Fade To Black And The Loneliness Of Leadership

Blue Goat Cyber is scaling fast. We're close to 30 people now.

At this stage, the work isn't the hardest part.

It's the responsibility.

Decisions that ripple. Timelines that matter. Clients counting on us. A team trusting I'll lead well.

That can be lonely.

Sometimes it hits in the quietest place: a hotel room at night, suitcase still half open, city noise outside, and my brain still running.

Why It's Lonely Even When It Shouldn't Be

I travel with my wife, Melissa. We're together a lot. The team I have built is full of people I genuinely like. Nothing about my life looks lonely from the outside.

The loneliness is not about being alone in a room. It is about being the only one in the building who carries every decision.

When a deal slips, the team feels the news. The founder feels the news plus what it means for runway, plus what it means for hiring, plus what it means for the customer commitment that depends on it. When a hire does not work out, the team feels the awkwardness. The founder feels the awkwardness plus the cost plus the time lost plus the question of what the process missed. The math piles up in one chair.

That chair is the job. Nobody is doing anything wrong by not sitting in it with you. It just turns out that the people who love you most cannot fully share it, because the only way to share it would be to also be responsible for it, and they are not, and that is correct.

So the loneliness is structural. It is not a problem to be solved. It is a condition to be managed.

What Helps, In Order Of Honesty

Music. Real talk. Movement. Naming it.

Macklemore's "Can't Hold Us" helped me finish an Ironman.

Metallica's "Fade to Black" carried me through my youth.

Real talk with other founders, the kind that does not start with "things are great." A run when the brain will not stop. And the simple, surprisingly powerful act of saying the feeling out loud to someone who can hear it without trying to fix it.

I'm not in that place anymore. I'm in a good place today. But I don't forget what it took to get here, and I don't ignore what I feel now.

So I'm naming it.

Because if you don't name it, it owns you.

What This Has To Do With The Work

It is why we help MedTech teams define cybersecurity requirements, threat model, and assemble FDA-ready cybersecurity evidence for premarket submissions and postmarket plans, so they're not stuck doing it under a clock.

A founder who is already carrying the weight of building a device that goes inside a human body does not also need to be carrying the weight of guessing what the FDA wants. That second weight is the one we lift.

I love what we're building. Medical devices aren't "tech products." They're what someone's mom, dad, kid, or spouse is depending on.

That mission is worth it.

And leadership, at least for me, requires honesty, not just stamina.

If you've ever felt alone in the responsibility, even while surrounded by love, you're not broken. You're human.

Fade to Black carried me then. Purpose carries me now.

Still here. 🤘