​Running a business is lonely as hell.

Nobody really tells you that when you start.

Your friends and family support you, but they don’t get it. Your old coworkers don’t understand why you’d leave a stable paycheck. Your employees (if you have them) don’t see the stress you carry trying to make payroll.

And when things get hard—and they always do—it’s just you staring at your books at 11 PM, wondering why you’re making less than you did at your old job.

Most businesses don’t fail because the owner wasn’t capable. They fail because they got stuck. And when you’re alone, stuck turns into shut down.

Here’s what helped me:

Stop trying to “figure it out” alone. You don’t get extra points for struggling in silence. Find people who understand the pressure of running a business. Not just people who talk about it—people actually doing it. Have someone to call when things go sideways. Because eventually, they will.

I had to learn this the hard way. If you’re stuck in that lonely phase, figure out a way to change it. If you don’t know where to start, I can tell you what worked for me.

How do you handle the lonelier parts of running a business?