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Founderology

Founderology

著者： Networld Media Group
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Welcome to Founderology – Built to Breakthrough, the ultimate podcast created by Founders, for Founders. Hosted by Kathleen Wood—Founder and CEO of Kathleen Wood Partners and creator of the Founders Growth Summit. Founderology is your go-to resource for actionable insights and proven strategies to propel your business and yourself to new levels of success.

Kathleen brings over 20 years of expertise, working side-by-side with Founders to turn small businesses into award-winning concepts, national expansions, and billion-dollar brands. Each episode is designed to speak the unique language of Founders and address the challenges, opportunities, and triumphs of the Founder journey.

What you’ll gain from Founderology:

  • Inside track insights from successful Founders who have broken through.
  • Proven strategies and practical solutions to grow your business.
  • Tools and resources to strengthen yourself, your team, your business and your bottom line.
  • Expert advice on building your net worth through developing powerful networks.
  • Competitive insights to help you dominate your market and breakthrough.

This isn’t just another business podcast—it’s a Founder’s inside track for success. Join us on Founderology – Built to Breakthrough and get inspired, motivated, and equipped to take your business—and yourself—to the next level.

© 2026 Founderology マネジメント・リーダーシップ リーダーシップ 経済学
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  • How Jae Kim is Scaling Chi’Lantro

    How Jae Kim is Scaling Chi’Lantro
    2026/06/16
    Jae Kim emptied his $30,000 in savings and maxed out his credit cards to launch a Korean food truck in Austin in 2010. Now he is leading 13 Chi'Lantro restaurants across Texas and building toward the next cycle of growth. He even won a deal on Shark Tank, then walked away from it to grow on his own terms.Jae has lived every stage of growth and made the hard calls even when he felt stuck. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and hear insights from a Founder building a brand to break through!The late night that created kimchi friesLate one night on his downtown Austin food truck, Jae had a batch of kimchi sitting unused. Customers kept telling him they did not know what kimchi was, so they did not want it.This is hard to believe today, however, in 2010, of course, no one knew kimchi.Jae did what every visionary Founder does: he caramelized it, let the smell roll out of the truck, and piled it onto hot fries. His bet was simple: let people taste it before they could second-guess it.That is how The Original Kimchi Fries were born, a dish Chi'Lantro now serves more than 200,000 times a year. If you are building something the market has not seen yet, your first job is the one Jae had on his truck. Get people to experience the difference.Jae's story is about one critical decision after another, each made while the business was stuck in the middle, too big to be small and too small to be big. If you are a Founder facing those same challenges right now, this is your episode.The risk everyone told him not to takeEvery Founder eventually meets the moment when their own success becomes the ceiling. In 2015, Jae met it with five food trucks and lines wrapping the block. It was clear that Chi'Lantro was a success and leading the charge in the red-hot Austin food scene.The safe move was to keep adding trucks. Jae decided to do the exact opposite. The reason he chose stability over momentum is the lesson restaurant Founders need most. The next move changed the trajectory for his business forever.Jae did not gamble. He moved before the ceiling could trap him, and that is the difference between Founders who scale and Founders who plateau.Walking away from Barbara CorcoranMost Founders would chase the very deal Jae landed: $600,000 on Shark Tank from a shark who believed in him. A shark with a proven track record of scaling businesses. Jae made it on Shark Tank after applying three times, got an offer and then walked away.Understanding why he said no is worth more to your business than the deal itself. He turned down money to chase something he valued more. Instead, he backed himself with partners who had already built and sold a brand bigger than his own. That is the kind of decision that keeps paying off for years."I've wanted that relationship more than the money because of the experiences and the wisdom that they had." - Jae KimWhen sales dropped 90%, his real test beganIn 2020, Chi'Lantro's sales fell 90% almost overnight when the governor told residents to stay at home.Jae could have protected himself and pulled his money out. What he did instead tells you everything about why people follow him.He again made what many would say would be a difficult decision — he chose his team over selling out. He told his team the truth about how long the company could keep paying them and gave them a choice to stay or go. Every team member chose to stay.Then, with no customers, Jae and his team just started giving their food away, more than 20,000 meals through Chi'Lantro Cares. Their community wrote checks to keep the kitchen running. The team he protected became the reason Chi'Lantro came back stronger.Those values trace back to his family: a single mother who built business after business after immigrating, and a sister he lost to NF2, whose memory still drives him.It is the WHY beneath every decision he makes.Why success in one city means nothing in the nextThe love you earn in one city does not always follow you to the next. Jae is living that right now in Houston, and it has been one of the hardest parts of scaling.What keeps him in the fight is a fanatical focus on his core fundamental principles he refuses to compromise on. Chi'Lantro serves authentic flavors with uncompromising standards for: great food, great service and clean restaurants."It's easy to open up a restaurant, but the real fight comes afterwards on a day in, day out basis." — Jae KimListening to what Jae protects, and why, will sharpen how you defend your own brand.More lessons worth pressing play forThe three questions Jae asks himself before opening any new location — the ones he says he learned to ask the hard way.Where Jae goes to keep sharpening his decisions, and how he turns other Founders' experience into his next move.His read on why money is more expensive right now, and the kind of growth he believes this market actually rewards.Where to start if you are stuckI asked Jae what he would tell a Founder still sitting there, grinding it ...
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    38 分
  • How best friends are building their pizza and brew empire

    How best friends are building their pizza and brew empire
    2026/06/03
    Two childhood friends bought a pizzeria at 21 with no plan. Now they leading nine restaurants and getting ready to scale Best Pizza & Brew towards its next destination 35 locations.Best Pizza & Brew Founder, Mitchell Millar made a decision while out golfing with Co-Founder Joey Freis to stop answering his phone. By the end of the round, Joey had five calls from their general managers, each looking for answers to their questions.It's a funny story and a familiar problem for most Founders.If your team cannot get through a round of golf without you, you do not own a business. You are the business.Joey and Mitchell have been friends since elementary school. At 21, they bought the pizzeria where they were both working, called Pizza Nova.And then changed the name to reflect their shared passion — Best Pizza & Brew. Today, they are leading nine restaurants, eight across Southern California and a first out-of-state location in Chandler, Arizona. The goal is 35 locations by 2035.In our conversation, we discussed what it took to stop being the answer to every question and start scaling towards their vision. If you are a Founder stuck in the middle right now, this is your episode for mere answers for moving forward.The pizzeria they bought on instinctJoey and Mitchell did not set out to build an empire; these two friends loved the pizza business."We liked it so much. We were talking all the time, kept going, and realized that this is our passion without knowing it at the time," Freis said.That passion is a real asset, and it is also a strategic filter selecting leaders who are passionate about growing Best Pizza & Brew.Joey and Mitchell have watched talented managers burn out. Not for a lack of skill. These managers simply did not love the work the way the two of them do.Their advice to any Founder is if you love it, do it. Loving what you do is what gets you started. It is the fuel for a business; however, it does not grow a business.The garage doors that wouldn't stay shutPicture a cold San Diego evening. The big garage doors at one of the restaurants are rolled wide open. The dining room is freezing. Guests are uncomfortable. And not one team member has thought to close them.That image, Mitchell says, is what scaling without systems looks like.At three locations, they could stay on top of things themselves. They would hold a meeting, talk about closing the garage doors and greeting the tables, and everyone would nod along. Then the next Friday night, they would look around, and nobody was doing any of it.It's a lesson Joey and Mitchell learned the hard way, and one every Founder eventually runs into. Saying something in a meeting is not the same as building a system for it. A nod is not accountability.The reminder lives in your head. The system lives in the building and works whether you are there or not. You scale your standards through building your systems.Getting the team to lead without themWhen I asked Joey to name one of his most critical decisions, he didn't reach for a location or an acquisition. He named their incentive program.The more stores Joey tracked, the harder it became to analyze each number. A GM who owns one store's numbers acts on them. So they handed ownership down to the people closest to the work.The Founder lesson — the more control they let go of, the more they got back.More Founder lessons worth pressing play for:We covered far more than I can address here, and I really want you to hear Mitchell and Joey's take on what being stuck in the middle really feels like, and how they moved through it.No. 1 Why Mitchell still interviews every hire, even over FaceTime, and the reason that will change how you think about hiring: people want an experience, or they would have just ordered DoorDash.No. 2 What buying a competitor taught them, which had nothing to do with the real estate and everything to do with two things they had avoided for years.No. 3 The truth about going out of state, where the hometown halo effect disappears, and they could no longer train new staff at a store down the road.Where to start if You are stuckI asked Joey and Mitchell what they would say to a Founder stuck at three locations, unable to see how they will ever reach eight or 10.Joey's answer was to get an incentive program in place, then start handing real responsibility to the people running your restaurants and trusting them with it.Mitchell's was even simpler. Pick one problem. Ask your GM what the biggest problem is this week, and fix it. In his experience, the other problems are easy to fix from there, and the next location no longer feels out of reach.And keep having fun with it, he says, because if you do not love this work, then it just becomes another job in the industry and not a passion to grow something that ultimately is the Best Pizza & Brew.You do not get unstuck by solving everything at once. You get unstuck by fixing the thing in front of you.P.S. Joey and Mitchell are no strangers to our ...
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    38 分
  • The success formula that took Everbowl from 1 to 400 locations

    The success formula that took Everbowl from 1 to 400 locations
    2026/05/20
    If you're a multi-unit restaurant founder stuck, knowing you have outgrown the early days but can't figure out the next move, this episode is for you.I sat down with Jeff Fenster, who built five eight- to nine-figure companies, exited three, and grew Everbowl to more than 100 open locations with almost 400 units sold across the country.His construction company, WeBuild, builds Everbowl locations at up to four times lower than the industry average and for clients across the industry.Jeff is also a best-selling author who runs the five-rule playbook on every company he builds, called his Success Formula.If you are stuck in the middle trying to figure out your next step this is your episode.What Jeff sees that most restaurant founders missFive minutes into our conversation Jeff mentioned a line that addressed being stuck in the middle immediately:"Home cooking tastes better than a 25,000-unit McDonald's."His point? Home cooking has never scaled to 25,000 locations. McDonald's has because home cooks make food decisions. McDonald's makes business decisions.Most multi-unit Founders build their company the way a home cook builds a meal. They live in the recipes. They obsess over the product. The focus on opening a location. And the growth ceiling shows up anyway at 5 locations. Or 12. Or 20.Jeff put it this way:"I can hire a chef to be the chef. I can't hire a business owner to be the business owner."Business owner belongs to you as a Founder. The second you confuse the two roles, you stop scaling.The 25-year-old in the mirrorJeff was 25, running his first company, a payroll and HR business called i-CHEX (later becoming CanopyHR).He felt the pressure to look smarter than everyone he had hired. Every time his team brought him a brilliant idea, he tweaked it just enough to stamp his name on it.His best talent walked out the door. He kept blaming them.Until one day, he caught himself doing it again, and realized:"The common denominator here is me."That moment changed his career. From that day forward:All the credit went to the teamAll the blame stayed with himHis only job was to make his people brilliantThe company went from barely surviving to a successful exit (the first of many) and remains a key foundation of his Success Formula.When you can't afford talent, change the currencyJeff had one Everbowl location. A great guy named Brian Augustine, the brother of a family friend who had come out of Trader Joe's, applied to work with him.Brian wanted to build out Everbowl's training program. He was brilliant, however at this early stage, Jeff did not have the resources to hire him.Brian came back with a counter and every Founder listening needs to hear. He told Jeff to skip his paycheck for a full year. Every two weeks, instead of cash, he wanted to buy equity at the current valuation.Jeff said yes, and with Brian's support, Everbowl opened:Year 1: 4 storesYear 2: 14 stores24 months in: 18 Everbowls operatingBrian still has his equity. He owns a couple of Everbowl stores in Utah, and his equity is worth a multiple of the salary he gave up.The takeaway is one I want every Founder to write down. When you cannot afford the talent, change the currency and it always doesn't have to be equity.Think about how many Brians are in your network right now?Three more breakthroughs waiting for you in this episodeJeff and I covered a lot of ground in this episode. Here are some more Founder insights you will want to hear and apply.No. 1 The cheapest hire is your most expensive mistakeWhy saving a few dollars an hour on mediocre talent costs you the lifetime value of a customer plus every friend they warn away. Jeff's math will rewrite how you hire.No. 2 Jeff's Success FormulaThe five-step playbook behind every business Jeff has built. He has run the same system through payroll, recruiting, restaurants, and construction.No. 3 The anti-pitch that protects every franchiseeEvery potential franchisee starts the call expecting a sales pitch. Jeff opens with the opposite. He asks them to find every reason NOT to sign. The result? Better operators.One last thing before you press playI asked Jeff what he would say to the Founder listening right now who is feeling the weight of every decision, and wondering how to take a first step. His answer was simple."Make a phone call. Right now. Someone you know who can help you.Don't bury yesterday's problems and carry them into tomorrow. A bad plan today is better than no plan."This episode is one of those rare conversations where the second you finish it, you're going to want to do something.P.S. If you want to spend two and a half days with Founders like Jeff, in a room full of operators doing this work, join us at 2027's Founderology Growth Summit, Aug. 2-4 in Chicago. We are rooting for you. Always
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    42 分
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