Unpacked with Ron Harvey

Kyle McDowell spent nearly 30 years climbing the corporate ladder, eventually leading 15,000 people. The higher he climbed, the more apathetic he felt. Then he sat at his mother's bedside as she closed her laptop after a work call from her hospital bed and said, "It's not supposed to be this way." That moment set him on a path to become the leader he never had. In this episode...

Nima Rahmany calls himself the artist formerly known as Dr. Nima. After more than two decades as a chiropractor and healer, he now helps leaders break through the story they are stuck in and own the fact that they are the creators of their lives. His starting point is simple: you cannot be a victim of your circumstances and a powerful creator at the same time. In this milestone 200th episode of Un...

Kevin Anderson was running a tutoring company staffed by Harvard master's and PhD students when a self-publishing company asked for high-level editing help. He saw the opening, split the businesses, and in 2014 rebranded as Kevin Anderson & Associates, now a ghostwriting firm with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London. In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, Kevin joins Ron to...

On his first day leading a 300-person in-house creative team at Boeing, Wayne Barringer got a blunt mandate from the CMO: we have tried to fix this group for 20 years, and if you can't, we are shutting it down. Employee satisfaction sat at 52 percent. When he left, it was 90 percent. In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, Wayne joins Ron to break down how he did it, what a near-failure...

Michelle Pollack built a career most people would envy, from Broadway with the producers of Rent and Avenue Q to network television in Hollywood. Then she caught herself doing exactly what she swore she never would: giving up her integrity to climb the next rung. Today she is an executive leadership coach and the creator of compassionate command, a framework for leaders who feel successful and stu...

Julien Godbarge was the CEO of a fast-growth company, stacking acquisitions and pulling every lever for value creation. Somewhere along the way he stopped taking care of himself and, in his words, ended up a broken man. His recovery became a book and a framework of ten blind spots that lead to burnout. In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, Julien joins Ron for an honest conversation about t...

Celeste Warren spent almost four decades inside global corporations, including her last ten years as chief diversity and inclusion officer at Merck. Her take on leadership is refreshingly practical: most failures are not complicated. Leaders skip the basics, chase their own careers, and forget that people, not production lines, run the business. In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, Celeste...

Bron Watson spent decades at the bedside as a nurse and nurse educator, then built a marketing business helping small business owners grow online. Then she became the patient. A breast cancer diagnosis in 2017, followed by a blood cancer diagnosis in 2023, forced her to rethink everything she believed about success, hustle, and what it means to lead. In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, Br...

When a civil war reduced her dean's office and 17 years of research to ashes, Fay Niewiadomski was left with a briefcase and one question: who am I when the title is gone? That reset became the foundation of her book Decisions That Matter: Rethink, Reimagine and Reset Your Life, and of a coaching career built on one belief: you have power, so stop giving it away. In this episode of Unpacked w...

Adam Roach had the franchises, the SaaS company, and the income. Then he stood at his father's funeral, looked out at 500 people whose lives his dad had shaped, and realized he had been chasing the wrong scoreboard. Within months he sold every business he owned. In this episode of Unpack with Ron Harvey, Adam joins Ron for an honest conversation about trust, influence, and what it actually co...

Ron Harvey sits down with Jennifer Doty, leadership author, speaker, and Vice President of Customer Operations at ThreeFlow, for an honest conversation about what happens when the title you built your identity around goes away. Jennifer spent nearly 20 years at MetLife. She started in finance, moved through M&A, served as chief of staff to a C-suite executive, and finished by leading a team of...

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...

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 comm...

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 t...

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...

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...

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...

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 McDonal...

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 unpa...

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 o...

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 easie...

We break down why the first 90 days in a new executive role matter more than most leaders expect, and how earned authority is built through visible, consistent behavior. We share practical ways to start strong, win trust fast, and avoid misreading the moment when everyone is watching.  • why getting the right leader hired is only half the battle  • using intentionality to set tone and expectations...

We break down why leadership is the real growth engine in business and why results only scale when trust does too. Chip Higgins shares a momentum model for small business owners and the people-first habits that keep culture strong under pressure. • Chip’s path from banking to small business coaching and consulting • Business momentum as mass times velocity and how leaders influence both • The lead...

In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, host Ron Harvey sits down with Stephanie Vera, Supplier Development and Engagement Operational Lead at BMW Manufacturing, to talk about the leadership it takes to build something authentic from the ground up. Stephanie owns the concept, approvals, and execution of the BMW Supplier Exchange, and she pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to bring...

In Episode 177 of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, host Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting sits down with David Fung — executive coach, founder of Coach Full Coaching, and 23-year veteran of the tech industry, including a leadership tenure at Salesforce. Based in Toronto, Canada, David now works with executives and teams navigating major transitions and chaos, helping them find clarity w...