A founder was about to make a £2 million project decision.

Chris March told him not to attend the meeting.

Why?

Because every important decision still depended on the founder.

Chris spent nearly two decades in travel leadership before becoming an executive advisor, helping founders build businesses that can operate without depending on them.

His leadership philosophy was shaped by much harder experiences.

When Covid shut down the travel industry, the company he was leading had to let go around 90% of its staff.

One conversation has stayed with him ever since.

A woman who was about to go on maternity leave begged him to keep her job. Chris stayed on the phone with her for around two hours, listening, explaining and trying to help her process what was happening.

That experience changed how he thinks about leadership.

In this conversation we explore founder dependency, delegation, decision making, hiring, leadership systems and why the desire to be indispensable can become one of the biggest constraints on growth.

The more valuable you are to the daily operation of your business, the less valuable the business may be without you.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:39 Removing the founder from a £2M decision
03:26 The decision that accelerated Chris's career
07:05 Laying off 90% of the team during Covid
08:30 The hardest phone call of his career
14:15 From operator to executive advisor
16:42 Why founders become the bottleneck
19:40 The ultimate test: can you take a month off?
20:52 When being indispensable damages business value
23:33 How to hire people you can genuinely delegate to
25:02 Chris's exact ExecDNA
27:05 Closing

Join the ExecDNA community and get early access to the platform:
https://www.execdna.com/join/community

Mario Rivas
Founder of ExecDNA
Host of ExecDNA Podcast

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

Chris March
Executive Advisor
Founder of Chris March Advisory

Website:
http://christophermarch.com/

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

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/chrismarchadvisory/

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@chrismarchadvisory/

Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/3804Om0XrGG1gNRsev6DlU?si=ce622db462c84839

Listen on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/execdna/id1847157416

#execdna #leadership #founder #delegation #businessgrowth

He was at Broadcast.com before its $5.7 billion sale to Yahoo. A few years later he was out of work with two young children, and two days a week of consulting became a fractional executive career across more than 25 companies.

Join the ExecDNA community:
https://www.execdna.com/join/community?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=episode&utm_campaign=ep-eric-grafstrom&utm_content=description

Eric Grafstrom has spent 30 years in technology as a CEO, COO, founder and fractional executive, and his biggest lesson is that knowledge is getting cheaper while judgment is getting more valuable.

He started out making more than 50 cold calls a day selling webcasting when many computers had no speakers, watched Broadcast.com grow from an early internet experiment into a multibillion dollar acquisition, and went on to work for Yahoo in London and Silicon Valley, where his landmark deal was the messaging interoperability agreement between Yahoo and Microsoft.

In this conversation we cover why AI can make experienced executives more valuable, what human judgment gives leaders that technology cannot, why every future executive needs to learn sales, the mistakes smart CEOs keep repeating, why investor and founder priorities can conflict, what it takes to make layoff decisions, and why building something valuable matters more than building something impressive.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:09 Is the traditional executive career changing?
02:26 Does AI make experienced executives more valuable?
03:32 Why human judgment still matters
04:50 Broadcast.com and selling the early internet
06:46 From startup chaos to a $5.7B Yahoo acquisition
09:06 The Microsoft and Yahoo deal that raised the stakes
10:40 Losing his job with two young children
11:24 How he became a fractional executive
12:46 The hardest decisions leaders have to make
14:35 The mistakes smart CEOs keep repeating
17:13 Building something impressive versus something valuable
18:23 Why life experience matters in leadership
20:45 Eric's ExecDNA in three words
22:17 Closing

Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/3804Om0XrGG1gNRsev6DlU?si=ce622db462c84839

Listen on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/execdna/id1847157416
Also available on Amazon Music.

Follow ExecDNA on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/execdna/

Mario Rivas
Founder of ExecDNA and host of the ExecDNA Podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariorivassanchez/

Eric Grafstrom
Fractional Executive and Startup Coach
Website: https://ericgrafstrom.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericgrafstrom/
Startup Coaching: https://www.linkedin.com/company/startupcoacheric/

New episodes every Tuesday at 17:00 UK.

#execdna #fractionalexecutive #executivecareer #careerreinvention #futureofwork

How do you become Head of Finance at just 27, keep progressing through senior leadership, and later build a seven figure business without sacrificing your life to work?

I sat down with Guinevere Ellis, Founder of Guinevere Ellis International and The Mind Director Institute, to understand the patterns behind career progression, ambition, self belief and exceptional performance.

At 27, Guinevere applied for a Head of Finance position at British Aerospace despite being told she did not have enough experience.

She got the job.

Throughout her corporate career she continued pursuing bigger roles, greater responsibility and higher earnings while refusing to accept that success required increasingly longer hours.

Then her career changed completely.

After becoming a parent, Guinevere left corporate life and built a technology startup. The business initially gained traction, but the platform crashed under demand and rebuilding it would have required tens of thousands of pounds.

She eventually reached a point where she had to borrow £5,000 from her father to pay the mortgage.

That failure became one of the most important pivots of her career.

Guinevere rebuilt around the work she actually wanted to do and went on to create a seven figure business. She says she built her first £1 million in three years while working largely around school hours and without relying on social media, advertising or traditional marketing.

We explore why highly capable people can still operate below their potential, how beliefs influence commercial decisions, and what Guinevere calls false logic, the assumptions we inherit about money, ambition, work and success.

We also discuss career progression, confidence, risk, failure, parenthood, professional identity and why the structures we build earlier in our careers sometimes need to be challenged later.

For Guinevere, success is not simply about working harder. It starts with what you believe is possible for you.

In this episode:
01:36 Why overwork is overrated
05:23 Becoming Head of Finance at 27
09:55 Why she expects things to work out
16:43 Moving to Sydney and starting again
18:59 Why brilliant people still underperform
25:06 Leaving corporate life to become an entrepreneur
28:41 Borrowing £5,000 from her father to pay the mortgage
32:13 The false logic holding people back
37:09 Building a £1M business around school hours
40:33 Guinevere's exact ExecDNA
42:55 The thought pattern limiting your success

Join the ExecDNA community and get early access to the platform:
https://www.execdna.com

Guinevere Ellis
Founder of Guinevere Ellis International
The Mind Director

Website:
https://guinevereellisinternational.com/home

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

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/guinevereellis

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@guinevereellis

Mario Rivas
Founder of ExecDNA
Host of ExecDNA Podcast

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

#execdna #leadership #careergrowth #entrepreneurship #businessgrowth