Greg Woods in a grey checked jacket

Official media profile

Greg
Woods

Trusted Advisor · Expert Negotiator · Successful Entrepreneur · Investor · Executive Film Producer

“Sought by those who cannot afford to be wrong.”

The measure of trusted counsel

Beyond Any Single Venture

Portrait of Greg Woods in a navy suit

Greg Woods advises the people who run things.

Over a career spanning 30+ industries, he has created more than $1B in value for 200+ C-suite teams through strategic vision and operational excellence, negotiated several billion dollars in contracts, and led over $100M in advisory services - building high-performing teams, selling and delivering solutions, and inventing new approaches.

Greg’s work sits at the highest levels of leadership and advisory to those responsible for significant enterprises, resources and capital. Much of it is private by design, and remains so.

The Advisor

Judgment for consequential decisions.

The work is defined by trust, discretion, and outcomes that endure long after the results are delivered.

What Can Be Said

  • His counsel is sought in rooms most advisors never enter due to his pragmatic approach and solution-focused mindset with a strong emphasis on outcomes.
  • He advises principals responsible for multi-billion-dollar mandates through their most consequential decisions.
  • He is the inventor of proprietary spend analytics deployed at the highest levels of leadership (U.S. Patent 7,398,227).
  • His discretion is as valued as his judgment, which is precisely why the work continues.

Measured Impact

A career in evidence

Scale, reach, and trust - measured across the decisions that matter.

Value created

$1B+

for 200+ C-suite teams through strategy, operational excellence, change management, risk and regulatory compliance and merger savings development

Reach

30+

industries including: Financial Services, Insurance, Oil and Gas, Industrial Manufacturing, Cable, Media, Telecom, Utilities and many others

Contracts negotiated

Billions

of dollars of the most complex deals through winning strategies with long-term mutually beneficial outcomes

Advisory services led

$100M+

in challenging and high-impact engagements under C-suite purview

Ventures built

2

advisory firms co-founded, including one that scaled to 80 employees and was acquired for more than $20 million

Intellectual property

U.S. Patent

7,398,227 for a method and system enabling organizations to create massive expense savings value

The Advisor Behind the Numbers

A former decorated U.S. Navy officer, Greg pairs strong servant leadership capabilities, strategic insight with operational discipline, and results focus with a negotiator's instinct for leverage and human behavior.

  • Top 100 Chief Procurement Officers (2012)
  • SAP Ariba Global Advisory Board
  • MBA, University of San Diego
  • BS, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Storyteller & Builder

Executive Film Producer

Josephine’s Pearl

Greg is Executive Producer of the upcoming film Josephine’s Pearl—an extension of the same instinct that drives his advisory work: making impact with the right people for the right things.

Visionary Leader

Greg builds trusted relationships and drives effective outcomes across people, teams, and leaders at every level through a direct, practical approach combining clear communication with compelling, vision-led storytelling to align stakeholders and unite teams behind shared goals.

Greg Woods seated in a grey checked jacket
LionStar Legacy Enterprise Offices logo

A Deliberate Chapter

LionStar Legacy Enterprise Offices

Greg could advise in any arena. He and his wife, Kim Woods, chose to create a new firm in a field the world overlooks.

Born from a personal contrast, one parent honored with a full-military service and 300 people, the other laid to rest with only an online notice during lockdown, LionStar Legacy Enterprise Offices (LS LEO) is the nation’s first Legacy Enterprise Office for independent funeral home owners: creating a third path between closing the doors and selling to a consolidator.

The Four Pillars

Choice01
Capacity02
Control03
Care04

Clients typically win back 10–15 hours per week and lift profitability 10–15%.

That a man of Greg’s skillset and experience turned his attention here is precisely the point; and it’s a statement about where he’s determined his expertise is needed most.

Media Questions

01You’ve advised leaders across 30-plus industries and created over a billion dollars in value. In your own words—what do you actually do?
I help leaders make the decisions they can’t afford to get wrong. No matter what, it is about how to improve, whether it be operational, leadership or other challenges, they all lead to financial improvement. Sometimes that’s a negotiation, sometimes it’s a strategy, sometimes it’s simply telling someone the truth no one else in the room will say. Across more than 30 industries, the challenges may be different, but the patterns are the same. When the stakes are high and the margin for error is thin, my job is to make sure that a sustainable outcome holds up long after I’ve left. The billion dollar-plus in value isn’t the goal. The goal is what happens when the right questions are asked and the right solutions are deployed.
02Much of your work is private by design and stays that way. Without naming anyone—what kind of problem brings someone to Greg Woods?
I am brought in when an organization faces problems that don’t have an obvious answer and can’t afford a wrong one. By the time someone brings me in, they have usually exhausted the easy options. What they need isn’t more noise, it’s focused thinking, judgement, and discretion. I’ll say this plainly: the confidentiality isn’t a formality, it’s part of the value. The people I work with trust me precisely because I don’t talk about them or their challenges. So, I’ll tell you the shape of the work, but never the names and honestly, that’s the whole point.
03You’ve negotiated several billion dollars in contracts. What does almost everyone get wrong about negotiation?
They think it’s about winning. It isn’t. A deal you “win” at the other side’s expense tends to fall apart the moment the leverage shifts. Real negotiation is about understanding what the other party actually needs, often something they haven’t said out loud, and building an outcome both sides will still honor years later. Most people negotiate the price. I understand people, their true motivations, both known and sometimes unknown, and negotiate the relationship to create a winning, equitably valuable deal. That’s why the agreements last.
04You hold a U.S. patent and co-founded two advisory firms; one that sold for over $20M. What connects the inventor and the entrepreneur in you?
Both start with the same question: what’s missing to make this the most effective it can be and can I build it? The patent came from seeing a problem that no existing tool solved. The firms came from seeing advice being delivered in a way I thought could be done far better, again, built around better relationships with clients and our own teams. I’m not content to just diagnose something—I roll up my sleeves and want to build the thing that fixes it. Having one of those firms sold was validation, but the building is what I actually enjoy.
05You’re executive producer on the upcoming film Josephine’s Pearl. How does a trusted advisor end up making a film?
The same way I end up doing everything else—I forged a great relationship with some people who had developed a story worth telling and were putting together the right people and team to tell it. Executive producing isn’t as far from advising as it sounds. You discover something worth putting your time and resources into, then you assemble the right talent to help bring it to life. Josephine’s Pearl mattered to me, so I got behind it. I’ve never been interested in being uni-dimensional, and this fit into my overall vision. A “Yes” to being an executive producer was easy.
06You began as a U.S. Navy officer. How does that first chapter still show up in how you advise today?
Everything I do traces back to it-everything. The Navy taught me how to lead, how to gain perspective by walking in another man’s shoes, how to have disciplined focus, how to be the best servant leader that I could. It gave me a proving ground to develop composure when the stakes are real, discipline and doing the right thing when no one’s watching, and discretion as a way of life. The leadership and integrity instilled aren’t credentials you hang on a wall-they are a state of mind and being. You learn to hold sensitive things carefully and to act without theater. Decades later, that’s still exactly how I operate and why my relationships with all my clients and the teams in which I have worked are still strong today.
07You could advise in almost any arena. Why funeral homes, and why now?
Honestly, this is an industry where the need is greatest and the attention is least. Independent funeral home owners are being squeezed out and either closing their doors or selling to consolidators who strip away everything that made them matter to their community. These are people who have graciously served families for generations during their most difficult time, and no one is helping them achieve a better balanced life and the value that they could have. I could take my expertise to any industry, but I chose this one on purpose. That’s not a step down from the rooms I usually work in, it is a decision about where that expertise is needed most.
08LionStar offers owners a “third path.” What are you giving them that closing the doors or selling to a consolidator can’t?
Their independence. Closing means giving up, and selling means handing your family’s name and legacy to someone or something who only sees it as part of their inventory. LionStar creates the third path—funeral home owners keep their business, name, legacy and standards. More importantly, they get the enterprise-level business, leadership and operational guidance they never had access to before now. We built it on four pillars: Choice, Capacity, Control, and Care. In practice, owners tend to win back 10 to 15 hours a week and lift profitability 10 to 15 percent, or more. The real value comes when the owner has the bandwidth to determine which path is right for them, their business, and the legacy they want to leave. We get them there.
09You built LionStar with your wife, Kim. What does each of you bring that the other doesn’t?
Kim is truly one of the sharpest strategic minds and operators I have ever worked with-and I have worked with “the best and the brightest” across all the top-tier consulting firms and client companies. She has spent 25 years in the C-suite, working with nearly 600 leaders, over 125 corporate executives, 300,000 team members, and has been a KPI strategist to more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies. She sees the machinery of a business and can dissect it so quickly in a way that no other strategic advisor can. She’s the one asking what’s possible; I’m the one who builds the relationships, operations and systems that make it real. We don’t overlap much, we complement each other perfectly, which is exactly why we are so effective.
10The idea was born from how differently your two families’ losses were honored. What did that contrast teach you about legacy?
It taught me that how we say goodbye should be honored as a way we valued a life. Kim’s father received a full service with 300 people and the military honor he earned. My mother was laid to rest during lockdown with little more than a quiet online notice. It highlighted the disparity between the events through two completely different farewells. That contrast never left us. It is why LionStar exists, so the people who help families truly honor a life can remain open and thrive long enough to keep doing it. This isn’t a business plan. It’s personal not only to us, but to everyone on this planet as there is nothing more certain than every single human will require the services of a funeral for someone they love and eventually themselves. It’s personal and should be for all of us.

Inquiries

For inquiries, please reach out to my media coordinator at katy@lionstarlegacy.com.