He'd built a tech company in Prague. Fifteen people. Growing fast...But

I coached a founder last week who said, "I left London to stop performing. Now I perform in Prague."

He laughed when he said it. The way men laugh when they've just told the truth and need to make it sound like a joke.

He'd built a tech company in Prague. Fifteen people. Growing fast. Moved here from London three years ago with his wife and a plan to live differently. Slower. More intentional. Less of the machine.

Three years in, he was working harder than he ever had in London. The team needed him in Czech for client meetings he could barely follow. He'd sit in rooms nodding at the right moments, performing understanding, then go back to his desk and ask his Czech colleague to translate what he'd just agreed to.

The Rat loved Prague. New city, new threats, new things to scan for. The Rat doesn't care about your intention to slow down. It cares about survival. And survival in a foreign language means the volume never turns down.

"I thought the problem was London," he said. "The pace. The commute. The culture of always being on. I thought if I removed all of that, I'd finally relax."

"And?" I said.

"I'm more tense here than I ever was there. Because in London I knew the rules. Here I'm guessing. Every meeting, every email, every conversation with my landlord — I'm performing competence in a country where I can't even argue with the gas company."

This is the thing about Prague that no one tells you before you move.

The city is beautiful. The pace is slower. The beer is cheap. The quality of life is, by most measures, better than London or New York or wherever you left.

But the Rat doesn't care about quality of life. It cares about threat. And being foreign is a threat that never fully resolves. You're always slightly off balance. Always performing a version of yourself that can cope. Always one misunderstood email away from feeling like a fraud.

I asked him when he last felt like himself.

He went quiet for a long time.

"On the phone with my mate in London. Friday nights. He doesn't need anything from me. He doesn't care about the company. He just asks how I am and I tell him the truth."

"What's the truth?" I said.

"That I'm lonely. That I'm tired. That I built this thing and now it's eating me. And I can't say that to anyone here because I'm supposed to be the one who has it together."

That's the Stag. Carrying it all. In a foreign city where the weight falls differently because there's no one nearby who knew you before the armour.

We walked along the river for an hour after that. I didn't say much. I didn't need to. Once he'd said the thing out loud — the real thing, not the version he performs at networking events — something loosened on its own.

That's what the river does. It doesn't fix anything. It gives you enough space to hear what you've been carrying. And sometimes hearing it is enough.

He texted me two days later. "I told my co-founder I'm struggling. First time I've said it. He said he is too. We had the best conversation we've had in two years."

That's how it works. One honest conversation unlocks the next one. The Rat says honesty is dangerous. The Wren asks: dangerous compared to what? Compared to two founders running a company in silence, both drowning, neither saying it?

If you're a founder in Prague performing competence in a language you haven't mastered, in a culture you're still learning, with a team who needs you to look like you know what you're doing — the weight of that is real. It's not the same as London. It's heavier in some ways and lonelier in most.

You didn't move here to perform harder. You moved here to live differently. But the Rat came with you. It always does.

The question isn't how to silence it. The question is whether you've told anyone the truth about what it's been like.

One conversation. That's where it starts.

I'm Andrew Sillitoe. I help leaders have better conversations. If this resonated, you can find more at andrewsillitoe.com.