Happy 2023 folks, and hope you had a great holiday season.
Today is a very exciting day for 2 reasons:
First and most importantly, we’re back after my holiday break!
Be honest – did you miss me? Maybe don’t answer that…
Anyway, I spent the last 10 days in Florida with family, and took about 98% of it off.
Relaxed, slept in, was lazy, ate a lot of food, and only spent a bit of time checking email, Slack etc.
And it was glorious.
I’ve talked about it before so I won’t beat a dead horse, but over the years I’ve learned to be strategic about time off. We can’t grind for months on end, and in my case, I find taking about 1 week off, twice per year, to be a good benchmark to stay energized but also push hard (with some one-off holidays here and there, when needed or for the stat holidays too).
There’s something valuable in taking more than 5-6 days off from your solopreneur business, wherein you feel much more refreshed and start thinking of ideas and strategies for your business that you wouldn’t have been able to if you’re too busy “in the business”.
So make sure to take a solid week (or more) off, at least once per year.
My suggestion:
- take a 7-10 day vacation twice per year, minimum
- take most of your country’s holidays off
- take a random Friday or Monday off, once per quarter, as needed
On that note, and secondly, last week was my birthday – boy am I getting old. I don’t actually think I’m old, and I don’t feel old, but it’s weird to see that number they call “age” to start creeping into the 30s…
Anyway.
Given I’m just finishing a long vacation, I’m going to work most of the day and had a fun birthday dinner planned with family.
I’ve also done a lot of thinking and planning for my 2023 – work thoughts, social media posting, workout routines, etc.
New year, slightly-new-but-not-really-new me.
I’ll share more of these thoughts and ideas over the next week or so.
It’s also interesting getting back into the solopreneur groove after more than a week off.
On the one hand, feeling nice and relaxed, refreshed, etc.
On the other hand, getting back into the grind and old routine after spending 10 days by the pool ain’t necessarily easy.
Luckily for me, we have lots to focus on at Visto and an exciting first quarter in 2023, so I don’t have much time to think about it either way.
And maybe that’s the key to it all – having something exciting and promising to stay focused on?
To give some more background, we’re doing our last week or two of beta testing for our newest immigration software.
It’s a platform that automates the entire process of preparing a study visa application, to then submit to Immigration Canada, if you’re trying to come study here as an international student.
Normally – if you’re an aspiring international student or their lawyer – this means preparing lots of supporting documents, filling out an assortment of PDFs, trying to navigate the (God awful) Immigration Canada website, piecing together instructions, etc.
In short, it’s a bit of a pain.
We’re doing our last round of testing for our new platform, and it automates all of it. It will make the process about 50% quicker and easier (maybe more), both for students applying by themselves, or the immigration professionals/lawyers/consultants that prepare and file these for their clients.
It also means getting feedback, fixing bugs, making the last tweaks and improvements so it’s good enough to ship it to paying clients. It’s a delicate balance too – making sure the product is good enough, but not spending too much time and waiting until it’s “perfect”.
In fact, no product is ever perfect and you should probably launch when it’s “good enough” and evolve from there.
But what does “good enough” even mean?
Well, that’s for you to decide (and largely case-by-case of course)…
Have a great day, make sure to join the email list if you want these updates right to your inbox, and keep grinding.
