From the Green Velvet Couch | A Conversation with Lauren Reed Williams
What if the hardest seasons of your life were actually the ones preparing you for your greatest growth and being a great leader meant letting your team see you cry? Conscious leadership is knowing that being strong and vulnerable at the same time.
On her podcast, From the Green Velvet Couch, Shelly sat down with Lauren Reed, CEO and owner of Reed Public Relations Agency in Nashville, for a conversation that moved through leadership, mental health, turnover, astrology, and the slow work of becoming the kind of person who can actually live the values she talks about. Lauren is also currently working on her second book, this one on conscious leadership, and she is an avid trail runner who once completed a 40-mile race in Kentucky’s Land Between the Lakes.
Here are the moments worth holding onto.
Building a Culture That Puts People First
Lauren opened with a principle she returns to often. A company will always take on the culture of its leader. That truth kept her honest as she built Reed Public Relations from the ground up, and it continues to shape how she leads a team made up largely of women in their twenties and thirties.
Reed recently earned a platinum-level certification from Mental Health America, which required meeting more than fifty criteria for workplaces that prioritize employee mental health. The company pays for therapy sessions for every team member, with no questions asked. They have built what Lauren calls a culture of feedback, which can be challenging at times because it means constant reflection on how to grow personally and professionally, but it also keeps the organization honest and evolving.
Lauren was quick to acknowledge the stakes of her industry. PR is regularly named one of the most stressful jobs, which she finds funny because her team is not running into burning buildings or performing surgery. At the same time, they are in the business of solving client problems, which means they are constantly pulled into other people’s challenges. That reality makes intentional culture-building essential rather than optional.
This kind of proactive investment in people is exactly the approach Shelly brings to her wellness consulting work with organizations and leadership teams, where culture is treated as a living thing that needs tending.
Turnover as a Sign of Growth
One of the most refreshing moments in the conversation came when Lauren shared her take on turnover. She called it controversial, but her reasoning is sound. When an employee moves on, it creates space for new energy and new perspectives. If that employee leaves better than they arrived, having grown in skill and confidence during their time at Reed, Lauren considers that a win rather than a loss.
Shelly echoed the sentiment from her own experience building a healthcare company. In the early years, she took every departure personally. Over time, she came to see that her goal was not to keep people forever. It was to give them a meaningful experience that left them stronger, more skilled, and more supported than when they walked in the door.
Lauren admitted that she had to grow into this belief slowly. For the first several years of Reed, she clung to the idea that the team she started with would be the team that took her to the next level. She now laughs at how confident she was about that. Ten years in, none of her original employees are still with the company, but all of them are thriving elsewhere, and they remain friends and cheerleaders for each other. What she once would have called a failure, she now sees as the natural evolution of a healthy leader and a healthy business.
Life Happens For Us, Not To Us
The conversation took a deeper turn when Lauren shared a season of her life that nearly broke her. She tore her ACL and meniscus during her first week after her husband of 15 years moved out. Her recovery required help with the most basic tasks, including getting out of bed. In the middle of it, she thought her life was over.
Looking back, she describes that period as one of the most life-giving experiences she has had. Not because the pain was welcome, but because of who showed up for her. Friends, family, and people she did not expect stepped in to help, and she grew more in that season than she had in years.
Shelly related deeply. A recent fall from her horse left her with a fractured pelvis and a long recovery that required a walker and then a cane. Both women agreed that they would not choose the pain again, but they would absolutely choose what they learned from it. Lauren now repeats something to her children that she works to believe herself. Life is not happening to us. Life is happening for us. The event will occur either way. Our perspective is the only thing we get to decide.
Leadership Wisdom Through Astrology
Lauren’s upcoming book is on conscious leadership, and it draws from her work with her husband, an astrologer, in their consulting company called The North Node Leader. She laughed as she described how unexpected this partnership was for her. She grew up Catholic, spent time in evangelical church, and was open to spiritual exploration but had never really connected with astrology. Meeting her husband changed that.
The north node in astrology is thought to indicate what a person has asked themselves to learn in this lifetime. Lauren’s book explores what happens when your daily work actually aligns with that life path. She has watched her own career move in and out of burnout over twenty years in PR, and she believes that magic happens when what you do for a living lines up with what you are here to learn.
You do not have to follow astrology to appreciate her deeper point. Work becomes sustainable when it is connected to purpose, and purpose is what carries you through the seasons when everything feels hard. This kind of alignment is also at the heart of Shelly’s performance mentoring work with leaders and high performers, where clarity about purpose is often the thing that unlocks the next level of growth.
Living the Four Pillars
Shelly asked Lauren how she integrates the four pillars of wellness, emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial, into her daily life. Her answer was honest, specific, and full of the kind of wisdom that only comes from practicing what you preach.
On financial health, Lauren shared that the core of her anxiety has always been tied to money and security. She used to check her QuickBooks app eight times a day until a therapist gently asked her what it would feel like to take it off her phone. Now she trusts her CFO, her bookkeeper, and her financial advisor, who also happens to be Teresa Bailey from an earlier episode of this podcast. Turning over the details to professionals she trusts has freed her to focus on leading.
On physical health, running is non-negotiable. It regulates her energy, calms her ADHD, and gives her perspective on everything else. After her first marathon, she noticed that nothing felt as hard as mile 24. Having that reference point built a kind of resilience she still draws on. She also encourages her team to find their own physical or creative outlet, whether it is movement, journaling, or something else entirely.
On spiritual health, Lauren focuses on perspective. She reminds herself that she is here to learn and grow, and she tries to embrace the mystery of difficult situations rather than resist them. Meditation is part of her practice, though she is honest that she falls off the wagon and climbs back on regularly.
On emotional health, her growth edge has been letting herself have bad days. As an Enneagram seven, her natural wiring is to spin things toward the bright side, but she has learned that bypassing real emotion is not health. During her divorce, she once burst into tears in the middle of a team meeting. When she returned, her team told her how good it was to see her be human. That moment reshaped her understanding of what strong leadership actually looks like.
The Humility of Asking for Help
Toward the end of the episode, Shelly shared something that hit both women squarely. When she was in the early days of her injury and struggling with dependence on other people, she began to feel overwhelmed with sadness and anxiety. She asked herself what she would tell a client to do, and then she did something many of us resist. She reached out to her own trusted mentors and asked for help.
Knowing what to do and actually doing it are two different things. Sometimes we need someone we trust to reflect our own wisdom back at us. That, Lauren and Shelly agreed, is one of the most important lessons of leadership and of being human. You do not have to do any of it alone.
This kind of trusted, private support is exactly what Shelly provides through her wellness specialist practice for founders, executives, artists, and high-profile clients, where having someone in your corner who actually understands the weight you are carrying can change everything.
🎧 Join the Conversation
If this post sparked something in you, the full episode is waiting with even more warmth and thoughtful insight.
✨ Listen to the full conversation on the From the Green Velvet Couch podcast. Visit the Podcast page to discover more episodes focused on resilience, leadership wellbeing, and holistic wellness.
Let this be your invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, and step into a well-grounded life full of growth and intention.
