Hi,
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I asked 100 CEOs this question, and here are the top 5 answers:
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Dan Murray, an angel investor in 100+ companies and Co-Founder of supplements brand, HEIGHTS.
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“It’s not so much success itself, but the pursuit of it that has caused strain on my relationships. Most notably, my marriage.
Even the most understanding and patient partner can’t hide the fact that early mornings, late nights, and every spare moment spent building your dreams don’t exactly drive connection and cohesion in a relationship.
There was a period during Covid when we were stuck in our flat, and she probably heard me do the same investor pitch for my company, thirty times a day - every day - for months. That kind of torture is normal for founders, but partners… not so much.
One day, it all erupted. We realised that complaining about the past wasn’t as constructive as flipping the script and asking, what does a great relationship look like in the future?
Just like a company, we created a vision.
We recognised that a relationship can also be designed like a business - and if life gets too busy, we can create values, processes, and commitments to make sure we’re continuing to build our lives together.
We took it a step further. We both used a management process called OKRs in our companies and found them useful. So, we designed them for our marriage. We spent days creating “relationship OKRs”, developing a process that covered the key aspects of a successful relationship.
We’ve been following the process ever since. Two daughters and a much happier marriage later, it’s clear that great relationships don’t just happen spontaneously.
Like great companies, they’re built - intentionally, patiently, and with a lot of hard work.”
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Andrew Hulbert, Founder and speaker, exited property company Pareto FM for £70M in 2023. |
“For 10 years, I barely saw my wife, my family or my friends. I worked every hour of every day to make my business a success. I sacrificed sleep. I sacrificed fun. Worst of all, I sacrificed my relationships.
As an entrepreneur, I felt like I was on a mission. Nothing else could get in the way. The pressure didn’t come from anyone else. It was my choice. I believed that if I focused entirely on the work, I’d get to a point where I could finally enjoy life fully. I set myself a goal of achieving that before I turned 40.
During those years, I can’t pretend I was pleasant to be around - just ask my wife. I was grumpy and frustrated when we didn’t make sales, elated when we did. But the highs never lasted. I was always thinking about how I could do more.
At age 37, I sold my business. These days, my life looks very different. My focus is now rebuilding those relationships I nearly lost.
I bought a farm, and now I spend my days with my kids riding quad bikes, fixing fences, and picking berries for jam. Before, I was there, but I wasn’t fully present.
My friendships have bounced back too. The great thing about old friends is that they stick around. Now I’m the one organising trips and holidays for all of us. It’s my way of making up for lost time.
Success did strain my relationships, absolutely. But the real success has been learning how to rebuild them and finding joy in the ordinary, everyday moments I once sacrificed.
To other founders, my advice is to carve out time where you are not available to the business. To do this, you need to hire people you trust which is a challenge!
But once you’ve managed that, just put your phone away, and focus on being there. Fully.”
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Hanushka Toni, Cofounder & CEO of Sellier, a luxury resale platform. |
“Success doesn’t always feel like winning when it costs you people you care about.
I had a friend I started my career with. We sat exams together, trained at City firms at the same time, and for years we were side by side chasing the same thing. When I left the law because it wasn’t for me, they were supportive. But when my business started to take off, our relationship started to feel a bit different.
It’s tempting to call it jealousy or FOMO. But that’s too simple. The truth is our lives stopped running in parallel. I wasn’t free for after-work drinks. I had no interest in office gossip when I was fighting to keep a company alive during Covid. My days were consumed by building something I cared about, and that intensity left little space for anything else.
Eventually, the gap between us turned into tension. A friendship that had once felt effortless started to feel heavy. Partly because they couldn’t relate anymore, and partly because I was consumed by what I was building. Both things can be true.
What I’ve learned is that success doesn’t just demand time and energy. It can cost you closeness with people you thought would always be there. Sometimes that’s just part of the journey - and learning to accept that is its own kind of growth.”
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George Cowin, Co-Founder & CEO of Cowshed Collective, a creative content studio. |
“Success can make you feel like you’re building a future for everyone you love while slowly losing them in the process.
When I started my business, people said I put work first. They weren’t wrong, but my intention was never selfish. I wasn’t chasing money or status - I was chasing freedom for the people around me. I thought if I worked harder, pushed through the burnout, and sacrificed now, we’d all have more time, options, and security later. But the irony is brutal - the harder you work for freedom, the less of it you actually have.
In the early days, I did everything myself. There were no boundaries, no team, no off switch. Every missed text or skipped dinner came from wanting to build a better future for my loved ones. But from the outside, all anyone saw was absence. You become the person who’s ‘always busy,’ even when your reason for being busy is them.
There’s a loneliness that comes with success no one warns you about - not just pressure or exhaustion, but the slow distance between who you were and who you’ve had to become. Some people cheer you on; others quietly drift. By the time you’ve built the life you dreamed of, you might be too tired to enjoy it.
These days, I’ve learned to draw a line between work and life. My advice: get a second phone. When the day’s done, switch your work phone off. If it’s urgent, they’ll find you. And stop treating every late-night message like it’s life or death. Most things can wait until morning. The work never ends - but the moments with people do.”
“I was born in the 70s, fiercely independent, curious, and always chasing opportunity. My career has been a cycle of reinvention: leaping into entrepreneurship at 26, moving into corporate leadership, then back again.
But reinvention came with personal costs. As a woman, my career was never separate from my personal life. Ambition and independence, while strengths in business, often strained intimacy.
In my twenties I was living with my boyfriend, also an entrepreneur. At first, he found my independence magnetic, but over time it became a source of tension. One day he said to me, “You don’t need me.”
That moment showed me how ambition can be misread as self-sufficiency and how independence, while powerful, can create distance in intimacy.
It drove a wedge in my friendships too. Some of my closest friends earned far less and didn’t share the same hunger for growth. I began to feel an undercurrent of envy. It changed our dynamic and taught me how easily drive can be misunderstood, making me more cautious about who I let in.
Motherhood brought the most defining change. When my daughter was born, I was climbing the corporate ladder in London. I knew I couldn’t raise her as I wished while remaining in that world full-time. So I stepped away and launched another venture - one which gave me more control over my time.
From the outside, it looked like another pivot. In truth, the measure of success was not whether the business thrived, but whether my daughter would one day see me as a model of both womanhood and motherhood.
What I’ve learned is that ambition can be seen as a threat, and reinvention as instability. But they’re the qualities that kept me moving forward.”
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Talk soon,
Steven