When Gabriela Flax left her corporate position managing 40 people to work on her career coaching businesses solo and moved from London to Sydney, the first thing she noticed was the silence. Without the constant movement, office hum, phones, and elevator dings, she says, she could finally bask in the quiet she’d always craved.
But, she quickly realized, “Oh, wow, there’s no one around me.”
Flax, a career coach and founder of the newsletter Pivot School, says, “I initially named my Substack No One’s in the Kitchen. I’d get off a work call super excited [because I] signed a new client . . . go to my kitchen to make a coffee, and no one’s there . . . just my dog looking back at me.”
Running a business alone can feel liberating, but it can also come with a cost: a unique type of loneliness research suggests stems from acute uncertainty, resource constraints, responsibility, and time pressures. Online, subreddits, creator cohorts, and Discord groups brim with solo founders seeking to manage loneliness.
“Loneliness is a mental health emergency in many cases,” says Dr. Michael A. Freeman, a San Francisco-based psychiatrist who works exclusively with entrepreneurs.
Ironically perhaps, “entrepreneurs often feel quite alone despite the fact that they have very large networks and communicate with lots of people every week,” he explains, because those are largely “transactional role relationships” and solopreneurs, particularly, “are pursuing a uniquely personal vision.”
“The loneliness can come from a lack of people, but it can also come from being the only person who holds your ‘why’ so tightly,” says Flax.
Identifying the ‘loneliness loop’
Particularly in a venture’s early days, solopreneurs “are living and breathing their new business,” explain researchers Ashley Evenson, lecturer of creative enterprise at Goldsmiths, University of London and Beki Gowing, lecturer in fashion enterprise at London College of Fashion, who coauthored a study on entrepreneurial loneliness and burnout.
Loneliness, they say, “[can be] the catalyst for other mental health difficulties, [eroding] decision-making, creativity, and emotional resilience.” Social interactions slip, overwork rises, and a “vicious and toxic cycle” takes hold.
Diane Sullivan, business professor at the University of Dayton, calls this the regulatory loop of loneliness: Some founders respond by building connections and hobbies, while others withdraw, potentially making isolation worse .
In Flax’s case, she had to get creative—digital lunch invites via TikTok, long-form writing for other solo-founders—to cultivate relationships in her new role and city.
In what Flax describes as an “eat what you kill” field, solopreneurs can ill-afford to let loneliness derail their purpose. Here’s how experts recommend fighting it.
Seek ‘deep social’ experiences
Taking the first step to get out of a loneliness rut can feel awkward, but it’s key to make the effort to engage offline, even if it feels uncomfortable at first.
Juliana Schroeder, associate professor in the Management of Organizations group at Berkeley Haas, says one of the major instigators of loneliness is that people are trading “deep social” experiences for “shallow social” experiences.
“Shallower social experiences are those that leverage AI connection, online engagement (particularly on social media platforms), and prioritize more superficial types of interactions,” like short text-based conversations, for example, or group conversations over one-on-ones. Other potential connections, like talking with neighbors or disagreeing counterparts (say, talking across the political divide), “are starting to disappear entirely,” she says.
“I suggest setting up environments that involve regular contact with community members, having recurring ‘deep’ conversations to maintain and grow friendships, and stretching outside of your social comfort zone when any opportunity arises.”
And it may not be as hard we imagine. “We find that people’s psychological intuitions about some of these interactions are miscalibrated,” she explains, and the awkwardness and depletion we anticipate is often overridden by the pleasantness of the interaction and how good both parties feel afterwards.
Flax recommends seeking connection outside of work: “If you go to the gym at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, or a coffee shop at 11 a.m. on a Thursday, not everyone in those spaces is going to be self-employed or building their own thing. But . . . chances are they might not have a [traditional] nine-to-five,” she explains. “It’s hard the first five times you [introduce yourself]. By time number six, you’re like, oh, whatever.”
Quality over quantity
Preempting loneliness, at least initially, may also help proactively manage it, says Freeman, who recommends, “engaging in a rich set of relationships that do not involve being a leader and ultimate decision-maker.”
“One of the founders I work with belongs to a football team that is part of a regional amateur league. He has many friends on the team, which he doesn’t have to lead, and the camaraderie gives him a lot of social support,” he adds.
Flax agrees, noting online cohorts, while “full of a unanimous understanding of we’re all in this together,” can lose meaningful connection when they exceed six to seven people. “Don’t just put us all in a room,” she says, adding that breakout rooms on a Zoom call, for instance, help foster one-on-one connection.
Back to basics, away from the drawing board
Tim Michaelis, assistant professor in the department of psychology at North Carolina State University, founded and runs an annual Health in Entrepreneurship Conference.
Physical activity and sleep, he says, are two big recommendations, citing additional research that “leisure activities can provide a way to detach from entrepreneurial work and improve venture performance.”
“Engaging with a local university or community college can help connect with like-minded people, feel less alone, and improve wellbeing,” he adds. “A small step could be going to watch a pitch competition or email a professor to see if they need help with a guest lecture . . . Sometimes it’s a clear win-win.”
Ultimately, it’s worth remembering that loneliness does not increase just because you’re a team of one. Claude Fernet, an organizational behavior professor at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, who studies job stressors in small and medium enterprises, raises an important point. Solo founders may actually have a bit of an advantage when it comes to job stressors and loneliness. That’s because “owner-managers” (or entrepreneurs with a small team of employees) feel the additional responsibility for others’ wellbeing and salary, leading to, “the burden of shielding others from stress.”
Still, he adds, “That said, the psychological toll of isolation remains a significant concern in both cases.”
Flax, meanwhile, recommends thinking of loneliness in stages.
“Don’t fight [it],” she says, “Because solitude is a part of building something meaningful . . . The day will come where the work you put into it is seen by others and you can create incredible community off the back of it.”