As a small business owner in Australia, you may often feel loneliness in business. It’s normal to feel isolated. With the hardships of running a company, dealing with finances, making decisions, and often working from home, you begin to feel the stress of wanting to succeed. It’s an exciting and liberating experience, but also very challenging.

Loneliness in business comes from working long hours away from friends and family. You may also feel like you are the only business owner dealing with cash flow issues. As work environments change, more and more people leave their full-time jobs and venture out on their own, meaning you’re not the only one experiencing loneliness in business.

Despite the pressures of working alone, what you need to remember is that small business doesn’t have to be lonely. With the increasing number of entrepreneurs in Australia today, there is a large community of startups who can help you. Here are some ways to leverage those relationships and combat the loneliness in business you may feel.

 

Network

Networking in business is essential whether you are big or small, but it can be more difficult when you are small. With fewer employees, there are fewer people to talk to, amplifying your feelings of loneliness in business. You have to engage in networking opportunities to overcome these feelings and foster a sense of community.

Networking is invigorating and rewarding. As social beings, we thrive on communication with others. Meeting other entrepreneurs, sharing experiences, helping each other, and learning new business techniques can increase your knowledge and help you grow. This camaraderie can improve your loneliness in business, too.

Use local events to increase your participation in the small business community. Sponsor a booth, request to present, teach a seminar, or simply attend the conference. Go outside of your comfort zone to see that many opportunities exist to decrease your loneliness in business.

You may uncover partnerships, ways to help a fellow entrepreneur or other ways to increase the value of your business. Not only do these events help you embrace and solidify your participation in the community, but they build awareness for your business and help bring in new customers. It’s a win/win.

 

Mentoring

Mentors used to walk in your shoes. They know how you feel. The brilliant thing about a mentor is that he or she overcame the obstacles you now face, and lives to tell you about it. A mentor can provide advice, guidance, motivation, and support. Best of all, a mentor can relieve your feelings of loneliness in business.

Getting to know the other people in your business community through – you guessed it – networking, can help you find a mentor. Seeking out a non-competing entrepreneur or looking for free mentoring services as part of a professional association can get you started in the right direction.

As a matter of fact, you may not think so now, but you have a lot to offer as a mentor, too. We’re all on this journey together, and while you aren’t the most experienced business owner, you’re not the least experienced either. Your perspective is valuable, and you should use it to help others. Enhance the community by proving that small business doesn’t have to be lonely.

 

Build a Professional Team

Teams drive success by motivating each other, empowering learning, and challenging the status quo. By building our own team of experts, you enable your business’s success. This can be a network of other business owners who hold monthly meetings to discuss hot-button topics or a management team that you employ to help run your business.

Either option helps alleviate stress and loneliness in business. It can help you improve your tactics, management style, or goals to suit your business needs better. It drives results because you constantly have the best information and resources at your disposal to be the best that you can be.

Small business doesn’t have to be lonely when you have a trusted team of professionals on your side to give you advice and support your business decisions. In fact, very few people succeed or fail on their own. As they say, it takes a village. Use your team’s insights to empower your growth.

 

Focus

If you work from home, the hardest things to overcome are distractions. When you find loneliness in business setting in, you may use the dishes in the sink, the laundry on the floor, or the burnt-out light bulb as an excuse to take a break.

This lack of motivation leads to decreased productivity, which can make you feel even more lonely. Working in a physically isolated manner and managing the conflicting demands of your work and personal lives makes it hard to focus.

Establishing a plan and sticking to it can ensure that your home-based small business doesn’t have to be lonely. Learning early on how to cope with these demands can make it easier to overcome loneliness in business when it sets in. Setting a schedule that includes much-needed time to step away from work helps to create a positive balance.

You can’t always expect to feel good about the decisions you make, the current state of your business, or working alone. But that doesn’t mean you have to be lonely. You are part of a bigger community. Leverage that to improve your feelings of loneliness in business and stay positive.

 

Using tools like the Business in Your Pocket app can help you manage tough tasks and improve your employee scheduling, staff rostering, employee management, payroll as well as time and attendance. leaving more time for you to focus on the things discussed above.<.h3>