The CEO Perspective on Managing Chaos, Growth, and Building Strong Teams

Chris Blauvelt shares his journey as a multi-time entrepreneur, how he hired his first Chief of Staff after learning about the role from House of Cards and leadership books, and why setting top three priorities every quarter changed his effectiveness as a CEO. He explains how his Chief of Staff tackled big challenges like product innovation, people operations, and compliance, even without previous experience in those areas. Chris also discusses bringing on a second Chief of Staff with a more technical background to focus on launching a new payments company.

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Connect with Chris Blauvelt on LinkedIn

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If we haven’t met before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want.

Time Stamps:
01:20 Chris Vet's Journey and Achievements

03:26 The Role and Impact of a Chief of Staff

06:40 Hiring and Integrating a Chief of Staff

16:48 Taking Ownership and Delegation

18:23 Onboarding and Establishing Cadence

20:41 Hiring a New Chief of Staff

29:43 Mission and Vision of Launchgood

Transcript

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 0:25

Welcome back to Leveraging Leadership. My guest today is Chris Vet and he is a multi-time entrepreneur. He's currently founder of Two Crown funding startups, and he has worked with a chief of staff and he's about to work with another second chief of staff, which we will talk all about. But Chris, welcome to the show.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 0:47

Thank you, Emily. I'm, I'm happy we finally gotta connect. Uh, you've been actually very critical in our journey into. Chiefs of staff and, and by the way, it's not just me like onto my second chief of staff. We have, I got a chief of staff, my COO got a chief of staff and also also our VP of growth. So we've got chief of, of staffs in the organization. May maybe too much like I, you know, that'll be a question for you actually, but yes,

Chris’ Journey and Achievements

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 1:13

Can you have too many chiefs of staff? Yeah. I don't know. That's a good, that's a good one. It's spreading in a good way. Um, well thank you so much for being on. I'm excited to speak with you and, uh, I think first of all, our congratulations in order, did you get a green belt in Judo recently?

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 1:28

I did, I did, I did. right before my hernia surgery. you know, wanna give myself like a different challenge. Um. You know, it's like, uh, I've been playing basketball my whole life. It's not a great sport to age into. I don't know why I thought martial arts is any better, but, uh, I did pick up martial arts a few years ago and I was like, this is really hard. And, you know, but you kind of stick to it. And you know, here I am, I think it might be three years, so it took me three years. I don't know if that's good or bad, but here I am with the green belt.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 1:56

Yeah, judo is you're actually slamming people or rolling on the ground. So yeah, if we're talking about aging into a sport, but um.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 2:02

I'll say it is a great CEO sport. You just have all this stress, stress on you and just like, take it out. Like just throw somebody. Um, it feels great.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 2:13

That's awesome. Are there any kind of lessons or principles that you would take into business world from martial arts or is it just like, it's just to de-stress embody slam people, Emily.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 2:22

I feel like I'm gonna be one of those LinkedIn meme posts. Like what, what judo taught me about B2B sales, you know, um, you know, I, I think. The bigger point is in picture, this is actually quite serious, is you need outlet as a CEO, as a leader. I think probably everybody, but CEOs deal with a lot of stress and physical exercise and activity is so helpful to just reset yourself. Um, you know, I'd always have it, uh, my martial arts Monday and Wednesdays, like after, uh, work hours. I couldn't be having a really bad day. And there's like definitely days I go in there. I'm like, the last thing I wanna do right now is any sort of exercise or strain. I'm just so stressed out and tired and just wanna take a nap. like an hour later I feel great. And it's like, you know, that thing that's causing me all that stress, like life moves on, you know, it's okay.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 3:16

Hmm.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 3:16

Um, that, that's really important to, to balance your life.

The Role and Impact of a Chief of Staff

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 3:21

Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. So people got a little bit of you there, but just to do the full kind of your background and kind of who you are and where you're coming from, maybe you can do the highlight reel up until you started the company where chief of staff first entered your orbit. Just give us kind of that preamble.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 3:39

Oh man. Um, you know, I, I was born overseas, Malaysia, grew up all over the world. Uh, ended up, um, doing engineering and working out in California. But, uh, really want to have a lot more purpose in my life. And I come, to be honest, I come from a family entrepreneur, so, so maybe it's not so surprising, but I quit making, you know, kind of corporate America. I did a lot of things in my twenties from being a teacher basketball coach, nonprofit founder, to eventually start a film company. we had a movie go to Ance Film Festival in 2010. And I did a Kickstarter, and this was like, Kickstarter was brand new. We were one of the very first projects out of Michigan. Um, I fell in love with Kickstarter and I fell in love with crowdfunding. I thought, how cool would it be to kind of create my own crowdfunding site. made two of them. Um, so one is called Patronicity. It's a very small niche, one that deals with public space. Community projects like bike paths, murals, um, playgrounds, and then, uh, a much bigger, more ambitious one called Launch Good, which is like GoFundMe for the Global Wilson community. Um, and it's that one that has kind of consumed my life for the last 12 years. Uh, it's also for that one that I ended up, you know, hiring a chief of staff for a couple years ago. Um, that takes us to this podcast.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 5:00

Yes. Beautiful. So right in there, what, what was the first time you heard? When was the first time you heard? Of chief of staff as a role, as a concept. Do you remember that?

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 5:12

Uh, you know, I mean, it's gonna sound funny, but like House of Cards, right? Where you're like, okay, the chief of staff, the president,

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 5:19

Yeah.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 5:19

like, oh, every president has the chief of staff. But in House of Cards you get to see like, wow, this chief of staff is really pulling a lot of strings. but you think it's a political position. You're not like, oh,

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 5:28

West Wing House of cards. Yep.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 5:30

Yeah, so then I miss met West Wing. It's very embarrassing, but, uh, yes, I, at least I got House of Cards. I was looking at a CEO coach. Um, one of my friends who works at Microsoft, he's like, Hey, we all had to read this, uh, book. Um, but, you know, or get injured to something called like the Moy Method. I, I think that's how you say his name. Moy, uh, Michael Moy. So I started coming across some of his work and I'm reading about him as a CEO coach, and he's been a coach, uh, for really great tech founders in, in the uh, valley. basically he's like, I won't take on anybody. As A-C-E-O-A client, unless they have a chief of staff. So that caught my attention. I'm like, whoa, that's kind of weird. Like that's a, you know, it

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 6:20

That's bold.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 6:21

of the company or number of employees or whatever. It's like they gotta have a chief of staff. So that put me down that rabbit hole. Um, you, you could probably explain better than me why he would say that, but yes, that, that's how I kind of really first came across the concept, chief of staff a tech, CEO.

Hiring and Integrating a Chief of Staff

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 6:37

And then you went into hiring rounds, the first application from the person who ended up being your chief of staff did not go well. it was rejected and they had to. Come back.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 6:46

Yeah, you know, there, there's more to the story, uh, than, than even, you know, probably. But first, when I was hiring for the chief of staff, I was like, okay, this person is gonna be my, you know, right hand man or woman and, and. I have to be able to sprint with them, like I'm not gonna slow down for them. And so I had really high standards, like even internally in the company when I first announced I was gonna be hiring, like a lot of people were applying and obviously I trust them enough to work in my company, but I was like, listen, this is going to be even too fast pace for you. Um, and so I was looking and we actually spent a year looking, I don't know if that's common, but for our first chief of staff, uh, is basically a year. and I was waiting for the right person to come along. Then, uh, I got a LinkedIn message, I think from somebody and she had seen the application and she, her name is Arian Al, and Arian was like, you know, I'm interested in this role, and I'm looking at her background. I'm like, oh, this is great. Like. Oxford, you know, worked for the, uh, British Embassy in, in Doha, in in Qatar. She worked with these banks. She got her master's in from Princeton. She's in New York City. I'm like, she's got a lot of great experience, a broad experience, which is, I find a generalist is actually a really good background, um, for chief of staff. And so I immediately, I was like, yeah, I would love to talk. This would be great. And then she responded. It's like, oh, actually I was already rejected by your team. like, what the heck? So I went to head of people office at the time. And let's just call him Calvin. I don't wanna, you know, kind of embarrass him. So I was like, Hey, Calvin, what happened? I saw this woman, Miriam applied, she seems fantastic. We rejected her. Like, what's wrong with her? like, oh, nothing's wrong with her. She's amazing. We just can't afford her. what do you mean? She's like, you know, she's looking for, uh, this, you know, ideal salary and we could pay two thirds of that. I was like, so. You told her that and she rejected us. She's like, oh no, I just, you know, rejected her on our, like, figuring that. And I'm like, listen, you let her reject us. Like it's a pet peeve of mine. I'm like, it's, you know, I never want to reject someone because we think they wouldn't work for us. You know, we are a mission-driven organization. A lot of people today are looking for, uh, that value, alignment, and purpose in the work, more than just cash. so anyway, we went back to Miriam, I said. You know, that was my miss our mistake. Like we think you would be great for the role, but this is our budget. If you're still willing to have conversation, we can, you know, continue and resume those interview, uh, conversations. Um, and she was willing to do that and we did it. And you know, lo and behold, we end up hiring her.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 9:30

Rest is history. And then what were your expectations of that role going into it, and then kind of how did that first, you know, 90 days kind of unfold for you and your chief of staff there?

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 9:43

One analogy for chief of staff that I like is that this, they're your personal trainer for work.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 9:49

Hmm.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 9:50

if anyone's had a personal trainer before in in exercise, that you know that they push you harder than you would push yourself if you went to the gym. They also understand like what parts of your body you need to work on. they might align with you. Like, what are your goals? Okay, you wanna become a, a world class judo fighter, whatever. Okay. Like these are the type of things we need to work on your shoulders and hips and whatever. so that was my. Kind of communication, uh, and expectation setting with m when she joined that you're here to help me be a superhero effectively. Um, you're going to give me superpowers. And say that was also like a big mental shift for me. I, I'm sure different people will take that differently. I, I come from a background of servant leadership I'm always trying to put myself last,

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 10:43

Hmm.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 10:44

and it was actually a big mental hurdle for me to say like, I'm gonna hire myself a chief of staff when it's like, well, why don't I hire my COO Chief of staff or my head of engineering? Like all these other people in the company are really bogged down and, and overworked and not paid enough, and why am I getting this special privilege over everybody else? I realize like, it's not about me, it's the fact that I'm the CEO. Whether I like it or not, that means that I can have a bigger impact than any single other person in the company. And if I wasn't the CEO, if I was just Chris, like, I don't know, honorary board member of launch, good, then I actually, I wouldn't matter at all, you know, and I couldn't do anything. But whoever's CEO e should still have a chief of staff, um, because they could move a lot of stuff. So anyway, I had to get up the hurdle, Miriam starts, and the very first thing we did What are my top three priorities at the moment? And I love that number. Like every quarter I reset with my chief of staff. What are my top three priorities? How are we doing? And we just stay focused and we, we kind of take that quarter by quarter.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 11:50

That's music to my ears and plenty of other chiefs of staff ears as opposed to many founders who are visionaries are kind of, I have 47 things and I wanna do this now, and I forgot about the 23 things that I told the team to do. So the fact that you have that awareness and discipline to come back quarterly and say, what are my three priorities? Um, and, and. How did the chief of staff impact? So how did Marriam impact you and the team in terms of selecting the top three or sticking to the top three?

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 12:20

You know, there is a personality assessment I love called Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 12:27

Yep.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 12:31

is a. If I get this right, uh, discernment and enablement, I think is the combination d and e and like the, the pairing is called like the trusted counselor or something like that. And I'm like, this is kind of perfect for a chief of staff. And the reason I mentioned as like the first thing is like, how do I determine those to you? It was like a lot of conversations. Talking with Maryam, figuring out what should my priorities be right now? You know, where does the business need me? What are some of my ideas? Like sometimes us, you know, when we founders and CEOs have these crazy ideas every so often, they're pretty good, you know? And so you have to entertain them. Uh, if not all, you know, maybe we don't take all'em seriously, but like, just talk through them. So, you know, first is like, let's talk through it. What do we need to, then you have to prioritize. And it's not easy. Like no one likes to do it. But it's kind of like exercise. Like you don't like to do it, but once you do it, you're so glad you did it. Um, and so it's just that discipline, having that discipline, like we talked about, talked about, well, what are we gonna focus on? I remember when she started, the three that we decided to focus on were our product. We were stuck in no man's land with product, like no innovation happening, stuck in a rebuild. Just a very frustrating situation. We had a big issue with our people ops. Um, so our people ops was kind of dysfunctional at the time and. That has a huge, you know, kind of trickle down effect on the whole company culture. Of course. And then the third one was, uh, compliance. Compliance is super critical

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 14:09

Hmm.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 14:09

space to survive. Especially like if you're a Muslim doing crowdfunding, trying to help raise money for things like Gaza and, and people are terrified of Hamas or ISIS or whatever, uh, yeah, compliance is really important. And we were also facing like an internal crisis and dysfunction within compliance. And so I was like, these are our three product. People, ops, compliance, um, of those three, Miriam has zero experience in any of them. Right. and that's what I, but like, it kind of doesn't matter. And what I love about, you know, Miriam, I think any great chief of staff will just be ready to jump in, I I'm sure you had that experience, right? Like was like, I have no experience in this, but I gotta tackle it. and I remember for product it was like. do we do? Well, let's start. We don't know anything. Sometimes that's actually a blessing because then you have no biases. And so it's like we don't know anything. Well, I do know a bunch of tech CEOs, so let's talk to them and, and share our problems and, um, talk to the team and like get in the ground level, like individual PMs, engineers,

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 15:16

Wow.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 15:17

figure out like why are we so dysfunctional? Um, and it was actually one of my staff. That shared, um, Marty Kagan at that time, I, I wasn't familiar with him, but you know, Marty Kagan's, like this really amazing product leader and, and, and kind of, uh, forefather of the modern agile product pod models. And we ended up, you know, pivoting the whole company that way. And it's been a tremendous turnaround for us.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 15:43

What did you see in terms of. Execution and speed to, so we have the top three identified, and then there, those sounded like three pretty chunky initiatives. I mean, one of those could be a full-time job, but there's three on the table. What did you see in terms of, okay, now these things are moving in this amount of time, or, you know, it, it took a little while to get off the ground, but once it did it, it really took off. Or like, oh my gosh, Emily, she just took it and I backed off, or I was involved in these key areas and it just kind of happened.

Taking Ownership and Delegation

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 16:12

You know. Sometimes the stuff I give them or I give them to my chief of staff, they actually can just run with it themselves. Um, I remember at one point we were launching a new logo. And it was a busy season for us, so it's like, who's gonna take ownership for this? I'm like, no one has capacity. I'm like, well, Miriam, it's yours now. You know, figure it out. We're gonna have to get a video, a website, a landing page, like all this stuff, like it's yours. Obviously I supported herself, but really, you know, she owned it. cases like this, when it's, it's a little bit more sensitive, like, how do we do product? Um. I had to actually replace also the head of product and the head of engineering to really make that change happen. So it's not something she has the authority, uh, to do. Um, so it's, it's, it's just a balance. Like you have to kind of figure out with everything, what can she do, what can I do? Then I would say that even though we have three a quarter, it tended to be like one is a priority every month, you know? So it's like this is the month's priority and we're still working on this other stuff. Uh, and then the next, you know, October comes along and it's like, okay, now this, we're shifting to compliance. And then November comes along. Now we're shifting to people ops. Um, and at some point, you know, these products, uh, projects should all have like, kind of like an end date. Like, okay, we took it far enough. Now we're gonna hand it off, you know? So for example, we had to get a, uh, we also got a new head of people ops, uh, the, the Calvin quote, unquote

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 17:45

Yeah. Yeah.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 17:46

goodbye to

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 17:47

Bye Calvin.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 17:48

yeah, we brought

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 17:49

Yeah.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 17:49

of people ops in and, um, you know, they built a new team and got going and it's like, we're done. Like, I mean, we did our job basically. And, and, uh, you know, onto the next challenge.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 18:01

So after Miriam's in for 90 days, 180 days, what's the cadence like in terms of communication? Check in, Hey, I trust you with this. Just you don't need to ping me about that. Just go do it. These things I'd like to be informed about. How did you kind of establish that rhythm and cadence? Hmm.

Onboarding and Establishing Cadence

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 18:19

You know that that started on day one, and the reason is. I, even though I have a very busy schedule, I'm sure anyone listening to this podcast, a super busy schedule, I basically cleared out a whole week and I'm like, this is Miriam's first week. You are just gonna get a deep download of Chris, you know, you're gonna get to meet my wife and kids. You're gonna come have dinner at my house. We're gonna work every day. You know, my office, I'm gonna give you the, the history of me, my company, the city of Detroit because it's

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 18:49

Wow.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 18:49

and it's gonna affect you. And then there was like a big conference that weekend. It's one of like the biggest conferences in our industry. And, um. I'm like, you're, I think I was speaking probably so I was like, you're coming with me. Like, and you know, we actually, it was in Chicago and I'm in Detroit, so we got in the car, uh, she had her husband with her, so her husband tagged along and we just drove like five hours to Chicago, which is also fantastic

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 19:14

Wow.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 19:15

rides just opened the door for so many more conversations and that set us up, to win from, from day one. it was like right from the beginning, she, she got a very good sense of who I am, how I like to work, and then some of the other stuff. I'm trying to even think if it was conscious like I, there, there was probably some conscious element to it, but I can't even recall it now. It just feels so natural for us, um, she understands how I. Very well, and she could start to probably around 90 days really anticipate, um,

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 19:53

Hmm.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 19:53

what I would say about something, uh, and how I'd feel about it, where she wouldn't need to ask and, and like something that might be as mundane as, uh, by coffee order, right? Like some, whatever the, the special, uh, day is with oat milk. Um, how I would respond to, you know, um, an irate client, for example.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 20:18

Gotcha. What are you thinking about as you bring on a second Chief of staff?

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 20:24

So actually we brought in second GFS staff.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 20:26

Oh, okay.

Hiring a New Chief of Staff

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 20:28

Yep. Uh, last month, Miriam is now the executive director of one of our sister companies called GMW and She is my new chief of staff. And um, this was really interesting actually, because I felt like with this chief of staff, the priorities are different. Um, when we, when I hired Merrim, I feel like we had so many fires going on in the company, and so I was like, I really need someone that's gonna be a firefighter with me, just ready to like, jump into whatever the next challenge is. Um, and you know, a large part credit to Merrim we're two years later, those fires are, are like largely gone. With companies in a really healthy place. Um, but we have new, that just means we have like. The ability now to pursue bigger opportunities.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 21:26

Right.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 21:26

Uh, one of them is, we actually launched a payments company this year, it hasn't taken off yet because we haven't had the ability to focus on building the team and figuring out the exact next steps. And like the demand is through the roof. We, I think we have like 150 or companies we waiting to use our payments company and it's just like. You know, we have our one beta tester and I'm like, we have to get this off the ground. So that was my primary focus. As I was looking for my new chief of staff, I'm like, who is someone that can really help me figure out like what our way forward with this Um, and that's where I ended up finding a chief of staff a bit more technical than than Miriam was. Um, you know, Wiji Hill was a chief of staff to the, kind of like the CTO at Red Hat. And a lot of technical experience, a lot of team building experience, um, and a lot of excitement around this idea of building the payments company. So it's, it's definitely a different, uh, kind of chief of staff than I had with Maryam. Uh, but we're also in a different stage as a company.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 22:28

Yeah, I love that. I wanna highlight a few things you said,'cause I think it's important for listeners, especially principals who listen to this show. Chris invested time to onboard the chief of staff. Correctly. A lot of principals are like, I want chief of Finance, chief Chief of staff. And they, they don't spend time to set that up for success and then it falls down and they, then they come to me when they have problems. But it sounds like you really took the time to invest in your people and in your team members and that that special relationship you have with the chief of staff. So it sounded like you did that on a, a full week of your calendar, drive time to a conference and things like this. And I also love that the chief of staff you needed. The second round was different than the first round. Doesn't mean one is good or bad, right or wrong or better than the other. Just what your company needs in that stage is different. And so you, you were strategic about your chief of staff hire, so I just wanted to highlight those two things'cause they stood out.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 23:24

I will say something common between the chief of staffs is like, what? Because I, I think that's important too. It's like, oh, you get different types of chief of staff, but like. What didn't change is my, um, standards.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 23:38

Ah.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 23:38

I was like, I need a super qualified chief of staff. Um, I was about to not hire one, so I, I remember I met with GHA the first time and I was like, oh, this, this, uh, this woman's incredible, you know, really sharp. Um, but. She just had her second child like tra, she couldn't travel a lot. Now Miriam has basically been on the road with me everywhere. You know, we've been on average traveling every single month internationally, not even domestically like international, right? that's just a deal breaker. So initially I was like, okay, would you, uh, you're, you're fantastic, but. Um, gonna work. So, you know, we had some other roles in company we were exploring with her, including Chief of Staff to my COO. Um, and then, you know, I had, I was down to final, like two finalists, um, these two young men. Um, I was like, they're pretty good. Maybe not quite as good as with GHA and Merriam, but like, but solid for sure. Uh, and they, they could travel, so that was important. And then they both pulled out. And I was like, Hmm. And I had to, I went back to to Zainab, who's my COO, and I was like, did you end up hiring Wajiha? And she's like, well, it's either gonna be Wajiha or this other candidate she was considering. she's like, I'm inclined for the other candidate. I was like, well, if you're going for the other candidate, I think I wanna reexamine Wajiha. have to think about it like now. I have to also restructure the role a little bit because it's like I can't expect them to. Maybe travel with me internationally as much as, uh, I had merrim going with me everywhere. then I thought, is that even that important now? So there was kind of like forced to have that exercise where I said, do I want another merrim? and is that what we, we need right now as a company? And I realized that we don't actually need another Marion, like right now. We need someone to get paid good off the ground. And so we, we, we actually put her through the whole, and I felt terrible about this by the way. not do this. Like this is not a good thing to do. But I put her through the interview process all over again, a new case study with a payments company now. Um, she passed. Yeah. And, and, and flying colors. And so we made her the offer and, and started her this September.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 25:52

Wow, wow. If, if a chief of staff is listening. What advice or guidance or just considerations would you give them? And then I'll ask about advice for a principal, but just if a chief of staff is listening, maybe a, an aspiring chief of staff or a current chief of staff, they're working with a principal who's a founder, C-O-O-C-O-O, what have you, what would you, what would you say to them?

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 26:12

Uh, you, you gotta love the chaos. There is never, never a dull day for a chief of staff. And just like that interview process, like I, like now I think about, I'm kind of embarrassed, but both of my chief of staffs were kind of rejected, initially, right? So. know, it's like, be ready for the unexpected. Be ready for rejection. You know, you gotta prove your grit, uh, because the role requires a lot of grit.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 26:37

Have thick skin be persistent. Yeah. Okay. And what about for fellow principals? So founders or executives who are like, I've heard about this chief of staff thing, but is it, is it really that big a deal? Does it really help help me and my team? What would you say to those folks listening?

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 26:56

I mean, resounding. Yes. I'm trying to think of a good way to put it. Those like, and it's funny because ever since I got a chief, I, I'll be honest, none of my CEO friends had chief of staffs before me,

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 27:11

Hmm.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 27:11

none. And of them had bigger companies. You know,

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 27:16

Hmm.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 27:16

so like I was a little nervous to go down this path.'cause now I feel like, oh am I just like a diva? You know, I'm getting, you know, friends got the 30 million company, million dollar company doesn't have chief of staff and I'm getting one. Um, now it's really interesting, like so many of my friends have gotten chief of staff. Like I know it's not just me. I know there's like a whole industry trend going on. Uh, but at least I was the instigator within my group of friends. And what I am so grateful for with Chief of Staff is I felt like before the chief of staff, I was not able to make substantial progress on the most important things.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 28:00

Hmm.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 28:01

Sometimes we productively procrastinate, like we'll make, we're like, man, I, you know, I don't know how to fix the website Bottleneck or backlog or, or, or challenge we're facing. But I can get this new business contract, I can do this. I, I can do some other things that I have control over. This big, messy challenge though, like, I don't know. and my chief of staff has basically not let me get away with that. It's like, you know, you're gonna take care of this. That little thing take care of, you know, or I, we can delegate that to somebody, but like, I'm not gonna let you lose your focus,

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 28:37

Yeah.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 28:37

You're the only one that can solve this. You gotta do it. Um, and you can do it. Uh, I think maybe that goes a little bit understated too, but there are many times where Miriam is not just enabling me, but she's, she would be cheerleading me or now wajiha, like cheerleading me. Like, you've got this, like, you know what you're doing. Look what you built. Like you can do this. Like, no challenge is too big for you. And it's like, yeah, yeah, I can't do this. You know, I'm gonna do it.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 29:03

Your little pep talk. So it sounded like personal trainer, chief of staff came in and said, you are gonna do leg day, Chris? Like, you're not gonna, you're not gonna skip that. And then like, here we go. Let's go buddy. Here we go. Big, big air. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay. Very cool. And you know, you've been so generous with your time and speaking about chief of staff and your team, but can you say a little bit more about your company? I know it is mission driven and you guys are doing a lot of good work out there, but just. Anything that you want people to know or anything that you're excited for in, in 26 that's coming up?

Mission and Vision of Launchgood

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 29:34

Oh, definitely. I mean, so Launchgood I mentioned it's kind of like a Muslim GoFundMe. I, the first thing, people always raise their eyebrows. They're like, why is a guy named Chris leading a Muslim company? So, you know, cats outta the bag. I became Muslim, you know, many years ago. Um, and uh, you know, proud Muslim. I love the Muslim community. I think it's a pretty, pretty awesome community that is often overseen. A community that has a lot of, historically, has really contributed amazingly to civilization, you know, from coffee to soap, to modern medicine and surgery, et cetera, et cetera. admittedly, we aren't kind of. our own weight in the 21st century. Launchgood was built on the belief that like if we could create a platform that is funding those change makers in the world and providing them the resources to do their good in the world, it would actually inspire, like those stories themselves become inspirations and seeds to, to plant a dozen more. And those dozen more, plant a dozen more, and all of a sudden you get this exponential growth of good, uh, across the world. Uh, so that's how, what we're built off of as a premise, um, we are, you know, we have people of all faiths that actually work in the company and, and no faiths even. But I will say as a driven company, people that love to see, like, know, let's have this focus on positivity, and focus on, you know, building something better, uh, for the world. We're getting a lot of people joining our company. I'm just, especially after. These last two years of a war on genocide that's been going on in Gaza, like so many people, um, leaving companies like. Tesla, Google, IBM, et cetera, to join Launchgood, um, and kind of turn around their work. You know, feeling like they're going from enabling a genocide to, to standing up and supporting the people, um, know, that are suffering. And so I would just say this, like, if there's someone listening that's, you know, really interested in a mission-driven company like Launchgood, we're always hiring, always hiring. Uh, and you can reach out to me. I'm on, I'm very active on Twitter at arve. you can find me. And, uh, always open for conversation.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 31:50

Beautiful. So if you, if you're looking for a place to work and also just other folks who are looking into what Launchgood does and other ways to support that, we'll put everything Chris just mentioned in the show notes. You can find him. Yes. But Chris, thank you so much again. Really appreciate your time and thank you for all that you are doing in the world.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 32:07

Uh, you're welcome and don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn for my uh, B2B sales tips with judo.

emily-sander_1_10-23-2025_123352 32:13

Get some powerful memes in there. Awesome. Thank you, Chris.

chris-blauvelt_1_10-23-2025_153352 32:17

Thank you.