Nobody Warns You About the Loneliness

55% of CEOs experienced mental health issues last year. Here is how professional isolation cost one founder hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the moves that actually fix it.

By Jeffery Boyle, Bemodo, CEO · Published · 3 min read · 692 words · Founder Notes

Nobody warns you about the loneliness.

They tell you about the risk. The capital. The market timing. The competition.

Nobody sits you down and says: the higher you build this thing, the fewer people there will be who actually understand what you are carrying.

“As I became a CEO I started leading from the front, at the peak of the mountain, but then the higher you get to the peak, the fewer the people there are with you.” — Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb

He is worth billions. He still said that out loud.

The Number Nobody Posts About

A peer-reviewed study published in Science this past June analyzed 588,000 Americans over 13 years. The finding: remote work accounts for roughly one-third of all post-pandemic mental distress increases. People working remotely spend approximately one additional waking hour alone every single workday.

Five hours a week. Twenty hours a month.

55% of CEOs reported experiencing mental health issues in the past year. Up 24 percentage points from 2023. In a single year.

87.7% of entrepreneurs report struggling with at least one mental health issue.

61% of CEOs who report loneliness say it is actively hurting their performance.

This is not weakness. This is what the job actually costs.

What Costa Rica Actually Cost Me

In 2021 I moved my family to Costa Rica for 14 months. My wife was there. My family was there. By every external measure I was not alone.

But I was building a business remotely for the first time, making decisions in complete professional isolation, with no peer community around me who had done what I was trying to do.

I spent too much on staff I did not need. I hired the wrong people for the wrong roles because I had nobody to reality-check my decisions. I wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars making mistakes that a single honest conversation with the right peer would have prevented.

The loneliness was not personal. It was professional.

61% of lonely founders say isolation hurts their performance. I lived that number. It showed up in my bank account.

Since returning, I have been deliberate about something I used to treat as optional: being around people. Real entrepreneur groups. Live meetings. People who own companies and can say the thing your employees never will.

Entrepreneurs with peer community are three times more likely to hit their goals. I believe that because I have felt both sides of it.

The Fix Is Not a Wellness App

Here is what actually works:

  • Find one peer group with founders at your revenue level and apply this week. EO has 18,000 members in 75 countries. YPO has 36,000 across 142 countries. Apply this week, not someday.
  • Put one non-sales human connection on your calendar each week. Protect it the way you protect revenue calls.
  • Open Claude or ChatGPT and run this prompt before your next hire: "I am a founder building a remote team for the first time at $\[X\] revenue. What are the three most expensive hiring mistakes founders make at this stage?" Use the answer to stress-test your next decision.
  • Let your AI Voice Co-Pilot handle inbound calls and take two of those hours to attend something in person. The system covers the phone. It cannot cover the peer gap.
  • Before any major hire or operational decision, find one founder who has built at your stage and ask them one question. That conversation is worth more than any consultant.

    • The Bottom Line

    The loneliness at the top is real. The research confirms it.

    I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars learning it without a peer in the room.

    You do not have to.

    Build the systems that give you back your time. Then use that time to be around people who have been where you are going.

    That is not soft. That is strategy.

    Jeffery Boyle

    CEO, Bemodo AI

    P.S. If you have been making major decisions without a single trusted peer who has done it before, you are not being independent. You are being expensive. Share this with someone who needs to hear it.

    Tags: sovereignty, freedom-score, productivity, operations