Business Roundtable

Business Roundtable

Welcome to the Business Roundtable Podcast, hosted by David Carr of Steward Your Business. This engaging and informative podcast series is dedicated to helping business owners, and entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of running a successful enterprise. Each episode features David Carr and a roster of industry experts, including regular contributors like Curtis Cochran, who bring their wealth of experience in mergers and acquisitions, organizational health, and team building. Dive into discussions that cover a broad range of topics essential to business growth and sustainability. From strategic planning and preparation to understanding the cycles of business ownership, the podcast provides invaluable insights into evaluating, enhancing, and exiting business ownership. Listeners can expect practical advice on scaling businesses, managing finances, and creating a culture that aligns with company goals. What sets this podcast apart is its focus on actionable strategies combined with real-world experiences. The conversations often delve into the importance of providing more value than the dollars earned and the necessity of adaptability in a rapidly changing business landscape. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, the Business Roundtable Podcast is vital for staying ahead in today's competitive market. Join David Carr and his guests as they explore the art of making a business profitable but also enjoyable and sustainable. Tune in for your dose of inspiration, guidance, and tools to make 2024 and beyond a resounding success for your business ventures. Become a podcast supporter at just $2 a month at https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support.

Episodes

June 15, 2026 43 mins
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...
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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 ov...
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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 t...
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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 ...
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    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 ...
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    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 m...
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    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 &mdash...
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    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 d...
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    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 ta...
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    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 run...
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    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, Ala...
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    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,...
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    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 w...
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    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 ...
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    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...
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    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.
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    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 lear...
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    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...
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    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 c...
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    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...
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