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The Loneliest Part of Leadership: What Business Owners Don't Talk About | The Boujee Multipreneur · The Boujee Multipreneur

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, welcome back to the Bougie Multipreneur.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hillary.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're continuing our series about rebuilding while you're still living it.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: The episode is called The Loneliest Part of Leadership.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And before I go any further, I want to say something.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: This episode isn't about complaining.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about feeling sorry for ourselves as business owners.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about saying leadership is harder than what anyone else experiences because everyone has challenges.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone has responsibilities.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is carrying something.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: There is a unique aspect of leadership that often goes unspoken.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that is loneliness.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Not physical loneliness per se, not necessarily being alone, but the feeling of being the one everyone else is depending on.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling of being the one people come to when they need answers.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling of caring responsibility that nobody else fully understands.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever felt that way, I want you to know you're not the only one.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because leadership can be incredibly rewarding, but it also can be incredibly lonely.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I think people misunderstand about leadership is that the higher your responsibility grows, the fewer people there are who truly understand what you're carrying.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: When you're the business owner, your employees see one version of the situation.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your clients see another, your friends see another, your family sees another.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: But very few people see the entire picture.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Very few people see all the moving pieces, right?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: The payroll, the staffing, the financial decisions, the legal decisions.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then you got the family responsibilities, the personal responsibilities, the future planning, and then the unexpected problems.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that creates a feeling that's difficult to explain.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can be surrounded by people and still feel completely lonely.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have all this stuff, or my least favorite is when people go, Oh, you do all that and you have all this time?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Must be nice to be a business owner and work on your own time.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to myself, but are you up at 4:30 a.m.?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you still out here on the computer at 9 30, 10 o'clock, recording podcasts and making spreadsheets?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then are you doing marketing and advertising and Canva?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And are you learning how to do all the Google ads yourself?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, you're not.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're clocking in, clocking out.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, they all need something from us, right?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's without talking about all the details, right?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: That I could go into, but you know, we've got our patients, we've got our staff, our kids, our vendors, attorneys, realtors of your houses.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, let's talk about what it feels like to carry multiple responsibilities simultaneously.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I've learned recently is that leadership isn't just about making decisions, it's about making decisions while knowing those decisions affect other people.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Especially if you have employees, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have a family, you have kids.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: That weight there can feel heavy because when you're leading a business, the decisions aren't about you.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: They affect your team, they affect your patients, they affect your clients, they affect your family.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes there isn't a perfect answer.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like when I wish there was like a manual to life and I could just open the chapter up and be like, oh, yep, there it is.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: It says, Don't worry, okay, good.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um it can be exhausting, right?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings me to something I think more leaders need to talk about, and that's decision fatigue.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: The decision fatigue is real.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think most people realize how many decisions a business owner makes every single day.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not just the big decisions, but the small ones, the constant decisions.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what should we focus on?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: What should we stop doing?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Should we hire?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Should we wait?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Should we spend more money?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Should we save the money?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: How should we respond to this?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's just over and over again.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And your brain just gets tired.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: When your brain gets tired, everything feels harder.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Even the simple decisions start to feel overwhelming.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, recently had a lot going on in my life, if you've been following the podcast, and sometimes the simple decisions, I was like, I don't know.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know what to do in this situation.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to ask, like when I was at work, the doctors that work with me, I'm like, I don't think I really know what to do.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one day it was just the schedule, rearrange the schedule.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had to leave for an emergency again with a kid, and I was just like, I don't know what to do.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked um the doctor with me, I said, Can you like fix this?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know what to do.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so overwhelmed.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so tired from not sleeping, and I'm just I just don't know what to do.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: My head's just ping-ponging around in there, my brain, I don't know what it's doing.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, I will fix it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when it looks so like stupid to me on the outside, like I don't know how to fix my schedule and rearrange it because it's just jumping off the page everywhere to me.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's when you reach out and you ask for a little bit of help, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And knowing that, okay, on a normal day, I could rearrange my own schedule.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: On that day, it was like, you know, a nine out of 10 put things put fires out in my life kind of day.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, asking for help and then, you know, being willing to make some decisions despite uncertainty.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know if this is gonna be the right thing for the business.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I got so many things on my personal plate.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try this, you know.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we as leaders secretly believe that we should know always what to do, right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that the leaders, we should always feel confident.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: We should always have clarity in our business.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is, many successful leaders spend a significant amount of time figuring out as they go.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy, right?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I am such a planner.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I would rather just plan out the next five years personally and just, you know, chapter by chapter go.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But leaders are willing to move forward before everything feels certain.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's an important distinction because confidence doesn't come from clear, like clarity or certainty of what's going to happen.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Confidence comes from experience.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's from us doing it before, right?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's from me having multiple business before and multiple employees and knowing the right things to do based on my past experiences.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the confidence from surviving difficult seasons in the past, knowing I can survive this season again.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: The confidence from looking back and realizing I figured this out before.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll figure this out too.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think another lonely part of leadership is that people often assume strong people don't need support.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed this?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a leader listening to this, this is why I'm doing this podcast for people like us.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're so strong on the outside.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And people say that to me all the time, right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're so strong, you're gonna get through this, da-da-da-da.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're so positive all the time.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they don't check on you as much.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just because I'm not crying all the time and um having like a severe amount of drama all the time.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, people just don't check on you as much and make sure.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the more capable you seem, the more people just assume you're fine.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fine, great, everything's fine, I'm fine, great.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the more responsibility you carry, the more people assume you can handle it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she handles all these businesses and kids and a whole house on her own and da-da-da-da, you know, and maybe you can carry it all.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't mean you should have to do it alone.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's when me as a strong person leader type A steps back and asks for help.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would want someone else to ask me for help.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to assume that someone needs my help.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just sometimes just want to be told, tell me what to do, tell me you need help, tell me you need me to do this, or run your kids for you, or make you dinner, or tell me you need to borrow some money.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is it?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm there, you know, telling your friends and family what you need.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And most recently, opening up about my personal struggles and my tornado of life hitting down that to my um employees and my my team at work that I'm struggling, I need help, and them pulling together versus me just halfway showing up all the time, right?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Messing up things, which totally have messed up a lot lately, but them knowing why.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: That way they're not gonna be upset later when I do mess up, or they're gonna try to take some things off my plate, or they're gonna ask me how I'm doing, and then I'm gonna respond and say, not very good today.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's been awful, or it was better than yesterday.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I could still be positive, but don't lie, don't fake and say, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, everything's fine.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it's not fine, those people around you want to know, that's why they ask.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, every leader needs people they can honestly talk to.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not the people they have to impress, not the people they have to lead, not the people they have to perform for, people who allow them to be human.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because leadership doesn't mean you stop being human and having errors and faults, apparently.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'll say things like, oh, that's my one mistake this year, but it's not.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, you know, one every couple hours.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, leadership doesn't mean you stop needing encouragement.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's from your family, maybe it's from your friends, maybe it's from your business coach.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's what I try to do as a business coach, um, is encourage, but also my business coach encourages me and takes things apart and looks at it from a wider scope than my little binoculars that I'm looking at things, my little up close and personal.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people can step back and look at the problems and situations for you and help you.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I would say the best leaders are the ones who recognize those needs and then create support systems around them.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I wish more entrepreneurs understood is this you don't get extra points for struggling alone.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get extra points for struggling alone.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's no award, there's no trophy, there's no special recognition for carrying everything by yourself on your shoulders.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes strengths look like asking for help.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: That could be a strength, actually.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Strength could look like delegating things, home, work, life things.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Strength could look like saying, I can't do this all by myself, and that's okay.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, some of my biggest breakthroughs have happened this year in 2026, asking for more help.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Mainly, I would say from my team at work, they have been amazing and everyone's so impressed with them, as am I.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I always knew they were impressive.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, you know, Hillary, that's because you cultivated that.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I'd like to think so.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: But these are amazing humans too.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't take all the credit, but I do strive to cultivate that environment.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when they need me, I will be there too.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And vice versa for for everyone there.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's creating that uh that family that that can rely on each other um and look up to each other, you know.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't feel like leadership is supposed to be a solo sport.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember back in the day trying to do everything myself.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure some of you still do it and and or have never stopped and or want to, but it's hard to do it all on your own.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: It you burn out easier and you plateau easier in your practices and businesses.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the best thing, really.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why some of us are built that way, but many of us tried to do it all on our own.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening today and leadership feels lonely, I want to encourage you to ask yourself three things.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, who understands what I'm carrying?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Who can I honestly talk to about it?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And who am I allowing to support me?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have the answers for that yet, that's fine.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: But make building that support system a priority, not later, but now.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just say you have nothing going on and everything in your life is it's fabulous, and you can't understand or relate to what I'm talking to.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we all know that it's gonna happen at some point.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So create your team that's gonna support you.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have those people that you can honestly talk to.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a competition, not everything in life is a competition.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, unless you're getting paid to like play sports, okay.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you you have some competition, but most of us don't.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to make it a competition either.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, your business deserves a healthy leader and your family needs a healthy leader, and you deserve the support too.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you're weak, because you're human.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And human beings were never designed to carry everything alone.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for spending time with me today.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode resonated with you, awesome.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know what you liked about it.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Share it with another business owner or person.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even have to be business owner because I feel like a lot of this stuff ebbs and flows over different transition areas.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: But someone that might want to hear it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, being the leader doesn't mean carrying everything yourself.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just have to tell myself that every day, put it on a sticky.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I might tattoo it on my hand.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't decided yet.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have to plan for that, right?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just kidding.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you for listening.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I will have one more episode similar coming up because this is the season of my life I'm in and I feel comfortable talking about it now.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: I will see you next time on the episode.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And get out there, be a money magnet, find some coins, and thank the universe for throwing money at you.