What if the strategy you’ve been searching for wasn’t a book or a mentor, but a one-way ticket to silence?
That’s what I discovered when I boarded a plane to Estonia. No plan or return date. Just a suitcase, laptop and a quiet knowing that I needed to be somewhere else, far away from the version of me I’d been.
I was in the early days of stepping out on my own. A founder of a new freelance business. I was still testing the edges of my offerings, navigating remote teams, juggling shifting time zones, and dancing with the radical idea that maybe work could feel good. Like, really good.
In a time when we're taught to seek answers from books, mentors and online frameworks, I found something deeper through solo travel. This story isn't about tourism. It’s about transformation. The kind of simplicity that emerges when you give yourself space to listen, feel and lead from within.
My first stop, Estonia. It called me in a way I can’t fully explain. Intuition maybe. I didn’t know the language. I’d never stepped foot on its soil. It didn’t matter. There was a quiet pull towards its magical forests, folk art, ancient rhythm and something else I couldn’t name yet. Unexplainable.
I came to learn later, that's how real transformations often begin. Not with logic. Instead, a gentle pull.
Death comes first
Let’s be clear, this wasn't the glossy “solo female traveller” narrative you often see on social media.
I wasn’t seeking business advice. Or even to change my life. Something deeper was unfolding. I wasn't just changing locations. I was letting a version of myself die.
The roles I once played; employee, partner, reliable friend, daughter. They were all built for who I had been. Safe. Predictable. Approved. Yet, no longer aligned to who I was becoming, or maybe who I always was.
While I couldn't name it then, I can now. Solo travel became my soul's initiation into a new kind of leadership. Not the loud, performative kind. Yet quiet, the kind that surfaces from within.
So here are 3 reasons I believe every Founder should travel solo. Not to escape the work, but to remember who they are underneath it all.
3 Reasons Founders Should Travel Solo
1. Self Trust Becomes Somatic
Solo travel doesn't just teach you how to plan. It teaches you how to feel your way forward. To trust your body just as much as your thoughts.
Without a back up plan or second opinion, you become your own compass.
You ask yourself:
“Am I safe here?”
“Do I trust this person, this situation?”
“Can I rely on myself, even when I don't have the answers?”
And over time, you do.
Each decision becomes a quiet rehearsal for leadership. A different kind. You don't need proof to move. Or applause to feel valid.
You learn to steady your nervous system through the discomfort. To stay within yourself. During those wrong turns, in foreign cities at night. Choosing presence over panic.
This is the kind of confidence that can’t be taught in a course. It’s lived and felt. You build a stronger, quieter you. Built not in performance, but in stillness.
It's the kind of leadership your nervous system remembers.
2. You’ll unravel (and that's the point)
I didn’t travel to find clarity. I travelled to find space. But in that space, something unexpected happened. I began to unravel.
Away from the noise, the roles I’d worn for years started to slip. Employee. Leader. Partner. Reliable problem solver. Do-it-all friend.
Sure, they weren't lies, but in between the cobbled and dirty streets, train rides, musing at beautiful artwork, solo travel began to peel off layers that no longer fit. In those quiet moments, I met the version of myself I’d been too busy to see.
No, solo travel didn't just reset my nervous system. It revealed me.
Because beneath the business plan and founder identity…. There was just me. Honest. Unfiltered. Whole.
And that’s where the real work began. Not by building a brand, but remembering the 'self' beneath it all....and I finally started to hear my voice again.
3. You redefine connection, without the performance
When no one knows your name, story, position title... connection becomes something else entirely. Presence becomes the only currency.
There’s no performance. No applause. Just the raw, beautiful honesty of being seen, entirely as you are, and not what you can offer.
In that stillness, I began to listen more deeply. To myself. To others. To the spaces in between.
I could finally lean into what my intuition was telling me. I started to notice more, not what people said but what they didn't say.
Some of my most meaningful conversations happened with strangers I’ll never see again, in cafes, hotels, while hiking, through broken translations and open hearts. Where I realised…
True leadership isn’t loud. It’s fluent in nuance. It knows how to pause before reacting. How to sense the unsaid. And how to choose softness when it matters most.
When I returned to my work, I wasn’t just more connected to others. I was more connected to myself.
What I brought with me
Travel didn’t teach me business. It taught me soul leadership.
It gave me space to trust myself again. To integrate what most business courses skip. To lead without performance. To listen, even when I was scared of what I’d hear.
No, solo travel didn’t give me answers. It gave me something far more powerful. Access to my intuition again. The kind of strategy that begins in silence, not around a table discussing ideas.
It became the most unexpected (and essential) accelerator of my business journey.
Your Invitation
If you’re feeling stretched, stuck or in-between, maybe it's not more strategy you need. Maybe it’s space.
To soften.
To listen.
To return to yourself.
Book the ticket. Get a little lost. Not to escape, but to remember.
You don’t need a perfect plan. Just the courage to meet the version of you waiting on the other side.
You may not return with a polished pitch deck or idea. But you will come back with the most powerful operating systems a founder can carry:
"One built from soul, not scarcity".
Whether you're in a strategy sprint or a quiet season of reinvention. Remember: real clarity often arrives in stillness.
This experience now shapes how I guide founders. Not through cookie cutter templates, but through presence, pattern recognition, and embodied decision-making.
At The Mindful Facilitator, we blend strategy with soul. Because we know real alignment and transformation doesn’t live in a framework.
It lives within you.
