Why I Took a Vacation to Figure Out my Solopreneur Journey (And Why You Might Need One, Too)

My solopreneur journey started when my family and I were 2 months away from moving permanently to Spain and the opportunity suddenly disappeared into thin air.

Since then, my goal has been to find a globally remote job…but they’re few and far between. I want the flexibility to work from Spain. The tech job market has been dicey for a while so solopreneurship is away to diversify my income streams as a means to increasing my financial security and ability to live where I want.

Nights and weekends have been when I try to move the needle on indie hacking. With that type of constraint, it can be difficult to make a big push (without sacrificing too much sleep).

To make ambitious moves and build momentum, I needed clarity and focus. I took a vacation to get it and it absolutely paid off.

It was exactly what I needed to move the needle. I rewrote artsypetz.com, enabling me to move into selling physical products. I rebuilt my personal website by moving a way from Squarespace then learning and rebuilding with Next.js and React. I spent time learning about marketing and started implementing those ideas to drive traffic.

My time off condensed a few months of nights and weekends into a couple of weeks.

“To make ambitious moves and build momentum, I needed clarity and focus. I took a vacation to get it and it absolutely paid off.”

More than that, it gave me the space to recognize that the work I was doing allowed me to inject a whole new level of creativity to being an engineer. Being able to express myself in a new way while doing something I loved felt exciting.

Success is a mix of luck and hard work—but hard work is the only part I can control. Taking a “solopreneur vacation” let me to build momentum and hold up my end of the bargain. Let’s see where the chips fall.