Exploring the world of solopreneurship

At the last minute, I had a salary negotiation yanked out from under me. As someone who knows to negotiate every year, I made my case and offered to forgo a raise in salary in exchange for being able to live and work in Europe. Everyone agreed so I planned to move my family in 12 months. With 2 months left until the move, the company changed their mind on a whim. That crushed me. I had my family ready to go, a tenant ready to move into our home, and was working with a realtor in our dream city. It all came crashing down after being told for 10 months straight that everything was in order, there’s nothing to worry about, and how the powers that be were so excited for me.

This pain and disappointment was so different from anything else I had experienced before. I couldn’t get over—and in some ways, still can’t—how small, insignificant, and vulnerable I felt. I felt so naive for thinking an agreement was a done deal. I felt so stupid for being so excited. It was a potent cocktail of such negative emotions and I had no other choice than to drink it.

I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of what happened. My parents raised me with the understanding that a corporate job meant stability and security. Their generation was able to buy a home on one salary. They had been part of unions and benefitted from collective bargaining. They passed that lesson on to me because that was their completely valid experience. But now? I started spotting a lot of holes in that idea. I saw huge layoffs and people struggling to find their next job; a lot of people struggling to make progress.

That’s when I came across “Company of One” by Paul Jarvis and that opened up my eyes. You see, that lesson from my parents about corporate security and stability also came with the lesson that entrepreneurship was risky and insecure. In some ways, they were right. However, they weren’t completely right. It’s worth acknowledging that there is a significant amount of insecurity and instability that comes with the corporate path. At will employment, layoffs, and stagnant salaries aren’t entirely uncommon. Jarvis talked about people like himself that decided to find their own pathway to making a living that didn’t always mean corporate, salaried life. There are people out there that offer their skillset to the marketplace with success. Better yet, they do it alone. They do it all themselves. They’re a company of one.

It opened my eyes to solopreneurs and, at that point, there was no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. These were people with a valued skillset and found ways to generate income from that skillset. As a data engineer with a master’s degree in data science, I noticed that some of these people were in the tech industry! They were providing a service and/or building things and were having success. I don’t believe in fate but this felt like I was learning about solopreneurs at the right time.

“It opened my eyes to solopreneurs and, at that point, there was no putting the toothpaste back in the tube.”

“Company of One” also advocated for a more steady, reasonable path of trying to start your own thing during your nights and weekends and not immediately leaving your job. I couldn’t believe what I was reading because so often I’ve had entrepreneurism pitched to me as “all or nothing” and that if you weren’t all in you never really wanted it in the first place. That kind of attitude always made me roll my eyes but now I was reading about people who still figured it out without having to adopt a toxic mindset. I knew this was something that I wanted to try.

…and that’s how I made ArtsyPetz! It’s a small side business where people can buy custom pet portraits and have them printed as wall art or on shirts, sweatshirts, bags, and mugs. I genuinely love working on it and thinking about it. It’s an outlet for my creativity, growth, and learning and I’m happy with it.

Is it the next big thing? Will it fund my early retirement? Honestly, probably not—and I’m totally happy with that. This is the first thing that I have ever built entirely on my own, released, and it has paying customers. Just thinking about that puts a smile on my face. In a way, it represents a possibility of what the future can hold. It can be a way to diversify my income stream and in turn gain more autonomy over the decisions that my family makes. It can be a way for us to live our life more on our terms. It can be a way to reduce the possibility of being forced that damn aforementioned cocktail.

Now, it is something that I do in my spare time and love. I get to meet insanely smart and interesting people. I’m constantly learning, growing, and progressing. I’m excited about a new possible way for me to take care of my family in the future. I work on ArtsyPetz, I think about new things I can build, and I build them.

Life works in mysterious ways.