How To Overcome Entrepreneur Loneliness

Entrepreneur loneliness is widespread. Nearly 30% of entrepreneurs feel lonely or isolated, according to a 2026 study by the Association for Entrepreneurship USA (AFEUSA).

Loneliness can affect the quality of your decisions in your business and your personal life, your team’s morale, your ability to innovate, and your physical health. Yet the Association for Entrepreneurship (AFEUSA) points out that there tends to be more discourse around the mental health topics of anxiety and burnout. By learning more about entrepreneur loneliness, you can better prepare yourself to deal with it.

Read on to learn how loneliness affects business owners and discover the skills fellow entrepreneurs have used to cope with entrepreneur loneliness.

Why is it lonely to be an entrepreneur?

It’s common for entrepreneurs to feel lonely. Every big business decision falls on their shoulders, and they often can’t talk it out with their colleagues or even show that they’re struggling because they want to project an image of success. 

Even friends and family may fail to understand the all-consuming nature of their job, especially if those friends or family members work traditional nine-to-fives. Long, sometimes irregular hours can cause entrepreneurs to miss family dinners and weekend nights out, straining their relationships over time.

When these feelings of isolation run rampant, they can affect you as both a founder and a person. Loneliness can impact:

• Your decisions. Loneliness impairs your thinking and leads to cognitive distortions like catastrophizing and mindreading, according to an academic study.
• Your team’s morale. When you feel a lack of community, your company culture may start to reflect that isolation. A 2025 Randstad Workmonitor report found 8 in 10 employees believe a sense of community helps them perform well at work, and 55% would consider quitting if they didn’t feel a sense of belonging.
• Your risk tolerance. Researchers have found that lonely individuals tend to have diminished neural responses, which may alter how they respond to rewards and, in turn, drive risky decision-making.
• Your concentration. An academic study discovered that on days people felt lonely, they reported more trouble concentrating and memory lapses—even if they weren’t chronically isolated.
• Your physical health. Another study found that loneliness or social isolation has been associated with a 17% higher risk of cardiovascular disease and a 23% higher risk of stroke.
• Your innovation. More than one study correlates loneliness with reduced “theory of mind,” a cognitive ability that experts consider to be a component of or precursor to creativity. 

How to deal with entrepreneur loneliness

• Connect with founder peers
• Seek professional support
• Practice work-life balance
• Connect with friends and family
• Prioritize self-care

Feeling isolated is common among entrepreneurs, but there are several strategies for managing loneliness:

Connect with founder peers

Loneliness grows when you have no one to share your fears, uncertainty, and questions. When you discover that you’re not actually alone, your feelings of loneliness might recede.

Connect with other founders through local meetups, conferences within your space, online networks like the Shopify Merchants Community, and groups that hold virtual and in-person events, such as the Founders Network.

Seek out spaces that aren’t only about celebrating the wins. Whether you discover a whole group or one or two individuals to connect with, the key is to spend time in a place where you feel safe enough to be vulnerable, ask questions, and share your own experiences and advice.

“I’ve had founder peers from day one at Fishwife, and I literally could not do it without them,” says Becca Milstein, founder of premium tinned fish brand Fishwife, on the Shopify Masters podcast. “I talk to founders every single day, usually via text, but we’re constantly in communication. I would truly perish without them.”

Sophia Pierro, owner of gift box company Present Day, agrees. 

“I joined a few local networking groups of people my age, which have been incredibly beneficial for my business,” she says. “It’s impossible to run a business fully on your own, so taking the time to meet others in your community will, without a doubt, help you in the long run.”

Jaz Fenton, cofounder at design agency Otherhalf Studio, says on Shopify Masters that her biggest early mistake was failing to tap into the founder community and instead choosing to operate in a silo. If she could go back and do it all again, she’d connect earlier with founders who followed a similar path. 

“They can tell you really early on what mistakes they made, and we wouldn’t have done those things,” she says.

Seek professional support

A landmark 2025 meta-analysis from the American Psychological Association evaluated the clinical effectiveness of various loneliness interventions, pooling data from 280 studies that tracked nearly 31,000 participants in total. It found that professional therapy resulted in the strongest, most sustained long-term success.

Therapists offer the POV of an external third party who’s outside of your business—and outside your brain. With this clearer view, they can identify negative thoughts and cognitive biases you didn’t recognize in yourself. They can also guide you in science-backed approaches to help you overcome these challenges. 

Business coaches are another form of professional support. They may even relate to your struggles and can help you strategize as well as cope. Both coaches and therapists can be outlets for sharing your emotional strain, concerns, and other aspects of your business and life.

Michelle Johnson, cofounder of oat milk brand Ghost Town Oats, says on Shopify Masters that the strain of building her brand took a heavy emotional toll. To cope, she now relies on her therapist, coach, and personal network to pull her out of moments of isolation and remind her that the business is not life or death.

Kheris Rogers, who founded Flexin’ In My Complexion as a teen, also says on Shopify Mastersthat therapy was crucial in helping her overcome severe anxiety, build the confidence to speak publicly, and push past the fear of rejection.

Practice work-life balance

Developing a work-life balance is challenging for workers of all kinds, but the lines can become especially blurry for entrepreneurs who don’t have the structure of a typical 9-to-5.

Sometimes you may have no other choice but to spend time working late or over weekends and holidays, but it’s easy for entrepreneurs to fall into the habit of treating all time like it’s crunch time. And that’s a recipe for burnout.

“Burnout is so prevalent,” says Laura Thompson, cofounder of natural skin care brand Three Ships, on Shopify Masters. She says she’s seen many founders get caught up in the mythos of overnight success and hustle culture, with some even pushing themselves so hard they ended up leaving their businesses altogether.

There’s a fine, yet critical, line between putting in the hard work necessary and overworking yourself. Setting realistic boundaries can help you maintain your relationships while you’re building your business. Maybe you commit to closing your laptop by 8 p.m. every night, even if there’s more work you could do. Or maybe you make a Wednesday night happy hour with friends a weekly non-negotiable.

Connect with friends and family 

Make it a ritual to engage in at least one human-to-human interaction each day—for example, a phone call to a family member, a video chat with a friend, or an in-person meetup. It’s fine to discuss work, but don’t make it the only thing you talk about so that your connection remains strong and reciprocal.

Art of Tea founder Steve Schwartz says on Shopify Masters that he avoids burnout and prioritizes true connection with his family by turning off all technology from Friday night to Saturday night every single week.

Prioritize self-care

Self-care looks different for everyone. For some, it might be going out to a trendy restaurant; for others, it could be reading a book at home. It’s all about what helps you, personally, to feel recharged and refreshed so you can keep showing up as your best self. 

Habits like exercising, eating healthfully, sleeping well, spending time outdoors, or working on a hobby can help pull you out of a lonely mental state and feel more connected to the people, places, and things around you. Try scheduling these self-care activities the same way you would a work meeting to ensure you actually do them.

Ann McFerran, cofounder of beauty brand Glamnetic, warns that the fast pace of ecommerce makes it easy to work 24/7. On Shopify Masters she says she uses weightlifting to combat burnout and challenge herself. She also enjoys spiritual retreats with friends and takes time away from the office to travel.

Lauren Gropper founded Repurpose, which makes compostable household goods. She says on Shopify Masters that she relies heavily on staying active—playing tennis, hiking, and being outdoors—to care for herself and get refreshed.