You've always been the person who helps. The problem-solver. The one people come to when things are difficult. Asking for help has never been part of your repertoire — not because you're arrogant, but because you genuinely haven't needed to. You've handled everything yourself, and handling everything yourself has been central to how you see yourself.
Until now. Now, the situation is beyond what you can manage alone. The business, your finances, your mental health, your relationships — something (probably several things) has reached a point where solo management isn't working. And the thing you need to do — the single most impactful thing — is the thing you've never done and don't know how to do: ask for help.
We've written about why founders resist asking for help in Why founders don't ask for help (and what to do about it). This article is different. This is the practical guide — the how-to. Because knowing you should ask for help and knowing how to ask for help are different problems, and the second one trips up founders almost as much as the first.
Decide what kind of help you need
"I need help" is too vague to act on. Before you reach out to anyone, get specific about what you actually need. Different problems require different people, and matching the ask to the right person dramatically increases the likelihood of a useful response.
Professional help
Legal: You need a solicitor or insolvency practitioner. For insolvency questions, director duties, personal guarantees, employment law. Read: How to choose an insolvency practitioner.
Financial: You need an accountant or financial adviser. For personal tax implications, debt management, financial planning.
Psychological: You need a therapist or counsellor. For depression, anxiety, burnout, grief, identity crisis, relationship strain. Your GP is the gateway to NHS services; private therapists are available more quickly.
Professional help is transactional in the best sense — you're engaging expertise for a specific purpose. It doesn't require emotional vulnerability (though therapy obviously does), and it doesn't strain personal relationships. If professional help is what you need, get it. It's not a favour — it's a service.
Practical help
Business advice: You need a mentor, an adviser, or a fellow founder. For strategic decisions, reality-checking, operational guidance. Someone who's been through similar situations and can offer informed perspective.
Administrative help: You need a practical extra pair of hands. Someone to help with the paperwork mountain, the phone calls, the logistics of winding down a business. This could be a virtual assistant, an organised friend, or a family member who's good with admin.
Financial support: You need money. This is the hardest help to ask for, and it requires the most careful consideration. Borrowing from friends and family creates relationship dynamics that are difficult to undo. Before asking, consider whether professional debt advice might identify alternatives you haven't considered.
Emotional help
A listening ear: You need someone to hear you without trying to fix you. Someone who'll sit with the mess rather than immediately offering solutions. This is often a close friend, a partner, or a therapist.
Peer support: You need someone who genuinely understands. A fellow founder who's been through business failure. The specific recognition that comes from shared experience provides something that general-purpose friendship can't. Fortitude Foundation can connect you with someone who's been there.
Community: You need to feel less alone. A support group, an online community, a regular meetup where your experience is normalised rather than exceptional.
Choose the right person for the ask
This is where many founders go wrong. They either ask the wrong person (asking their partner for business strategy advice) or ask everyone (broadcasting their crisis to people who can't help and don't need to know).
For professional help: Do your research. Ask for recommendations from your accountant, solicitor, or other professionals. Most offer free initial consultations. You're not committing to anything by having a conversation.
For practical business advice: Choose someone with relevant experience. Ideally someone who's navigated a similar situation — a failed business, a cash crisis, a difficult insolvency process. Their experience is more valuable than theoretical knowledge. If you don't know someone personally, ask your network for introductions. "Do you know anyone who's been through a business failure who might be willing to talk to me?" is a question most people will try to answer.
For emotional support: Choose someone who's demonstrated empathy in the past. Not the friend who always has solutions. Not the family member who panics. The person who, when you've shared difficult things before, responded with presence rather than fixes.
For financial support: Proceed with extreme caution. Borrowing from friends and family changes relationships in ways that are difficult to predict. If you do ask, be clear about the terms, realistic about repayment, and honest about the risk that you might not be able to repay on schedule.
How to make the ask
The opening
The hardest part is the first sentence. Here are some that work:
For professional help: "I'm going through a difficult time with my business and I'd like to explore my options. Could we arrange a consultation?"
For business advice: "I'm dealing with a serious situation with my company and I could really use the perspective of someone who's been through something similar. Would you be willing to have a coffee and talk through it with me?"
For emotional support: "I've been going through a really hard time and I've been keeping it to myself. I think I need to talk to someone I trust. Can we meet up?"
By text or email if speaking feels impossible: "I know this is a big message, but I'm struggling and I think I need some help. Could we find a time to talk this week?"
Each of these openings does the same thing: it names the situation briefly, makes a specific request, and gives the other person agency to respond. You're not demanding. You're inviting.
What to say when they say yes
Once the conversation is happening, you don't need to have a prepared speech. Start with the headline — "the business is failing" or "I'm not coping" or "I'm in financial trouble" — and then let the conversation develop naturally. You'll find it easier to be honest than you expected, because the hardest part was the opening, and that's done.
A few guidelines: be honest about the severity (don't minimise to make them comfortable), be specific about what you need (advice, a listening ear, practical help, a connection), and don't apologise for asking. "Sorry to bother you with this" undermines the ask and signals that you don't believe you deserve help. You do.
If they can't help
Not everyone you ask will be able to help, and that's okay. They might not have the right experience, the right availability, or the emotional capacity to support you right now. If someone says no or redirects you, don't take it as rejection. Thank them, ask if they know someone who might be able to help, and move on.
The fact that one person can't help doesn't mean nobody can. Asking for help is partly a numbers game — the more people you reach out to, the more likely you are to find the right match.
The specific asks that founders resist most
Asking your partner for patience
"I need you to be patient with me. I'm going through something enormous and I'm not going to be at my best for a while. I'm not asking you to fix it. I'm asking you to stay with me in it."
This ask is terrifying because it acknowledges vulnerability in the relationship that matters most. But it's also one of the most important, because your partner is affected by everything you're going through whether you involve them or not. Involving them deliberately is better than involving them through the side effects of your deteriorating mood, withdrawal, and stress.
Asking a friend to just listen
"I need to talk about what's happening, and I don't need advice. I just need someone to hear it. Can you do that?"
This is hard because it feels like asking for something useless. Founders value utility — advice, solutions, action. Asking someone to "just listen" feels like asking for nothing. But being heard — genuinely heard, without interruption or solution-offering — is one of the most powerful interventions for isolation and shame.
Asking for professional mental health support
Calling a therapist or asking your GP for a referral requires admitting that you can't manage your mental health alone. For founders who've always managed everything alone, this admission feels like the ultimate failure.
It's not. It's the same thing as hiring an accountant because you can't manage your own tax return, or engaging a solicitor because you can't manage your own legal issues. Mental health is a specialist domain, and seeking specialist help is pragmatic, not weak.
Asking for money
Whether it's asking a family member for a loan, asking an investor for emergency bridge funding, or asking a friend for help with a specific expense — asking for money combines all the vulnerabilities at once: admitting failure, acknowledging need, creating obligation.
If you need to make this ask, be transparent about the situation, specific about the amount and purpose, realistic about repayment, and willing to accept no gracefully. And consider professional debt advice first — there may be options you haven't considered that don't involve borrowing from people you love.
After you've asked
The immediate aftermath of asking for help is often surprisingly positive. The relief of sharing the burden, the warmth of receiving support, the practical value of advice and perspective — these things are real, and they make a tangible difference.
But there's also an adjustment period. Having accepted help, you may feel: exposed (someone now knows the full truth), indebted (you owe them something), and vulnerable (they could judge you, tell others, or withdraw their support). These feelings are normal. They don't mean you made a mistake by asking. They mean you're adjusting to a new way of operating — one that includes other people in your crisis rather than excluding them.
Over time, the vulnerability becomes easier. The second ask is less frightening than the first. The third is less frightening than the second. And gradually, you develop a new skill — the ability to seek and accept help — that will serve you for the rest of your life, in business and beyond.
You've spent your career being strong for other people. Let someone be strong for you, just for a while. That's not weakness. That's the bravest thing a person who's never needed help can do: admit that they need it now.
Building a support system rather than a single lifeline
One of the mistakes founders make when they finally break through the resistance to asking for help is over-relying on a single person. Your partner becomes your therapist. Your mentor becomes your emotional support. Your one friend who knows the truth becomes your entire support network.
This isn't fair to them, and it's not effective for you. A single person, however loving and capable, can't meet all your needs. They'll burn out, and you'll feel guilty for burning them out, which reinforces the belief that asking for help was a mistake.
Instead, think of support as distributed. Different people serve different functions: your accountant for financial guidance, your solicitor for legal clarity, your therapist for emotional processing, your partner for daily companionship, a fellow founder for peer understanding, and a friend for normality — the person who takes you to the pub and talks about anything other than your business.
No single person carries the full weight. Each carries a piece. This is sustainable for them, effective for you, and it builds a genuine support system rather than creating a new dependency.
A practical first step
If everything in this article feels overwhelming, here's the smallest possible first step: send one message today. To anyone. It doesn't need to be the perfect person or the perfect message. Something like: "Hey, I've been having a tough time. Could we catch up this week?"
That's it. One message. One person. One conversation. Everything else follows from that.
The person who's never asked for help doesn't need to become the person who asks everyone for everything. They just need to become the person who asked once. And then, if it helped, the person who asked again.
Start with one. The rest will follow.