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=> Can you really separate your life from your business?

=> What if your hardest experiences became the foundation for your greatest success?

=> Are the patterns in your organisation helping it grow? Or, are they holding it back?

If you’ve ever faced setbacks that shaped how you lead today, this episode is for you.

In this episode, John Downes speaks with Marie Felsbourg, founder of Astral Consulting, a specialist in information management and governance. Marie built her business from personal challenge and resilience, helping Australia’s largest corporates and government agencies prepare for the AI era with systems that ensure compliance, trust and performance. Her story shows how discipline, self-awareness and people development can turn adversity into long-term growth.

What You’ll Learn:

== How to turn personal hardship into leadership strength

== Why developing people from the bottom up drives business resilience

== How information patterns define your organisation’s success

== Practical ways to prepare your business for the AI future

== The importance of discipline and accountability in growth

Highlights

00:00 Meet the Founder: Marie Felsbourg

00:43 The Fascination with Patterns

03:07 The Birth of Astral Consulting

06:03 Challenges and Growth

06:32 Information Management and AI

09:09 Building a Business from the Ground Up

15:38 Navigating Personal and Professional Life

25:10 Intern Programs and Global Opportunities

30:27 The Unexpected Benefits of COVID-19

31:26 Navigating the CEO Masterclass

32:14 The Importance of Perspective and Resilience

35:43 The Role of Information Governance

37:45 Innovating Business Models with Managed Services

44:20 Leveraging Positive Psychology for Team Development

51:52 Advice for Young Professionals and CEOs

55:23 #CriticalFewActions™ for Senior Leaders

The #CriticalFewActions™ You Can Do Today

When I work with successful business leaders, I often see that many struggle to connect the personal lessons from their own lives to how they lead their organisations. Marie’s story reminds us that resilience, focus and discipline are as vital in business as in life.

Here are the three key insights I took from the conversation:

Insight 1 – Turning personal challenges into business strength

Many founders separate personal and business growth, yet they often inform each other.

So, what can you do?

• Reflect on how your life experiences shape your leadership decisions.

• Build systems and habits that keep you focused when life throws its next curve ball.

Insight 2 – Developing people from the bottom up

Growth stalls when leaders don’t invest in the next generation of talent and processes.

So, what can you do?

• Create structured development pathways for your team—from interns to leaders.

• Build repeatable processes so knowledge is retained and scaled, not lost in handover.

Insight 3 – Understanding patterns in information management

Most leaders don’t see the repeating patterns in their operations until they become bottlenecks.

So, what can you do?

• Map the critical information flows in your organisation and ask where data gets lost or duplicated.

• Use those patterns to identify what truly creates value and what only creates noise.

If you found this conversation valuable, please Subscribe / Follow, leave a comment, and share this episode with your peer business leaders. Your support helps us reach more CEOs who want to improve organisation performance and value.

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Sponsor: The CEO Masterclass in Strategic Planning and Implementation

Are you a business owner or CEO striving to elevate your business to new heights? But right now… you’re not hitting the targets or objectives your business needs to achieve. Or maybe you’ve hit a roadblock you can’t move past, a major challenge with no clear solution, and there’s no one in your world you can talk to about it.

This isn’t another generic leadership course. It’s a highly focused, small-group programme where you’ll work alongside your peers, on your business, break through barriers, and implement real-world strategies; not just to solve the problems holding your business back, but to accelerate your growth faster than you thought possible.

Find out more here:  https://www.criticalfewactions.com.au/ceo-masterclass/

Final Thought

Every business leader faces moments where personal and professional lines blur. The challenge is to recognise that those experiences aren’t distractions—they’re lessons. Like Marie, use them to sharpen your leadership, strengthen your team, and build a business that stands resilient no matter what comes next.

#CriticalFewActions #CEOMasterclass