Few moments expose a leader’s true confidence faster than the stare of a camera lens.

Karin Reed, founder of Speaker Dynamics, brings forward a clear view of why virtual communication rattles even seasoned leaders and what presence actually requires when the usual cues disappear. She points to a familiar pattern: people become smaller, flatter, or overly polished once the lens becomes the audience, and those shifts quietly shape how trustworthy or grounded they appear. The conversation asks an important question for anyone leading through a screen: what builds credibility when connection feels harder to access?

Karin’s insight centers on the qualities that make leaders feel real on camera. Authentic expression carries farther than perfect delivery. Natural movement brings energy back into the voice. Audio quality influences how intelligent and credible someone seems. Early interaction sets the tone for participation. These elements are less about technique and more about the leader’s willingness to show up with a steady, human presence that invites others in.

The conversation ultimately challenges leaders to rethink executive presence for a virtual world. Confidence becomes easier to project when leaders stop performing and start communicating with the same clarity and ease they rely on in person. The screen changes the environment, but it doesn’t change what people want from a leader: someone they can hear, follow, and trust.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Leadership Communication in a Virtual World

01:55 Karin Reed’s Path to On-Camera Expertise

09:59 Eye Contact and Connection in Virtual Meetings

15:35 Body Language That Builds Executive Presence

24:10 The MVP Framework for Strong Virtual Communication

29:46 Why Production Quality Shapes Credibility

35:20 Authenticity and Executive Presence

Connect with Karin Reed:

Visit Speaker Dynamics

Connect with Karin on LinkedIn

Connect with Sarah Lockwood:

Visit HiveCast

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:

Visit The Conscious Entrepreneur website

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram

Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

If you are wondering if you should work with your husband or wife, or for tips and tricks to stay married when you work together, you are in the right place today! When married partners work together, the business is never “just business.” Working in a #familybusiness is a dynamic that impacts the partners at home and at work, and it impacts everyone in the company, too.

Kaley Warner Klemp, co-author of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and The 80/80 Marriage, discusses actionable tips to help partnerships thrive. She shares suggestions for aiming for generosity rather than fairness, why clear roles protect both the relationship and the business, and how spouses can repair after conflict when you are doing it in front of the whole company.

They discuss the quieter questions leaders rarely ask out loud. How do power dynamics shift when work and home blend so closely? What do employees notice before the couple does? What helps a team feel steady when conflict between partners surfaces in real time?

Kaley offers tools for conversations, visible repair, and the kind of leadership that supports long-term wellbeing for the couple and the company. It’s a grounded look at working with your partner in a way that strengthens both the business and the relationship behind it.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Marriage and Business Dynamics

03:00 Conscious Leadership in Action

06:12 The 80/80 Marriage Framework

12:10 How Couples Affect Team Culture

17:59 Power Dynamics at Work and at Home

29:52 Repairing Conflict in Front of Your Team

Connect with Kaley Warner Klemp:

Visit Kaley’s Website

Connect with Sarah Lockwood:

Visit HiveCast

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:

Visit The Conscious Entrepreneur website

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram

Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Work–Life Integration, Conscious Leadership, and Values-Aligned Staffing are at the heart of this conversation with entrepreneur, Scott Britton. Scott shares how he went from Princeton, Forbes 30 Under 30, and a startup sold to Salesforce to realizing that no amount of achievement could fix the feeling of being reactive, stressed, and out of sync inside his own life.

He talks about the moment he began treating his reactions as data instead of flaws, and how that simple shift helped him see the patterns driving his stress and decision-making. Scott walks through his “freedom log” practice that any conscious leader can start using immediately, the difference between emotions and long-running patterns, and how everyday triggers at work can become practical entry points for awareness instead of something to hide or power through. Work stops being separate from inner growth and starts to become one of the most honest places to see what is actually going on inside you.

Scott also shares how this path led to his book Conscious Accomplishment and to Conscious Talent, a staffing company that connects talent with companies committed to both professional excellence and inner work. For founders and leaders who feel like they have “outgrown” the company they built, his story offers a grounded look at what it means to bring more of your inner life into how you hire, lead, and shape culture.

In this conversation, you’ll hear about:

• The point where external success stopped working for Scott and what he noticed next
• How he uses the “freedom log” to track triggers and unpack the stories underneath them
• Why work can be one of the most powerful places for real inner growth
• Practical ways to bring more authenticity into leadership without blowing up your culture overnight
• How Conscious Talent supports values-aligned staffing for leaders who care about both results and inner development

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Introduction

05:09 Scott Britton’s Turning Point and Inner Shift

07:55 How Business Becomes a Spiritual Dojo

17:51 Emotional Awareness Tools for Leaders

18:45 Why Scott Created Conscious Talent

31:30 Values-Aligned Hiring and Modern Leadership

Links

Connect with Scott Britton:

Scott’s book: Conscious Accomplishment

Learn more about Scott's Projects:

ConsciousTalent.com

https://linktr.ee/scottbritton

Connect with Sarah Lockwood:

Visit HiveCast

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:

Visit The Conscious Entrepreneur website

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram

Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm.

Appreciation can lift a team or quietly erode it, and Sarah Lockwood breaks down why the difference often comes down to whether people feel genuinely seen.

In this solo episode, she explains why the usual holiday scramble for company gifts rarely creates the connection leaders intend and why Thanksgiving offers a clearer moment for gratitude that feels personal instead of performative. Sarah shares how a simple note or a small, thoughtful gesture can shift how someone experiences their work, and she challenges leaders to consider what their gifts say about their culture. A day of rest signals care, a learning budget signals curiosity, and a mismatched gift signals a gap between stated values and lived values. She also covers the practical side of appreciation with tools like Goody that let teams choose their own gift while still giving leaders room to add a personal message.

Sarah closes by reminding listeners that recognition works best as a steady habit. Even one specific thank you can strengthen trust, and she encourages leaders to pause, notice one meaningful contribution, and send a message that proves someone’s effort didn’t go unseen.

Episode Breakdown:

• 00:00 The Art of Meaningful Employee Appreciation
• 01:25 Why Thanksgiving Is the Perfect Moment for Team Appreciation
• 04:05 The Power of Specific and Authentic Gratitude
• 06:10 Choose Gifts That Reflect Your Company Values
• 07:02 A Practical Tool for Personalized Corporate Gifting (Goody)
• 08:09 Make Recognition a Habit, Not a Holiday Task

Links:

Goody

Connect with Sarah Lockwood:

Visit HiveCast

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:

The Conscious Entrepreneur

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram

Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

The story you tell yourself as a leader becomes the culture your team lives in, and Nataly Kogan shows how to rewrite that story with agency, awareness, and action.

Sarah sits down with Nataly Kogan for a grounded conversation about entrepreneurship, business, and wellbeing—how the way we think shapes the way we lead. Nataly shares how to “talk back to your brain,” a practice that helps quiet fear, interrupt unhelpful patterns, and create space for better choices. They discuss how mindset ripples through an organization, shaping how teams respond to uncertainty and whether they lean toward anxiety or possibility.

Nataly offers simple tools to help leaders edit their thoughts and reframe challenges as creative prompts. What story are you telling your team right now—and is it one that invites courage, clarity, and connection? This episode is a reminder that leadership starts in the mind, but it comes to life through the stories we choose to share.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Nataly Kogan on Entrepreneurship and Wellbeing

04:15 Why Confidence Follows Action

07:06 The Power of Agency in Times of Change

09:07 How to Talk Back to Your Brain

14:24 Reframing Negativity and Building Constructive Beliefs

18:04 From Obstacles to Possibilities

26:01 The Edit Your Thoughts Practice

34:01 Creating a Culture of Possibility in Business

42:56 Leading with Clarity, Courage, and Humanity

Connect with Nataly Kogan: Visit Nataly Kogan’s Website

Connect with Nataly on LinkedIn

Connect with Sarah Lockwood:

Visit HiveCast

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:

Visit The Conscious Entrepreneur website

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram

Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

When your business becomes your identity, resentment follows.

Entrepreneur and author Debbie King shares how she rebuilt her company, and herself, by separating self-worth from success metrics. Her framework, “the model,” links circumstance, thought, feeling, action, and result, revealing how the stories we tell ourselves drive outcomes. Facts are neutral; meaning is optional. Which thoughts support the kind of results and wellbeing you actually want in your business?

She explains how founders can interrupt unhelpful thinking through quick “thought downloads,” turning frustration into clarity instead of self-criticism. When results are viewed as data, not verdicts, entrepreneurship becomes a practice of learning and refinement.

Debbie also connects mindset to enterprise value. Every recurring pain point signals a risk: “no time” often means founder dependence; “too many mistakes” signals missing systems; low pricing power points to weak differentiation. Simplifying offers and building repeatable structures creates freedom, for both the owner and the company.

Her “future self” exercise ties mindset to strategy: put your goal in the result line, then ask what your future self believes and does to make it happen. Growth follows identity. When wellbeing and business align, entrepreneurship becomes sustainable, and success starts to feel like something worth keeping.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Identity Trap: When Business Becomes You

03:35 Rebuilding an Unsellable Business

05:38 The Model: Thoughts Create Results

17:46 Founder Mindset Shifts

25:27 Future Self Framework

32:06 Hidden Risks in Your Business

34:51 Systems That Scale

39:44 Data Over Drama

Connect with Debbie King:

Visit the Loving Your Business website

Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn

Connect with Sarah Lockwood:

Visit HiveCast

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:

Visit The Conscious Entrepreneur website

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram

Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“It can be difficult for people to know who they can speak to about it,” says Amy Lewin, of entrepreneurs who are unhappy in their own companies. Amy is the Editor at Sifted, a media platform focused on Europe’s startup ecosystem and she joins The Conscious Entrepreneur podcast to discuss a survey Sifted recently posed to a number of entrepreneurs, the vast majority of whom reported experiencing poor mental health, high stress and even a strong desire to leave their businesses within the coming year. Though these figures may seem alarming, they merely shed light on common struggles and pressures felt by entrepreneurs which are so often swept under the rug for fear of looking weak or needing to maintain an ultra positive mindset in order to see their businesses succeed. On today’s episode Amy will reveal more of the survey’s findings as well as what venture capitalists (VCs) can do to support entrepreneurs, in whom they, after all, have a vested interest.

The survey highlights the importance of a community in an entrepreneur’s life. Family and friends share the entrepreneur’s burden, while simultaneously being unable to relate. Professional networks of like-minded contemporaries can go a long way toward making isolated individuals feel heard and connected, as well as ease the mental health stigma.

Today, Amy shares the common regret shared among most entrepreneurs and why quitting might be the best thing they could do for their careers.

Quotes

• “It was just a real sign of the personal toll—and not just even on the founders, but on their family, on their friends, on their colleagues—just another reminder that building startups is really tough.” (4:48 | Amy Lewin)
• “Whenever we publish stories about that personal side of company building at Sifted, we get the most amazing response. People love knowing that they’re not the only ones. And I think sometimes, startup culture is so much that you’ve got to be optimistic. You’ve got to believe that your company can be the one in 100 that’s going to really make it. You hear from so many people that your idea is never going to work and you have to believe in it yourself and I think when times are really hard it can be difficult for people to know who they can speak to about it.” (6:27 | Amy Lewin)
• “That attitude that’s going to be out there from some corners that if you are struggling in any way then you are weak and that you’re not in it for the long term, which I obviously don’t believe, but is obviously what some people still think.” (13:04 | Amy Lewin)
• “Encourage founders to go on holiday. Encourage them to have a personal life. These things are important. We all need to recharge our batteries and ‘visionaries do,’ too. There’s that famous saying that comes from the VC world: “I’ve never seen a company go bust because the founder took a week off, but I have seen plenty of companies go bust because the founder didn’t.’” (18:26 | Amy Lewin and Alex Raymond)

Links

Connect with Amy Lewin:

https://sifted.eu/articles/founder-mental-health-2024

Connect with Alex Raymond:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/

Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Traditional leadership models tend to choose between kindness and clarity. Zen teacher and executive coach Marc Lesser argues that’s a false dichotomy.

In this episode, Sarah sits down with Marc to unpack the concept of compassionate accountability — or in Marc’s preferred language, alignment with caring. It’s the core of modern Entrepreneurship and Business leadership: setting clear expectations while staying deeply connected to the humans you work with. Instead of defaulting to micromanagement or passivity, leaders can choose high standards and high trust at the same time, the key to building high performing teams without sacrificing wellbeing.

Marc shares why psychological safety isn’t just a cultural ideal, it’s a metric that correlates directly with business performance. Referencing Google’s Project Aristotle, he explains how teams perform better when leaders normalize mistakes, invite real feedback, and resist the urge to appear infallible. A strong team culture isn’t born from rigid systems or motivational slogans, it comes from leaders modeling vulnerability and follow-through. If you’ve ever wondered how to hold people accountable with compassion, this episode is your roadmap.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Marc Lesser & Compassionate Accountability

02:51 What Compassionate Accountability Looks Like in Leadership

07:19 Misconceptions About Accountability and Compassion

13:14 Vulnerability as a Leadership Strategy

15:02 Google’s Psychological Safety Study & Business Impact

20:01 Emotional Intelligence and Business Performance

24:51 Turning Breakdowns Into Breakthroughs

29:21 How to Hold People Accountable With Compassion

32:05 Leadership Lessons From the Zen Monastery Kitchen

34:06 Prioritizing Joy and Humanity in High-Performing Teams

36:21 Daily Habits to Build Clarity and Trust

Connect with Marc Lesser:

Visit Marc’s website

Connect with Sarah Lockwood:

Visit HiveCast

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Connect with The Conscious Entrepreneur:

The Conscious Entrepreneur website

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on LinkedIn

Follow The Conscious Entrepreneur on Instagram

Subscribe to The Conscious Entrepreneur on YouTube

HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm