Why “Going It Alone” Is Still the Biggest Mistake Small Business Owners Make

“The businesses that make it through the hard patches usually aren’t the ones with the best plan. They’re the ones where the owner had someone in their corner.”

There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with running a small business. You’re surrounded by people — customers, suppliers, maybe a team — but the actual weight of the decisions lands on you. And usually at midnight, when nobody else is awake.

Over 63% of Australian businesses are now run by solo operators. That number has been growing steadily, and technology has made it more viable than ever to run a lean, one-person operation. But viable doesn’t mean easy. And it definitely doesn’t mean you have to do it entirely alone.

The isolation problem nobody advertises

When you work for someone else, you have colleagues. You have someone to bounce an idea off at 3pm. You have a manager to escalate to when something breaks. You have the invisible support structure of an organisation around you — even if it’s imperfect.

When you run your own business, you lose all of that overnight. And most people underestimate how much they relied on it until it’s gone.

The decisions don’t get smaller — they get bigger. Do you hire? Do you raise prices? Do you take on that client who’s already showing red flags? Do you keep pushing or pull back and protect what you’ve built? These are hard calls. And making them in isolation, over and over again, is exhausting.

What connection actually does for your business

This isn’t a soft, feel-good argument. Community has tangible business value. When you’re connected to other owners, a few real things happen:

You make better decisions faster

Someone in your network has already faced the version of your problem. Their experience is worth months of you figuring it out the hard way.

You catch things earlier

Talking regularly with other owners normalises the hard conversations — about money, burnout, difficult clients — before they become crises.

You get actual referrals

Not the watered-down LinkedIn endorsement kind. The “I know exactly who you need to talk to” kind, from someone who actually knows your work.

You stay in it longer

Isolation is one of the biggest contributors to small business burnout. Having people around you who understand — who genuinely get it — is protective in ways that are hard to quantify but very easy to feel.

Why SBC exists

I’ve been in business long enough to know what it feels like on both ends — the wins, and the times when the wheels fall off. What I noticed, every single time, was that the people who got through the hard patches weren’t necessarily the smartest or the best resourced. They were the ones who had someone in their corner.

That’s what Rhodie and I built SBC to be. Not a networking event where you swap business cards and never speak again. A real community — online, practical, and honest — where small business owners can actually support each other.

If you’ve been running your business mostly on your own, it might be worth asking whether that’s by choice or by default. Because the good news is, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Ready to stop going it alone?

Join the SBC community at smallbusinessconnect.com.au