How I solo-traveled the world as a solopreneur

It was late August last year in the coastal area of Croatia. I had been workcationing in Europe for three months. The Adriatic sea was calmer than a swimming pool. I was laying flat on my back, floating in the water.

Floating is a great feeling — your weight presses down into the water; the water presses back, pushing you up. Your ears submerged under water and all you could hear was the occasional popping noises made by sea creatures. Worry-free, you could literally fall asleep in the ocean bed.

Having a life where I alone hold the key to my destiny is something I’ve been aiming for for the past 7 years. I’ve finally made it. Drifting in the water, I closed my eyes and felt the warm sun on my face.

Life hasn’t always been this easy though. In the summer of 2011, I quit my high-paying job as a lead architect for an Internet company and decided to embark on my journey to become a full time entrepreneur. Six months into it, I was burning $2500/month living in my upscale condo in downtown Vancouver, not having a clue what I was doing. I was quickly burning up all my savings. Alas, for the nth time, the sinking feeling was all I felt on my entrepreneurial journey. It felt like a video game where I could never win no matter how hard I tried.

Most people prefer to have a 9–5 job where they could live comfortably. At my age of early thirties, they would be married with kids. The after-work activities may include watching HBOs and playing video games. Entrepreneurship is a path less traveled — it’s extremely hard. The road to mastery is paved with blood and sweat. For the past few years, going back home for me involved coding sessions fueled by coffee and trance music, reading piles and piles of books, fixing bugs way past midnight and getting burned out.

So why would I do this to myself? Some entrepreneurs want to change the world. But for me, I just want the freedom to control my own time and, hopefully, travel the world.

So I pressed on. The work was all that mattered. I was too busy to even look for a cofounder. By the time I made the first cent for my startup, I had managed to designed and build the whole website by myself. I’ve managed to automate a lot of business processes, which freed me up to work a few hours each week while I traveled the world.

The life of an solopreneur is not unlike that of an artist — never validated by the outside world and constantly battled with deep sense of self-doubts: “you will never make it”, “there are lots of other people who are doing this. What make you think you will be successful”.

I just embraced the intense desire to prove them wrong.

So laying there in the Adriatic sea, it felt great knowing that I floated. For now, I just want to enjoy life and see the world.