From zero: solo burnout, the phoenix gene, and the fear that finally left

This one isn’t a guide. It’s a note from the bottom of the thing nobody puts in the brochure — and the climb back out. If you run something alone, you’ll recognise it.

The bottom

I went all-in. Put everything I had into fixing a network of projects I’d let drift for too long, and for months I lived on the wrong side of sustainable — sleeping four or five hours, spending the last of what I had on the tools I was betting on, working like the runway was on fire. Because it was. And it worked, in the end: the projects turned, real growth came back. But it cost me.

My health frayed first — eyes, then nerves. The money ran out before the recovery landed. A long European winter, a body running on empty, and then the part that makes it heavy: I’m a father of two daughters and a husband. The business isn’t just mine to carry; people depend on it. When the energy and the money are both gone at the same time, “stressed” isn’t the word. It’s emptier than that.

The phoenix gene

Here’s the thing I’ve learned about myself across twenty years of this, and it’s the only reason I’m still here: every single time I’ve fallen, I’ve found something to get back up with — usually right at the point where it seemed there was nothing left. I started calling it the phoenix gene. Not because I’m special; because starting again from zero stopped feeling like failure and started feeling like the move. Down to ashes, then up. Again. I even wrote a track about it — From Zero — because some things you have to say out loud to believe.

If you take one thing from this: from zero is a starting point, not a verdict. Falling isn’t the end of the story for a solo operator. Not getting back up is.

The fear that’s leaving

And then something shifted — partly age, partly the moment we’re living in. The fear I used to carry is quietly draining away, and I think a lot of it was never really about ability. It was about barriers I could hide behind.

The biggest one was language. For years you could genuinely doubt yourself: can I really run support in that market? find partners in a language I don’t speak? serve a region I don’t know? In 2026 that excuse is dissolving. AI can now translate, draft and help you communicate across most languages and regions well enough that the language barrier is far lower than it was — not perfect, and high-stakes or nuanced conversations still need a human, but the wall I used to stand behind is mostly gone.

When the barrier is gone, hesitation stops being caution and starts being the only real mistake left. That’s the quiet revolution under all the AI noise: the cost of trying has collapsed — so for me, not trying became the thing I’d most regret. I don’t say that as hustle-culture noise (and not as a rule for everyone — life circumstances differ) — I say it as someone who spent years letting fear wear the costume of “being realistic.”

Why I won’t put my hands down

So I keep going. Not because it’s guaranteed — most of what I build won’t be the one that works, and I know it. I keep going because this is what I actually want: my own projects, under my own name, that earn on their own, that let me be independent and provide for the people I love without selling my hours to someone else’s plan. I’ll do it even if, at the very end, it doesn’t all come together — because the alternative, for me, isn’t a life.

If you’re somewhere near the bottom right now: the autonomy is real, the cost is real, and so is the climb back. Build the supports — runway, sleep, movement, people — before you need them (movement for the desk-bound solopreneur is not a side issue when your mind is the whole production line). Then look honestly at the barriers you think are stopping you, and notice how many of them just quietly fell.

The work itself is the same as it ever was — decide what to build and get it in front of people. The difference now is that the usual excuses are weaker than they used to be. From zero is fine. From zero is where everything starts.

Part of the complete mind & life guide for solopreneurs.