She Found a Way to Travel While Her Business Runs Itself

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While I share money-making strategies, nothing is "typical", and outcomes are based on each individual. There are no guarantees.

Last week I was in Alaska.

I took my two brothers and my sister. First time we’ve ever traveled just the siblings. I paid for the trip. We laughed until it hurt. I hadn’t laughed that long in years.

And the whole week, my business ran without me. Made money without me. I never once opened my laptop. Never connected it to the ship’s internet. I was completely off the clock — and nobody even noticed I was gone.

That’s the part I want you to sit with. Not the trip. The fact that leaving didn’t cost me anything.

Three real vacations in twelve weeks

And the whole week, my business ran without me. Made money without me. I never once opened my laptop. Never connected it to the ship's internet. I was completely off the clock — and nobody even noticed I was gone.

Sedona for a week — a private retreat, spa and wellness. Almost a week in California visiting my daughter. Then Alaska.

Three trips. Twelve weeks. And the business kept running the entire time.

I didn’t build it this way by accident. But I also didn’t build it the way most people think you have to.

Who I was before this

Nine years ago I got divorced.

I didn’t get anything. No assets. No child support. I raised my 13-year-old on my own and rebuilt from zero. Right after, I was in survival mode — I was even job hunting, not sure what I was going to do.

A single woman with nothing to sell and no one to lean on, I built my way back up. Got my credit high. Put my daughter through college. And a few years ago, I built this house from the ground up with the builders. Four bedrooms. A gym. An office. A studio. Filled with my own love and my own choices.

I tell you that not to impress you. I tell you because I need you to know where the starting line was.

I used to do it the hard way

I didn’t always work alone.

I built my whole career through leverage. Teams, systems, other people. And around 47, I hit a wall. Burned out. Tired of hiring and firing and managing people all day.

What I actually wanted was to create. Write something. Make something. A newsletter, a video, a book, a blog. I didn’t want to manage people. I wanted to make things.

So I did something that shocked everyone who knew me, because I’m social and I’d spent years teaching people to grow through teams. I went solo.

I stopped calling myself an entrepreneur. I became a solopreneur.

What the business looks like now

I’m a content creator. A publisher. A little media company of one, and I only work for myself.

No clients I answer to. No employees. No team to keep fed. It’s just me, creating things — and a set of systems quietly doing the work in the background whether I’m at my desk or on a boat off the coast of Alaska.

The income comes from a few different lanes. I don’t chase every shiny new platform anymore. If a project doesn’t fit one of my lanes, the answer is just no. That focus is the whole thing. Doing less, on purpose, so the parts that matter can actually run without me.

I’m not going to walk you through the mechanics here. That’s not what this post is for. This one is just the picture.

What it actually feels like

It feels like freedom.

It feels like taking my mom to Alaska for her 73rd birthday. Like taking my siblings this year. Like healing after a hard chapter instead of grinding through it.

I’ve learned to listen to my own energy. Sometimes that means hermit mode — stay in, get quiet, focus, build. And sometimes it means go play. Go rest. Go connect. Both of those are part of the work now. Not a reward for the work. Part of it.

I’ll be 55 at the end of August. And for the first time in a long time, I’m not searching anymore. I know who I am. I know what I built. I just get to feed it now.

This is what’s possible

That’s the whole reason I share any of this.

Not to show off a trip. To show you that a woman can start over from nothing, choose to work alone, and end up with a business that funds the life she actually wants — and keeps running while she goes and lives it.

That’s not a someday-maybe. That’s a solopreneur business. And it’s more within reach than anyone tells you.

I open my actual books and share the real numbers — every stream, every dollar — inside my paid newsletter. If you want to see exactly what this business earns, that’s where it lives. And if you want help building your own version of it, I coach solo creators inside Ballen Academy, and my playbooks are at Ballen Publishing.