Picture your ideal Tuesday.

You come in with a clear head, a short list of things that actually matter, and a couple of hours of uninterrupted time to think strategically about where you're taking this thing.

Now picture your actual Tuesday.

Six fires before noon. Three decisions that landed on your desk that someone else should have made. A calendar that left no room for anything except reacting. And somewhere around four in the afternoon, the quiet feeling that you've been incredibly busy and somehow accomplished nothing.

If that second picture is more familiar, this episode is for you.

My guest Brian Vogel has spent 25 plus years watching this happen to brilliant founders and high-performing leaders. The same relentless grit that built their initial success eventually starts working against them. And most of the time, they're the last ones to see it.

We got into what it actually looks like when a leader becomes the bottleneck without realizing it, why most founders get stuck in the doing instead of the leading, and why Brian firmly believes nice wins more than it doesn't. There's also a line about winners and losers from one of his old swim coaches that I want you to stick around for.

More About the Guest

Brian Vogel is the Principal and Head Coach of Sundog Coaching and a battle-tested HR executive with over 25 years of experience scaling teams through hyper-growth at global organizations including Indeed, Verizon, and USAA.

At Indeed, he helped scale the workforce from 2,500 to over 10,000 employees in just three and a half years. At Verizon, he orchestrated workforce transitions during the historic Bell Atlantic and GTE merger involving over 6,000 employees, driving more than 12 million dollars in direct labor cost savings.

Brian is also a former NCAA Division I competitive swimmer and collegiate coach. The eye in the sky perspective he developed on the pool deck, spotting blind spots athletes can't see while they're in the water, is exactly what he brings to founders and executives drowning in operational fires today.

He works with proven founders and growth-stage executives to help them step out of the daily weeds, overcome executive isolation, and build highly autonomous teams. He is a certified Positive Intelligence coach and Co-Founder of Sensible HR.

If this conversation resonated and you're at a critical inflection point in your business, Brian offers a Mutual Fit Assessment at sundogcoaching.com. It's a focused 30-minute strategy session to uncover your hidden bottlenecks and see if a one-on-one advisory partnership is the right fit.

For practical insights and unfiltered operating strategies for growth-stage founders, subscribe to his Substack, Eye in the Sky Leadership

Ripple with Brian Vogel:
Website: sundogcoaching.com
Mutual Fit Assessment: sundogcoaching.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brianmvogel/

More About the Host

Steve Harper is the founder of Ripple Central and host of The Ripple Effect Podcast, where he explores what it really takes to build authentic, meaningful relationships. He also owns Owner Insite, a construction project management software company. Steve runs The Pond, a community built around intentional connection and 8-Minute Ripple events.

Want to go even deeper? Check out our Substack and Patreon for exclusive content and behind-the-scenes insights. And if you're ready for something more immersive, our Connect + Grow Ripple coaching program is a full year of community, coaching, and accountability designed to help you build more meaningful relationships and create an even bigger Ripple out there in the world.

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When was the last time you made something?

A drawing, a photo, a collage, a doodle in the margin of a notebook. Something you made with your hands because something in you wanted to.

Most of us have to think about it. And the longer we think, the further back the answer goes.

Somewhere along the way, we handed our creative lives back. Not all at once, and not on purpose. Just gradually, between the jobs and the responsibilities and the screens and the schedules, the things we used to make got quietly set aside. And we told ourselves we'd get back to them. And then we didn't. And eventually we stopped telling ourselves that too.

My guest today has a lot to say about that.

Maria Gatling is one of the most genuinely creative people I know. She gives herself creative assignments every single week. She runs a weekly creativity group. She builds her own notebooks. She teaches short workshops and helps people start creativity clubs in their own communities. And the way she talks about creativity, not as a talent you either have or don't, but as a practice you simply show up for, is something I think every single one of you needs to hear.

This conversation is a first for this podcast. Maria is the first guest I've ever had sitting right here in my studio. Same room, same table, no Zoom, and no screens between us. Just two people who love this topic, finally talking about it the way it was meant to be done. You can hear the difference.

Let's get into it.

More About the Guest

Maria Gatling's life experiences across publishing, advertising, art, and raising four children have shaped everything she creates and teaches. She's the author of two creativity workbooks, Coffee Break Creativity - Grande! and Project 52, and she facilitates small-group mini-workshops and short classes designed to help people reignite their creative lives. She also helps others start their own creativity clubs. Whether you consider yourself an artist or have never picked up a paintbrush in your life, Maria meets you exactly where you are.

Ripple with Maria:

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More About the Host

Steve Harper is the founder of Ripple Central and host of The Ripple Effect Podcast, where he explores what it really takes to build authentic, meaningful relationships. He also owns Owner Insite, a construction project management software company. Steve runs The Pond, a community built around intentional connection and 8-Minute Ripple events.

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Here's a question I want you to think about before you hit play.

When was the last time you felt like the work you were doing actually mattered? Not mattered as in the numbers went up or the boss was happy. Mattered in that way where you finished a day and felt genuinely full rather than just done.

Most of us have forgotten what that feels like. Or maybe we never had it to begin with.

This conversation goes deep on that. My guest Joe Fusco and I got into what actually makes a company great, why people don't fit in a spreadsheet no matter how hard we try to make them, and what it really means to lead in a way that brings out the best in the people around you. We talked about AI coming for the people business, why capitalism is at an inflection point, and an analogy involving Newtonian versus quantum physics that completely reframed the way I think about connection and networking.

And then we got into retirement, which in Joe's world looks nothing like what most people picture. It's less about slowing down and more about finally having the freedom to point everything you've built toward something that actually matters to you.

This one's a slow burn in the best possible way. Stay with it.

More About the Guest

For 28 years until his retirement in 2022, Joe Fusco was a senior executive with a publicly-traded mid-cap company, where he served as an advisor to the chairman and CEO.

Joe has spoken frequently to companies and organizations on leadership, organizational culture, business and cultural trends, and business strategy and sustainability. He's been engaged as a speaker by groups and companies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Credit Union National Association, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the Telecommunications Association of the Southeast.

He is currently the co-host of "Retirement Unscripted," a regular series of conversations exploring the design of that next stage of life through a lens of freedom, creativity, wisdom, and identity.

Joe is on the board of Internality, a non-profit corporation dedicated to engaging an expanding coalition of business leaders, academics, and other key stakeholders in catalyzing a systemic rework of how business is conducted and how the economy works.

He is also an advisor and teacher in the University of Vermont's top-ranked Sustainable Innovation MBA program, and advises senior executives on leadership, culture, and strategy in an array of industries from hospitality to clean energy.

Joe lives in Chittenden, Vermont with his wife, Renae. They are the parents of five grown children.

Ripple with Joe Fusco
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Tune in to Retirement Unscripted

Catch Joe Fusco's Graduation Ripple sessions in The Pond community.

More About the Host

Steve Harper is the founder of Ripple Central and host of The Ripple Effect Podcast, where he explores what it really takes to build authentic, meaningful relationships.

He also owns Owner Insite, a construction project management software company. Steve runs The Pond, a community built around intentional connection and 8-Minute Ripple events.

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Most of us have spent years learning how to communicate better.

Better words, better models, better frameworks. And yet somehow the same conflicts keep happening, the same conversations keep getting avoided, and the same people keep making the room tense the moment they walk in.

Dr. Annie Campanile has a different theory about why, and it starts somewhere most leadership training never goes.

Watch to learn what's actually driving workplace conflict beneath the surface, why the protective patterns you developed as a kid are probably still showing up in your leadership today, and what your nervous system is doing in the split second before you open your mouth in a difficult conversation.

We also discuss the four fundamentals of drama-free communication, what it really takes to have high-stakes conversations without your own survival response getting in the way, and why calm might be the most underrated leadership skill nobody is teaching right now.

This one goes deep. Worth every minute.

More About the Guest

Dr. Annie Campanile is a trauma-informed executive coach, author, and host of Drama Free Teams, the podcast for leaders who care deeply and want their teams to thrive without sacrificing themselves or losing sleep over interpersonal drama at work.

With over two decades of experience in healthcare leadership and executive coaching, Annie helps senior leaders and clinicians move beyond communication scripts and complicated models to address what is really driving workplace conflict: the survival responses that unconsciously erode trust, fuel burnout, and keep teams stuck in drama.

Ripple with Dr. Annie Campanile:
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Podcast: Drama Free Teams

Before you go, grab Dr. Annie's free Drama Free Leadership Starter Kit at anniecampanile.com/drama-free-leadership-starter-kit. It is exactly the kind of practical, no-fluff resource this conversation deserves a follow-up from.

More About the Host

Steve Harper is the founder of Ripple Central and host of The Ripple Effect Podcast, where he explores what it really takes to build authentic, meaningful relationships.

He also owns Owner Insite, a construction project management software company. Steve runs The Pond, a community built around intentional connection and 8-Minute Ripple events.

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If you listened to Part 1, you already know Ileana Garcia doesn't hold back. Part 2 goes somewhere I honestly didn't expect when we sat down to record it.

We start with something that still visibly stings a little: the Wall Street Journal feature that was supposed to be a proud moment for her and instead turned into something else entirely. Ileana walks me through what actually happened behind that headline, and by the end of that story, I understood exactly what her brother meant when he called it "engagement by enragement."

Ileana tells me about the anonymous accounts that stitched her videos together just to mock her, the men who show up in her comments for no reason other than cruelty, and the moment she almost shut her whole account down over it. What struck me most wasn't the hate itself, it was how clearly she's learned to tell the difference between the comments that are actually about her and the ones that are really about whoever's typing them.

But this conversation isn't only about what's hard. Ileana opens up about why she's stayed close with her ex-husband, and why that friendship makes complete sense to her even when it confuses everyone else. And she shares a little about her new relationship, and what it's like to build something new while an audience is watching the whole thing unfold.

If Part 1 was about the decision to leave, this one is about everything that gets rebuilt in the years after. Ileana's as funny and as unguarded here as she was in Part 1, maybe even more so.

If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, start there first, then come back for this one.

Ripple On!!!

More About the Guest

Ileana Garcia is the creator behind Illy in the Streets on TikTok, where she's built a following of over 50,000 by talking openly about what life actually looks like after leaving a long marriage. Featured in The Wall Street Journal, her content covers the parts most people go through quietly: the agonizing decision itself, navigating friends and family, guilt and sadness, untangling finances, and the slow work of reinvention and reflection. She's just as candid about what comes after, from dating again to building new relationships, and doesn't shy away from talking about the internet hate that comes with putting your life online. Before entering content creation, Ileana spent her career in enterprise sales, and it shows in the way she naturally tells a story.

Ripple with Ileana Garcia:
TikTok

More About the Host

Steve Harper is the founder of Ripple Central and host of The Ripple Effect Podcast, where he explores what it really takes to build authentic, meaningful relationships. He also owns Owner Insite, a construction project management software company. Steve runs The Pond, a community built around intentional connection and 8-Minute Ripple events.

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Have you ever had that moment where you realize the life you built isn't actually the one you want anymore? Today's guest knows that feeling better than almost anyone I've talked to on this show.

Ileana Garcia (you probably know her as Illy in the Streets on TikTok) has spent the last few years turning her gray divorce and everything that followed into some of the most honest and funniest content out there. If you've ever gone through a divorce after 50, or you're staring down starting over at 50 and wondering if you have it in you, this conversation is going to feel like sitting across from a friend who already walked the road you're on.

We talk about what it actually looks like to date after divorce when you haven't done it in decades (spoiler: it's a whole new world out there). We get into how she's managed to stay friends with her ex, which honestly might be the part of her story that surprises people the most. And we don't skip past the hard stuff either, because being a content creator in this space means dealing with online criticism that most people never see behind the videos.

What I love most about Ileana is that she never tried to build some polished, curated version of herself online. She just showed up as she is, funny and a little chaotic and completely unfiltered, and that authentic social media approach is exactly why people can't get enough of her. We talk about what pushed her to leave a whole career in sales behind for this, what that career change to content creator actually felt like in the messy middle, and whether she ever saw any of this coming.

If you've ever wondered whether you could rebuild your friendships, your confidence, or your whole sense of self after everything falls apart, stick around for this one. Ileana's story might just be the permission slip you didn't know you needed.

More About the Guest

Ileana Garcia is the creator behind Illy in the Streets on TikTok, where she's built a following of over 50,000 by talking openly about what life actually looks like after leaving a long marriage. Featured in The Wall Street Journal, her content covers the parts most people go through quietly: the agonizing decision itself, navigating friends and family, guilt and sadness, untangling finances, and the slow work of reinvention and reflection. She's just as candid about what comes after, from dating again to building new relationships, and doesn't shy away from talking about the internet hate that comes with putting your life online. Before entering content creation, Ileana spent her career in enterprise sales, and it shows in the way she naturally tells a story.

Ripple with Ileana Garcia:
TikTok

More About the Host

Steve Harper is the founder of Ripple Central and host of The Ripple Effect Podcast, where he explores what it really takes to build authentic, meaningful relationships. He also owns Owner Insite, a construction project management software company. Steve runs The Pond, a community built around intentional connection and 8-Minute Ripple events.

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