The Loneliness of the Business Runner

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Twenty-three years after launching his first start-up Reid Hoffman was still feeling the effects. The creation of SocialNet, a site that tried to combine social networking with dating services and a classifieds board, “was a lonely and stressful journey,” Hoffman wrote in 2020. The use of food as a stress relief, combined with the meals taken during recruitment and sales, meant that more than two decades later, the founder of LinkedIn and co-founder of PayPal was still trying to lose the weight he gained during his first entrepreneurial venture.

Building your own business, Hoffman argued, is even more lonely than being the CEO of someone else’s company, more intense and more challenging. Founders have to persuade an entire community of people—co-founders, employees, and investors, as well as family and friends—that they know what they’re doing and are on the right track.

“Any rational person in that position would feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt, but founders can’t afford to spread those feelings to the other people in the organization,” writes Hoffman. “Even if you have co-founders to share the burden, it’s still a heavy one.”

But that loneliness isn’t just a difficult period that entrepreneurs need to pass through until the company’s built and they’ve made their fortune—at which point, they suddenly discover they have a bunch of new friends eager for their company. According to a new study, the loneliness that comes with creating a new business also affects that company’s success and can lead the entrepreneur to throw in the towel.

The researchers, led by Fei Zhu of Nottingham University Business School in China, define loneliness as “a negative emotion that occurs when an entrepreneur’s social needs are not satisfied by the quantity or quality of his or her social relationships in the entrepreneurship process.”

It’s a problem common among entrepreneurs, they say, because of the unique features of the entrepreneurial journey. Although the autonomy that comes with building a business can be attractive, the uncertainty, dynamism and high risk of failure can all trigger feelings of helplessness which, in the absence of peers who can relate to those pressures, can generate feelings of loneliness.

Deepening that isolation are an entrepreneur’s need to constantly maintain an image of competence and confidence, the personal responsibility for all major decisions, the need to persist even in the face of others’ doubts, and of course the lack of time to spend with friends and family. Everything about the entrepreneurial journey places business-builders in isolation.

That isolation, in turn, affects the ability to self-regulate—to aim at a goal and constantly correct the direction. As loneliness breaks down the entrepreneur’s energy, they struggle to stay on track, increasing their loneliness and deepening the problem further.

The first essential entrepreneurial quality to go is passion, the power that drives entrepreneurial endeavors.

The researchers identify three kinds of passion in entrepreneurs: a passion for inventing new things; a passion for founding new ventures; and a passion for developing those ventures. As loneliness grows, those passions weaken, damaging the entrepreneur’s ability to access the resources needed to build the business.

“Specifically, high loneliness generates the feeling that high-quality social relationships at work are lacking and this feeling may add to the perceived difficulties of obtaining new information, identifying new business opportunities, and founding, nurturing, and growing a business venture,” the researchers warn. The result will be an increased willingness to sell or close the company and take up a different activity that’s more social.

To test the relationship between loneliness, passion and a willingness to give up, the researchers conducted a series of surveys at different times. They asked 181 entrepreneurs in the UK to rate their agreement with statements such as “There is no one I can turn to when running my own business”; “It is exciting to figure out new ways to solve unmet market needs that can be commercialized”; and “I feel less excited about entrepreneurial positions.”

The researchers found a positive correlation between feelings of loneliness and an intent to exit entrepreneurial work, and a negative correlation between loneliness and passion.

“Our work reveals entrepreneurs’ business exit intention as an aversive business-related outcome of entrepreneurs’ loneliness,” the researchers conclude. “More importantly, we have demonstrated that entrepreneurs’ loneliness affects business exit intentions by reducing entrepreneurial passion.”

Beating the Loneliness of the Entrepreneur

So building a business can be a lonely affair. The initial vision belongs to an individual who has to cajole others, hide their own doubts and spend time away from friends and family while knowing there’s a good chance that all their efforts will be in vain. As their passion for the project falls, it’s no wonder they look for a way out—and bring about the failure they dreaded and tried to hide.

But what can an entrepreneur do to reduce the loneliness at the top of the company and save their business?

The researchers, four academics who work alongside peers in universities in China, Singapore, Australia and the UK, have little help to offer. They recommend that entrepreneurs “pay attention to their feelings of loneliness” and “be aware that loneliness can reduce their entrepreneurial passion and increase their business exit intention.” But they don’t suggest ways in which business-builders can find the emotional support they need.

Reid Hoffman, who broke with his then-girlfriend during the creation of SocialNet then saw the company fail, had a better experience when he moved on to the creation of PayPal then LinkedIn. His co-founders at LinkedIn included people who had worked with him before. They had more start-up experience and they understood too that the journey would be difficult. They were people he could confide in.

“From an emotional perspective, we understood that providing positive energy for each other along the way would be a key factor to help us succeed,” he wrote. Finding well-prepared partners was one important technique that Hoffman used to manage the loneliness of entrepreneurialism.

Hoffman also looked outside the business to lessen his loneliness. As he built SocialNet, he’d speak to his friend Peter Thiel at the end of each week and often at the end of each day. Hoffman would describe “the craziness of being an entrepreneur” and describe all the things he’d wish he’d known before he started.

Those chats with someone who understood didn’t just help Hoffman to offload each week and reduce his sense of isolation. They also opened new opportunities. When Thiel and Max Levchin started the company that would become PayPal, Thiel invited Hoffman on board.

He also recommends coaching, and in groups. While an executive coach can be important and valuable, he suggests, a good team coach can help everyone on the team sustain each other and understand the meaning of their venture.

Both chatting to an entrepreneurial friend and bringing a coach on board reduces loneliness directly by putting an entrepreneur in direct contact with other people. But Hoffman also offers a way to reduce the isolation of the entrepreneurial journey without talking to anyone. Content, and in particular, podcasts, can be a useful way of enhancing skills, building connections and creating a personal connection.

“The power of the podcasting format is the way it can provide emotional sustenance to so many listeners through the intimate connection of hearing a human voice in your ear, talking about the same kinds of challenges and problems they face in their own lives, with an optimistic message from those who have made it through similar challenges,” he writes.

Listening to regular podcasts each day, it seems, can help a lone entrepreneur imagine he’s part of a community of entrepreneurs.

As you start building a business then, it’s important to surround yourself not just with people who’ll do what you say and cheer you on. Choose people with a similar level of experience and passion, people who have walked the path you’re taking and understand the challenges. When you want to complain, they’ll understand where the frustrations are coming from and listen without fearing that you’re losing your grip or thinking of quitting.

And between those conversations, listen to discussions among other entrepreneurs even if you have to do it with headphones on.

And of course, friends and family are vital. But here, Hoffman has a warning. Unless you come from a family of entrepreneurs, friends will matter more when it comes to beating the loneliness of the entrepreneurial journey. And friends with the experience of being an entrepreneur will matter the most.

So build up those friendships and talk regularly to people who can understand, even if they don’t understand the specifics of your business exactly. You should find that you stick with your company, avoid a premature exit, and enjoy success. At which point, you’ll suddenly find you have all the friends you need.

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