Scaling yourself as an executive is usually treated as a training problem. Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech Americas, treats it as an access problem. His answer is a personal board of directors: a standing group of people who have already walked the path the executive is on, selected for different experience rather than similar background, and approached with the value exchange defined before the first conversation. When an executive has outgrown the counsel available inside their own company, Hasemeyer holds that a personal board of people who walked the walk in slightly different ways will produce guidance no single mentor delivers, a practice he began in his mid-20s as an analyst-level business development rep at Spire Digital and still runs 20 years later as CEO of Valtech Americas.
Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast, framed the problem the personal board solves: an organization will not grow past its leader, so the leader must grow first to bring the organization along. Hasemeyer’s own path gives the practice its evidence. He rose from analyst-level business development rep to CEO at Spire Digital, steering the firm to 900% revenue growth and a corporate exit, managed a $165 million business at Kin and Carta while doubling nearshore headcount year over year, and moved from Chief Revenue and Client Officer to CEO of Valtech Americas within a two-year tenure.
Who this episode is for: executives who have hit the level where nobody inside the company has done the next job before, and who need counsel from outside the org chart rather than another training program.
Key Takeaways
- A personal board of directors outperforms a single mentor because membership is selected for difference. Adam Hasemeyer recruits people who reached the same destination by a slightly different route, which gives him several versions of the path rather than one.
- The value exchange must be defined before the first ask. Hasemeyer entered his board relationships with three answers ready: what a personal board of directors is, what each side gives and gets, and the specific thing he was trying to learn.
- Senior people say yes more often than executives expect, because sharing experience is the return they receive. Hasemeyer found that people get a lot from entering other people’s lives and sharing what they have been through, which means the ask is closer to an offer than an imposition.
- A personal board and an executive coach solve different problems and will not substitute for each other. Hasemeyer runs both, plus team-based coaching on trust and credibility and instruments including StrengthsFinder and the Enneagram.
- Board membership expires as the company changes stage. Hasemeyer names three transitions where the required counsel shifts completely: a single-person business reaching 20 people, a 20-person business reaching 100, and a 100-person business reaching 10,000.
Executives Select Personal Board Members Who Reached the Same Destination by a Different Route
Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech Americas, was challenged by a mentor in his mid-20s to build a personal board of directors, and his selection standard has stayed the same ever since. The requirement is not seniority alone. It is people who have walked the path before you with diverse experiences, and who, in Hasemeyer’s phrasing, walked the walk and talked the talk but may have done it in a slightly different way.
That last clause is the selection rule most executives skip. A board of people who took identical routes will return identical advice, which reduces a board to one voice with several faces. Hasemeyer selects for difference in route so that each conversation surfaces a version of the path he has not seen.
| Selection criterion | What it means in practice | What it rules out |
| Has walked the path before you | The person has already held the role, run the transition, or carried the responsibility the executive is moving toward | Peers at the same stage who are solving the problem at the same time you are |
| Brings a different experience of that path | The person reached a similar destination through a different sequence of companies, industries, or decisions | A roster of people from one company, one function, or one playbook |
| Covers a defined ambition | Each member maps to a personal, professional, career, or business ambition the executive named in advance | Collecting impressive names with no stated reason for each one |
Hasemeyer applies the roster across four categories he names explicitly: personal ambitions, professional ambitions, career ambitions, and business ambitions. Treating those as separate lines is what keeps the board from collapsing into a group of people who all advise on the same question.
Executives Define the Value Exchange Before Asking a Board Member for Time
Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech Americas, describes his first reaction to the personal board idea as a set of questions rather than a plan. Those questions became the preparation standard he now applies before any approach:
- What does a personal board of directors actually mean in this situation, and what will it produce that existing relationships will not?
- What is the value exchange between their time and my time?
- What is the specific thing I am trying to learn from this person?
The second question is the one that changes the conversation. An executive who has answered it is proposing an exchange rather than requesting a favor, and Hasemeyer found the exchange is more balanced than most people assume. He describes senior people enjoying and getting a lot from the fact that they will enter other people’s lives and share their experiences. The return for the board member is the act of sharing itself.
The third question protects the relationship after the first meeting. A named learning objective gives the conversation a subject, gives the board member something specific to answer, and tells the executive when that member’s contribution is complete. Hasemeyer’s own board started from that discipline and expanded into what he calls a whole world opening up, which is the compounding effect of one prepared conversation producing the next introduction.
Executives Pair a Personal Board With Executive Coaches and Team Diagnostics
A personal board of directors will not do every job, and Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech Americas, runs three instruments in parallel rather than treating any one of them as the complete answer to scaling himself.
| Instrument | What it addresses | How Hasemeyer has used it |
| Personal board of directors | Lived experience of a path the executive has not walked yet, drawn from outside the company | Built in his mid-20s at Spire Digital and rebuilt continuously through Kin and Carta and Valtech Americas |
| Executive coach | The leader’s own patterns, decisions, and blind spots, worked on privately and continuously | Hasemeyer has engaged executive coaches for himself personally throughout his career |
| Team-based coaching and diagnostics | Trust and credibility between members of a leadership team, and how individuals will work together | Team-based coaches plus instruments including StrengthsFinder and the Enneagram, applied to leadership team relationships |
The distinction matters because executives frequently ask one instrument to do another’s job. Hasemeyer’s stated purpose across all three is the same underlying target: interpersonal trust building and empathy, which he identifies as the thing that determines whether a leadership team functions. The instruments differ in who they act on. The board acts on the executive’s information. The coach acts on the executive’s behavior. Team coaching acts on the relationships between the executives.
Executives Rebuild the Personal Board at Every Stage of Company Growth
Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech Americas, does not describe the personal board as something built once. He describes it as a standing question he keeps asking: who is Adam’s personal board of directors right now, and who is the community of people he will talk with about his current ambitions. The roster changes because the problem changes.
Hasemeyer names three growth transitions where the counsel an executive requires shifts completely: a single-person business trying to reach 20 people, a 20-person business trying to reach 100, and a 100-person business trying to reach 10,000. A board member who guided the first transition has no direct experience of the third. Keeping that member on the roster out of loyalty produces advice one stage behind the company.
His own progression shows the pattern applied. At Spire Digital, a 20-person firm, founder Mike Gilman put Hasemeyer in rooms he says he did not deserve to be in and gave him autonomy and ownership to drive things forward, which is the earliest version of the same principle: proximity to people operating above your level. At Kin and Carta, running a $165 million business and doubling nearshore headcount year over year, Hasemeyer was handed the M&A remit as a first-time acquirer and describes a whole world opening up around how global businesses use strategic acquisitions. At Valtech Americas, leading complex integrations following a major corporate acquisition, he continues to state plainly that he has not completely cracked the nut on cultural integration and that every situation carries new lessons. The board keeps changing because the executive keeps arriving at problems he has not solved before.
Principles Executives Can Apply From This Episode
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Select board members for a different route, not a similar one | Recruit people who reached a comparable destination through a different sequence of companies and decisions, so each conversation adds a version of the path you have not seen | Hasemeyer built his first board in his mid-20s as an analyst-level business development rep at Spire Digital, a 20-person firm, and rose to CEO of that company, which reached 900% revenue growth and a corporate exit |
| Answer the value exchange question before the first ask | Arrive with the exchange defined and the learning objective named, which converts a favor request into a proposal the board member gets something from | The practice Hasemeyer began in his mid-20s carried him through a $165 million business at Kin and Carta and a two-year progression from Chief Revenue and Client Officer to CEO of Valtech Americas |
| Run the board, the coach, and team coaching as separate instruments | Use the board for outside experience, the executive coach for your own patterns, and team-based coaching for trust and credibility between executives | Hasemeyer ran executive coaching for himself alongside team-based coaching and instruments including StrengthsFinder and the Enneagram while leading complex integrations at Valtech Americas following a major corporate acquisition |
| Get into rooms above your level before you have earned them | Proximity to people operating a stage ahead delivers pattern exposure that formal training does not, and it usually requires someone senior deciding to grant it | Mike Gilman, founder of Spire Digital, put Hasemeyer in rooms he says he did not deserve to be in and gave him autonomy and ownership, and Hasemeyer went from analyst-level business development rep to CEO of the firm |
| Rebuild the roster when the company reaches its next stage | Treat board membership as tied to a growth transition rather than to the relationship, and re-ask who belongs on it as the company moves between stages | Hasemeyer named the transitions where counsel stops transferring, one person to 20, 20 to 100, and 100 to 10,000, and his own board turned over across a 20-person regional firm, a $165 million business, and the CEO seat at Valtech Americas |
Quotes From This Episode
- “Early in my career, I had a mentor really challenge me to create my own personal board of directors, which at the time I think I was mid-20s.” — Adam Hasemeyer, CEO, Valtech Americas
- “What’s the value exchange between their time and my time? What is it that I’m trying to learn?” — Adam Hasemeyer, CEO, Valtech Americas
- “Talk to people that have walked the path before you have with diverse experiences, because people enjoy and really get a lot from the fact that they can enter into other people’s lives and share some of their experiences.” — Adam Hasemeyer, CEO, Valtech Americas
- “From that point forward, I’ve continuously been looking at who’s Adam’s personal board of directors” — Adam Hasemeyer, CEO, Valtech Americas
- “The founder, a gentleman named Mike Gilman, really put me in rooms that I didn’t deserve to be in and really gave me a lot of autonomy and ownership to kind of drive things forward.” — Adam Hasemeyer, CEO, Valtech Americas
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you build a personal board of directors?
Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech Americas, builds a personal board by starting with three answers rather than a list of names: what the board is meant to produce, what the value exchange between his time and the member’s time will be, and the specific thing he is trying to learn from each person. He then recruits people who have walked the path before him with diverse experiences, spanning his personal, professional, career, and business ambitions. Hasemeyer began the practice in his mid-20s while working as an analyst-level business development rep at Spire Digital and has run it continuously through a $165 million business at Kin and Carta and into the CEO seat at Valtech Americas. Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, frames the underlying requirement as a leader growing first so the organization will grow with them.
Who should be on your personal board of directors?
Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech Americas, selects people who have walked the walk and talked the talk but may have done it in a slightly different way, which means the roster is chosen for variety of route rather than similarity of background. A board of people who took identical paths returns identical advice, so Hasemeyer maps members against four separate lines: personal ambitions, professional ambitions, career ambitions, and business ambitions. He also treats membership as stage-dependent, naming the transitions from one person to 20, from 20 to 100, and from 100 to 10,000 as points where the counsel an executive requires changes completely. Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, asked Hasemeyer directly what has allowed him to scale himself personally, and the personal board is the answer Hasemeyer gave first.
Is a personal board of directors different from an executive coach?
Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech Americas, runs both because they act on different things. The personal board supplies lived experience of a path he has not walked yet, drawn from people outside his company, while an executive coach works on his own patterns and decisions continuously and privately. Hasemeyer adds a third instrument, team-based coaching on trust and credibility between members of a leadership team, supported by tools including StrengthsFinder and the Enneagram. He identifies interpersonal trust building and empathy as the shared target of all three, applying at every size of business from 20 people to 10,000. Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, works with executives on the same problem of scaling the leader ahead of the organization.
Executives Work With Glenn Gow to Scale Themselves Before They Scale the Company
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits, drawing on 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
