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Hello Chaos episodes
- Ep. 213 Debbie Simmons - You Didn't Burn Out Because You're Weak
Most of what the world calls founder success is just survival mechanisms wearing a nicer outfit. Control, hustle, urgency, being the one who holds it all together. Debbie Simmons ran on those for years and built a multimillion dollar organization from nothing. Then her body shut down and handed her a lesson she couldn't outwork.
Debbie is the CEO of AnchorPoint and the mind behind a framework she calls the architecture of trust. She gets specific about the defaults that quietly run your company under pressure, the org chart exercise that shows you where you're the bottleneck, and the brutal work of letting go so the thing you built can survive without you. If scaling has ever felt like carrying more instead of building something that holds, this one lands close to home. Here's what stood out.
1️⃣ You didn't burn out because you're weak
Founders love to blame themselves when they hit the wall. Debbie ran a multimillion dollar organization until her body shut down, and the lesson wasn't that she lacked grit. Life got bigger and her structure stayed the same. Keep answering that with more hustle and you're just paying a trust tax in dollars, speed, and your own health until something finally gives.2️⃣ Write your name in every box, then get out
Draw the org chart you'd need at ten times your size. Now write your name in every box you're actually doing today. You'll see it instantly. You are the whole company, and that's exactly what caps it. Your job is to work your way out of your own job, because a business that only runs on you can only grow as far as you can carry it.3️⃣ The biggest growth has to happen in you
You can hire the COO, draw the perfect system, and still wreck it by stepping in every time something breaks. Debbie learned the real work was calming herself down enough to let the structure hold. Every time you jump back in, you teach your team the answer is always you. Let go, or you stay the bottleneck and the whole thing quietly dies the day you try to step away.Timestamps
00:00 Why the messy middle breaks strong founders
01:56 The loss that rebuilt her definition of impact04:40 She built it all on herself until her body quit08:25 You did not burn out because you are weak11:19 The five defaults founders fall into under pressure14:22 The three things missing when a company stalls16:20 Name your default and the fix gets obvious18:11 The hidden trust tax draining your speed and money23:00 The org chart trick that reveals your real bottleneck27:02 Why companies rarely survive two years past the founder31:18 The growth that has to happen in you first34:27 The injury that forced her to finally stop42:45 Two words that carried her from surviving to flying47:13 Clarity beats adrenaline every single timeIf your business still runs entirely on your back, Debbie has both a framework and a free book to help you build something that can hold without you.
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49 min - Ep. 212 Brian Samson - He Made $10M and Learned the Wrong Lesson
Making a lot of money can teach you the wrong lesson about yourself. Brian Samson turned about two thousand dollars into more than ten million in revenue, ran sixty recruiters, and walked around convinced he was exceptional at sales. He says it plainly now. He wasn't. Then the market shifted, the business went with it, and he had to figure out what was actually his.
What he built next is the interesting part. Brian didn't grow up around business owners, took five or six years to work up the nerve to try anything, and ended up building his first team in Buenos Aires with no playbook and inflation eating the math. Today he runs Plugg Technologies with around a hundred people across Latin America, and his hiring filter has almost nothing to do with cost. He doesn't document his processes. He can't tell you what tomorrow's problem will be. So he hires for something most founders never think to screen for, and it happens to be the same thing that decides which roles AI takes first.
Here's what founders should pull from it.
1️⃣ A good market will fake your competence
Brian went from about two thousand dollars to over ten million in revenue and decided he was great at sales. He wasn't. The money was flooding into VC backed companies and he happened to be standing in front of it, and when that dried up the business went with it. If you can't separate your skill from your conditions, you'll scale the wrong one, and you'll find out which was which at the worst possible moment.2️⃣ Hire for ambiguity, not for cheap
Brian doesn't document anything. He chases things and he doesn't know what tomorrow's problem is, which means anyone he hires has to move without a script. That's the filter most founders skip because they're comparing hourly rates instead of asking whether this person can operate when nobody tells them what to do. Cheap and process driven looks great on a spreadsheet right until you're paying twice for the same work, and it's the exact profile AI is coming for first.3️⃣ Your best year should fund the next thing
When the money was pouring in, Brian did what founders do and hired ten expensive people in the States to build an empire on top of it. Months later the market cracked. The only thing that saved him was quietly using part of that surplus to start something else instead of pouring all of it back into the business that was already working. Treat a great run as a window and not a new baseline, because the window closes and it never gives you notice.Timestamps
00:00 The nearshore bet most US founders have never considered
05:48 Five years of imposter syndrome before he'd try anything09:42 The no that turned into two million dollars13:42 Buenos Aires with no playbook and no safety net17:08 Two thousand dollars turned into ten million in revenue19:34 He thought he was a great salesperson and he wasn't20:04 The founder's trap of hiring big when things go well21:26 When the need disappeared the business went with it23:54 The number two who keeps the trains on time32:20 Why documented process breaks founders who don't document34:45 A rough hand builds the exact people you're looking for37:55 The roles AI takes first and the ones it multiplies41:00 He had it in him the whole time and was just afraid47:28 Stop fixing the commas and go get a customerBrian told us every message submitted through his website goes straight to him. So if you're making a hiring decision, now's the time to reach out.
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48 min - Ep. 211 Gary Acevedo - Your Business Is Stuck Where You Are
Gary Acevedo can look at a room and tell you what is about to go wrong in it. Not the strategy, the thing underneath. He has spent forty years on this, starting from a first year of college where he was brilliant, capable, and a week from a nervous breakdown. What pulled him out became the work. He founded Rise Leadership Group and The Awakening Retreat around a claim most founders resist on instinct. The business is stuck exactly where the founder is stuck, and effort does not fix that.
The résumé is real. AT&T hired him on the spot after forty five minutes. He has taken a client from a million a year to seven. But the useful part is what he learned along the way, which is that everyone runs one of two theaters in their head and most people live almost entirely in the one built from fear. That is where the ego lives, and the defensiveness, and the procrastination you cannot explain to yourself. Jennifer pushes on it from the brand side, since Bright Marketing renamed their whole system to brand therapy after realizing the blocker was never strategy. It was leaders too afraid to pick one.
Gary gives the tools away here. Three of them stuck with us.
1️⃣ You get scared, you get busy, and it makes everything worse
When pressure hits, the instinct is to push. More effort, more hours, more grinding. Gary spent decades watching that reflex tank people's productivity instead of saving it. His fix sounds soft until you try it. Three breaks a day where you do something that actually lights you up, because you come back to the problem as a different person. Skip it and you keep solving today's problem with yesterday's exhausted brain.
2️⃣ You are not afraid of failing. You are afraid of what success would prove.
Everybody says rejection is the big fear. Gary says that one is nothing compared to the fear of success. Push hard enough and you start pressing against the story you made up as a kid about what is wrong with you, and some part of you does not want to find out it is true. That is why smart people stall out right before the thing they say they want. If you keep almost getting there, look at what you would have to believe about yourself if you actually did.
3️⃣ Criticism does not fix anyone, including you
There is a parent and a child in your head. When the parent is critical, the child does one of three things. Caves, rebels, or freezes. Jennifer named the version she sees in companies every week and called it functional freezing. Teams stuck in analysis, leaders who cannot commit, everyone waiting for permission. The move is turning that critical voice into a compassionate coach, because all pain is just asking for a correction. Keep criticizing and you will keep wondering why nothing changes.
Timestamps:
00:00 Welcome to Hello Chaos
01:18 The breakdown that started everything04:46 Flyers around town and no idea what he was doing05:30 Why selling feels gross and enrollment does not07:09 The coaching that took a client from 250k to 70k a month09:07 The invisible thing every room has and most leaders ignore12:17 The two theaters running inside your head13:23 Working harder is why your numbers are down14:44 Three recesses a day, even for the busiest people15:02 The answer is never in your circumstances16:36 Build the ending first, then everything else19:39 How to melt your favorite jerk20:37 The stranger he refused to let off the hook25:35 The exercise that changes a sales floor in five minutes29:38 The workshop nobody would leave33:57 Why Jennifer started calling it brand therapy35:37 The fear that is bigger than rejection36:37 The parent and the child living in your head39:01 Criticism is the fastest way to keep yourself down41:35 Five to one, and seven to one at home42:31 The teenage nightmare who got into seven PhD programs45:06 How to hang up the phone on a bad thought48:57 The one skill that moves you up in any company52:11 What still moves him after all these years56:53 One word for the whole journeyGary has spent forty years helping people get out of their own way, and this is where you go if that sounds like something you need.
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55 min - Ep. 210 Kashaun Cooper - Pressure Doesn't Change You. It Reveals You.
Kashaun Cooper used to get written up at work for pushing back on every process anyone handed him. Now founders pay him to build the exact thing he used to hate. That's not a fun contradiction, that's the whole story. He didn't wake up one day and become a systems guy. He just figured out something most people never do, that hating structure and needing structure were never the same fight.
Kashaun runs the Five Stages of Yes Leadership and Development Institute now, and he built it off one lesson that took him years to actually feel: discipline wasn't the problem, design was. He worked hard, stayed consistent, checked every box the books told him to check, and his results still wouldn't hold. If you've ever grinded for months and gotten nowhere or caught yourself doing the same thing you swore you'd stop doing, this one's going to land close to home. Kashaun and Jennifer get into why your business falls apart the second real pressure shows up, why nobody on your team seems to know who actually owns anything, and why burnout usually has less to do with working too hard and more to do with working without a system underneath you. Here's what stuck with us.
1️⃣ You Don't Have A Discipline Problem
Kashaun worked hard for years and stayed disciplined, and his results still stayed shaky. The real shift came when he stopped grinding harder and started building a system he could run on his worst day, not just his best one. He calls it bettering your best, one specific action, done at a set time, every day, whether he feels like it or not. Keep chasing motivation instead of designing the routine and you'll stay inconsistent no matter how hard you try.2️⃣ Pressure Doesn't Break People It Reveals Them
The moment pressure hits, decision speed, ownership, and emotional stability are the first three things to crack, and they crack fast. Kashaun watched a restaurant manager who ran fine on a normal Tuesday completely unravel during a rush he knew was coming every single week. Pressure didn't create that behavior, it just showed everyone what was already sitting underneath the calm. Audit your own defaults now, before the next crisis forces your team to watch you find out in real time.3️⃣ Stop Obsessing Over One Deal Start Planting Fifty
Kashaun calls it regulated ambition, and it's the antidote to the anxiety that comes from staking your whole identity on a single outcome. He plants dozens of seeds at once, some slow, some fast, so when an email gets ignored for eight months and then suddenly gets a reply, he barely notices because he wasn't waiting on it. Founders who fixate on one deal, one client, or one launch burn themselves out watching a pot that was never going to boil on their schedule. Spread your bets, stay patient, and let the ones that are ready do their work on their own timeline.Timestamps:
00:00 Why every founder feels like they are improvising chaos on purpose01:00 The system hater who built his whole business on systems06:06 The leadership advice that only works when nothing is going wrong09:01 Are you a carrot an egg or a coffee bean under pressure10:41 The first thing that breaks on a team the second pressure hits15:14 The restaurant manager who taught him exactly what not to do16:16 You are setting the weather whether you mean to or not19:02 The social media lie about what building a business actually feels like20:56 The real competition every founder is fighting is in the mirror24:49 The moment he realized discipline was never the answer32:19 Why effort without structure is just delusion34:55 Pressure does not create behavior, it exposes it46:39 Why planting fifty seeds beats betting everything on one52:11 The two sentences of advice every founder needs to hearKashaun spent years turning pressure into something predictable, so if you're tired of guessing what's going to break next in your business, go see what he's built.
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PodcastAs mentioned in the episode, here’s the short Pressure System Index assessment
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52 min - Ep. 209 Frank McShane - Their Downtime Was Costing $23,000 an Hour
Frank McShane spent years leading other people's companies before deciding he was done working for someone else's vision. Instead of taking the easy path back into a big firm with someone else's risk tolerance, he bet that most business owners are chasing the wrong fix, hunting for more customers when the real problem was sitting inside their own P&L the whole time.
What makes Frank different is his patience. He does not walk in and start talking. He listens, understands why things are the way they are, then asks one uncomfortable question backed by the client's own numbers. That approach turned a 700 million dollar business bleeding 70 million a year into a 500 million dollar business making 70 million, and it is the same move he ran recently at a paper mill, where he uncovered they were losing 23000 dollars for every hour of downtime they had been quietly measuring in minutes.
Here is what every founder can take from how he does it.
1️⃣ Not all revenue is good revenue
Frank ran the numbers at a fuel distribution client and found 11 percent of their customers generated 80 percent of their profit. The other 71 percent barely moved the needle, but still ate up massive time and attention. If you are treating every customer the same because they all show up on the revenue line, you are working just as hard for the wrong people as the right ones. Pull your own numbers and see who is actually paying your bills.2️⃣ Stop pitching, start doing
Frank's sales process used to drag until a colleague told him to quit presenting and just start consulting in the first meeting. Show the client what you can do instead of explaining it, and the decision gets made a lot faster. A quick no beats a long yes every time, and most founders waste months chasing the long yes because they are scared to hear the quick no.3️⃣ Data only works if it embarrasses someone
Frank did not walk into a paper mill and tell them what was wrong. He asked one question, what does an hour of downtime actually cost you, and let the answer do the damage. Turns out it was 23000 dollars an hour, and they had been measuring it in minutes, which made it look small. If you want people to change, do not hand them your opinion. Hand them their own numbers and get out of the way.Timestamps
00:00 The founder who walked away from two exits to start over solo
00:41 What nobody tells you about the sales process when you go out on your own04:02 The advice that cut his sales cycle in half, start consulting before you start selling06:58 Why he named his company after the fastest way to waste your own time09:39 The referral shift that changed his entire business model10:50 The peaks and valleys problem every solo consultant hits and never talks about14:13 The 700 million dollar business that was losing 70 million a year, and what fixed it16:13 11% of customers, 80 percent of the profit, the number that stops every room17:45 The one spreadsheet trick that makes companies see their own waste instantly22:44 What happens when he lets AI do the analysis his clients used to pay him for25:05 The one word he uses to describe eight years of building this on his own27:04 Why retirement scares him more than the business ever did30:31 The line from his father that changed how he runs every client engagement34:11 The number his client didnt know was costing them 23000 dollars an hourIf your P&L has more waste hiding in it than you want to admit, Frank's the guy who'll find it before you do.
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36 min - Ep. 208 Robin Ferguson - You're Living Someone Else's Life and Don't Know It
Robin Ferguson has started more things than most people will in a lifetime. A neonatal ICU. An urgent care. A church. A leadership coaching program that grew to 25 coaches. And then, at a milestone birthday, she finally started something for herself. Three months in, hitting walls with no guaranteed income and her partner in the same boat, she walked to a park with a journal. What came out of that sitting wasn't a new strategy. It was a question she couldn't shake. Whose life am I actually building?
That question became The Phoenix Effect. Robin's a coach and speaker who works with leaders and entrepreneurs who are good at what they do but aren't sure it's actually theirs. This conversation gets into what resilience looks like when it's not a personality trait but a daily decision, why high achievers stay buried in busyness long after it stops working, and what happens when a founder finally puts passion, purpose, skill, and livelihood in the same room. If you've ever felt like you were executing someone else's version of your life without realizing it, this one's going to hit.
Key Takeaways:
1️⃣ You're not burned out. You're building the wrong story.
Most founders assume the hard part is the market, the model, or the money. Robin Ferguson found out it's something older than any of that. The stories you absorbed from family, culture, teachers, and media are quietly running your business decisions right now. If you never stop to ask which ones are actually yours, you will keep grinding toward a version of success that was never yours to begin with.2️⃣ Resilience isn't something you have. It's something you choose.
Robin expected to be resilient going into her own business. What surprised her was that it's not a switch you flip once. It's a decision you make every single morning, especially when there's no guaranteed income and the people closest to you are in the same boat. Founders who treat resilience like a personality trait get blindsided. The ones who treat it like a daily practice build something that lasts.3️⃣ The pivot that looks like failure is usually the signal.
Three months into her business, Robin hit a wall. Instead of pushing harder, she walked to a park with a journal and sat in the quiet. What came out of that wasn't a new strategy. It was the book she'd been putting off for years. The hardest stretch of her founder journey opened the door she actually needed to walk through. If something keeps not working, the answer might not be more effort. It might be a different direction entirely.Timestamps:
00:00 When you realize you have been starting things your whole life
02:45 Leaving a stable career to bet on yourself06:00 Three months in and hitting walls08:30 How a park bench and a journal changed everything11:00 The stories you inherited that are quietly running your life14:30 Resilience is not a personality trait it is a daily decision17:30 How to use your calendar like a founder not an employee21:00 What you wish people recognized about the way you work24:00 Ikigai and building a business around your reason for being27:00 Why high achievers stay busy even when it stops working30:00 Learning to receive help when you are wired to do it yourself33:00 Intentions over goals and staying open to unexpected doors36:00 The one word that defines Robin's founder journey38:00 Where to find Robin and The Phoenix EffectIf you're ready to question the story you've been building from, here's where to find Robin.
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37 min - Ep. 207 Ken Miller - He Lost 20 Years to Addiction and Prison. Here's What He Built Next
Ken Miller shouldn't be where he is. Twenty years on the streets. Three stints in prison. A crack addiction that nearly took everything. And yet here he is running multiple businesses, generating $700K a year, mentoring founders all over the country, and talking about kindness like it's the most practical business skill he's ever developed. His story isn't an exception to the founder journey. It's an extreme version of what every founder faces: fear, finance, and family pulling against the version of yourself you're trying to become.
What Ken built on the other side of that rock bottom isn't just success. It's a system. Most founders aren't struggling with control, they're struggling with fear dressed up as control. A solopreneur caps out around $250K not because of the market but because of what they won't let go of. And the most courageous thing you can do in business and in life is stop acting the way you feel. This one's for every founder who knows they need to scale but keeps finding reasons not to.
Here's what Ken unpacks in this conversation.
1️⃣ What You Call Control Is Actually Fear
Most founders think they have a delegation problem. Ken reframes it completely. The reason you won't hand off tasks isn't because you're a perfectionist or a control freak. It's because you're scared. Scared the business will slip, the quality will drop, or you'll lose your grip on something you've bled to build. Until you name it as fear you can't actually move past it.2️⃣ Busy Isn't the Same Thing as Forward
Ken calls it vertical action versus horizontal action. Treading water is still movement but it isn't progress. If you're spending four hours a day on social media, answering emails, and doing tasks that don't require you specifically, you're not building. You're surviving. The audit is simple: look at your calendar and ask honestly whether what's on it is actually moving you toward the goal or just keeping you feeling productive.3️⃣ You Don't Have to Act the Way You Feel
This one came from Ken's mom and it took him 20 years to fully understand it. Founders feel fear every single day. Fear of the wrong hire, the slow month, the pitch that didn't land. But feeling it doesn't mean you have to lead with it. The most courageous thing you can do is make the next right move even when everything in you wants to freeze. That's not toxic positivity. That's the actual work.Timestamps
00:00 From Homeless to $700K: Ken Miller's Origin Story
07:24 What Founders Get Wrong About Virtual Assistants10:25 The $250K Ceiling Every Solopreneur Hits13:00 Delegation Is Not the Problem. Fear Is.17:00 Learn Do Delegate Automate: The Framework That Scales You23:00 Treading Water vs. Moving Forward: Know the Difference31:49 Two Things Ken Would Change to Grow Faster34:38 Four Businesses, One Mission37:41 What 20 Years Homeless Taught Him About Business44:24 How to Shrink Your Fear and Expand Your Capacity47:08 Courage, Kindness, and the Legacy Worth Building49:41 Why Ken Chose Good Over Great52:22 The Financial Advice Every Founder Needs to HearIf Ken's story or framework resonated with you, here's where you can follow his work and reach out directly.
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52 min - Ep. 206 Adam Povlitz - The Recovering Micromanager Who Finally Learned to Let Go
Most founders think the goal is to be the best person in the room. Adam Povlitz spent a decade proving that was true, then spent the next decade paying for it. As second generation CEO of Anago Cleaning Systems, he walked into his father's franchise and quietly became the thing holding it back. When you are controlling everything, you are not leading. You are the ceiling.
It took YPO, a hiring book, a COVID breakdown, and a lot of hard lessons about delegation versus abdication before he figured out that letting go was not a weakness. It was the whole job. If you have ever been the hardest working person in your business and still felt stuck, this one is for you.
Key Takeaways:
1️⃣ The skills that got you here will cap you here
Every founder gets promoted by being the best at doing. But the moment you step into a CEO role, doing becomes the enemy of growing. The founders who scale are not the ones who do it best. They are the ones who let go first.2️⃣ Delegation without structure is just abdication with better intentions
Handing something off without a system is not delegation. It is hope with a deadline. The fix is not better people. It is building the box they need to operate in, clear ownership, milestones, and a reason why attached to every task.3️⃣ Where you spend your time is the real business strategy
Most founders live in the urgent and ignore the important. Adam protects the time that actually moves the business forward before someone else fills it. The work that builds the future will never scream as loud as the work that is due today.Timestamps:
0:00 He scrubbed toilets and cold-called under a fake name. This is how he got his start.
3:12 What nobody tells you about taking over a family business5:14 Why he left IBM and chose the messy middle instead9:15 The biggest shock of franchising. You cannot tell anyone what to do.12:08 How becoming CEO meant unlearning everything that made him good15:39 The book that changed how he hires every senior leader20:17 YPO and why he needed a room full of people smarter than him21:03 The Eisenhower Matrix. The quadrant where all the money actually gets made.27:02 Work life integration. There is no balance at the CEO level.29:19 The Trello system that finally let him stop being the bottleneck35:06 COVID hit and nothing was the same. Here is what changed first.39:45 The perception problem in commercial cleaning nobody talks about41:52 One word to describe the whole journey. His answer will surprise you.50:59 The best advice he never got. Delegation is not the same as abdication.55:31 EOS or OKR. Why he built his own hybrid and never looked back.58:33 How his team tests two AI tools every single month1:01:27 What they are celebrating a year from now and why it has taken this longIf Adam's story hit close to home, here is where you can follow along with what he is building.
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1 hr - Ep. 205 Hart Fandrich - She Built 5 Businesses Because Nobody Would Hire Her. Now She Calls It Peace.
Nobody would hire Hart Fandrich. Not because she was unqualified but because she moved every three years as a military spouse and no employer wanted to bet on someone who'd be gone before she got good at the job. So she stopped asking for permission and started building five businesses over 15 years. Hart's also severely dyslexic with a verbal IQ of 137 and a written IQ of 69, which means the thing most founders lean on hardest to grow, written content and social media, has always been her biggest obstacle. She built anyway.
What came out of that journey is a conversation about what it actually takes to build something sustainable without losing yourself in it. Hart gets into why trying to be the operator and the owner at the same time is the trap most founders don't see until it's too late, how she learned to build around her wiring instead of fighting it, and why peace isn't something she's chasing at the end of the road. It's the foundation she's been building on the whole time. For any founder who's wondered if it's supposed to feel this hard, Hart's answer is worth sitting with.
Key Takeaways:
1️⃣ You Are Not Supposed to Do All of This
Hart spent years trying to be the operator and the owner at the same time and it nearly buried her. The moment she separated those two roles and started asking which tasks only she could do versus which ones someone else could handle, everything changed. Founders who ignore this distinction don't just burn out. They become the bottleneck in their own business.2️⃣ Your Wiring Is Not Your Weakness
Hart's severely dyslexic with a verbal IQ of 137 and a written IQ of 69. Social media, the growth tool every founder is told they can't ignore, has always been her hardest thing. She built five businesses anyway by leaning into how she actually thinks and communicating with clients and team members in the style that matches how they process the world, not how she was told it should be done. The founders who figure out how to build around who they are instead of who they think they should be last longer and lead better.3️⃣ Peace Is a Strategy, Not a Reward
Most founders treat rest, clarity, and peace as something they'll earn after the next milestone. Hart treats it as the foundation everything else is built on. She takes two weeks completely offline every year, defines her growth on her own terms, and measures success by whether the work still feels like hers. If you're waiting to feel good about your business later, you're building toward a finish line that keeps moving.Timestamps:
00:00 She Built Five Businesses Because Nobody Would Hire Her
01:05 From Babysitting to Five Businesses: The Origin Story Most Founders Relate To03:27 Why the Spa Industry Was the First Thing That Felt Like a Round Peg Round Hole05:19 The Regulations Nobody Warns You About When You Open a Spa07:22 The Aha Moment That Changed How She Thinks About Work08:06 The Biggest Ongoing Challenge: Why Social Media Still Wins10:03 Are You the Operator or the Owner? The Question That Changed Everything11:36 How She Finally Learned to Delegate (It Started With Laundry)13:32 What Entrepreneurship Taught Her About Herself14:46 Why She Takes Two Weeks Off Alone Every Year and What It Does for Her Business17:19 The Real Reason Most Founders Struggle to Stay in It19:02 What Running a Spa Taught Her About the Human Body and Her Own Health22:59 The Thing Nobody Knows About Her That Reframes Everything25:34 If You Had a Magic Wand: Two Things She Would Change27:08 The Two Interview Questions That Tell Her Everything About a Hire30:38 How She Reads People Using Auditory Visual and Kinesthetic Cues33:21 One Word to Describe the Founder Journey: Her Answer Will Surprise You34:08 The Word Driving Her Next Chapter and What She Is Building Toward35:11 The Win She Is Chasing in the Next 12 Months36:19 The Best Advice She Has Ever Given or Received as a Founder39:37 Final Thoughts and Where to Connect With HartIf you want to connect with Hart and see what she's building, here's where to find her:
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39 min - Ep. 204 Andrew Stallings - Laid Off on Monday and Bought the Company by Summer
Key Takeaways:
1️⃣ Your Network Is Not a Safety Net. It Is the Business.
Andrew did not build Athelo Group on a pitch deck or a business plan. He built it on a decade of relationships that were already in place before he ever wrote a check. When founders underinvest in genuine connection and only reach out when they need something, they are not just being bad at networking. They are quietly dismantling the only infrastructure that actually holds when everything else breaks. Community over currency is not a mindset. It is a survival strategy.2️⃣ Small Failures Are a Feature. Ignoring Them Is the Real Risk.
Andrew did not avoid failure. He learned to engineer smaller ones so the catastrophic ones never had a chance to land. Founders who only see the tidal wave when it is already on top of them are not unlucky. They are avoiding the discomfort of early signals. The ability to pivot before you have to is the skill that separates founders who scale from founders who stall. You cannot course correct what you refuse to look at.3️⃣ Stability Is Not Weakness. It Is the Thing You Were Always Chasing.
Eight years in, tens of millions built, and what Andrew wants most is to stop freaking out about payroll. That is not a failure of ambition. That is clarity. Founders who treat stability like a consolation prize often run past the finish line without realizing they already won. If you cannot define what enough looks like, the chaos never becomes organized. It just stays chaos.Timestamps
00:00 The Origin Story Nobody Romanticizes But Every Founder Needs to Hear
01:10 Beer League Hockey a Bad Idea and the Birth of Othello Group05:30 Why He Paid Out His Partners and Never Looked Back07:44 What Happens to Friendships When One Person Outgrows the Vision10:43 The Trait Every Successful Founder Has That They Will Never Admit Out Loud13:47 Stress Is My Love Language and Why That Is a Gift and a Problem20:49 The Person Behind the Scenes Who Makes the Whole Thing Work21:30 The Biggest Misconception About What It Takes to Run Your Own Business25:09 Why Your Network Is the Only Strategy That Actually Compounds27:44 How to Build a Personal Brand When You Have Nothing to Offer Yet33:57 What Andrew Does When the Chaos Gets Too Loud36:13 The Injury That Forced Him to Stop and What He Found in the Stillness39:53 The Two Things He Would Change About His Business Right Now42:17 What He Wishes People Understood About Him Beyond the Hustle44:38 One Word That Sums Up Eight Years of Building in the Messy Middle49:24 The Win He Is Chasing Next and Why It Has Nothing to Do With RevenueIf Andrew's story of building Athelo Group from a post-honeymoon layoff into a powerhouse sports agency resonates with you, here is where to find him and keep up with what he is building.
Website: https://athelogroup.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/astallings88/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/athelogroup/Thank you for tuning in! If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform and share it with your network. We encourage you to join our community HERE and connect with us on social media for the latest updates and more great content.
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About Hello Chaos
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Every day, entrepreneurs all over the world roll out of bed and say: Hello, Chaos. And more often than not, we’re having that conversation in our own heads. It’s time to crack the dialogue wide open.
Hello Chaos is a weekly podcast dedicated to entrepreneurs and founders, published every Sunday. It is another platform brought to you by OrangeWIP. It is a megaphone and round table created specifically to welcome bright, stubborn, visionary minds to a conversation founders have been craving. Here, founders have permission to vent—or be vulnerable. To bring the wildest ideas. Their greatest obstacles. And find a national sounding board for solutions. Here, we want founders show off—or allow them to speak their truth. To meet challenges head-on. To make hyper-local community connections. And share “aha!” and “oh shit” moments.
Welcome to Hello Chaos. Founders, it's time to unmute yourself.