, my goal is to travel the world. My goal is to have fun. My goal is to live life to the fullest.

Christa Romano: And it just didn't seem like that's what other people wanted.

Christa Romano: I started to really understand that I was not a cultural fit. And not only that, but all the other logistics of my lifestyle at the time were really, really affecting my happiness. First of all, my commute, I don't know about you, but if you are commuting to work, that is like 15 minutes to two hours of your day.

Christa Romano: That's sucked away from you that you could be using for things that are more aligned and more authentic for who you are.

Christa Romano: Maybe you're listening to this podcast in your commute. And if that's the case, amazing. Why are you listening to this podcast rather than a [00:05:00] podcast about whatever your career is? Hmm. Little indication there that probably it's time for you to start stepping into your authenticity, but you've got to ask yourself, why are you living the lifestyle that you're living now?

Christa Romano: I had a really interesting conversation with one of my clients last night who booked a career assessment call with me. And if you don't know what a career assessment call is, essentially that is one of my entry-level offers as a coach.

Christa Romano: where I help people figure out what is the best digital nomad career for them based on their personality, their skillset, and their interests. And we talk a lot about their limiting beliefs and also their lifestyle goals, short-term and long-term. And honestly, it's a really powerful call. your mind will be blown after an hour, just like my client's mind was blown last night.

Christa Romano: So what were we talking about? Well, my client, she's actually also from Boston. So Hey, if you know that this is about you.

Christa Romano: My client was sharing with me that she is a librarian and she's been a librarian for the past 10 years and she no longer feels [00:06:00] that this is aligned with who she wants to be or with the lifestyle that she wants to live. During the pandemic, she realized that working from home was actually something that felt really good for her.

Christa Romano: While sure, she might have some dreams of traveling the world, like who doesn't have dreams of traveling the world, what she actually loved and what she wants more of that she experienced during the pandemic was being able to spend a month with her parents at their cabin.

Christa Romano: The digital nomad life isn't just about travel. Honestly, really, it's all about flexibility and freedom. So what my client was saying was that she just wanted more flexibility, but because she's a librarian and she actually works in a library, she has to physically be there in person almost every day of the week.

Christa Romano: So while she actually does like a lot of the work that she's doing, the lifestyle no longer feels authentic for her. So we were talking about why is she living this lifestyle in the first place. And she told me the backstory and maybe this backstory will resonate with you too. Similarly to me, when she graduated high school, she didn't know what she wanted to do for her [00:07:00] career.

Christa Romano: But all of her friends and her parents especially were like, you got to go to college. So she did. And what did she study? Actually, I forget what the major is when you go into being a librarian, but ultimately she ended up going to grad school for it because still, she didn't really know what she wanted to do.

Christa Romano: And actually this is something that I see a lot of people doing is that when they can't figure out what career it is that they want to pursue, they just. Put more money into their student loans and buy more time with that money by going to grad school because they think that at least if they get a graduate degree, they'll be doing something productive and then they'll be set up for life afterward.

Christa Romano: And in my client's case, that may have been true for her ability to make money. She set herself up to have a career where she would make money and she would be a valuable person who applied for a librarian job.

Christa Romano: But another thing that she shared with me last night was she doesn't actually feel like she's going to be able to grow much in that career. So she put in all that time and energy [00:08:00] and financial resources into getting her library studies graduate degree. Ultimately, just to feel stuck in her career, like unable to even climb up a corporate ladder.

Christa Romano: Not to mention she has to sit in a quiet room Monday through Friday, like every single work day. And that's not what she wants to do. What she wants to do is to spend time with her parents at their cabin. And what she told me that she wants to do is get an RV and drive across the country with her two cats.

Christa Romano: But how is she going to be able to live that authentic life if she is stuck in her librarian job? So naturally the next thing that we would be talking about on our career assessment call is what is she going to do instead of being a traditional librarian. But before I go into what we concluded for her, I just wanted to zoom in onto a little part of the conversation that I think might help you too.

Christa Romano: It was a reflection that I gave to her of what I heard. So as a coach, what I'm constantly doing on these calls is that I hear you talking and you tell me [00:09:00] about your situation and you're very much speaking from your conscious level, right? As a coach, I am very familiar with our subconscious and how powerful it is.

Christa Romano: And I'm always listening between the lines of what my clients say so that I can understand what's in their subconscious and help them surface that because what's in our subconscious is actually what's authentic to us. So anyway. The thing that I reflected back to my client is interesting. Okay. So what I'm hearing is that you've basically been living your life.

Christa Romano: It's seemingly on a conveyor belt, if you will. and I think most people do this, right? And you listening to whoever you are, maybe you also feel this way that when you were born, you didn't necessarily take full ownership of your lifestyle. You kind of let other people and probably specifically your parents or the influence of your.

Christa Romano: town or society or whatever, dictated what you were going to do with your life. So, therefore, you hopped in the conveyor belt and just like everybody else, one after the [00:10:00] other, after the other, after the other, after the other, you go to elementary school and then you go to high school and then you go to college and then you go to university.

Christa Romano: And then you get a job and you make sure that that job has benefits and you make sure that that job is paid an amount of money that you feel meets your minimum standard.

Christa Romano: And when you're on this conveyor belt, life is actually pretty easy. I mean, you don't even have to move your own body in order to move forward. When you are on a conveyor belt, literally society's expectations of others are propelling you forward. Forward. And you are just following the motions that other people are telling you to do.

Christa Romano: Life this way is easy. But life this way is not necessarily good. And so what I was reflecting back to my client was that it felt like the story she was sharing with me was that she was on this life conveyor belt. And then all of a sudden she had this awakening where she was like, wait a minute, I don't want to be on this conveyor belt because that conveyor belt broke during the pandemic [00:11:00] and it broke for a lot of people during the pandemic.

Christa Romano: During the pandemic, a lot of people were like, wait a minute. Life doesn't have to be in the way that it always has been. All of these businesses that were telling people that they had to be in person every single day of the week, suddenly we're figuring out alternatives and suddenly we're figuring out ways to let people have their freedom and their careers.

Christa Romano: But the businesses do operate a little bit better when everybody's on their conveyor belt and when everybody's doing exactly what they're told and when everybody's acting like a little puppet. But you don't have to act like a puppet and neither does my client. And that is what I was reflecting to her that it seems like she was on the conveyor belt and then all of a sudden she woke up and she was like, wait a minute.

Christa Romano: There's a floor right next to the conveyor belt. I could just actually step off of it and then start walking on my own. I hope that this metaphor is resonating with somebody else, because for me, I was saying this and I was like, damn, this is actually so true. So it's one thing for me to [00:12:00] be like, get off the conveyor belts and go build your own business and go live the authentic lifestyle that you always wanted.

Christa Romano: But the thing is what we really need to address now is why was my client and why is everybody else? on a conveyor belt. Why aren't they getting off the conveyor belt? Because some people are on the conveyor belt awake like they're aware that they're on the conveyor belt and they're still doing it. And um, this is really, I think the value of the call that I gave to my client last night was like, Hey, you're awake now and you see that you're on this conveyor belt.

Christa Romano: So you have a choice. It's to either stay on where things are going to be easy, but not necessarily great. Your mental health might suffer if you stay on the conveyor belt, or you could step off the conveyor belt in hopes of building a new, better, and brighter future for yourself. However, when you step off that conveyor belt, you're learning to walk for the first time.

Christa Romano: Ever. When you step off of that conveyor belt, when you decide that [00:13:00] you are not going to follow society's expectations, when you decide that you are going to start choosing to live an authentic life, a life that actually is like, you're walking the path that you want to walk on. Not the one that was laid out before you, but the one that just feels good to your soul.

Christa Romano: The one that lights you up, the one that's lined with flowers or Pretty pebbles or whatever it is. What do you want your path to look like? You can go follow that path, but you're probably going to be forging it yourself. And that's not easy, especially when you're just learning how to walk. So I have another podcast episode called It's not easy, but it's possible.

Christa Romano: And I really encourage you to listen to that episode. If what I'm saying right now is resonating with you, I am going on a little bit of a rant in that episode. I kind of realized like after I recorded it, but it's just because I really do feel passionately about this. And I don't want people to step off that conveyor belt.

Christa Romano: And then all of a sudden like they're crawling because they didn't realize that they would have to [00:14:00] start walking on their own. So I'm really just here to protect you. I really just want you to have the beautiful freedom focus, fun, loving, adventurous, authentic life that you've always wanted. And I want you to be responsible about it.

Christa Romano: I want you to do it in a way that feels safe to your nervous system and in a way that's going to actually be sustainable and not too scary. So I really do feel that it is my responsibility when I encourage people to yeah, go off the beaten path, become a digital nomad. Live your authentic life I'm also making sure that I am Holding up those statements with realism, which is choosing this lifestyle And when I say this lifestyle, I mean whatever you want your lifestyle to be.

Christa Romano: Again, like, if you want to be like me and go live on a tropical island, then you can. If you want to be living the van life, you can do that. If you want to be spending time with your parents at their house, you can do that. If you want to move to another country to go be with your long lost lover, [00:15:00] you can do that.

Christa Romano: You can relocate. You can live a life that's surrounded by a sport that you love. Like maybe you're obsessed with surfing or skiing or whatever. You can choose lifestyles that accommodate all of those things that you absolutely love. The digital nomad life doesn't have to look just one specific way.

Christa Romano: Anyway, I got a little sidetracked there, but that choosing that lifestyle is not necessarily going to be a cakewalk, but it is absolutely possible. So let's talk now about how it can be possible and how it can be possible for you, how it can be possible for anybody, and how it could be possible for my client that I was just talking about.

Christa Romano: So, maybe you've listened to one of my other episodes all about how my career assessment process works, but I'll just recap it really quickly for you in the context of my client. So, basically, I have her watch all of these videos that I do. essentially are psychologically designed to open up your mind to all the possibilities so that you approach the exercise with an [00:16:00] open mind.

Christa Romano: So you or she will watch all the videos and then you go fill out the homework assignment. And in this homework assignment, I am asking you questions like, what does this word feel like? like in your body and uh, the word might be colorful. And so she rated the word colorful a level 10. Like this word feels amazing.

Christa Romano: And then she wrote down the reason why and the reason why she wrote down color is life. that is just a very specific example, just one that I'm remembering. But the point is I give you a whole bunch of different Like, very abstract questions that are meant to not necessarily have you think, Oh, I see where she's going with this.

Christa Romano: I just want you to feel into who you are as a person. So for her, when she says, colorful is life, that actually gives me a really interesting insight into her personality that I probably wouldn't have gotten if I just asked her what her resume background was. the point is, I'm on the call with her, and I'm looking through her whole homework assignment, and I'm really starting [00:17:00] to understand what her personality is like, and what her values are, and what she desires in life, what her goals are, what she's done in the past, the things that she's liked and not liked about what she's done in the past.

Christa Romano: What she wants to change, et cetera. A few things that I noticed about her was that she actually does really like a lot of the tasks that she's doing in her librarian work, specifically researching, like she loves, loves, loves researching and she loves to make an impact and. what I eventually suggested to her was something that surprised both of us.

Christa Romano: I usually get surprised at the things that come out of my mouth. I think the career assessment process that I take my clients through is extremely intuitive, but, um, anyway, I said, Hey, can we take a second and talk about how artificial intelligence is utilized in the librarian space? And then she started telling me a little bit more about it.

Christa Romano: And ultimately we came up with a concept for her to create a business [00:18:00] helping libraries or universities or whoever, she's going to have to still decide, but helping them figure out how they can best incorporate artificial intelligence into their library. We both were like, wow, this is so random, but it actually makes complete sense.

Christa Romano: She was like, oh, I thought you were going to tell me that I should be a VA, um, or a virtual assistant. And honestly, I do tell a lot of people that they might want to start off as a VA because it's a great career path for digital nomads. But for her, you know, she's been in her professional career for like over 10 years.

Christa Romano: She does have her master's degree and just feels like there was more potential for her than being a VA. Then again, as I would tell anybody, when you come to the career assessment call, we're not necessarily trying to find you a career that's going to be perfect for you. That's going to be, so passionate about right at the beginning, but I am helping you come up with [00:19:00] a business idea that feels accessible to you.

Christa Romano: It feels possible and it feels kind of exciting. It feels a little bit purposeful and meaningful to you.

Christa Romano: Because the way that I teach business, cause that's the next thing, right? Like once you do the career assessment, then you enroll inside of the Digital Nomad Life Academy, which is my program where I help you actually build a business around the business idea that we discuss on the career assessment call.

Christa Romano: And inside of the Digital Nomad Life Academy, you learn all about how to niche yourself, how to do the market research, how to create an offer, how to price yourself, how to market yourself, how to get clients, how to keep clients, all the things like you learn everything that you need to know about creating the business.

Christa Romano: So, what we really need and what, my goal is for my clients is that on that career assessment call, I give them an idea for a business that makes sense to them specifically so that they can get excited about it. And then they learn how to build a business. in the context of that business idea that we have discussed on the career assessment [00:20:00] call.

Christa Romano: Now, if my client ends up pivoting and changing their mind, you know, five months into the program, I honestly couldn't care less. I feel that I've done my job getting them started. And that really is my role here, I think, is to help people leave the nest. It's to help them start pursuing that authenticity.

Christa Romano: Because the thing is, once you know how to create a business. And in the Digital Nomad Life Academy, I break it down in a very step by step by step by step by step manner. Side note, a lot of my clients who have MBAs say that my teaching is actually better than what they learned in their MBA because it's just like so simple and so straightforward.

Christa Romano: So, once you learn how to build a business in the step by step by step way, First of all, you will have already met yourself on a level that is deeper than you could ever imagine because building a business and being an entrepreneur, it like forces you to understand all of your [00:21:00] insecurities. It puts them all right in the spotlight, you really meet yourself on such a deep, deep, deep level. And with the career assessment form, with the homework assignment, I can only reflect back to you what information you have given me. Yes, I am very intuitive, and I do use my intuition on that call. And sometimes I say things that my clients like, how could you ever have gathered that from my homework assignment?

Christa Romano: But the thing is, I can only meet you as deep as you've met yourself. So usually on the career assessment call, I will reflect back to you the most powerful thing that is available to the level that you've met yourself. But once you start going down the entrepreneur journey and you start meeting yourself on an even deeper level, you might actually have five months in get a different career or business idea that feels way more aligned and even more authentic to you.

Christa Romano: And now that you know how to build a business, you can actually just take action on it. So, if you're catching my drift here, this [00:22:00] program and the way that I teach my clients is very empowering. It's all to set you up for a lifetime of success. It's not necessarily to give you some get-rich-quick scheme.

Christa Romano: It's not necessarily to give you a business in a box. It's not necessarily giving you a quote-proven framework to make 10, 000 funds like so many of my competitors are saying, which, by the way, is absolutely true. Fucking bullshit. Excuse. Don't excuse my language. It is it's bullshit. Like what these people are saying?

Christa Romano: I don't know if you see these messages on my Instagram my tiktok is covered with people being like this is how you can make 10k months super fast Um, what they're doing is they're selling you one very very very very specific Model or business model or one very specific method that worked for them Because for them, it was authentic.

Christa Romano: It was authentic for them to build a business in this way and to build that specific kind of business. And because it worked for [00:23:00] them, they're going to be like, Oh, everybody should do this. it's so narrow-minded. It's so short-sighted. And to me, it's really just like very like money hungry, like, Oh, monetize this one thing that I learned how to do?

Christa Romano: And it's really not coaching. So. obviously I want to make a bunch of money in my business too. And I do have a step-by-step method to teach people how to build a business, but ultimately you watch the coursework, but it is pretty general. And the real way that you can get value out of me and out of, the digital and my life Academy is to come to the live calls every single week.

Christa Romano: We have multiple live calls with me and with the other coaches and also workshops where you can come live and get your questions answered so that you can take the information and apply it to your specific situation, your specific business, and your specific fears and limiting beliefs. And if you don't have a specific fear as a limiting belief that are coming up, you can come [00:24:00] and listen to other people being coached through theirs, and it probably will inspire a whole bunch of new ideas and new learnings and new understandings.

Christa Romano: Business is an absolutely unlimited domain. playing field. The number of business models that exist is absolutely infinite. This is something that I think about all the time and I just probably, it's probably because I'm a career slash business coach, but every time that I see any business, I'm like, Oh, interesting.

Christa Romano: That's an interesting business model. And I wonder what the profitability is of that. I really believe that there is no one best business model, but everybody believes that their business model is the best one again, because it worked for them. So earlier this year, I sat in on a talk or a conference where this woman was talking about how, if you can figure out a luxury product. So her saunas.

Christa Romano: she sold custom-made saunas to a luxury market. And these saunas were like 20, 000 [00:25:00] and you can get really targeted with your ads. You just need a simple landing page that covers all the specs of the sauna. And then she basically automated the system so that when people, put in their number, then they would get some kind of automated reply.

Christa Romano: like, it was easy to sell the sauna. And she was like, it's amazing because then you never have to follow up with people. Usually they're happy with it because it's been custom-made in the first place. And, uh, that was her business model. And she was really excited to share it with everybody.

Christa Romano: And I thought, oh wow, like she's obviously making a killing. I think she, I think she cleared like 4 million within two years with this business. But for me, like I don't know if I would like that business because first of all, that doesn't feel meaningful to me. It doesn't feel meaningful for me to sell saunas to rich people and it doesn't feel powerful to me.

Christa Romano: I don't feel like I'm utilizing my skills. When I'm just like tweaking a landing page in the background and optimizing it so that more people see it. yeah, I could make a lot of money that [00:26:00] way, but that's not how I want to be spending my time. And if I don't want to be spending my time in any particular way, guess what?

Christa Romano: I'm going to get really burnt out and I'm probably going to give up. Another business example that one of my friends is pursuing. So she is a coach now, and I think that coaching is an amazing business model. I mean, ultimately you get paid to be yourself because you're just making content online that we're speaking from your soul.

Christa Romano: And then all you have to do is sit on the phone and talk to your favorite kind of people because your clientele Is people that are naturally drawn to who you are, but the thing is when you're constantly putting your soul online, that also can be very draining for some people. And that's what my friend is noticing is that she's been doing coaching for a few years and she feels like, okay, this business model, I see that it works, but my energy and my passion isn't behind it anymore.

Christa Romano: I really want to be a fashion designer. And then she was telling me all about how being a fashion designer, um, or selling clothes is. is such a great [00:27:00] business model because you can, especially if you're in Bali, you can manufacture clothes, very affordably.

Christa Romano: And especially if you create a luxury brand, then the markup for these clothes can be huge. And then she gets to get paid for just being an artist, creating beautiful things for people, seeing her artwork on people's bodies. And. Then she doesn't even have to talk to anybody on the phone. Like she can just work when her energy feels good.

Christa Romano: And I thought, wow, yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Like you're able to utilize your gifts. Like your gift is art and your gift is creativity and you love fashion. And it's something that you want to be filling your mind, thinking about all the time. So for her, it makes sense for her to pivot away from coaching to fashion.

Christa Romano: Whereas for me, Oh my gosh, I think that would be so incredibly stressful. I just wouldn't want to do that. And I wouldn't necessarily be prepared to make the big upfront investment on all the fabrics and the staff [00:28:00] and the employees to actually make the clothing. So, you know, that's why that business model is a little bit different and it's suitable for her because she actually has a boyfriend who's willing to invest heavily into her business.

Christa Romano: it works for her, but it, it wouldn't work for me. Another example of a business model that works really, really, really well for some people is YouTube monetization. So if you are a YouTuber, then actually you don't even have to ask anybody for money, you can just make amazing, really viral content.

Christa Romano: And ultimately, if your content reaches enough people, then YouTube will pay you for every view. And that is an epic business model if you can get there, but the thing about that business model is that it's a very slow process to build up your audience to be that big. And you really need to be super consistent and you need to be editing your videos and constantly in creation mode.

Christa Romano: And for me, like a lot of the work that goes into. Creating a YouTube channel is just not [00:29:00] how I personally want to spend my time. I'm very much a people person. I'm a talker. I like to connect with people. So for me, like being a full-time YouTuber doesn't really make sense, but for somebody else who doesn't necessarily want to be connecting to humans, with their actual voice and energy, but they want to be just like a creator and they want to do ridiculous things and.

Christa Romano: Mr. Beast, for example, like, that guy, he is obviously living out his dharma. He's obviously doing what he's meant to be doing. He's just having a fucking ball, and people love him for it, and love paying him for it. Or, like, he gets paid for it. So, anyway, works for him, doesn't work for me.

Christa Romano: Another business model that I see a lot of people doing here in Bali is opening up restaurants. So, in Bali or, or real estate too, right? Like the labor costs here are very, very, very low. And that's usually the biggest expense for a restaurant. So it seems like a great business model where you just You know, build the restaurant, [00:30:00] um, cheaply because you can, I mean, hell, you don't even need to have windows on it.

Christa Romano: Like half the restaurants here are just little bungalows. so the cost of creating the restaurant is very low here compared to other places. The cost of labor is very low. The cost of food is very low. And then there's a lot of, tourists who are willing to pay top dollar for a cute cappuccino that has a little picture of an angel on it.

Christa Romano: So, you know, like the markup for the cappuccino in this little bungalow setting, it could be astronomical, and therefore restaurants could be a highly, highly profitable business. Is that the best business to create? Is that the best business model? For me personally, I value freedom too much and I do not like managing people.

Christa Romano: Like I, I honestly, I would really rather be a solopreneur for the most part. So for me, Owning a restaurant would be incredibly stressful. I don't want to handle those customer complaints. So there are always other things to think about. For someone else who maybe has experience in hospitality and they maybe have a kid so they have no [00:31:00] intention of leaving the island anytime soon.

Christa Romano: Opening up a restaurant or building a villa here in Bali might be the best business model for them, but it's not for me. Anyway, I think that's enough examples, but if you're catching my drift, like my thing is that I'm always thinking about different businesses, and different ways to make money. And the truth is there are infinite ways to make money.

Christa Romano: Really the best way to make money though is to tune into who you are, what you value, the way that you want to be spending your time, what your unique skill set is, and then create a business idea that makes sense for all of those factors. Not because someone else says this is a highly profitable business model, but because ultimately any business, you can get it to be highly profitable.

Christa Romano: So really the thing is you want to tune in to what is super authentic to you and that's how you're going to have success because when you're doing something that feels authentic and then you're going to be excited about it and you're going [00:32:00] to actually take the time to watch the training videos and you're going to show up to the live calls and you're going to do the work to your capacity and like I said to my other client, like if you start working on this business idea, Great.

Christa Romano: And ultimately, if you want to change your mind and do a different business idea, that's great too. Like by then you'll have already known, you'll have already learned how to make a business. So it really is this empowering way to do life. Speaking of doing life, another little metaphor that I wanted to share with you is about being the captain of your own ship.

Christa Romano: Okay. So similarly to the conveyor belt metaphor earlier, where, you know, you're just kind of like blindly on this conveyor belt, not using your own limbs, not making your own decisions, just going through the motions that other people have set for you. If you think about your life, As a ship, you can make it a pirate ship, you can make it a yacht, make it whatever you want, whatever you want your ship to be.

Christa Romano: What, what does your ship look like? Decide your ship. And now think about you on that ship. Who's [00:33:00] driving the ship? Well, when you're a child, it's not you, right? When you're a child, adults are running the ship of your life. So you've basically been living your life. as the skipper of the boat, right? You're just like taking directions from somebody else and um, you're going with the flow.

Christa Romano: Like you're just on for the ride. Like you're just going wherever this boat is going. But then once you get a little bit older, I think what a lot of people do is they forget that they can promote themselves to the captain at any time. The captain is the one that's driving the ship and when it's your life, why wouldn't you choose to be the captain?

Christa Romano: But what so many people do is they just continue to let society be the captain or they don't have any captain at all and then they end up being this like really passive, you know, like free-spirited. I mean, I, I feel like I'm free-spirited, but Also, you need to have ownership of your life, like you should probably be holding on to the freaking steering wheel of your ship, but people just don't [00:34:00] do it.

Christa Romano: And I genuinely think it's because they forget. So this is my reminder to you that you can give yourself a promotion to be the captain of your own ship at any time. I mean, you can literally decide right now. that you're the fucking captain. You're the captain of the ship. Whatever these other people are saying, like, you know, your parents, sure, they might be on the boat, but like, They're not the ones that are directing your life anymore.

Christa Romano: You're an adult now. It might be your friends, like your friends might influence the direction that you're going in. Maybe you want to sail in a similar direction to your friends, but ultimately you are not the same boat as your friend. You are two different boats. You're either parallel or one of you is going in a slightly different direction, and that's fine.

Christa Romano: You don't need to be in parallel. riding alongside somebody else for your entire life, like choose your own path. So anyway, you can decide right now that you're the captain, but here's the realism that I want to give you. Like this is me doing my [00:35:00] responsible thing as a coach, as someone who's encouraging people to be authentic, to choose your own life, to be the captain is that when you give yourself that promotion when you go from being a skipper to a captain, guess what?

Christa Romano: You're the captain. You're probably pretty underqualified to be the captain or you're inexperienced, you're not experienced in being the captain. So there's going to be some scary moments, right? And this happens a lot when you, for example, choose to become a digital nomad, it's that you're choosing a new path that no one else has sailed on before, and therefore you're going to need to navigate it all by yourself.

Christa Romano: And you might not know how to navigate. So you got to learn how to use a compass. You got to learn how to use all the different navigation tools. And the chances of you going astray at first is pretty high. Now, for me, like the reason why I want to be here today, And the reason I'm telling this to you is [00:36:00] that it's okay for you to go a little bit astray at first, like, no problem, you know, as long as you are still holding on to the steering wheel, you can always course correct, but it's when you let someone else hold on to the steering wheel that if you go astray, you don't have a say over it.

Christa Romano: And that's why people feel stuck in life. It's because they're letting someone else hold the steering wheel of their ship.

Christa Romano: So it's okay to make mistakes, right? It's okay to choose a path that actually doesn't end up making a lot of sense for you. here's an example of that. Like, let's say that you, have a job and then you join my program and then you come up with a business idea that feels great to you.

Christa Romano: And so then you got your first couple of clients and then you quit your job and now you are on your own. By the way, you quitting your job is you being like, what? F the skipper role. Like I'm taking full ownership of this ship. You might end up hitting a storm. [00:37:00] Okay. And then like the situation might be that you, um, you lose your clients and then you don't have any others lined up.

Christa Romano: And now all of a sudden you're thrown into like a financial pickle. Well, when you don't have a job, you suddenly have all of the options available to you. And I guarantee you that if you ever are in a situation where you're in a financial pickle, you will start to figure out ways to get out of that pickle.

Christa Romano: You will find ways that you never, ever, ever would have considered. If you still had your nine-to-five job. And honestly, it is when you are like, Oh shoot, I really need to make a change or, Oh shoot, I really need to get a client. Now you're going to start scraping the bottom of the barrel for different ideas.

Christa Romano: You're going to start looking in different barrels and that is when you get innovative and honestly that might be when you have the biggest breakthrough in your life, which is when you hit a point where you're just like, I just don't know what to do. And I wish somebody could help me. answer my [00:38:00] questions.

Christa Romano: Like, I kind of wish I was back on that conveyor belt right now because life was easy that way. But easy isn't necessarily good. Easy isn't rewarding. Challenges, that is what end up giving you the most rewarding life. And freedom is what allows you to live the life of your dreams. Freedom is what allows you to be authentic.

Christa Romano: You can have all the freedom you want. You can have your dream career. You can have the dream income. You can live wherever you want. You can spend your time however you want, but you have to get off the conveyor belt and you have to give yourself that promotion of going from skipper to captain. And one thing that you can do if you want to go from skipper to captain is you can Literally, send me a DM.

Christa Romano: Send me a DM on Instagram now. And when you use this keyword, authenticity podcast, I will know that you listened to [00:39:00] this specific episode. And then I will send you an automated message that asks you a few questions about yourself. I'm probably going to ask you like, Hey, what's your story? And, um, what resonated about the podcast with you?

Christa Romano: And how can I help you? How can I support you? So I give you some prompts. And if you answer them thoroughly, if you, if you give me one-word answers, just to see if I answer, I'm not going to answer. Okay. So give me some thoughtful responses so that I have something to work with. And then we can actually just cut to the chase.

Christa Romano: what a lot of people say is that my podcast is no bullshit and no fluff and I hate bullshit and fluff. So if you messaged me and you're like, Hey, how are you? I have a question. Can I ask you the question? I'm not going to respond to that, babe. I need you to tell me about your life and then I can give you a thoughtful, meaningful response and I can either help you or I can send you in another direction that will help you more than I can help you.

Christa Romano: But send me a DM on Instagram now at KristaBellaTravels with the keyword Authenticity Podcast. respond to the [00:40:00] questions that I'll ask you and let's talk. Let's talk about how you can start harnessing your own authenticity, how you can start creating a life of freedom, whatever that means to you. So thank you so much for listening.

Christa Romano: This was so fun. Um, I hope you enjoyed my rantings and ravings. Once again, I hope that you benefit from it. I hope that it opened your mind. I hope that you feel empowered inspired and worthy of choosing. whatever life you want. I know that you're worthy. So let's get you believing that so that you can actually start taking action on it.

Christa Romano: All right. We'll see you in the next episode. Talk soon. Bye.