On Loneliness, LinkedIn, and Why Being Yourself is Actually a Business Strategy

A conversation with Victoria Dioh of Healing the World Together

I don't do many podcast interviews these days. Mostly because I'm pretty picky about who I spend my time with, and partly because talking about yourself for an hour requires a level of energy I'd rather put into the community. But Victoria Dioh is one of those people who makes it feel easy. She asked the kind of questions that made me forget I was being recorded.

So here's a bit of what we got into.

Nobody expects the introverted auDHD transcriptionist to build a 175k following

Before LinkedIn, I was running a tiny transcription business from home. Eight years, mostly word of mouth. A kid to raise on my own. No family nearby. Not enough money to stretch as far as I needed it to, but I got very creative with the stretching.

I didn't know what marketing was. Not really. I thought it was adverts on telly.

And then I accidentally posted a meme on LinkedIn instead of Facebook, watched it go weirdly viral, and thought: oh. So humour's actually fine here. I can work with this.

That's really how it started. Not a strategy. Not a five-year plan. A meme in the wrong app. Oops!

The reason it worked, I think, is because I'm neurodivergent. I've got autism and ADHD, which means if something bores me, I just won't do it. Ask my laundry pile. So I knew I had to find a way of showing up that felt like me, or I'd never be consistent. Turns out being a bit silly and real on a platform full of people performing professionalism is quite a good way to stand out.

On vulnerability (and why the crying CEO got it wrong)

Victoria mentioned something that apparently Ryan Roslansky said about LinkedIn not being the place for emotions. I'll be honest: I think that's bollocks.

Shared emotion is how human beings connect. Always has been. You go to a wedding and you're crying next to a stranger and suddenly you're best friends for an evening. You're at a concert with your arms around someone you've never met. Emotion isn't unprofessional. It's how we become memorable to each other.

There's a version of vulnerability on LinkedIn that I think people rightfully roll their eyes at — the "I had to let 200 people go and it was so hard for me" CEO sob story. Weaponised vulnerability. Performing pain for reach. That's not it.

But when I shared recently that I need a hysterectomy, the response from women who'd been through it — the advice, the kindness, the "me too" — that's not a content strategy. That's people. And it helped me feel less alone in something genuinely difficult. Which then made it easier to manage. Which is the whole point.

Vulnerability isn't about oversharing. It's about giving people a thread to connect to you with. I talk about loving Thai food and travelling and animals and having tattoos. Any point of connection you find with me creates a tiny invisible thread between us. The more threads, the closer to the front of someone's mind you are. That's it. That's personal branding.

The talk at Big Festoon (and saying the word lonely out loud)

When I was planning my talk for Big Festoon, we went through a few different angles. None of them felt true enough.

Most stage talks are there to sell something; a programme, a book, a product. I didn't want to do that. What I wanted to talk about was why I built The HoLT. And the honest answer to that is: I was lonely.

Solo mum. No local family. Running a business alone. Surrounded by a growing LinkedIn audience and still walking into hospital appointments by myself because I'm so conditioned to managing on my own that I don't even think to ask for help.

When I said it on stage, I got a bit choked up. My dog was on the sofa looking at me adoringly (not staged, he's just like that). And it landed, I think, because so many of us feel it and almost no one says it out loud.

We've forgotten how to lean on community. We've confused being capable with having to do everything alone. They're not the same thing. I'm more than capable. So are most of you reading this. That doesn't mean you have to do it without support.

Why The HoLT exists (and where the name actually comes from)

A few people have asked about the name over the years. The HoLT stands for House of LT, and it's a direct nod to the ballroom scene in New York in the '70s, '80s and '90s. If you haven't watched Pose on the BBC, go and do that.

The houses in that scene were families built by choice. People who'd been rejected, who felt like they didn't fit anywhere, who found each other and created somewhere to belong. Led by a house mother who looked after them.

That's what I wanted to build. A space for the business owners who've never quite felt like they fit the standard mould. Who worry their questions are too basic or too strange. Who are brilliant at what they do but feel utterly alone doing it.

Inside The HoLT, you can ask anything. Nobody judges. In four years, I have never once seen a member be unkind to another member. When someone does cross a line, they're gone - we don't negotiate on that. But it genuinely almost never happens, because the kind of people who are drawn to a community built on those values are not, by and large, dickheads.

We've got members from 25 to 70. People who started their businesses last month. People who've been running theirs for 20 years. Everyone's equal. There's no tier that gets more access. No upsell to a private mastermind. Just a community that's genuinely buzzing, hosted masterclasses from people like Chris Do, speed networking, wellbeing circles, a book club, four years of recorded content you can dive into from day one, and me in there, every day, actually in it.

Because this is my only business. It's not a side project. I'm not building it while running something else. I'm in the chat. I'm noticing what people need before they've figured out how to ask for it. I'm making introductions and flagging opportunities and thinking about what comes next.

It's the thing I'm most proud of building.

On saying no (and how having a kid made me better at it)

Victoria asked me about how motherhood changed me. People expect me to say it softened me. And yes, in some ways it did. I nurture people now in a way I never did in my 20s. I look for the opportunity to help in almost every situation I'm in.

But I also became significantly less tolerant of rubbish.

In my 20s I put up with a lot; from men, friends, clients. Now I have a finite amount of energy. My son comes first. Then my business. Then the people I love. And that's it. If someone wants me to take a five grand job I don't want to do, I say no. If an event doesn't feel right, I say no. If my gut tells me something is off about a person from the very first message (and I mean a physical, visceral reaction) I trust that now, without needing to justify it or talk myself out of it.

Every single time I've ignored that instinct, it's been proved correct. So I stopped ignoring it.

I'm very happy with the life I've built. Just me and my son, no conflict in the house, a close circle of people I trust completely, and a community of 500+ people that feel like family.

That's not a lack. That's everything.

If this sounds like the kind of place you want to be, The HoLT has a waiting list. Come and find us.

Lea Turner is the founder of The HoLT, an online community for freelancers, solopreneurs and small business owners who want to do better work and feel less alone doing it.

Watch the full conversation with Victoria Dioh below on her YouTube channel.