It’s Lonely at the Top

Blog 8 of 30

Perhaps the most difficult thing, about running your own business, even one out of a room in your house, is that it is hard to find a person to be a sounding board for your thoughts.

Friends, yes. Family, yes. But unless they work with you, no one truly understands the actual goals, the dreams, the reasons you do what you do and the choices you have to make. I remember hearing this statement – It is lonely at the top. I always believed it applied to presidents and prime ministers or the heads of huge multinational organisations. But I realised when I started my business that it is lonely at the top even for a tiny one-man firm.

Over the years I took on a number of consultancy projects, with organisations where I worked as part of a team. I enjoyed the interaction, the camaraderie, where we all were at the same level. ideas could be bounced around, discussed, debated with anyone without any sense of seniority or ownership. It would never be the same in my business.

I have dear friends who worked with me, but at the end of the day it was my business. I grew to know a number of people who worked with me very well, but at the end of the day it was my business. Somewhere friendship, and personal feelings had to be balanced with professional challenges. That to me has been the hardest part of running the business. The decisions you take are yours alone.

The other challenge I faced is the culture where an employee readily agrees with your ideas however bad they were. So, you have no one to challenge you to think better and do better. That sense of challenge must come from within.

At all meetings, I long for someone who is willing to question what I am doing, to tell me what I was doing was stupid or foolish or silly or just not very interesting or creative but that rarely ever happens. It is more an exception than the rule. So, it is not just the decision making that is your own but also the need to find your own energy to challenge yourself and bring out the best in you. You really need to dig deep to be the best version of yourself.

For a brief while, I had the opportunity to work with a childhood friend, who was also a designer. We worked together for many years and on many projects – she provided the design and me the content. She worked as a freelancer and was not building a business as I was. But in every other sense we were equal and would sound each other out on ideas. Sadly, with differing goals and aims, that relationship petered out after some time.

What emerged was an understanding, that you must learn to find the strength, the energy, the courage and the enthusiasm within you and you alone. Everything else is a bonus. These were lessons I leaned starting a business, but they were no less applicable in my personal life.