The Loneliest Job in the Trades

Half of all CEOs say the job feels lonely

Sixty-one percent of those say it actively hurts their performance, and the number climbs past 70% for first-time CEOs still figuring out the role.* Almost none of them will say it out loud, on the record, on a podcast with their name on it.

Brad Barron did.

Barron sat down with Jason Walker on EGIA’s Cracking the Code, the Contractor University podcast, for an episode introducing its new co-hosts. Nobody asked him to get vulnerable. He just did, twice, in the same conversation.

Watch the episode

The moment that mattered

First, on mistakes:

“If you could see the scars on my body from the mistakes that I’ve made… they’re actually pride marks, right? And we need to share that and help others win.”

Then, later in the episode, on what actually gets to him:

“I think running a business is really lonely. And I think sometimes even if you’re not the owner, but you’re up there — whether it’s general manager or a VP of ops or whatever it is — those positions are lonely, too. And sometimes you feel like you’re stuck and you don’t know what to do or where to go.”

That’s Brad Barron: co-founder of WholeHome Alliance and CEO of Barron Heating, a multi-trade ($45M, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and solar) home services company he’s spent a decade helping run.

Why it gets louder as you grow, not quieter

The easy assumption is that loneliness is a small-shop problem, solved once you hit enough revenue to hire a real leadership team. Brad pushes back on that directly in the same episode, talking about scaling Barron across trade verticals:

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a $2 million business or a $200 million business, there’s still those challenges as you’re looking to grow and scale the different facets of a company or different trade verticals.”

More scale means more decisions only the owner can make, more people who used to be peers and now report to you, and less room to say “I don’t know” out loud. Growth doesn’t eliminate loneliness. It simply changes what you’re carrying, which is exactly why intentional community matters more as responsibility grows, not less.

It was never just about the owner, either. Every decision up top touches the people underneath it – employees, their spouses, their kids, the customers on the other end of the truck. That’s what makes leadership heavy in a way a P&L never shows.

What changed for Brad

Years ago, Brad realized something surprising. The bigger the company became, the fewer places there were to have honest conversations. Not conversations about profit. Conversations about pressure. About doubt. About the decisions that affect hundreds of employees and thousands of customers.

That’s one of the reasons WholeHome Alliance exists today; not because contractors need someone to tell them how to run their business, but because every leader deserves a community where they can learn, ask questions, share mistakes, and realize they aren’t carrying those burdens alone. That mission extends past coaching. It’s about elevating an entire industry by helping leaders grow together.

What actually breaks the isolation

WholeHome Alliance is that community, built for exactly the moment Brad described: stuck, unsure where to go, convinced you’re the only one dealing with it.

None of it requires you to have it figured out first. That’s the point. Brad’s own willingness to say “this is lonely” on camera, unscripted, is the same instinct behind everything WholeHome makes; real people, real answers, no teleprompter.

The best leaders aren’t the ones with all the answers

One thing Brad has learned over the years is that leadership isn’t about pretending you’ve figured everything out. It’s about continuing to learn, continuing to ask questions, continuing to surround yourself with people who’ll tell you the truth.

The strongest leaders aren’t the ones who never struggle. They’re the ones humble enough to admit when they do.

Source: Harvard Business Review — “It’s Time to Acknowledge CEO Loneliness”, based on RHR International’s study of 83 CEOs.