He’s been called the world’s number one CEO coach, with a client list that includes Richard Branson and Steve Jobs. What fewer people know is that Mark Thompson struggled all the way through school, with a learning and eyesight difficulty that made traditional education hard, and it took him years to understand why that mattered.

Mark has coached the CEOs and founders of Pinterest, Lyft, Fitbit and Waymo, led more than a hundred board-level succession engagements, and in 2023 became the first coach inducted into the Thinkers50 Coaching Hall of Fame. His most recent book, CEO Ready, tackles the thing nobody talks about: how you actually get the top job, and how you survive it once you have.

In this conversation, Mark takes me from the fruit orchards that became Silicon Valley, to the discovery that reshaped his life, when he realised the things that held him back in school had become his superpower. We talk about the shock of becoming a CEO for the first time and getting it badly wrong, why he treats the role as a privilege to be earned, and why he spends the first two chapters of his book trying to talk you out of the job entirely. We also get to what it really takes to lead in a world where the S&P 500 now churns in weeks rather than decades.

A conversation about readiness, resilience, and the humility to know that nobody gets anything worthwhile done alone.

The Unlock Moment is hosted by Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD — master interviewer, executive coach and author. Downloaded in over 140 countries. Sign up to The Unlock Moment newsletter at https://tinyurl.com/ywhdaazp Find out more at https://garycrotaz.com and https://theunlockmoment.com Also discover his other podcasts, The Box of Keys and Unlock Your Leadership. Follow, subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts — and connect with Dr Gary on LinkedIn for more leadership insights. Part of The Unlock Moment podcast family.

There’s a particular kind of certainty that comes from a traditional career. You have the training, the title, you know what good looks like. Starting a business feels like stepping off solid ground onto a rollercoaster you’re still building as it moves.

Recorded live at Climb 26, this is a conversation with Eve Hanks, founder and CEO of veterinary diagnostics company MI:RNA. Eve spent years as a vet and scientist before a midlife moment when she sat with her finger hovering over the “incorporate a company” button, worked out she had roughly two thousand working Mondays left, and decided that wasn’t a lot. So she packed up boxes, drove to France, renovated a house and launched a business ... during COVID ... because it had become more terrifying to stay than it was scary to go.

We get into the science that made it possible: microRNAs, a control system in the body we didn’t even know existed until recently, and how a process that once took six months now takes an afternoon. We talk about pitching a technology so new that investors asked her what a dairy cow was, what resilience actually looks like (pitching, getting no traction, crying in the bath, and getting up to do it again), and why she tells every scientist she mentors that they’re the one holding all the cards.

A conversation about counting your Mondays, betting on yourself, and turning brilliant science into something real. Find out more at mirna.tech.

The Unlock Moment is hosted by Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD — master interviewer, executive coach and author. Downloaded in over 140 countries. Sign up to The Unlock Moment newsletter at https://tinyurl.com/ywhdaazp Find out more at https://garycrotaz.com and https://theunlockmoment.com Also discover his other podcasts, The Box of Keys and Unlock Your Leadership. Follow, subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts — and connect with Dr Gary on LinkedIn for more leadership insights. Part of The Unlock Moment podcast family.

How do you stay ahead of the curve when you’ve been surfing the wave for 40 years?

Recorded live at Climb 26 as Andy Wood received the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award, this is a conversation with a man who has been present at the exact moment new ideas became whole new industries ... from the early days of the UK games industry, through computer vision and digital humans, to the AI tools reshaping creativity today.

Andy takes me back to the beginning: an adopted boy, endlessly curious, secretly taught to tell the time by the builders across the road. That curiosity carried him from making games like FIFA and Mortal Kombat ... one of them scored by Brian May ... to markerless motion capture that could do what Gollum needed without the dots, and a demo of Peter Gabriel he used to pitch James Cameron for Avatar. We talk about the game that still haunts him, the Nintendo friend who told him to hang a brass plaque reading “we make games, stupid,” and why six exits taught him to leave at exactly the right moment.

A conversation about staying curious, shipping things that are actually finished, and knowing when a chapter is done.

The Unlock Moment is hosted by Dr Gary Crotaz, PhD — master interviewer, executive coach and author. Downloaded in over 140 countries. Sign up to The Unlock Moment newsletter at https://tinyurl.com/ywhdaazp Find out more at https://garycrotaz.com and https://theunlockmoment.com Also discover his other podcasts, The Box of Keys and Unlock Your Leadership. Follow, subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts — and connect with Dr Gary on LinkedIn for more leadership insights. Part of The Unlock Moment podcast family.