Being an entrepreneur is one of the best jobs you can imagine.

It is also one of the scariest and loneliest. You’re always on call, it can take years to build up a semblance of success, and—statistically speaking—the odds are stacked against you. All of that is amplified by the fact that you often make decisions alone, so it’s hard to be sure if you’re on the right track or not.

So who can entrepreneurs learn from and lean on?

This may be counter-intuitive, but I suggest adopting the mindset that you are not alone. Act like you’re actually running a much larger business, where the expectation would be to get feedback from a group of leaders. One way I’ve found to start thinking this way is to create your own board of directors.

Your directory doesn’t have to be anything formal. In fact, its “members” don’t even need to know they are on it. All you need is to select three to five people with different areas of expertise and then contact them when questions arise. Creating a formal problem-solving “process” for yourself can alleviate the feeling that the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Plus, creating a directory forces you out of the daily tasks of running your business and connecting with other people, something we all too often consider superfluous when we feel like we’re short on time.

You may already know who you would ask to be on your “board,” but if you don’t, here are some effective tips for building your advisory team.

The easiest is to send emails to other entrepreneurs, but the “conversion” is usually low. Most people don’t respond, but sometimes you can get lucky. About ten years ago, I wrote to Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo. He gave me some amazing tips that helped my fitness business (even though he had no experience with it) and we still keep in touch today.

Another way to get in touch is through social networks. While these platforms can be a waste of time, they are also full of successful people connecting and sharing their journey. In particular, LinkedIn and Twitter have become a hotbed for conversations where people often “build in public,” discuss problems they’ve faced, and share solutions they’ve found.

Those threads and posts are an opportunity to observe, learn, and most importantly, participate in the conversation. Leave comments, ask questions, and connect in the most genuine way possible. You will be amazed at how much you learn and how social interactions turn into real relationships.

You can also attend traditional networking events and conferences, but be sure to interact with people outside of your business realm. Often the best way to jump-start your thinking is to find unexpected perspectives from different worlds. Great leaders search for a variety of ideas and then use a combination of intuition, knowledge, and experience to apply what they have learned to their own problems.

All of this may sound counterintuitive to the entrepreneurial spirit of doing it all yourself but put all the ego aside. Connecting with others will make your job a little less lonely, along with something much more powerful: it will help you build confidence in your decisions. That’s a competitive advantage that will propel you into leaps and bounds.

Remote work is the future of the workforce. Is your business ready to adapt? Latamforce is here to help. Contact us and let’s create a High-Performing team together!