Ryan Deiss explains why business owners feel isolated: employees, spouses, and old friends can't be true peers anymore. The fix isn't turning them into friends, but joining CEO circles and mastermind groups where you're around other founders facing the same thing.
Normalspace7237 says, it's so lonely being a business owner. Amen. Do any other successful business owners feel this way? I've been in business for 15 years now. I've built a multimillion-dollar net worth that most would be happy with and would be considered successful by most metrics, but damn, it's lonely. I felt that way during my growth phase, having to discipline, fire lots of staff, turnover, et cetera. However, now that I have been in business long enough, it feels even worse. Employees retire, move on to other companies, even ones we have to let go. Sometimes I feel like I lost a family member. I thought that feeling would eventually callous or go away, but it doesn't. My spouse isn't involved in the business at all, so I don't have anyone personally to even relate to the things I'm going through. Always stressed, sometimes due to valid external sources, but often just a personal pressure on myself for my own business. The money is great, but after being in business for close to 20 years, it is unexpectedly lonely at the top. I have days where I wish I could just be a normal guy. I know it seems greedy and selfish to feel this way when so many struggle to get by, but Damn, is the grass always greener on the other side? Yeah, yeah, I mean, you nailed it. Here's what I can tell you. You gotta get yourself some other business buddies. You need some business friends. Sounds like you're trying to make friends out of your employees, and they ain't your friends. This ain't show friends, this is show business. So let's get you some business buddies. Also, your spouse, yeah, is not gonna be able to relate to this if they're not in the business with you, and that's probably okay because you probably want your spouse to be your spouse, not your business buddy. So we don't want your employees to be your business buddy. We don't want your spouse to be your business buddy. So get into a CEO group, find people who are local, travel to a mastermind if you need to. I've hosted and have been in masterminds for 20 years, and I can tell you at some point, the primary reason that people join is not for the information, it's not for the ideas, it's for the community, it's for the camaraderie. So let's get you around some other folks. Let's get you some business buddies, and I bet business stops being quite so lonely.
