Running a business can feel lonely, even when your days are full of people. An honest look at carrying the decisions, finding people you can speak openly with and making room for connection beyond your work.
You can spend an entire day talking to people and still feel quite alone in your business. There are client calls, emails to answer, messages from your team and conversations about projects. You’re communicating constantly, but there might not be anyone you can turn to and say, honestly, “I’m finding this difficult. What would you do?”
It’s a part of running a business that can catch you off guard. You expect the hard work and the financial uncertainty. You probably anticipate having to learn things you’ve never done before. But the feeling of carrying so much in your own head can be harder to prepare for, particularly when, from the outside, things appear to be going well.
Carrying the decisions
For creative founders, work can be personal. You’re putting your judgement, ideas and taste into something, then asking other people to value it. A quiet month can make you question your pricing. A difficult piece of feedback can stay with you long after the project has finished. Even a good opportunity can leave you feeling unsettled when you have to decide whether you’re ready for it. There’s often a practical decision to make, followed by a much longer conversation with yourself about what that decision means.
Friends and family might be wonderfully supportive, but there are limits to what they can help you untangle if they haven’t experienced it themselves. You can explain why a delayed project is stressful or why you’re nervous about increasing your fees, but sometimes you find yourself giving so much background that you abandon the conversation. “Work’s busy,” you say instead, and move on.
As your business grows, that feeling doesn’t necessarily disappear. Having a team brings more people into your working day, but it also brings responsibilities. You need to think carefully about what you share and how you share it. There are decisions about money, capacity and the future of the business that you may need to work through elsewhere before bringing them to the people affected. You can have a close, supportive team and still need someone outside it to talk to.
Working remotely can make the gaps more noticeable. There’s no conversation on the way out of a meeting, no one to glance across at after an unusual client request. A call ends and you’re immediately back in your own company, expected to move on to whatever comes next. Without those small moments to process things, it’s easy to carry the whole day into your evening.
Social media gives you access to other founders, although access doesn’t always translate into connection. You might know what someone’s studio looks like, who they’re working with and where they went for lunch, without having anyone you feel comfortable messaging when a project falls through. And when you’re already feeling uncertain, watching other people announce launches, new hires and fully booked months can make it harder to speak honestly about your own experience.
Making room for connection
Finding a few people you can be open with can make a real difference, and you can start small. Reach out to a founder you’ve enjoyed speaking to before, suggest a coffee with someone working in a similar field or try a local coworking day. Give yourself permission to find a format you enjoy. A small breakfast or a conversation over a walk might suit you better than a room full of introductions.
Once you find people you can talk to, give those relationships some consistency. A monthly breakfast, a regular walk or a short call every few weeks can be easier to maintain than repeatedly saying you should catch up. Familiarity makes a difference. Over time, you spend less of the conversation explaining your business and more of it talking about what’s actually happening.
It helps to say what you need, too. You might want practical advice, someone’s experience of a similar situation or simply a chance to talk something through. And different questions need different people: a fellow founder might understand the pressure you’re under, while a mentor or specialist adviser can help you work through a particular decision.
Loneliness can be easy to dismiss when there’s so much else to do. Reaching out slips down the list because it doesn’t feel as urgent as a proposal or a deadline. Yet having someone to talk to can change how you experience those demands. A problem that has been circling in your head all week can become much easier to understand once you say it out loud to someone who gets it.
A place for those conversations
That’s something I hope &KO can grow into: a place where we can have those conversations, alongside sharing ideas, practical advice and creative inspiration. I’m still learning as I build my own business, and I’d love to create a community where we can be honest about what’s difficult, celebrate what’s going well and help each other move forward.
If there’s someone you’ve been meaning to message, start there. You don’t need good news, a collaboration to propose or a perfectly formed question. A simple “How are things going? I’d love a catch-up” can open a conversation you both needed. And if something here feels familiar, my DMs (@klioh&ko) are always open. I’d love to hear how things are really going.
