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Board Governance Best Practices and Stories/Experiences Shared
Chris Doble: [00:00:01] There's an analogy that we really like to use to describe VMs, which is that we don't build the race car, we train the race car driver. With the thinking that, of course we want to see success come to these start ups and come to these businesses, but for us, we really want that to flow through the growth and development of the individual. Longer term thinking being even if these ventures aren't ultimately successful, you've still built the skills and the capacity that someone could take with them to the next venture.
Munir Haque: [00:00:29] Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Boardroom 180 Podcast. I'm your host Munir Haque, an executive coach and senior board strategist. I have partnered with Action Edge Executive Development to lead their governance and political acumen division. In each episode, we meet with governance leaders and step into their boardrooms, where decisions shape the world around us.
Munir Haque: [00:00:48] Today we're excited to welcome Mr. Chris Doble. Chris is the program director of the Venture Mentoring Service of Alberta, the VMSA. It's an entrepreneur mentorship program that focuses on building the leadership capacity of growth stage entrepreneurs. Based on the VMS mentorship model established at MIT, the VMSA supports entrepreneurs by surrounding them with a team of experienced business leaders who provide ongoing coaching and guidance as they scale their ventures. Before entering the world of mentorship, Chris worked in a variety of roles within the music industry as a studio manager of an audio post-production studio, to artist marketing and PR, to co-launching a mastering studio in Toronto. He has an Honors Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ottawa in Communications and Business Administration and is proud to be a Calgary born and raised citizen. Welcome to the show, Chris.
Chris Doble: [00:02:04] Thanks for having me, Munir.
Munir Haque: [00:02:06] I first came across you back in 2023 during Innovation Week here in Calgary. You were presenting at a session on governance. There were two other gentlemen who were presenting with you, one was talking specifically about the board of directors, another was talking about the board of advisors. You were talking about a board of consciousness, and that struck a spark in my head, because I hadn't heard of that too much before. I always kept in the back of my head that I was going to reach out to you and have you on here so we can talk a little bit about that. When I've done some of the research on board of consciousness, I think there's a variety of different roles that they fill, and I think there's maybe some different characteristics and maybe different interpretations of what they are. But I thought I'd get you on here to talk about, how do you interpret what a board of consciousness is?
Chris Doble: [00:03:02] I'm glad you came to that session, and I am glad that you reached out. Because it's led to some really good conversations, and I appreciate the opportunity to come chat about this. I always smile when we use that term 'board of consciousness'. The word that we typically use when we describe what it is we do is mentorship, but I think board of consciousness is a prettier way of describing that. But this idea of, you're here to support an individual, where you have a board of directors or a board of advisors that may end up being more focused on helping your business or helping growth or strategy of the business, the organization, board of consciousness or mentors can really be focused on the individual. How do you help them grow and develop and succeed? More in whatever way that needs to look like for them. That's the focus of our mentorship program for entrepreneurs is, how do you take a group of highly experienced business leaders, entrepreneurs, business builders and put them around an up and coming entrepreneur and get focused on how you can make them a more effective leader. I'm sure today we can dive into what that looks like.
Munir Haque: [00:04:10] We'll get into a little bit more depth, but why don't we take it back a step. You have some sort of relationship with Platform Calgary. Perhaps for some of our listeners who aren't in Calgary, who aren't familiar with Platform, why don't you give a little bit of background on that and then your relationship with them?
Chris Doble: [00:04:23] Platform Calgary, really interesting organization, nonprofit organization. They offer a whole suite of programs and services designed to help entrepreneurs grow early stage businesses, particularly in the tech and innovation sector. There was a recognition a number of years ago that, obviously, Calgary has been such a town and community focused on energy, focused on oil and gas, recognizing there's a need potentially to diversify and expand the capabilities, the potential of the community. There's a really driven group of people that saw an opportunity to build a tech ecosystem in Calgary and in the province. Platform was born out of this idea of, let's have a physical location, let's offer programs, offer services, let's tap into the expertise we have in the community to drive the growth of tech and innovation companies. Platform has an innovation center in downtown Calgary, and like I said a whole host of services and programs designed to help early stage tech companies. The VMSA is offered up in partnership with Platform as one of these programs that can help early stage entrepreneurs.
Munir Haque: [00:05:34] I've been on their website and I see that your picture's on there and you've got a title within Platform?
Chris Doble: [00:05:42] My title is the Director of the Venture Mentoring Service, but we operate as a program out of Platform.
Munir Haque: [00:05:50] Maybe take me back a little bit to the program that was developed out of MIT. I've read that it was developed about 25 years ago, so do you have any background on that? MIT, are they the leading edge on this?
Chris Doble: [00:06:05] I think you're right. I think it was in about 2000, about 25 years ago. MIT was looking at ways of similarly supporting innovation, supporting tech, supporting entrepreneurs as they were coming out of the school. Looking at, how do we better support alumni, how do we support staff and faculty and students of MIT that have ideas or have launched companies and are really looking to grow? Of course, you look at the history of tech and innovation out of MIT, they've got some of the brightest minds in the world. MIT grads have gone on to build some of the most successful companies in the world. For the institution I think it was looking at, how can we tap into a lot of that experience and expertise to help that next wave of entrepreneurs? They developed this really cool mentorship framework based around this concept of team mentorship. Each entrepreneur that they'll work with, they surround with a team of three mentors that meet collectively as a team. Or as we like to say, like a board of consciousness that is there to focus on helping the entrepreneur grow and succeed. They launched this program, tried it with a few entrepreneurs, and found a lot of success in this model. Because of course, having the ability to surround an entrepreneur with three different minds, different skill sets, different perspectives, different expertise, obviously so valuable for the founder, but they were finding with the mentors that were volunteering their time to do this, it's a way to give back, it's an opportunity for them to be supporting a mentee.
Chris Doble: [00:07:34] Often they're learning from the mentee as well, but you get three of these minds around a table together, and it's an opportunity for them to be learning from one another. I think it created this engaging model where there's a lot of value on both sides of the table. They found a lot of success with this. Mentors were engaged, they found it really impactful for the mentees. The program grew fairly organically at MIT, and then at some point along their journey they recognized, I think we're really onto something with this actual mentorship model. What would it look like to package this up and license it out? So they take this model, they license it out. 25 years later, I think there's about 130 VMS programs around the world. Obviously a handful across America, we've got a small handful of VMS programs across Canada, but then truly global. There are VMS programs on every continent, save Antarctica. It's really cool, they've built a really impressive global network of VMS programs that have adopted this program so that's pretty cool.
Munir Haque: [00:08:42] I hadn't drawn that connection to the technology. Coming out of MIT, I just assumed it was coming out of academia. That makes a lot more sense, where you're working with the recent grads that needed help getting their tech startups going. That makes a lot more sense now, and I'm not sure why I wasn't drawing that connection.
Chris Doble: [00:09:05] I think a lot of it is, coming out of academia, you get really smart academics that are building really cool technology or they've got really great ideas for a company. But for a lot of academics, building something in a lab can be a lot different than taking something to market. Building a lab is different from building a business. I think it was born out of this idea of, let's help a lot of researchers who are looking to commercialize technology, let's give them support on the business building side of that. Inherent to this mentorship model, I don't think it needs to be tech focused specifically. Maybe coincidental that ours was also born out of the desire to build tech and innovation companies in Calgary, but the mentorship concept itself is pretty universal. You can drop this mentorship model into a lot of different areas and find value. It's really about taking seasoned professionals or experienced individuals, putting them together in a very intentional way and having them work together to support this mentee. I think it can be a pretty universal concept.
Munir Haque: [00:10:13] How did this adoption of the MIT program end up here in Alberta?
Chris Doble: [00:10:20] My understanding, there was a group in Calgary led by a gentleman named David Edmonds with the A100, a group that included members of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, Calgary Economic Development, some folks from the University of Calgary that had heard about this model and thought, let's go down to Massachusetts, let's go to Cambridge and check it out and see if this is a model that we think could have value in what we're trying to build here in Calgary. They went down and checked out the model and figured, let's give this a shot. At the time that it was launched in 2014, it was done so out of the University of Calgary, out of what is now Innovate Calgary. Over time, the history of the university and things transitioned, and at some point the public facing programming was split out from Innovate Calgary and has become what we now refer to as Platform Calgary. It was brought here with this idea in mind that, there's a lot of programs that can help with the business element of what people are trying to build. Can we put some more intentional mentorship that focuses on the individuals, and how do we help them become better entrepreneurs, better leaders?
Munir Haque: [00:11:28] In terms of bringing it to Alberta, we've got a bit of a unique business environment here with startups. How was it adapting that program? Did you have to make major changes to it?
Chris Doble: [00:11:46] One of the things that I'm proud of is this idea of, here's a really impactful model. Obviously, MIT has been doing this for 25 years, but it is a different market and there's different needs there, there's different demographics there. One of the things I think we have done rather effectively is take this really valuable mentorship model and adapt it to our community. For example, I think that one of the really good awareness points is that, as our community's been growing, there are a lot of support programs to help early stage entrepreneurs with the business, the tactical fundamentals of how to build an effective company. I think there is a recognition at the time that there's far fewer support for, how do you actually build an effective entrepreneurial leader? Recognizing that as a program, we'll take less of a specific mentorship focus on the operational, tactical elements of business, and let's hyper focus our program on building the leadership capacity, the leadership skills of the individual. I should clarify that one of the big tenets of the MIT program is this, focus on the individual more so than the business. But I think recognizing what we needed in Alberta, we took that concept and slammed it to the furthest extent. Where for us, the focus almost exclusively is on the person, more so than the business.
Chris Doble: [00:13:10] There's an analogy that we really like to use to describe VMS which is, we don't build the race car, we train the race car driver. With the thinking that, of course we want to see success come to these startups and come to these businesses, but for us, we want that to flow through the growth and development of the individual. With the longer term view to that being, especially in the world of startups, businesses come, they go. A lot of them fail, I think we know that 90% of startups fail. Longer term thinking being, even if these ventures aren't ultimately successful, you've still built the skills and the capacity that someone could take with them to the next venture. I think the other thing I'll add too, because I think it's a relevant point to how our program is different, I would argue, than most other mentorship programs. In recognizing that the focus of this is going to be on the individual growth and development of the entrepreneur, we found that taking a more advisory approach isn't always the right way to help someone grow in this way. What I mean by that is, you kind of touched on it, a lot of them have the technical skills, a lot of them are experts in their domain. Despite the fact that a lot of our mentors have great business growth and strategy and leadership experience, we don't have all of the context to what the mentee is building. Really in every way, they know their business so much better than we are ever going to know it.
Chris Doble: [00:14:33] We take a strong coaching philosophy to mentorship. This is another area in which we've taken the MIT model and made it our own. Where this leadership development focuses, we really believe in this philosophy around coaching, which is that we're not here to tell people what to do, we're not here to be advisory. In a lot of ways, it's not about them bringing problems to the table and having us solve them. We really try to focus on this coaching space, which is all about asking people questions. Trying to get them to dig deeper, think more critically, see things with perspective that maybe they're not seeing them. As opposed to coming in and being advisory, our goal is to help them come to these conclusions and solve problems for themselves. We find it can be a really sticky way of getting a lot of these things to land. Just to give you another example of how we've taken that MIT model of team mentorship, I think we've added this whole element around coaching that I think has been really valuable when the focus is so heavy on personal growth and developments.
Munir Haque: [00:15:35] How do you guys make decisions? Do you have a board that you report to? How do you make a decision?
Chris Doble: [00:15:44] VMSA, we're not an independent entity. We run out of Platform, we call them our host partner. Even within that we have a lot of autonomy. We do operate as if we were our own organization. We have a board of advisors, we've got a board chair, we have regular board meetings. The operational team of the program will lead a lot of the operations and make a lot of the day to day decisions, but we do get this advisory board support when it comes to things like setting strategic direction and setting goals. In the truest sort of VMSA sense, I get a lot of personal support from our board chair, Paul Sullivan, and the members of our board. How do I level up as a leader of the organization? We do get this nice blend of strategic support, strategic guidance. A lot of the more tactical operational decisions are left to the operational team. One of the benefits of being in a program that is inherently made up of highly experienced business leaders, is that we get to tap into a lot of that strategic expertise for ourselves, which is really great.
Munir Haque: [00:16:50] Why don't you talk a little bit about who your target market is, or your clients are.
Chris Doble: [00:16:54] It is interesting. Our program certainly was born out of the tech and innovation community. A lot of the core founding mentors of this program came from the tech space. Certainly when the program was launched, a lot of the mentees were building tech companies. With the way the program is funded, through support of Alberta Innovates, that being the focus, their mandate. Then, of course, the partnership with Platform Calgary. We do have a very close relationship with the tech and innovation sector. I would say at this point, about 60% to 70% of VMSA mentees would fall under that tech and innovation heading. As the program has grown, and because the focus is more so on the individuals, we've broadened that. To say, if there's really fantastic race car drivers, if you will, or entrepreneurs that we think demonstrate high potential, we're wanting to support. As the program has grown, we've expanded the industries that we play in. I like to think of us as a fairly industry agnostic program. Granted, a lot of the mentorship perspective and expertise is going to come from the tech sector. But there's a chocolate company and we've got a distillery that's looking to grow and there's an adventure travel company, so it really is getting diverse in terms of the types of companies that we're supporting, the industries they're playing in. Commonality to all of them is that there's an ambition and a desire to scale.
Chris Doble: [00:18:22] For us it's taking in companies that have some validation in the business, they know they're on to something, and now it's about, how do I hit the gas pedal on that? The one thing that a lot of our mentors are looking for, is they want to work with companies that have some potential for high growth. Whether that's geographic expansion or growth through acquisition, there needs to be that desire to scale up the business. Because our focus is so much on the individual, it's helping them navigate the challenges that come with that. As my company grows and scales, what's going to be required of me as the leader to lead the business through that growth? Most of our companies are in the early millions in revenue. They've got teams that they can be building out and looking to lead. The sweet spot for us, often when an entrepreneur or a mentee goes from being very tactical, very operational in the business, to now they're at a point where things are really starting to grow. In order for them to not be the bottleneck to growth, they're going to have to start building out the team and getting the right systems and processes in place. Just making that mindset shift of being a builder, being an operator, to being a CEO or being a leader. That's where we like to play.
Munir Haque: [00:19:41] What's a typical path for somebody finding you, or do you go out and find them?
Chris Doble: [00:19:48] Our program has been around for ten years and the growth has been fairly organic. Typically, most of the mentees that have come to us have been through referral of people in the program. Those that understand what we're about and the type of support and service we can offer, they've been really great about going out into the community and saying, I know someone that I think could really benefit from this. Now as the program is starting to grow, I think the reputation is starting to grow as well. We're getting more people cold calling us, expressing interest, seeing us on panel talks, hearing us on podcasts like yours. Things are starting to grow a little bit, but primarily it's been referral driven. I would say certainly on the mentor side, it's typically been referral driven.
Munir Haque: [00:20:36] What is your vetting process for mentees?
Chris Doble: [00:20:41] We have a pretty thorough intake process. It's a few rounds of conversations with different members of our team. People get put through a mock VMSA coaching session and it's an opportunity for us to have some deeper conversations with people. To understand, first of all, are we actually going to be the right fit for you? Also, is this type of leadership development, is this framework, is this style of coaching going to be something that's engaging? That you're going to want to put the time in and the effort to commit to it. Then on the flip side, it's also making sure that they get an opportunity to test drive that coaching approach, because not everyone has had the opportunity to sit down with coaching before. It can be an introduction for a lot of people, so these conversations are designed to make sure that people have a good sense of what the program is going to be like. Then both sides can say, do we think there's a fit here? Once someone comes into the program, by that time and through those conversations, we tend to have a decent understanding of where they're at, the types of challenges that they're facing, and then we can very particularly go out into our mentor pool and custom pick three mentors that we think will bring a lot of perspective and clarity and expertise for that individual. That becomes the fun part of our role as the program, is in how you curate those mentorship teams.
Munir Haque: [00:22:03] I could see some personality types wouldn't sit well with sitting in front of three people. Whereas that's the benefit to one on one coaching, is that both parties can adjust depending on the personality of the other person.
Chris Doble: [00:22:18] That's a huge piece that we consider as we're putting these teams together. We call it the art and the science in team building. The science of course being, looking at the specific challenges and problems and recognizing who in our pool can bring some perspective to that. That's maybe a little bit easier. The art is more in those personality types and trying to understand, who is the mentee, the type of person that they are, and then who are the personalities that are going to jive. Not only between the mentors and the mentee, but among the three mentors as well. In a lot of ways, you don't necessarily want three of the same type of person, because you want to have people that can push and dig in different ways. But at the same time, we've got personality styles that aren't always going to jive with one another. That becomes the fun of it, in putting those pieces together. I always like to say that I think the real benefit of this MIT board type model is that if you don't get it right, and I'm pretty proud, I think our batting average is pretty high on getting good combinations of people together, but if it's ever not right, it gives you the ability to rotate people on and off the team. I like that board type structure where if you have a board member that's not working, you can move it around.
Munir Haque: [00:23:42] How do you find your mentors? What are their qualifications, vetting processes?
Chris Doble: [00:23:46] The number one thing is that you've got experience in building business, and that can look a few different ways. The vast majority of the mentors in our program are entrepreneurs themselves. They've gone through that entrepreneurial journey of either starting from the ground up or taking companies and scaling them. They know what it's like to be in those shoes and to be a week away from missing payroll. They've gone through a lot of those very real challenges that entrepreneurs face. A handful of our mentors may come from more corporate backgrounds, typically C-suite senior executive level. A lot of them have sat in the CEO chair, so they know firsthand what it's like to carry the weight of that and the responsibility that comes with that. Then we have a few mentors that maybe haven't built businesses specifically, or haven't necessarily sat in the CEO chair, but bring a lot of high level domain expertise or perspective. Whether that's someone that has come from a little bit more of an executive level sales function or marketing or HR.
Munir Haque: [00:24:49] Do you have any mentees that have gone on to become mentors?
Chris Doble: [00:24:53] We have. In the history of our program, it's happened four times. I feel like that's honestly the biggest win that I think we can have as a program. If we feel that we're able to develop mentees to the point where they've built good businesses. In a lot of these cases, they've had some nice exits. Sometimes they've had some pretty impressive failures as well. To get them to a point where they've learned enough and they feel comfortable enough in their leadership that they then want to turn around and pay that back or pay it forward, if you will. For us, that's the biggest win that we can have as a program. I'm really proud of the fact that that has been the case. We've got four current mentors in the program that were mentees previously.
Munir Haque: [00:25:38] Your funding is primarily from the province. Is that something you have to reapply for every year or how often do you have to do that? Do you have to use any of these metrics in justifying it?
Chris Doble: [00:25:50] We've had a fantastic relationship and a lot of great support from the province, and specifically that flows through the innovation arm of the government, through Alberta Innovates. They've been such a fantastic partner and have very much bought into the longer term vision of this. Recognizing that it's important to see how we're helping companies grow and develop, but the longer term view is, how are we actually helping entrepreneurs develop? The idea that, even if it's not this venture, let's see if we can help them build the next one more successfully or the one after that. It overall contributes to a stronger economy long term. We've been fully funded through Alberta Innovates for years, and we do have to reapply for that funding every few years. They've been such great partners for us and allowed us to continue growing the program. Which we appreciate because for us it's about taking this model that we've seen that can be so impactful, and now how do we bring that out to support more entrepreneurs across the province?
Munir Haque: [00:26:54] How do you manage diversity, equity and inclusion? To ensure that there is equal opportunity, both with your mentors and your mentees?
Chris Doble: [00:27:02] Diversity is so inherent to the value of the model. The idea is that you don't want to surround someone with three of the same perspectives. Whether that's from cultural background, whether that's from an industry background, whether it's a size of business perspective, being able to surround a mentee with diverse experiences and expertise and life experience is so inherent to the value that the program provides. Absolutely, as we grow the program it really is about, how do we get more diverse voices around the table? Where that really shows up for us is in a lot of the outreach that we do. Right now, particularly being very intentional about the communities that we're going out into to promote the program. To say, we're missing voices from this community. Can we get more business leaders, because there's great entrepreneurs everywhere so can we tap into more great leaders, great entrepreneurial minds from different pockets of the community? Given where we sit in the community, we've already got a lot of strong ties to the tech and innovation sector, but there's a lot of different industry areas, there's a lot of cultural areas that we're not plugged into. For us right now, when we go out to promote the program and try to recruit people for the program, how do we get tapped into these pockets, these different business communities throughout the city, throughout the province that can bring a lot of this great leadership and business expertise to the table.
Munir Haque: [00:28:32] What I'm going to end with, I'm going to ask you about successes and failures. It's always nice to hear about successes, but often they're a little bit harder to learn from than failures.
Chris Doble: [00:28:42] It's a question I always get a little bit excited to answer. Success for us can look very different depending on what the growth of the individual needs to look like. We've had some more traditional successes by traditional standards, which is helping entrepreneurs grow some impressive companies. We've seen some of our mentees raise some nice funding rounds, we've seen some great expansion. In some cases we've seen some really nice exits. To be able to play a role to help mentees build the confidence and the skills to be able to do that and build those types of companies is really exciting. But success can also be helping someone recognize when maybe this isn't the right path for them. Some of our most successful outcomes have been helping a CEO recognize, maybe I'm not in the right seat anymore. Maybe I was the right person to build a business at the earliest stages, but now as things are starting to pick up, we've helped people get clarity on the fact. For example, my passion is in tech, it's in building the solutions. Helping them get clarity on that so that they've made the decision to move into a CTO role and bring in a new CEO.
Chris Doble: [00:29:58] The fact that we could help them get to that decision with more clarity faster has gone on to lead to better things for the business. For us, that's a huge success. In some cases we've helped mentees come to grips with the fact that, I don't think my heart is in it to build this business. This thing is my baby, but I don't think I'm the one that's going to take it to the next level. We've helped mentees work through those challenges, and the outcomes there have sometimes been having them step back from their own business. But now they're out doing something that they're way more passionate about. We're seeing them on to the next thing that's having a lot of impact. The fact that we can help people get to those decisions, which might otherwise take people a lot of years, a lot of extra financial strain, a lot of stress. If we can get them there faster, those are huge wins. Failure, for us is a program, is often in the model not being the right fit for someone. Whether they're just not at a place where they're ready to make their own leadership development the focus.
Chris Doble: [00:31:03] Part of why we have such a diligent intake is that some people have a really hard time putting themselves out there in front of three people and 'open the kimono', we like to jokingly call it. It doesn't work for us when people aren't willing to let the mentors in. Or sometimes the back half of the coachability piece is, mentors are there to help make people aware of some of these blind spots and some of these challenges and if, for whatever reason, people are unable or unwilling to move themselves forward, there's only so far that a mentor team can take you. Then if you're, for whatever reason, not able to keep progressing, we hit a point where there's only so much we can do. If it's not ultimately moving the needle, then maybe it's not the right fit. I'm pretty proud at how few cases we've seen of that. Far more often we're able to help people grow and develop. The feedback has been really positive, but there's some cases where sometimes it's just not the right style for someone.
Munir Haque: [00:32:11] With tech companies and startups, often as a condition of some of the funding that they get, they have to set up a board of directors. I think that's not where your space is. That's where I think that there's some associated services, a company like Action Edge Executive with their governance and political acumen division, can help fill in some of that void.
Chris Doble: [00:32:36] From how I see it, I find it very complimentary. It's one of the things we didn't touch on, but I think a really important element of our program is the non-conflict aspect of it. Our mentors are all volunteers, they're not compensated in any way, they're not taking equity. There is no vested interest in the success of the venture and that's very much by design. It's really important for us that we keep any perception of conflict out of the scenario, any perception of bias, just so that the mentees have a place where they can come and be truly open, truly vulnerable, and have the conversations that you maybe can't have with your board of directors or your board of advisors. Obviously there's so much value in having those boards in place, but recognizing that there are certain conversations that if people are struggling or they're facing challenges, they may not necessarily feel comfortable having those conversations. A really good example is, if you're an entrepreneur that's feeling burnt out, is that a conversation that you're necessarily going to take to your investors or your board of directors? Possibly, probably not.
Chris Doble: [00:33:42] The idea is, can this be a place where people can come to have those conversations that you can't necessarily have elsewhere? The focus, often, of boards of directors or boards of advisors is on the business and rightfully so. How do we make this race car run as efficiently and effectively as possible? If we can complement that by bringing more focus on the driver, in addition to making that business run as well as it can, how can we make this individual run as well as they can? With no skin in the game other than pretty altruistically wanting to see these people succeed, I just think it can be so complementary. It's certainly the case that a lot of our mentees, in addition to having this board of consciousness, this mentorship, will also have more formal boards of advisors, they'll have boards of directors. I know a lot of them find so much value in having both. Because you've got the race car covered, the drivers covered, and the hope is that we're all helping this person move in the right direction.
Munir Haque: [00:34:46] This has been a great conversation. I'm sure our listeners will get a lot out of it. For those who are in Calgary, they know a little bit more about you and your program. That being said, if somebody is interested, where can they find out more about the program and about you?
Chris Doble: [00:35:04] I really appreciate the opportunity to come and chat about this. It's something that we've seen the impact it can have on people. In a lot of ways, VMSA has been quietly doing a lot of this impactful work in the background. If we can now bring this out to support more entrepreneurs, there's a lot of room to help people. vmsalberta.org is the website. As the program grows, we're always looking for more mentees, we're always looking for more mentors. I would suggest, if you're interested in learning more about the program and starting that conversation around whether the fit is going to be right, whether you're a growth stage entrepreneur that's looking to move into that more strategic kind of CEO role. Or if you're an entrepreneur or business leader that's had a lot of experience and is now looking for a way to stay engaged in the community and learn from others, and most importantly, give back and want to find a way to help other people succeed in those roles, please reach out. Happy to have a conversation, we've got a great team that's always eager to share what we're doing and talk to people and help people determine if it's a right fit. Please reach out.
Munir Haque: [00:36:10] Perfect, this has been great. Thank you so much for coming out today, being a guest on the show.
Chris Doble: [00:36:14] Thanks Munir, I appreciate it.
Munir Haque: [00:36:16] Thanks everyone for listening to The Boardroom 180 Podcast. You can learn more about me and Action Edge Executive Development on our website at aeednow.com. Fill out the form if you want me to reach out to you, or if you have any thoughts for future subjects or guests on the podcast. We also have a free board self-evaluation that will be linked on our website. You and your board can fill this out either individually or together, and it gives you a bit of a quick temperature check on how your board health is. As always, don't forget to hit like and subscribe to The Boardroom 180 Podcast. It helps us grow and bring more governance insights. We're recording from the Pushysix Studios in Calgary, Alberta. With production assistance from Astronomic Audio. You can find their info and the links to the AEX forums in the show notes. We've come full circle to conclude this episode of The Boardroom 180 Podcast. Goodbye, and good governance.