Freedom has taken us out of company structures — but it has also taken away the warmth of having colleagues
I sometimes picture my past self as if through a surveillance camera — sitting alone in the office of my lawyer-landlord’s office, trying to decipher a commercial lease written entirely in Spanish. I flipped between dense legal paragraphs and my phone’s translation app, trying to make sense of words I barely understood.
But it didn’t matter what the contract said, or how confusing the charges were — including taxes the landlord was supposed to pay. I was going to sign it anyway. For personal reasons, I needed a space immediately, like a naïve gambler pushing all her chips onto the table.
I became self-employed, and by necessity, a small business owner. In Spain, earning a living through cakes is nothing like in the UK or the US. You can’t simply apply for a hygiene check and start selling. You must rent a commercial kitchen — or an entire commercial space — and spend a significant amount of money turning it into a licensed kitchen. It’s an incredibly unfriendly system for small businesses. Even if your operation is tiny, you still need large-scale capital to begin at all.
Now, entering my fifth year of business, I’ve learned countless lessons.
But there is one thing I’ve felt myself losing — deeply.
I’ve been lucky to receive support from wedding planners and various industry professionals — photographers, florists, venue managers. As my business grew, I gained regular collaborators and new opportunities. My world seemed to expand. During the winter off-season, I even started a Chinese YouTube channel and entered the creator world, opening doors to cross-industry collaborations. When you’re brave and creative, being self-employed can feel like flying freely in open sky.
And yet, all of these connections remained thin.
Collaboration is still just collaboration — none of it felt like friendship.
In the early days, I tried reaching out to other cake designers — introducing myself at industry gatherings in hopes of building some kind of connection. But most conversations felt guarded, as if everyone was protecting their own territory. Some ran storefronts, some baked from home, but the dynamic was always the same: polite, distant, transactional. The few genuinely warm people I met felt rare and precious.
Maybe that’s why I made a point to be open and friendly whenever I met others in the industry. My prices are on the higher end, but I’ve always believed everyone has their own business model. Cake design is personal work; treating each other as competitors never made sense to me. Whenever I couldn’t take an order, I often sent it to someone I trusted. Sharing felt natural.
But most of the time, interactions within the industry still felt lonely.
Sometimes it seemed like people only looked at me and thought:
“What can you offer me?”
or the even colder version — “What do you bring to the table?”
Eventually, I gave up trying. My black-and-white personality took over, and I shut myself off. If I didn’t engage, I wouldn’t get hurt.
Some people in my field carry a harsh, intimidating aura — and I’ve done that too. When I see freelancers presenting themselves as aloof, powerful, unshakeable, it makes me uncomfortable, even irritated. And deep down, I hated it because I recognized that version of myself.
Why?
Because beneath that armor was fear — intense, overwhelming fear — and remembering it still knots my stomach.
I don’t do that anymore. That version of me who tried to look cool, tough, invincible existed because I was drowning in financial pressure, painfully aware of my limitations, forcing myself to go all-in. It was like an animal puffing up its fur — trying to look bigger than it actually is.
But none of that truly helps.
My work requires delivering cakes to venues, which means stepping into restaurant kitchens. Each time I walk into a kitchen and chat with the chefs, I instantly feel at home. Before starting my business, I had been a professional chef for more than a decade.
I talk with the chefs about storing the cake, borrow counter space, show them how to cut it — sometimes even work alongside them. I understand their workflow, their language, their rhythm. Entering a kitchen during deliveries is one of the happiest moments of my job — like greeting old friends:
“Hey! How are you?”
“Wow, that smells amazing!”
“That looks delicious! How did you do it?”
“Guys, have a great service tonight!”
I deeply miss the days when people stood beside me — sharing tips, supporting each other. We competed too, but it was a fun, energizing kind of competition.
Now, when I open a messaging app hoping to reconnect with old colleagues, the last messages always stop at cold, transactional conversations. Ever since I became self-employed, we no longer complain about bosses together, gossip about stupid things, or have beers and talk nonsense. I’ve lost so much.
Since the pandemic, small brands, indie businesses, and self-employment have exploded. Freelancers have become one of the fastest-growing groups in the labor force. When we check Instagram profiles, almost everyone looks like they’re running their own thing. The pandemic pushed the world into an era that can’t fully return to traditional offices. Remote work and social media lowered the threshold for entrepreneurship. And after the pandemic, AI-driven layoffs reshaped the labor market everywhere.
If there’s anything that could make me consider returning to a traditional workplace, it wouldn’t be the salary — it would be the human connection. And when I look at how work has changed in the past few years, even the idea of being “your own boss” feels different now. Most of us who are self-employed aren’t really bosses in the traditional sense — we’re still workers, just working in a different structure.
Even in small businesses, the lone-wolf model of entrepreneurship doesn’t belong to this era anymore.
Cherish the people in your field who genuinely connect with you.
People doing what you do are, in many ways, your colleagues.
This is no longer a time for self-employed people to armor themselves.