„I was the worst boss I’ve ever had, and it was me.“
Lies people on the internet tell you about solopreneurship (and how easy it is to kill your creativity this way)
I am a solopreneur. And I wanna go back to work.
Unpopular opinion, and not many people will admit it. But wait. I’ll explain myself.
My name is Tamara and I am a brand and growth strategist. I built my career on creativity, started as a graphic designer around 15 years ago. That might mean nothing. I’ve met people with loads of experience who still sound inexperienced. So if you wanna build your trust on something else, I totally understand you.
We love to brag about freedom, working from anywhere, having “money work for us while we sleep”. But how many real people do you actually know who have this? I know zero.
I’ve “seen” a lot of them on the internet though. Crazy successful.
So who are they, and why do we all feel like we’re failing if we’re not there yet?
Here’s my version.
I started my business a little longer than 2 years ago, just after my maternity leave. I started writing on LinkedIn when the baby was asleep because I needed a creative outlet. Something I was “doing”. Later I realized I was doing a lot, but that’s another story.
I got 3 clients from LinkedIn alone, 2 of them high ticket (as solopreneurs like to say). I couldn’t say no to that, so I said no to AMS and opened my “shop”.
It was a lot of work, but very fun. I hadn’t felt that free at work in years. I was going to their offices, meeting them at Museumsquartier. I worked from everywhere, went to the gym when I wanted, and I was just learning how to do the “business stuff”.
Then the bliss passed and I found myself wearing 7 hats at once.
Salesperson. Founder. Social media creator, but not a random one, one with a strong POV, because doing socials for the sake of socials doesn’t work anymore. Newsletter writer, and not the kind where you notify old clients about something. A true magazine format, out every week. Which collected leads. Which went into sequences. Which I had to build myself. So, CRM person too. And growth strategist for my own thing.
And let’s not forget we live in Austria, the state of trust, where people still need to see you to trust you. I understand it. I also like meeting a person in person.
But that means another hat. Networking. Being everywhere, in the room, not only on the internet. Events, coffees, meetups, the same faces at the same places until they remember yours. And that takes a hell of a lot of time.
So that’s where the guru mantra of building an online business falls apart. All this “freedom”, working from Bali while drinking matcha, is not really true.*
*if this is you, reading from Bali with your matcha, I envy you and I apologize for not believing it’s possible. This is my story and my perspective.
After all the hats, the cohorts, the online advice and the offline advice, I came to a simple conclusion.
I don’t like this. It killed everything in me. My creativity first. I was the worst boss I’ve ever had, and it was me. Whipping myself to wear all the hats, build the Claude agents, the workflows, do more, do more. For what? For high ticket clients who’d be done in 2 months tops, and then the sales process starts again. It never really stops.
The client work was the smallest part. The rest was 90% of the job. Of the freedom.
And none of it guaranteed the clients or the pay. Some months 0. Some months 15k. Sounds good. For me it was mostly stressful. I was never happy, not even when I closed a big one, because I was already scared about next month.
Stressed and scared. There is no better way to kill creativity.
So when I think about freedom now, I think: monthly salary. Working from anywhere for a few months in the summer. Paid vacation. Paid sick leave. Going to the gym during working hours because your employer trusts you’ll do the job. Nice colleagues to have lunch with.
It’s funny. I had that. 12-13 years ago when I moved to Austria. Then the internet got to me and I thought I was supposed to build something crazy successful on my own, or I’d be a failure.
But we choose how to spend our time. And that one guru on the internet doesn’t know who we are, what our job is, or what we actually want.
I want to feel free on my own terms.
P.S. If you feel the same, add me on LinkedIn and tell me your story. I know I’m not alone.
