When Rachel Alexandria invited me onto her podcast Lonely at the Top, I laughed a little because my honest answer was not the dramatic one. I am not lonely at the top.
Not because leadership is easy. Not because being visible is easy. Not because running a business, leading a team, and carrying the emotional weight of other people’s big decisions somehow floats lightly off my shoulders like a silk scarf in a Nancy Meyers movie. Absolutely not.
I’m not lonely because I decided pretty early on that I could not do this in isolation.
Rachel’s podcast is all about the pressure, doubt, fatigue, and weird emotional burden that come with leadership, especially the kind that other people do not always see. And what I appreciated about our conversation is that we did not pretend leadership only looks one way. For some people, it really is lonely. For me, the deeper truth is that I have spent years deliberately building against that.
Listen to the full episode of Lonely At The Top, Rewiring a Hustle-Driven Nervous System with Lauren Goche here
I Did Not Stumble Into Community
On the episode, I said, “I actually do have a lot of contemporaries that I get to talk to, and I am not lonely at the top.” That did not happen by accident.
I have built an ecosystem of incredible women around me. Women I can run ideas by, vent to, learn from, problem solve with, and occasionally bitch and moan to when business is being particularly business-y. A lot of that was modeled to me early. Collaboration over competition. Reach out instead of white-knuckling it. Let people in.
And then politics honestly pushed that instinct even further. I talked on the podcast about how I started hosting postcard-writing parties to send postcards to voters in swing states, and how that kind of organizing reinforced something I already knew but maybe had not fully named yet: community building is not just something I enjoy. It is one of the most important things I know how to do.
That matters in business. It matters in leadership. It matters in life.
Because the truth is, a lot of people do rise into leadership and then quietly get more and more isolated. Fewer peers. Fewer honest conversations. More responsibility. More performance. More pressure to look like you have it handled.
I have no interest in building my life that way.
Care First Or The Whole Thing Falls Apart
One of the strongest parts of the conversation for me was when Rachel asked about leadership and how I think about taking care of my team. My answer was simple: care comes first.
On the podcast I said, “The basis of our team is care. Care for each other first and foremost, and then care for our clients.” I know some people might hear that and think it sounds backwards. I do not. If we do not care for each other, we cannot do great work for anyone else.
That looks big and small. Boundaries. Actual rest. Not glamorizing burnout. Asking if someone has eaten and then refusing to accept “a granola bar” as a real meal. There is a reason Rachel brought up the phrase “love bully” in our conversation, because yes, I absolutely will push people to take care of themselves when I know they are the kind of people who will not do it on their own.And a lot of that comes from learning the hard way. Before I had a team, I would work through sickness, pain, exhaustion, whatever. I talked about showing houses right after surgery in slippers because I physically could not get shoes on. That is not leadership. That is nervous system chaos wearing a productivity costume. Now I know better. Or at least better enough to interrupt the pattern.
If You Want The Full Conversation Go Listen
I’m grateful to Rachel for having me on Lonely at the Top. She created space for a conversation that felt honest instead of performative, which is rarer than it should be.
We talked about community, leadership, burnout, visibility, boundaries, self-abandonment, and the very weird process of learning that just because you can carry a lot does not mean you should. If that sounds like your kind of conversation, go listen to the episode on Rachel’s podcast.
And if you are in a season where leadership feels heavy, let this be your reminder that doing it all alone is not actually the prize.
