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Published: November 16, 2025

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What This Series Is About

Most entrepreneurship content focuses on tactics. How to validate ideas. How to build products. How to get customers. That’s valuable, but it misses something: how to build a life that can actually sustain you while you do all that. This series is about the part nobody talks about - staying stable mentally and financially while building. Getting clarity when everything feels urgent. Moving with intention instead of panic. Making career choices that fit where you actually are in life, not where some blog post says you should be. It’s not about hustling harder or finding your passion. It’s about building something that lasts without burning out before you get there.

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Who This Might Help

Maybe you’re working full-time and building on the side, trying to figure out if or when to make the jump. Maybe you’re freelancing and juggling clients while dreaming of products. Maybe you want more freedom but you’re realizing freedom without stability is just chaos. Wherever you are, the goal isn’t to convince you to quit your job or start a company. It’s to help you make intentional choices based on your actual situation.

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What’s Here

This series covers lessons from 15+ years of trying different approaches to work:
  1. Work-Life Balance & Sustainable Building - Why taking breaks makes you more productive
  2. Understanding Different Work Models - The real tradeoffs between employment, freelancing, client work, and products
  3. Trading One Boss for Many - What actually happens when you leave employment for clients
  4. Building Stable Foundations - Creating financial and emotional stability while building
  5. The Portfolio Approach - Mixing different types of work to reduce risk
Read them in order or jump to what’s relevant. Each one shares real experiences (mostly failures), frameworks for making decisions, and questions to help you figure out what makes sense for you.

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Starting with Reality

Most business advice assumes you’re 25, single, debt-free, and ready to sleep on a friend’s couch for two years. But maybe you have a mortgage. Maybe you have a family. Maybe you’re 37, not 27. Maybe stability sounds pretty good right now. That’s fine. That’s where most people actually are. The counterintuitive thing I’ve learned: a stable base means you can take better risks, not worse ones. When you’re desperate, you take clients you hate because you need the money. You ship products you’re not proud of to hit arbitrary deadlines. You say yes to everything because you can’t afford to say no. When you’re stable, you can be selective. You can build properly. You can walk away from bad situations. You can actually solve problems instead of just surviving them. Stability isn’t the opposite of risk. It’s what enables smart risk.

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What This Isn’t

This isn’t get-rich-quick advice. It’s not one-size-fits-all. There’s no motivation porn or success theater. No “just believe in yourself” or “follow your passion.” I’ll share the failures as much as the wins. Because that’s how you actually learn.

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A Note on Context

This comes from my experience: 15+ years building products and businesses. Based in Prague, originally from the UK. Worked full-time, freelanced, ran a business, now back to exploring employment. No co-founder, no external funding, lots of mistakes. Still figuring it out. Your context is different. Your lessons will be different. Use this as a starting point, not a blueprint.

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Where to Start

If you’re unsure, start with Work-Life Balance & Sustainable Building. It sets the foundation for everything else. If you know exactly what you’re struggling with, jump to that lesson. You can always come back.

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The Real Challenge

Building a product is hard. Building a business is harder. Building a life that can sustain both while you figure it out? That’s what determines whether you’re still doing this in five years, or whether you’ve burned out and gone back to a job you hate. Let’s make sure it’s the former.