The Ripple Effect Podcast with Steve Harper

Twenty-three years is a long time to spend earning a reputation. Michele Trongaard has one that precedes her everywhere she goes in this industry, and after sitting across from her for this conversation, I understand exactly why. Michele is stepping away from her role as a district CFO after more than two decades in public school finance, and she's doing it on her own terms, heading into a new chapter rather than just closing the book on the old one. I wanted to talk with her about what actually built that reputation, because it wasn't the budgets or the balance sheets. It was something much harder to teach. She told me about her early career, trying to become a carbon copy of a boss she admired, right down to the tone he used in a room, and how much pressure that put on her before she finally gave herself permission to lead in her own voice instead. We got into the real financial pressures facing public education today too: inflation, unfunded mandates, and the balancing act of meeting rising costs without raising taxes on the communities these districts serve. What stuck with me most was hearing her talk about staying visible as a leader. She made a habit of getting out from behind her desk to walk the halls and talk directly with principals, teachers, and staff, and that one habit shaped her entire leadership style, and her legacy. She also shared what pulled her into education in the first place, advice for young CPAs weighing private practice against public service, and what finally told her it was time for something new, without losing the parts of this world she still loves. This one's an honest look at what it means to build a career around service, and what it actually looks like to walk away from something you love while still holding onto the parts that made it meaningful. More About the Guest Michele Trongaard, CPA, RTSBA, SFO, has spent 23 years in school finance, most recently serving as Associate Superintendent of Business and Finance for Mansfield ISD, a role she's retiring from this year. She holds a BBA in Accounting from the University of Texas at Dallas and an MBA in School Finance and Operations from Concordia University. Michele is a Past President of TASBO and has been recognized with the ASBO Pinnacle Achievement Award in 2019 and the ASBO Eagle International Award in 2024. She currently serves on the ASBO SFO Committee and the TEA/TASBO Accounting and Auditing Advisory Committee, sits on the TASBO RISE Award Committee as a reviewer, and reviews for the TASBO Scholarship Award as well. Ripple with Michele Trongaard: LinkedIn 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. Ripple with Steve Harper: Instagram Facebook Twitter Website Patreon

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. Ripple with Steve Harper: Instagram: instagram.com/rippleon Facebook: facebook.com/rippleon X: twitter.com/rippleon Website: ripplecentral.com

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: Website 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. Ripple with Steve Harper: Website Instagram Facebook X

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 LinkedIn 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. Ripple with Steve Harper: Instagram Facebook X

Most of us have been there in some form or another. You know the truth. You can see it. You can feel it. And everywhere you look, the official version of events tells a completely different story. The institutions say one thing. The media repeats it. Slowly, the narrative everyone keeps hearing becomes the narrative everyone starts to believe, even when it is wrong. Sandy Rosenthal refused to let that happen. Twenty-one years ago, when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the floodwaters rose and swallowed whole neighborhoods and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, the country was told the same story over and over again. New Orleans was overwhelmed by a massive natural disaster. What Sandy knew, and what she spent the next two decades of her life proving, is that what happened in New Orleans was not simply an act of nature. It was the result of catastrophic failures in a federally designed and constructed flood protection system, and the Army Corps of Engineers worked hard to make sure that story never got out. This conversation hit me in a way I was not fully prepared for. The story of how one ordinary person with nothing but determination and the internet stood up against a powerful federal agency and eventually changed a national narrative is exactly the kind of Ripple story I started this podcast to tell. Watch this one to the end. You will not regret it. More About the Guest After Hurricane Katrina and the catastrophic federal levee failures in New Orleans, Sandy Rosenthal founded Levees.org, a nonprofit that has grown to 25,000 supporters nationwide. Her book, Words Whispered in Water, tells the story of how she exposed the true culprit behind the disaster, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and how the agency spent millions covering up its own mistakes. Sandy lives in New Orleans with her husband of 47 years. They have three married children and two grandchildren. When she is not holding federal agencies accountable, she plays tennis five days a week and practices advanced yoga. Ripple with Sandy Rosenthal: Website X Facebook LinkedIn Instagram YouTube Get a copy of Sandy's book Words Whispered in Water: https://www.wordswhisperedinwater.com/ 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. Ripple with Steve Harper: Instagram Facebook X Website Subscribe to the newsletter: https://ripplecentral.com/subscribe Be a Patron: https://patreon.com/SteveHarper Join The Pond: https://ripplecentral.com/pond Speaking and coaching inquiries: [email protected]