Business Roundtable

Most business owners think PR is about getting featured. More placements, more visibility, more attention. Ronica Cleary says that is exactly where it goes wrong. Visibility without a strategy behind it is not a win. It is just noise.

Ronica is the founder and CEO of Cleary Strategies and a former White House correspondent who spent years in newsrooms before building her agency. In this conversation with David Carr she pulls apart what PR actually is, and why chasing placements so often backfires. Your business alone, she says, is rarely newsworthy. The real work is figuring out what...

What do you do when your world turns to ashes? In one season, Elaine Lankford faced a yearlong attack on her character, lost her father, and watched her husband get a cancer diagnosis. Then, on a mission trip, she heard God whisper, "Go home and raise up my daughters."

That whisper became She Steps Forward. Elaine is the founder of She Steps Forward Coaching and the nonprofit She Steps Forward International, and she spent over 16 years in nursing before coaching women into their callings. A certified John Maxwell Team member, she now mentors women through the hardest first...

Most owners think they have a people problem, a time problem, or a strategy problem. Usually, it's none of those — the business is just built to keep everything flowing back to you.

Carol Schultz, Founder & CEO of Vertical Elevation, has spent 30 years as a recruiter and executive coach, helping CEOs stop being "hostages" to their own companies. In this conversation, she unpacks founder's syndrome, why "just hire the right person" rarely works (hint: you're the common denominator), and the succession mindset that separates owners who scale from owners who stay stuck.

She also walks through her Or...

You are moving fast on AI. Your team is experimenting. You are deploying tools. But you have not asked the critical questions that will determine whether you are building competitive advantage or exposing your business, your people, and your customers to serious risk.

Jill Stover Heinze has spent her career helping organizations think through complex technology decisions. When generative AI hit the market, she realized that speed was replacing judgment. Companies were racing to deploy without asking basic questions about data, bias, security, privacy, and alignment with their values. She created an AI Trust Architecture framework to help...

You built your career on accumulating knowledge, protecting your territory, and holding onto status. That strategy made sense in the old world. In the AI era, it is making you invisible.

Nikki Barua has spent 25 years leading large-scale transformation at Fortune 500 companies and building high-growth businesses as a serial entrepreneur. What she has watched happen in real time is a fundamental shift in how power works. Old power was currency you hoarded it, protected it, and held on tight. New power is current; it flows, it democratizes, and the more you give away, the more valuable you become...

Most business owners believe they need to get bigger to be successful. Chip Higgins believes the opposite and forty years of banking experience backs him up.

Chip Higgins spent four decades in banking, working directly with thousands of small business owners. What he observed was that size had almost nothing to do with success. Some of the most impressive businesses he worked with were small. What made them exceptional was momentum a real, measurable force that operates according to the laws of physics, not metaphor. In his book The Bizzics Way, Chip distills momentum into one equation borrowed...

Your business is demanding everything you have. Your body is paying the price. And by the time you realize how much damage you've done, it may be too late to avoid the crash.

Bryan Hardy nearly died at eighteen from a ruptured appendix and spent his twenties rebuilding his health from the ground up. What he learned in that process — and what he has spent the last decade helping other high-performing men discover — is that energy, digestion, mental clarity, and physical vitality are not luxuries. They are the foundation that everything else in your life is built on. When...

Most leaders believe they are credible. Most have never actually tested that assumption — and the gap between how they see themselves and how others experience them is costing them trust, influence, and opportunity.

Mitchell Levy has spent decades in Silicon Valley coaching executives, writing 65 books, founding 20 companies, and interviewing hundreds of thought leaders to answer one deceptively simple question: what does it actually mean to be credible? What he found is that credibility is not just about being trusted. It is about being trusted, known, and liked — and most leaders are quietly failing on at least one of thos...

Most leaders think they know what's happening inside their organization. Most are wrong and the gap between what they believe and what's actually true is where talent exits, projects stall, and money quietly disappears.

Polly Watt and Mike Vos are the co-founders of WattNext.ai and the creators of ViVo Pulse, an AI-powered organizational diagnostic tool that interviews your entire team in the time it takes a consultant to talk to eight people. What comes out the other side is something most business owners have never had: the actual truth about what is working, what is broken, and...

Most business owners have goals. Very few have a plan. And according to Marc Daniels, that difference is costing them everything.

Marc L. Daniels has spent over 45 years building, turning around, and scaling companies across 16 countries. He helped grow Diligent from a two-customer startup to a $941 million acquisition. He turned a bankrupt company into $80 million in revenue. He has seen every version of a business that runs on ambition alone and no strategic foundation. What he finds every single time is the same problem: smart, talented people running companies without a real plan.

In this episode...

Is your business working for you, or have you become its most underpaid employee?

Alan Franks has spent 15 years working with business owners who are successful by every external measure and quietly trapped. Trapped by time, by decisions only they can make, by a financial life that's been entirely reinvested back into the machine they built. As a Certified Financial Planner and founder of the Business Planning Institute, Alan helps business owners reverse-engineer a plan that puts their life back at the center before they're forced to.

In this episode, David Carr and Alan break down...

Your team isn't the problem. The system around them is — and most business owners never see it until it's already costing them clients, cash, and good people.

Thanos Diacakis has spent 25 years inside software teams at companies like Uber, scaling from zero to 2M+ monthly trips. What he found everywhere, from scrappy startups to global organizations, is the same pattern repeating: smart teams trapped in broken systems, doing half of what they should, just not the same half. He now coaches business owners and their teams to ship faster, reduce burnout, and build the kind of operational clarity th...

Why does so much marketing activity fail to generate real revenue? In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David Carr sits down with Stephanie Curtis, founder of Pace Creative and an experienced fractional Chief Marketing Officer, to unpack why many businesses struggle to see ROI from marketing — and how performance-driven strategy changes everything.

Stephanie brings nearly two decades of experience working with highly technical, regulated, and complex B2B organizations, including Fortune 500 companies and seven- and eight-figure manufacturing, engineering, and industrial firms. She explains the critical differences between creative marketing, corporate marketing, product marketing, and performance ma...

What if fear isn’t holding you back—but quietly shaping every decision you make as a leader?

In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, David Carr sits down with Jacqueline Wales, creator of the Fear Intelligence™ framework, to explore how fear operates beneath the surface of leadership, communication, and business growth.

Most leaders assume their challenges are rooted in strategy, execution, or people. But as Jacqueline explains, those are often symptoms of something deeper. Fear—unexamined and unspoken—can drive hesitation, control, misalignment, and breakdowns in trust across organizations.

Drawing from decades of experie...

Choosing the wrong ERP system can cost your business millions.

In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, David Carr sits down with Danny Kaplan, founder of SMC Data Systems, to unpack what most companies get wrong when selecting enterprise resource planning software — and how to avoid expensive implementation failures. Danny founded SMC Data Systems in 1980 and has helped thousands of mid-market manufacturers and distributors optimize operations, strengthen inventory control, and scale through mergers and acquisitions.

With more than four decades of experience, he brings practical wisdom, relationship-driven leadership, and real-world case studies to the conversation. Th...

Why do so many companies invest in marketing tools and still get ignored?

In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David Carr, founder of Steward Your Business, sits down with Ben Baker, strategic communications expert and founder of Your Brand Marketing, to unpack why most outreach fails today — and it is rarely about the tools being used. It is about the alignment, or lack of it, behind the message.

Ben brings over twenty-five years of experience helping mid to large size organizations fix broken communication ecosystems, align stakeholders, and build brands that earn long-term tr...

In a world full of noise, how do you actually stand out?

In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David Carr, founder of Steward Your Business, sits down with JoJo LaRicci, video strategist, super connector, and media veteran with over six decades of experience, to explore what it really takes to get seen, heard, and remembered in business and in life. 

JoJo shares her remarkable journey from learning photography at MIT at age eleven, to building recording studios, appearing on MTV, and reinventing herself during COVID to master video marketing and social media distribution. H...

You spend months hiring someone great, then lose them in 90 days. It is tempting to blame the people. Workforce strategist Joel Schwan says the real problem lies in the system beneath them.

Joel is the founder of Schwan Stratifyr and holds a master's degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, with over 25 years of experience in retail team leadership and enterprise workforce operations. After a layoff of his own, he started seeing the same pattern everywhere: companies do not need more people; they need clarity.

In this conversation, he and David Carr unpack the five areas of...

Why do so many business owners see HR as an administrative cost instead of a growth engine?

In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, David Carr is joined by Bruce Nichols, a global HR executive and people-first strategist, to challenge the traditional view of human resources and reframe HR as a profit multiplier and strategic advantage.

Drawing from decades of experience across private equity, Fortune 100 companies, startups, and high-growth organizations, Bruce explains why most businesses stall not because of sales or market demand, but because the right people are not in the right seats at...

Why do organizations keep fixing symptoms instead of solving the real problem?

In this episode, David Carr sits down with Hanna Bauer, leadership strategist and founder of HEARTnomics, to explore why misalignment between people, systems, and purpose quietly erodes performance, culture, and trust.

Drawing from Hanna’s experience as a CEO, board chair, and executive advisor, this conversation examines what happens when organizations rely too heavily on process, technology, or structure without tending to the human side of leadership. David and Hanna discuss why communication breakdowns, burnout, and stalled execution are rarely people problems and almost al...

Why do so many capable leaders feel exhausted, unfocused, or misaligned, despite doing everything right? In this episode, David Carr sits down with Sara Gayle, founder of EverKind Strategies, to explore how neurodivergence, burnout, and broken systems quietly undermine leadership effectiveness and what it actually takes to design environments where people can thrive. Drawing from Sara’s journey as a late diagnosed ADHD leader and her work with mission driven organizations, this conversation examines how clarity, kindness, and relational intelligence shape sustainable growth. Rather than treating focus and productivity as personal discipline problems, David and Sara reframe them as leadership an...

Why do so many networking conversations never turn into real opportunities? In this episode, David Carr examines the leadership dynamics behind stalled conversions and why relationship-driven professionals often struggle to move conversations toward commitment.

Inspired by the operating principles of Success Champions Network, this conversation explores how leadership, structure, and accountability shape whether conversations lead to results.

David also references the systems-focused leadership behind SCN, led by Jessica Gruber, whose work emphasizes training, infrastructure, and intentional community design to support sustainable growth across chapters worldwide. 

Drawing from real leadership engagements and collaborative work with f...

What if exiting your business did not mean selling out your people, your culture, or your legacy?

In this episode, David Carr sits down with Kelly Finnell, President of EFS ESOP Consultants and one of the nation’s leading experts on Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), to unpack how employee ownership can be a powerful succession and liquidity strategy for business owners.

With more than 40 years of experience helping founders transition ownership, Kelly breaks down what ESOPs actually are, how they work, and why they are often misunderstood. Together, David and Kelly explore why ESOPs appeal to...

In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, David W. Carr, founder of Steward Your Business, sits down with Stephanie Simpson, founder of Brand-ification, to explore the powerful intersection of leadership, message clarity, and brand confidence.

Stephanie shares her journey from Warner Bros. to launching a brand strategy firm that helps business owners define who they are, what they stand for, and how to communicate it clearly. Together, they unpack why so many professionals struggle to articulate their value — and what it really takes to create a brand that connects.

What You’ll Lear...