This language—what I would call an entrepreneur’s love language—not because it doesn’t exist—but because it doesn’t sound like what we’ve been taught to recognize as love.
In the real world, we tend to separate two distinct languages.
In business, we are expected to be calculated, composed, and unemotional. In relationships, we are expected to be warm, fuzzy, expressive, and vulnerable.
But sometimes, those worlds don’t stay separate.
My experience with someone I’ll call “K” challenged that in a completely opposite direction.
What we shared didn’t resemble a traditional romantic exchange. It felt more like a high-stakes board meeting of the soul—one where honesty replaced comfort, and reality replaced performance. One that strips away someone’s ego, identity, and image.
At one point, K didn’t tell me he was struggling emotionally. He didn’t say he was overwhelmed or afraid. He didn’t say he was sad. He didn’t even stay silent or “ghost me.”
He said, “The airplane engine is on fire, and I’m losing altitude.”
Psychologically, that is clinically honest. K, the entrepreneur, had given me a technical status report. In business terms, it was a “data of a disaster.” As humans, it’s a complete vulnerability.
The rarity of it all is that K told me he was bleeding money. That his company had only three months left to survive, and so on. That everything he had built was collapsing.
K honestly and bluntly admitted his “financial security” and “his company” was completely gone—the ultimate “un-sexy” admission. I stayed as a “guardian” of his secret—the ultimate “non-reciprocal” act. There is nothing “romantic” about that kind of honesty.
It was raw. It was highly uncomfortable for both of us.
That dialect to disclose about one’s own failure is a language very few people have courage to speak. And that’s exactly why most people never hear it.
The “99%” are still speaking the language of “safety.”
They ask questions like, “Do you like me?” or “Where is this going?”
We were speaking the language of survival. As an entrepreneur myself, I don’t believe that the word “safety” is in our regular vocabulary or dictionary.
When K shared his situation, I didn’t respond the way most people would. I didn’t offer sympathy or soft reassurance. I didn’t respond with words like, “I’m sorry” or “that’s tough.”
Most people would likely offer flowers or a phone call or two.
I responded with solutions.
I turned my love of consulting into a kind of tourniquet—
Basically, I gave him all of what I knew—strategy, structure, and perspective. I treated his crisis with the same seriousness I would give any business problem. I responded with “thousands of dollars” worth of effort providing research and long-term planning.
To some, that might seem overly analytical. To others, perhaps too generous or crazy.
But to me, it was instinct.
In business speak, it was “extremely high value supportive solution-focused outreach strategy in crisis.” I’ve lived through business instability. I understand what it feels like when everything is on the line. This wasn’t emotional anymore—it was practical.
It was a map.
In my world, that is a form of compassion.
I treated his crisis with the professional respect it deserved. It was how I show up when something matters. I spoke to him as a CEO, not just as a “crush.”
Looking back, I realized something important.
We weren’t navigating a relationship in the traditional sense.
We were navigating what felt like a “life business.”
When things began to fall apart, we didn’t describe it as a breakup. We described it as a market crash. Our conversations weren’t about feelings in the conventional sense.
They were about rebuilding, reinvention, and survival.
At one point, it felt as if the “company of us” had to file for bankruptcy—not because of a lack of connection, but because the external market (K’s crisis) was too volatile to sustain it.
Anyone who has built something knows that reality.
Not everything fails because it wasn’t real.
Sometimes it fails because the environment can’t support it.
And sometimes, the most honest thing you can do is acknowledge that.
There’s another part of this that stays with me.
K believed he was giving me instability. Something uncertain. Something difficult to hold onto. But what I saw was different. As a peer, a fellow business person, and a writer, I recognized at that time he was giving me the truth. Unfiltered, unpolished, and without the protection of ego.
And that’s rare.
At one point, he said, in his own way, “I’m broken.” And what I said back, in the only language I knew how to use, was: “I see you. And here is a map to rebuild.”
Not everyone will understand that exchange.
But that’s the point.
Most people are listening for reassurance.
Very few are listening for reality.
And even fewer are willing to respond to it with clarity instead of comfort.
Perhaps that’s what the entrepreneur’s love language really is.
Not flowers. Not words.
I openly admit, “I may never know the outcome” to date. Maybe as the reader, you viewed us both as “high-level stayers” merely standing in the massive wreckage of a business.
But the willingness to stand in uncertainty, face what’s actually happening, and offer something that helps the other person rebuild—even if you may never see the outcome.
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