Running a Business Doesn't Have to Feel This Lonely

Can we talk about how lonely running a business actually is?

Not the version people say out loud at networking events, where everyone's doing great and business is booming. I mean the version that shows up at three in the morning, when you're looking at a decision that could go either way and there's nobody in the house who can tell you if you're right.

I built and exited a technology company before I started TAB North Texas, and I know that feeling from the inside. I also spent 25 years as a U.S. Diplomat, representing American business interests in six countries, sitting across the table from people who didn't share my language, my culture, or my assumptions, and having to find the right answer anyway. Both of those careers taught me the same thing: the isolation of being the one who has to decide isn't a personal failing. It's structural. Nobody warns you about it, and almost nobody talks about it.

The research backs this up. A CEO Snapshot Survey by RHR International found that half of CEOs report feeling secluded in the role, and 61 percent of that group say it actively hurts their performance. Writing in Forbes this year, Andy Molinsky cited research putting the number at 55 percent. And this isn't a new problem: a study going back to 1984 found more than half of small-business owners reported feeling lonely in the job, and more recent research keeps finding the same thing. It isn't only a productivity issue, either. Sustained isolation has real physical costs, and researchers have linked it to higher stress and worse sleep, on top of the toll it takes on decision-making.

Here's what nobody tells you when you start a business: the bigger it gets, the smaller your circle of honest feedback gets with it. Your team wants to keep their jobs. Your family wants you to be happy. Your accountant will tell you what the numbers say, not what you should do about them. And your competitors are, well, your competitors. So the actual hard calls, the ones about hiring, pricing, a partner who isn't pulling weight, whether to expand or hold steady, end up getting made by exactly one person, in a room by themselves.

Large corporations solved this a long time ago. That's what a board of directors is for: a group of people with real experience, no stake in your ego, and enough distance from the day-to-day to see what you can't. Most small and mid-sized businesses never get that advantage. Not because it wouldn't help them. Because nobody built a version of it for them, sized and priced for a business like theirs.

That's the whole idea behind TAB North Texas. I put together a room of eight to ten Dallas-Fort Worth business owners, from industries that don't compete with each other, who meet once a month to work through whatever's actually going on: an issue, a challenge, or an opportunity, brought by one owner at a time. No rotating cast of speakers pitching the room. No filler. Just people who have run something themselves, telling you the truth about what you're facing, because they've faced something like it too.

If you've never sat on a peer advisory board before, that might sound abstract. It isn't. It looks like bringing the actual problem you've been turning over in your head without anyone to turn it over with, and leaving with more than you walked in with. Sometimes that's a fresh way to think about a hire. Sometimes it's someone in the room who tried exactly what you're considering and can tell you what actually happened when they did. Add one-on-one coaching and a set of proprietary tools for planning and team development on top of the monthly meeting, and you have a system built around your business, not just a once-a-month conversation.

You don't have to keep making the big calls by yourself. Working with Tab brings community, accountability and growth to your business.

If you want a quick read on where the gaps are in your own business right now, take the free Business Snapshot. It takes a few minutes and gives you an honest, personalized look at where you stand. Or skip straight to the conversation: book a call with me. No pitch, just a conversation about your business, and about what you've been carrying alone that you don't have to.