Breakfast Leadership Show

GUEST BIO Stephanie Houser is a former Fortune 500 executive turned consultant, entrepreneur, and speaker. After 12 years in corporate leadership, she now runs a consulting practice focused on process, risk, product, and technology development for growing businesses. She also operates a self-publishing company that helps writers publish their books, and she is building an asynchronous ed tech tutoring platform. Stephanie speaks and serves on boards, bringing a cross-industry, problem-solving lens shaped by careers in writing, education, corporate leadership, and entrepreneurship. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN Why fear rooted in layoffs is now the biggest barrier keeping people and businesses from moving forward. Why unrealistic timelines, fueled by social media highlight reels, cause people to quit before real traction happens. The difference between chasing virality and building lasting visibility. Why shiny object syndrome derails long-term strategy, using a cruise liner turn as a metaphor for staying the course. Why attention spans have dropped from just over two minutes in 2004 to roughly 47 seconds today, and what that means for leaders. Why personal development starts with empathy, admitting mistakes, and spotlighting others rather than seeking credit. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS Stephanie Houser joins Michael to discuss what separates leaders who build lasting organizations from those who stall out. She describes herself first as a problem solver, a thread running through her varied career across writing, education, corporate leadership, and entrepreneurship. That range gives her more lenses for seeing and solving problems, a point Michael echoes from his own background in healthcare and consulting. Drawing on her work across an ed tech startup, a self-publishing company, and a consulting practice, Stephanie names three forces holding people and organizations back right now. The first is fear, intensified by waves of layoffs that have eroded job security. The second is a timeline problem: social media rewards overnight success, so people quit when real progress, which usually takes years, does not happen in months. She draws a clear line between virality, a temporary surge, and visibility, a durable state built through consistent, trusted engagement. The third force is a lack of personal development, which she ties to empathy and staying connected to the people doing the work. She shares an example of a CEO who assumed her team did not need more support, only to learn the team had been asking for it directly. Leaders who disconnect from front-line reality create openings that get exploited or ignored. Stephanie and Michael return repeatedly to staying the course. She uses the image of turning a cruise liner, which takes three nautical miles of advance planning, to describe how leaders must commit to a long-term direction and resist shiny object syndrome, the short-term distractions that feel exciting but pull an organization off its planned path. Michael shares a cautionary example of a well-funded organization that lost its way chasing shiny opportunities instead of holding to its plan. They also discuss shrinking attention spans. Stephanie notes that undivided attention today lasts about 47 seconds, down from just over two minutes in 2004, so a message needs to be repeated rather than delivered once. She points to the marketing rule of seven as a reminder that repetition, not length, makes information land. The episode closes on personal development as an ongoing discipline. Stephanie encourages leaders to listen more than they speak, admit when they are wrong, spotlight the people doing good work, and learn to say no with confidence, backed by reasoning rather than a title. GUEST CONTACT INFO Stephanie Houser, corporate speaking and board inquiries: https://stephaniehouser.com Stephanie Houser, individual and creative fractional work: https://AboutStephanie.com LEADERSHIP OS CTA Ready to bring more clarity and long-term focus to your leadership? Visit https://www.breakfastleadership.com/leadershipos to schedule your Leadership Operating System diagnostic for your company. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dr. Santarvis Brown, educator, pastor, author, and Chief Education Officer at ProQ, joins Michael D. Levitt on the Breakfast Leadership Show for a powerful conversation about leading with purpose. With over 20 years in education and 15 years in pastoral ministry, Dr. Brown brings academic rigor, spiritual grounding, and practical business insight to every leadership conversation.The Leader You Have to Lead First: YourselfIn his book "Leading While Limping," Dr. Brown challenges leaders to confront their own "bang-ups and hang-ups" without filters or masks. When you avoid that internal reckoning, you risk inflicting your unresolved issues onto the people you lead. Authentic leadership begins with radical self-honesty. As Michael puts it, you will spend more time with yourself than with any other person on earth. Working through whatever you find within is not optional for any leader who wants to create lasting impact.Impact Over TitleDuring his tenure as the top education official for the Seminole Tribe of Florida's Department of Education, a young student wandered to the executive floor looking for homework help. Dr. Brown pulled up a chair and helped him with his reading. When the boy's mother arrived, the student looked at her and said simply, "He's a teacher." That moment crystallized the principle Dr. Brown carries everywhere: your title comes and goes, but your impact remains.The Story That Became a ChapterDr. Brown shares a defining story from "Leading While Limping." A university student he mentored went silent one evening, breaking from his usual enthusiastic greeting. Dr. Brown turned around in the parking lot, took the student to a nearby Denny's, and had a conversation about everything and nothing. At 1:30 a.m., the student sent an email with the subject line: "You saved my life." He had been on the verge of ending it rather than returning home without finishing his degree. Dr. Brown was on campus at 5:00 a.m. the next morning, and together they secured the funding needed to get him to graduation. Nearly 20 years later, that student still introduces Dr. Brown to everyone with the same words. The lesson: sometimes you are the aspirin to someone else's headache while carrying a migraine of your own.Human Connection Is Not OptionalLeaders who isolate themselves behind titles miss the very thing that makes people want to follow them. Genuine presence, curiosity, and interest in another person are not soft skills. They are the foundation of any leadership worth building.Growth as a Problem: The Chaos TaxProQ, founded on the book "Don't Walk Off a Cliff in Business" by Thomas McDonald, operates on a simple principle: predictable, scalable, reliable progress. Dr. Brown explains that not all growth is good growth. When growth outpaces process, businesses pay a chaos tax in inefficiency, burnout, and lost leadership bandwidth. ProQ helps organizations grow incrementally and intentionally so that progress becomes sustainable. As Dr. Brown puts it, businesses fail today not because they lack opportunity or know-how, but because they lack process.Connect with Dr. Santarvis BrownLearn more about ProQ at ProQSystems.com https://www.proqsystems.comConnect directly with Dr. Brown at [email protected] and subscribe to his YouTube channel, The Leadership Doctor SB (https://www.youtube.com/@TheLeadershipDoctorSB), where he diagnoses leadership challenges every week.Schedule Your Leadership DiagnosticVisit https://www.breakfastleadership.com/leadershipos to schedule a leadership diagnostic for your company today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Most books about life after a career transition are written after the author has figured it all out. Geoff Curtis wrote his while still inside the uncertainty. That intentional choice is at the heart of "Embracing Your Own Purgatory," and it is what makes his perspective so rare and so honest.After 30 years in biotech and pharmaceutical communications, Geoff exited his company and found himself in the disorienting in-between that so many high-achievers are completely unprepared for. He had the freedom. He had the resources. What he did not have was a roadmap for who he was without the title, the team, and the daily structure that had defined him for three decades.In this episode, Geoff and Michael explore why leaders who spend their careers focused outward on results, teams, and growth are often the least equipped for the inward work that a major transition demands. Geoff makes the case that rushing to the next thing, whether a board seat, a consulting engagement, or a new venture, is often a way of avoiding the more important question of who you actually are beneath the role you played.The conversation covers the uncomfortable reality that early career success can become a liability later in life, why men in particular are reaching out to Geoff after reading his book to share stories they have never told anyone, and how getting comfortable with uncertainty is not a sign of weakness but a prerequisite for genuine self-discovery.Geoff also discusses what he learned from observing young physicians who took time away from their careers to travel and returned as better clinicians, and why he believes the leaders who do this kind of reflective work in their 40s and 50s are better positioned for whatever comes next than those who never slow down long enough to look inward.If you have recently exited a company, are approaching a major career transition, or simply feel like your identity has become too entangled with your professional title, this episode will give you permission to sit with that discomfort a little longer and do the work that actually matters.Book:  "Embracing Your Own Purgatory"Topics covered: Career transitions, business exits, identity after leadership, retirement planning, self-reflection, biotech and pharma industry, vulnerability in leadership, personal growth, purpose after work, life after business ownership Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What You Will Learn In this episode, you will discover how the most powerful experiences are engineered around a single shared emotional trigger that lives in both the audience and the brand simultaneously. You will learn why most corporate and museum experiences entertain without transforming, and what business leaders must do differently. Guest Bio Bob Rogers is the founder of BRC Imagination Arts, a globally recognized experience design firm with 44 years of work spanning presidential libraries, cultural institutions, and major brand homes. His projects include the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Jameson Distillery experience in Dublin, and the nine-story Johnnie Walker Princes Street experience in Edinburgh. Rogers began his career in the magic shop at Disneyland, an experience that permanently shaped his philosophy on identity transformation. His forthcoming book, Deep Story, distills decades of award-winning methodology into a practical framework any leader can apply. Website: BobRogers.com | Company: BRCweb.com Episode Summary Bob Rogers joins Michael Levitt on the Breakfast Leadership Show to discuss his forthcoming book, Deep Story, releasing September 8th. Rogers traces the origins of his approach to his days in the Disneyland magic shop, where he discovered that the most meaningful part of a demonstration was not impressing the audience but shifting their perception of what they themselves were capable of. For 44 years, BRC Imagination Arts has been designing permanent experiences for iconic institutions and brands. The defining question his firm asks is not whether visitors were entertained, but whether the experience changed what they do next. The conversation explores the core mechanism of Deep Story: finding the same pre-existing emotional trigger in both the audience and the subject, then building the entire experience around that common thread. Rogers argues this is what separates experiences that permanently alter behavior from those that simply produce a pleasant afternoon. The most resonant experiences cause people to feel that their own inner life is being articulated more clearly than they could manage themselves. Rogers also reflects on why he wrote the book, citing mentors such as Marty Sklar and Buzz Price, Disney Imagineering giants who invested in him early. He describes the book as paying that generosity forward to the next generation of leaders. Key Insights Transformation requires a target. Most organizations spend enormous resources creating experiences without defining the specific behavioral change they want to produce. Deep Story begins with that definition and works backward. The shared emotional trigger is the architecture. It is about locating the same emotional truth that already exists in both the audience and the brand, then making that overlap the structural foundation of everything. Identity shift is the highest outcome. The most powerful thing an experience can do is cause someone to see a new possibility in themselves. Entertaining is not transforming. Memorability and enjoyment are not the metric. The metric is whether the visitor leaves prepared to act differently. Resources and Links BobRogers.com | BRCweb.com | Deep Story releases September 8th Call to Action If this conversation shifted the way you think about how your organization shows up for its customers, share it with a colleague responsible for customer experience, brand, or culture. Subscribe to the Breakfast Leadership Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, and visit BreakfastLeadership.com for more leadership resources. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kathy Solberg Book Discussion Michael welcomed Kathy Solberg to discuss her background and book. Kathy shared her career journey from academia to running a leadership program and starting her own consulting company, Common Unity Consulting. She mentioned her upcoming book "Practical Tools for Workplace Transformation" releasing September 10th. The conversation touched on how Kathy's diverse experiences across academia, consulting, and running peer groups for various professionals have allowed her to accumulate valuable tools and skills that she uses to help others. Change Management Best Practices Kathy explained that many change management efforts fail because complex solutions are applied to complex problems without properly addressing existing systems and infrastructure. She described her "unweaving" process, which starts with noticing and clarifying current systems before acting, emphasizing the importance of understanding what works before implementing changes. Kathy noted that leaders often try too many different approaches without giving previous efforts enough time to succeed, leading to broken trust and employee exhaustion. AI Implementation Planning Challenges Michael shared his experience from government healthcare panels where doctors were often excluded from planning discussions, leading to failed implementations when doctors ultimately rejected the proposed solutions. He drew a parallel to current AI deployments, warning that many AI initiatives will likely fail by 2027 due to lack of proper oversight and understanding of standard operating procedures. Kathy agreed and added that many organizations struggle with creating meaningful strategic plans without proper human interaction in the process. Future-Focused Systems and Tools Book Kathy explained that her book, which took over three years to write, was inspired by her frustration with people wanting to return to pre-pandemic normalcy and her desire to share insights about creating a better future. She described the book as a gift of simplified systems and tools, including 302 worksheet pages that will be available for free on her website when the book launches in September. Workplace Boundaries Book Discussion Kathy discussed creating a book focused on workplace boundaries and control, which started as a personal project but evolved into a workplace-focused publication. Michael shared his experience with conference notes and learning resources, emphasizing the challenge of implementing new knowledge due to limited staffing. They both discussed the importance of applying learning to both personal and professional settings, with Kathy noting how her book addresses the connection between personal and workplace behavior. Book Promotion Timeline Discussion Michael and Kathy discussed the promotion and release timeline for Kathy's book. They agreed to release promotional content gradually over a few days to build anticipation, with Michael's team handling the editing and distribution process. Kathy provided her website kathysolberg.com as the place for people to learn more about her work and the book. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.