Unpacked with Ron Harvey

What separates a business that's growing from one that's truly scaling? On this episode of Unpacked, host Ron Harvey sits down with Doug Levy, president of Lexington Rose Consulting and a fractional COO with two decades in the trenches, to unpack the systems, mindset shifts, and hard-won lessons that let owners step out of the day-to-day without the business falling apart. Doug spent ten years growing an insurance agency from $3.4M to $12.1M in revenue at a 40% profit margin before a record-setting sale to private equity, and he brings that operator's perspective to every answer.

In this episode:

• Why systems, not effort, are what let a business scale, and how "anything that delivers consistency is a system," whether it's software, an SOP, or your org structure
• The owner bottleneck: how "nobody can do it like I do it" quietly caps your growth, and why progress beats perfection every time
• Building a trust-first culture by trusting people by default, then confirming the decision by observing competence
• The real cost of a bad hire, and why a $60K employee who leaves inside six months can run you $55K plus lasting cultural damage
• Institutional knowledge vs. documentation, and knowing the exact moment to start writing things down: "when the pain of not doing it exceeds the pain of doing it"
• Treating workflows as an investment with a compounding ROI, not a sunk cost
• Why not every business needs to "10x," and giving yourself permission to define your own version of success
• The leadership truth business school skips: how people feel matters more than any academic framework, plus Ron's signature question, "Does your audio match your video?"

Guest: Doug Levy, President of Lexington Rose Consulting, a business operations and fractional COO consulting firm. Reach him at LexingtonRoseConsulting.com or 954-459-4052, and connect with him on LinkedIn. If your team is hiring in the next 12 to 24 months, ask about his LogicWise Hiring System.

Host: Ron Harvey, Vice President and COO of Global Core Strategies and Consulting.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

What if caring for your people wasn't the thing that slows results down, but the very thing that drives them? On this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, Justin Ricklefs — founder and CEO of Guild Collective, a human-first brand agency in Kansas City — joins the show to unpack the ideas behind his book, Give a Damn: The Catalyst for Caring Companies. Ron and Justin dig into why care and commerce can coexist, and why the leaders who genuinely give a damn tend to build healthier, more loyal, and higher-performing teams.

In this episode:

• Why caring and results are not opposites, and how leaders quietly lose their best people when they treat them as either/or
• The critical difference between being nice and being kind, and why avoidance dressed up as care is really self-protection
• Justin's framework of core leadership characteristics — curiosity, compassion, and clarity — and why clarity means telling the truth and giving honest feedback
• What publicly tearing a team apart does to trust, and why trust, once broken, shatters like a coffee mug dropped on a tile floor
• How to lead through high-pressure moments by moving toward curiosity instead of projecting false certainty
• Why "pressure is a privilege," a lesson shaped by Justin's years working in the Kansas City Chiefs front office
• The simple five-minute daily habit — handwritten notes and naming gratitude — that any leader can start today

Justin Ricklefs is the founder and CEO of Guild Collective and the author of Give a Damn: The Catalyst for Caring Companies, available now on Amazon. Connect with Justin on LinkedIn, where he writes almost daily about leadership, care, and building human-first brands.

Unpacked with Ron Harvey is hosted by Ron Harvey, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Global Core Strategies and Consulting in Columbia, South Carolina, where the guiding belief is simple: people always matter.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

Confidence is not the same thing as competence, and chasing more credentials will never close the gap on its own. In this episode of Unpack with Ron Harvey, coach and author Tricia Conyers joins Ron for an honest, vulnerable conversation about why so many accomplished, high-performing women still struggle to see themselves as capable as everyone around them already does, and what actually builds the kind of self-trust that lasts.

Based in Trinidad and Tobago, Tricia Conyers is a professional and personal coach who works with women standing at a crossroads between the life they are living now and the brighter, braver, bolder version of themselves they know they are capable of becoming. Her first book, Confidence Is Action, releases in September on Amazon.

In this conversation, Ron and Tricia unpack:

• Why competence is only one ingredient of confidence, and what the missing pieces really are
• The "negative sum game" women play by dismissing their wins and magnifying their mistakes
• A simple daily practice: naming one thing that went well, then why it was about you
• How reflection, scheduled every 90 days like a meeting, compounds into higher performance
• The wedding-party moment that stripped away Tricia's confidence, and the lesson underneath it
• Why self-trust, not outside validation, sits at the very heart of real confidence
• The "waiting to feel ready" trap, and why confidence only arrives after you take action
• How confidence works like a muscle that anyone can build through repetition and reps

Whether you lead a team, are building something of your own, or keep waiting to feel ready before you begin, this episode delivers practical, day-by-day tools to stop waiting and start acting, plus a leadership lens on how to build confidence in the people you manage and help them step into bigger opportunities.

Connect with Tricia Conyers:
 LinkedIn: Tricia Conyers
 Instagram: inspireher (Trinidad and Tobago)
 Website: triciaconyers.com
 Book: Confidence Is Action (Amazon, September)

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

Scott Proposki went from shooting events at the White House under President Obama to building a multimillion-dollar photography business, then losing all of it during COVID. In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, Scott walks through the three years he spent in the wreckage, the one question from his coach that pulled him out, and the method he now uses to help business owners find the small changes that move an entire year of revenue.

Ron and Scott get into why trust has become the scarcest asset in business, why most owners keep restarting instead of building momentum, and what it really takes to earn a yes in a market full of noise.

In this episode:

• The trust recession: why buyers have stopped believing claims, and how to earn belief back one step at a time
• Selling the destination instead of the seat on the plane, and what that shift does to your pricing
• Base camp: why climbing the same hill over and over stalls growth, and how to rebuild with the right team first
• The only two reasons people do not buy, and how to solve both
• Moving from victim thinking to ownership after a setback you did not cause
• Why small businesses lose deals on follow-up, not on price
• Being of service instead of selling, and why service closes what pressure cannot
• The unconventional path that got Scott into the White House, and what it teaches about being found
• Why it is not how, it is who, and how to staff around your weaknesses

Scott Proposki is a former National Geographic and White House event photographer, author of Camera Focus, and creator of the Business Focus Method. He works with businesses from six figures to nine figures to identify the one to three percent changes that compound.

Connect with Scott: businessfocusmethod.com | [email protected]

Ron is covering the cost of Camera Focus for the first five listeners who email Scott after hearing this episode.

Hosted by Ron Harvey, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Global Core Strategies and Consulting, a leadership development firm helping executives stay closer to their people.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

Erin Treacy spent years working 80- and 90-hour weeks, telling herself she would slow down next week. Her body ended the argument for her. Standing on the cook line of one of her 1950s-style diners, her right leg went numb. The diagnosis was a slipped disc and compressed discs in her lower back, and she could no longer stand on a concrete floor for twenty minutes, let alone a twelve-hour shift.

In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, Erin Treacy, a leadership and business coach in West Virginia, unpacks what burnout actually cost her, why closing the business was the smartest decision available, and how she rebuilt a people-first leadership model that includes the leader.

What Ron and Erin cover:

• Why servant leadership falls apart when the leader is left out of "people first"
• The signs her husband and kids named for years before her body forced the issue
• How leaders make themselves the bottleneck while believing they have empowered the team
• The Post-it note challenge that exposes how often you say "I'll just do it myself"
• Why two minutes of teaching today saves roughly ten hours of work next week
• What it takes to close a business when you are wired to compete and hate to lose
• The adult version of a timeout, and why walks, art, and a phone left at home are not indulgences
• The eye of the hurricane problem: staying calm for everyone else while the storm runs inside you
• Why a lesson often has to land hundreds of times before it sticks
• Ron's Daytona pit stop analogy and the military policy that made leave mandatory
• The line that changed how Erin leads: your opinion of me is none of my business

This one is for the leader who has become the answer to every question and the entrepreneur who keeps moving the goalpost. Burnout does not announce itself. It sends warnings, and most high performers are moving too fast to read them.

Connect with Erin Treacy: ErinTreacyCoaching.com, and Coach Erin Treacy on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. She answers every message personally.

Connect with Ron Harvey: LinkedIn, or the Global Core Strategies and Consulting website.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, host Ron Harvey sits down with Luke Mickelson, the Idaho farm kid who turned a single homemade bunk bed into Sleep in Heavenly Peace, now the largest bed-building charity in the world. What began in Luke's garage in 2012 has grown into a national movement fighting child bedlessness, and along the way Luke discovered a challenge that quietly derails many founders and leaders: founder syndrome.

Together, Ron and Luke unpack what happens when your identity fuses with the thing you built, why the hardest part of leadership is often letting go, and how leaders can empower their people to take real ownership. Whether you run a company, lead a nonprofit, manage a project, or are raising a family, this conversation offers a framework for growing beyond yourself without losing yourself.

In this episode:

• The garage project that became a global charity, and the moment that sparked it all
• What founder syndrome really is, and its stages: identity fusion, relevance wounds, and the monster
• Why "pause before you protect" is the discipline every leader needs when they feel cut out
• How to give employees genuine ownership so passion, not just a paycheck, drives their work
• Why the sweatiest, dustiest volunteer is the happiest, and what that teaches about engagement
• The freedom in asking for help and letting go of "fake it till you make it"
• Ron's reframe for the stories we tell ourselves: "based on what?"
• How letting go, like Bezos with Amazon, lets a vision grow far beyond what control ever could

Luke Mickelson is the founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace (shpbeds.org) and creator of the Founder Syndrome Survival Course. Learn more and take his founder syndrome assessment at LukeMickelson.com, or email [email protected]. Find him on social media as Luke Mickelson or SHP Luke.

Host Ron Harvey is Vice President and COO of Global Core Strategies and Consulting, where he helps organizations develop leaders who take care of their people.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, host Ron Harvey sits down with Anya Cheng, founder and CEO of Taelor AI, the AI-powered styling and clothing rental service that helps busy men look sharp without shopping, laundry, or guesswork. Before launching Taelor, Anya led product at Meta building Facebook and Instagram shopping, served as head of product at eBay, was a senior director at McDonald's building its global food delivery business, and helped Target build its Silicon Valley tech office. A Northwestern University marketing graduate and University of Chicago alum originally from Taiwan, she is also a two-time TED speaker.

Anya shares the hard-won lessons behind building a startup and the mindset shifts that carried her from immigrant job seeker with no network to Silicon Valley CEO. Her story is a candid look at failure, resilience, and figuring out what customers are really buying.

In this conversation, you will hear:

• Why she bet on herself and left corporate life to solve a problem she lived every day
• The $100,000 pitch competition she lost, and why memorizing answers cost her the win
• How leaning on your existing strengths keeps you going when you want to give up
• Why Taelor sells confidence and peace of mind, not clothes
• How agile thinking and real customer feedback beat guessing what people want
• The sustainability crisis in fashion and how rental data reshapes what brands produce
• Why your proprietary data and know-how are your real advantage in the age of AI

Whether you are an entrepreneur, a leader, or someone rethinking your next chapter, this episode is packed with practical wisdom on confidence, customer focus, and building a business that solves a problem people actually have.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

On this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, behavioral scientist and serial entrepreneur Curtis Sprouse joins Ron for a candid conversation about why most leadership development fails and what it actually takes to build teams that perform without burning out. Drawing on a behavioral data set of more than 4,500 people and decades inside the biopharma, device, and healthcare industries, Curtis unpacks the difference between teams that hit their numbers and teams that can sustain success over time.

Curtis is the founder of a behavioral science practice, leads the nonprofit Institute for Biomedical Entrepreneurship, and has had a hand in founding dozens of companies. In this discussion, he and Ron explore what separates high-performing teams from high-functioning ones, and why teaching people how to think beats managing them every time.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why we don't actually train leaders, and the hidden cost of promoting people and hoping they figure it out
• The real difference between high-performing and high-functioning teams, and why only one is sustainable
• How trust is built and rebuilt, using Ron's subway-and-wallet test you won't forget
• A simple framework for human connection in an AI-driven world: experiential exchanges and engagement
• Why critical thinking is the most valuable skill in a five-generation workforce
• The behavioral mechanisms of action that explain why colleagues struggle to work together
• Curtis's "Rs" of leadership: responsibility, reality, relationships, relevance, and doing the right thing
• Why the best-performing teams are often the ones who most need outside eyes

Whether you are a first-time leader or a seasoned executive, this conversation will challenge how you think about trust, talent, and the human side of building a business.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

When disaster strikes, what separates the leaders who rise from the ones who freeze? In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, crisis management expert Keith Erwood draws on decades on the front lines of emergencies, from his years as a New York City EMT to advising organizations on business continuity and disaster recovery. Keith makes a sharp case that the plan itself is never the real test of leadership under pressure. The decisions a leader makes in the moment are. He and Ron unpack how any organization can build that capability long before a crisis ever arrives, and why waiting for perfect information is often the costliest mistake of all.

In this conversation, you will learn:

• Why the people who rise in a crisis often are not the ones you would expect
• The trait Keith consistently sees in leaders who stay clear and calm under pressure
• How crisis leadership can actually be trained through scenarios, tabletop exercises, and muscle memory
• A real pandemic-era example showing how one delayed decision triggered a cascade of new problems
• Why your business continuity plan is a "toolbox" and your strategies are the tools inside it
• What should happen in the first sixty minutes of any crisis, from activating the team to mitigating damage
• The role trust, clear communication, and the courage to course-correct play when everything is on the line
• A simple habit any team can adopt to stay crisis-ready in just a few minutes a week

Whether you lead a large enterprise or a small team, this episode is a practical, no-nonsense guide to making better decisions when time is your biggest enemy and the information in front of you is incomplete.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

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.
.
Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...

What does it really take to build a business that outlasts you? In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, host Ron Harvey sits down with Ty Givens, MBA, a customer experience consultant, operator, and founder with 26 years in the CX space. Ty pulls the curtain back on the unglamorous realities of entrepreneurship and the mindset shifts that kept her in the game when quitting felt like the easier option.

From getting stiffed by her first non-paying client to building the systems that freed her from being her company's only source of truth, Ty offers honest, practical lessons for entrepreneurs, support leaders, and anyone navigating growth without a roadmap. She and Ron trade hard-won wisdom on resilience, discipline, and why the success stories you see online rarely tell the whole story.

In this conversation, you'll learn:

• Why launching a website doesn't make the phone ring, and what actually drives client decisions
• The mindset shift that turned "I quit" into "quitting is not an option"
• How Ty escaped the solopreneur trap by building processes, GPTs, and a team she trusts
• Why she hires for integrity and critical thinking above raw skill, and back-channels every reference
• How "coopetition" beats competition in a market big enough for everyone
• The truth about goal-setting when your real metric is outperforming yourself
• Why she productized her services and got selective about the clients she takes on
• A first look at Reality Check, her new app built from 24 CX playbooks for support leaders

Whether you're on the fence about going out on your own or scaling a team you can finally step away from, this episode delivers the kind of real talk social media never shows. As Ty puts it: you can do difficult things.

Connect with Ron

Impact Leadership: A Strategic Guide to Sustainable Leadership, Enhancing Team Engagement, and Leading with the Principle that People Always Matter

“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”

Learn more about Global Core Strategies

.
.
.
.
.
Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties ...