The Loneliness Tax

There is a moment every entrepreneur knows. It usually comes at 2 am, or in the car park before a difficult meeting, or staring at a spreadsheet that refuses to balance. It is the moment when the weight of it all becomes impossible to ignore.

Running a business is not what people imagine. From the outside, it looks like freedom, success, and control. From the inside, it can feel like standing alone on a cliff edge, making decisions that affect livelihoods, reputations, and futures, with nobody to share the weight.

This is the problem that David Seinker and Joe Salmon set out to solve when, in January 2025, they founded Game Changers (a ‘by application’ London-based mastermind community for scaling entrepreneurs, combining business growth support with mental health-focused programming).

The Loneliness Nobody Talks About

Research shows that 76% of founders feel lonely, which is 50% more than CEOs generally. For Seinker and Salmon, that is not just a well-being issue. It is a performance issue. Lonely, stressed founders make worse decisions, miss opportunities, and burn out.

Even with a team of 20, a business owner can feel utterly alone because there are conversations that cannot be had with employees, fears that cannot be shared with investors, and doubts that cannot be voiced to family without worrying them.

“Running a business can be isolating, even with a team. Any chance to come together, share experiences, and help each other is invaluable. I’m surrounded by a great group of entrepreneurs, learning from Game Changers sessions, and being part of a growing, impactful community,” says Bill Cogan, founder of Seven Legal.

Game Changers was built to address exactly this. Not another networking group with forced introductions and business card swapping. Not a room full of people waiting for their turn to pitch. Something rarer and more valuable: a community of entrepreneurs who have committed to showing up for each other, authentically and consistently.

The Inner Game and the Outer Game

The community was built around a central idea: that entrepreneurs need support for both the inner game and the outer game. Most business communities focus on strategy, networking, and deal-making. Game Changers does all of that, but it also works on the person behind the business.

The inner game is mindset, resilience, and the ability to keep going when things get hard. It is the breathwork session that brings someone back to themselves after a brutal week, the coaching conversation that unlocks a block they did not even know they had, and the sauna and ice plunge that reminds the body what it feels like to be present.

The outer game is strategy, network, and commercial execution. Neither, Seinker and Salmon argue, can thrive without the other.

What surprised them most in the first year was how much demand there was for the inner game work. Founders come for the business connections but stay for the breathwork, the coaching, and the accountability. The realization, it seems, is that sustainable success requires looking after oneself as much as one’s business.

When the Body Keeps Score

Salmon hears it constantly: founders sleeping badly, eating at their desks, running on adrenaline, and telling everyone they are fine. The body, he argues, keeps a tally of every late night, every skipped meal, every stressful conversation pushed through without pausing.

The sauna and ice plunge wellness mornings were originally an experiment. A handful of people were expected to show up. They became some of the most popular sessions in the community. Breathwork has followed the same pattern. Founders arrive skeptical and leave saying it was the first time in months they felt calm. The science supports it: controlled breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowers cortisol, and improves decision-making.

When the nervous system is in fight or flight, clear thinking becomes impossible. Founders become reactive rather than strategic. They say yes when they should say no. They avoid the difficult conversation. It is why breathwork and mental fitness were built into the programming from the outset. Not a nice-to-have or a wellness trend. A performance tool.

The Ceiling Nobody Sees Coming

There is a ceiling that most entrepreneurs hit, and it has nothing to do with market conditions or business strategy. It is internal. The subconscious belief that they are not worth the higher fee, the story carried since childhood about money, success, or what people like them are allowed to achieve.

Seinker sees it constantly: founders who are brilliant at what they do but chronically underprice, leaders who could scale but keep playing small because growth feels dangerous, and CEOs who sabotage their own success because deep down they are waiting for someone to find them out. Impostor syndrome, as he puts it, is not just a buzzword. It is a revenue limiter.

Members have gone on to completely restructure their pricing, walk away from low-value clients, and take risks they would never have taken before, all because they did the inner work first.

“This is a role which is not for the faint-hearted. Game Changers literally holds you in that space to not just hang on in there but move forward and grow. As a business and as a person,” states Isabel Bathurst, founder of Legal AI.

The Invisible Team

The businesses thriving inside the community are the ones where founders have stopped trying to do everything themselves. They have leaned into the network, trusted other members with referrals and partnerships, and started building things together.

Members describe the community as their invisible team. Kate Woodyatt Hudson, CEO of WH Communications, says she felt it most clearly on a business trip to Saudi Arabia:

“I was in Riyadh, in back-to-back meetings, and the Game Changers community was with me the entire time. Checking in, problem-solving, having my back before I had even asked. That is not networking. That is the team every entrepreneur deserves.”

In its first year, members have facilitated more than £20 million in deals between themselves. Joint ventures have formed, apps have been built, and commercial partnerships have been created between people who would simply never have met otherwise.

Part of what makes Game Changers unlike anything else is where some of that connection happens. Seinker is based in South Africa, where he lives at a safari lodge with his family. Each October, winning members are offered the chance to experience it firsthand, with an all-expenses-paid safari trip that has become one of the most talked-about rewards in the community. Members who attended last year described it as genuinely life-changing: days spent in the bush, away from screens and schedules, with the space to think clearly, connect deeply, and see the bigger picture again. Several came back having formed new business partnerships. Others said it simply reminded them why they started.

“I have joined many founder communities over the years, but this is the first where I genuinely get more out than I put in. At the end of 2024, we had our first year of losing money. It was brutal. Twelve months on, we have hit all our targets and the business has completely turned around,” says Alex Birch, CEO of Polar London.

Letting Go to Grow

Control is the founder’s comfort blanket, and letting go of it is one of the hardest transitions an entrepreneur will ever make. “If you need to be involved in every decision, the business can only ever grow as big as your personal capacity allows. It is a ceiling, and it is one you are building yourself,” Salmon says.

The need for control, he argues, is almost always rooted in fear. He says, “It’s fear that nobody can do it as well as you. Fear that things will fall apart if you step back. Fear that your identity is so wrapped up in the business that letting go feels like losing yourself.”

One of the community’s speakers, Yannick Rebsamen, has come to embody this principle more powerfully than almost anyone. At 23, he lost both legs in a train accident and nearly lost his life. He went on to build a multi-million-dollar ecommerce business from nothing. His story is the ultimate example of letting go of what an individual thought their life would look like and building something extraordinary from what they actually have. When he spoke at the anniversary event, the room was speechless.

The Game Worth Changing

If the first year of Game Changers has proven anything, it is that the inner game and the outer game are not separate things. Mindset affects strategy. Well-being affects decision-making. The ability to be vulnerable and honest affects the quality of the relationships built, and those relationships affect the bottom line.

The founders who are building businesses that last are not the ones who pretend everything is fine. They are the ones who are honest about the hard parts, who invest in themselves as well as their businesses, and who surround themselves with people who genuinely have their backs.

More than £20 million in deals in year one, members going from losing money to fielding acquisition approaches, joint ventures, partnerships, and new businesses created between people who met in the masterminds: these are real numbers, real outcomes, real lives changed.

Building a business is hard enough. Nobody should have to do it alone.

10 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Know

After a year working alongside hundreds of founders, here is what Game Changers has learned.

The Inner Game – Joe Salmon

1. Loneliness is not a weakness. It is a warning sign.

Founders cannot always be honest with their team, their investors, or even their family about what they are facing. That kind of loneliness builds quietly, and it affects judgment, energy, and the ability to lead. Recognizing it is not a weakness; ignoring it is.

2. The body keeps the score, even when the brain pretends it does not.

Controlled breathing lowers cortisol and improves decision-making. The wellness mornings were meant to be an experiment. They became some of the most popular sessions in the community. A sustainable business cannot be built on an unsustainable foundation.

3. The conversations one avoids are the ones they need most.

The difficult conversation with a co-founder. The honest one about whether you are actually enjoying this. Most founders avoid these because they feel risky. But avoidance has a higher cost. It builds up as resentment, poor decisions, and missed opportunities.

4. Mindset is not a buzzword. It is the thing that determines whether you quit.

Mental fitness and flow are practical tools, not abstract concepts. The most successful founders invest as much in personal development as they do in sales training. It is not soft. It is not optional. It is the thing that keeps them in the game long enough for the strategy to work.

5. You need people around you who understand what you are going through.

Friends and family care. But unless they have built a business, they cannot offer the specific support that comes from someone who has faced the same decisions. Peer support is not a luxury. It is a necessity.

The Outer Game – David Seinker

6. Your network is your net worth, but only if it is genuine.

The relationships that drive business growth are built on trust and shared experience, not business cards and pitches. Invest in relationships first. The business follows.

7. Referrals beat cold outreach every single time.

A warm introduction from someone who vouches for you will always convert better than the cleverest email sequence. Be clear about what you offer, who you help, and what a good referral looks like. Then make it easy for people to refer you.

8. The best growth strategy is clarity.

Too many founders try to do everything. The ones who scale get ruthlessly clear about three things: who their ideal client is, what problem they solve, and why they are the best person to solve it. Clarity is not about limiting your ambition. It is about focusing your energy on what will move the needle.

9. Get comfortable with being visible.

Too many brilliant founders are invisible. People cannot buy from you if they do not know you exist. You do not need to be everywhere. You just need to be somewhere, regularly, saying something that matters.

10. Growth is not linear, and that is completely normal.

There are months when everything clicks and months when nothing works. The founders who succeed are not the ones who avoid the dips. They are the ones who keep going through them and do not make permanent decisions based on temporary situations.