Keith Langbo never planned to be a founder.

He grew up watching his dad spend 50 years in one company, started his own career at Deloitte, then became employee #5 (and eventually president) of a high-growth recruitment start-up.

In 2012 he quit, moved 900 miles, and launched Kellica—bootstrapped, no investors, no salary for six years.

What you’ll hear:

• 721 coffees in six months – the networking sprint that funded his first hires.
• Fail-forward culture – why Jeff & Bill (his first bosses) celebrated mistakes.
• Founder ≠ CEO – the very different skills that take you from 0-5 M vs 50 M.
• Moving to London and starting over: 456 cups of tea, 1st UK hire, zero office rent.
• Hiring lessons: fire faster, fill your gaps, culture > résumé.
• The longest dry spell: six years without a paycheck and how he kept going.
• Final advice: “If you can’t survive me telling you don’t do it, you’re not ready.”

Real talk on risk, resilience and why the fast now eat the slow.

Claudia Green went from agoraphobic teen to boiler-room recruiter, then hit absolute rock bottom in 2019—job gone, relationship over, family illness.

Lying beside her sick grandma, she registered “Scaling Up,” a fractional talent & HR firm that now supports VC-backed start-ups across Europe.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why burnout + “nothing to lose” can be the best launchpad
• The two founder traits, Claudia says, predict low attrition and high output
• Agency-recruitment war stories (holes-in-shoes firings, anyone?)
• Her biggest founder mistake: kindness that crippled the team
• How to be both a decent human and an authoritarian leader—no, it’s not easy

Raw talk on resilience, people problems and paying maternity out of your pocket.

Two totally different routes, one very real destination: founder reality.

• Sydney de Arenas grew up around family businesses, quit a soul-crushing sales job at 23 and never looked back—until a bad hire in Paris almost wiped her out.
• Audrina went from pro Latin-ballroom dancer to VP at a performance-marketing startup—then a shock lay-off pushed her straight into Summit Chasers and, eventually, co-founding Hive with Sydney.

Together they unpack:

• The myth of the “glamorous” founder life—and why their bank balances said otherwise.
• Why early wins can be dangerous (including the car Audrina wishes she’d never bought).
• Sydney’s jaw-dropping investor meeting that turned into a personal-space assault—and how she rebuilt her fundraising strategy.
• A Guatemalan hostel “fridge scam,” tornado-dodging sales calls, and other moments you truly can’t make up.
• What not to do next: overspending, saying yes to every client, and building a company that can’t survive without you.

Raw, practical and occasionally ridiculous—exactly what this show is about.