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Founderology

Founderology

By: 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.

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Episodes
  • The World Pizza champion who 'Let go to grow'

    The World Pizza champion who 'Let go to grow'
    Jul 8 2026

    He is a 13-time world pizza champion and a 5-time Guinness World Record Holder. Tony Gemignani spent 17 years making pizza in his brother's shop before he opened a place of his own. Now he has more than 30 Slice House locations, over 115 in development, and his pizza in NFL and MLB stadiums across the country.

    Tony Gemignani, Founder of Tony's Pizza Napoletana, and Slice House is the most decorated artisanal pizza craftsman alive, and he made the decision he always said he never would do - Franchise.

    What changed his mind, and how is Tony Gemignani scaling Slice House across the nation without lowering the bar? Listen now wherever you get your podcasts and hear insights from a Founder building a brand to break through!

    Inside this episode, hear Tony speak about his most critical decisions:

    1. Why he waited 17 years before he bet on himself.
    2. Why a self-described perfectionist finally franchised.
    3. The control that keeps so many Founders small, and the decision he made to let go and grow his business.

    And there's a whole lot more:

    The pizzeria everyone told him not to build and he did it any way.

    When Tony decided to open his own pizzeria, almost everyone in the industry told him to scale his idea back. Pick one or two pizza styles and focus, they said. Not twelve. Every Founder reaches the moment when the safe advice and the right move point in opposite directions. The critical Founder decision Tony made set everything that followed in motion.

    If you are a Founder trying to scale your standards, not just your store count, his first decision is the one to hear.

    What to do when the market has never seen your idea

    Backing a vision nobody understands is one of the loneliest decisions a Founder can make. Tony's concept broke every rule: one pizzeria, seven ovens, twelve regional styles, from Neapolitan and New York to Detroit, New Haven, and Sicilian.

    The market rarely understands a great idea at first, and the pressure to water it down never lets up. The Founders who break through hold the line until it does, and few have held it like Tony, and now he is scaling it too!

    If you are sitting on a concept your peers do not get, this is the decision you are facing, and hear how Tony made his decision to move forward.

    When your biggest success starts from opportunity

    As a Founder, your biggest success can hide your biggest opportunity.

    Tony's Pizza Napoletana was very busy, yet Tony saw the guests it could not serve: those who wanted a slice under ten dollars and a fast exit. So he bought the deli next door to his original location and opened the first Slice House, a concept that connected fast-casual speed with full-service hospitality.

    The critical decision to let go and grow

    When COVID closed dining rooms, those smaller to-go concepts thrived. Tony and his team made the critical decision to start franchising mid-pandemic. He could have raced to a thousand stores; instead, he chose a disciplined and focused approach to franchising, saying no far more than yes to have the absolute best franchise partners.

    Today, Slice House's success speaks volumes. However, it is not a path for everyone, and Tony shares how he is navigating the process of letting go so Slice House can grow.

    This is your podcast - if you are stuck

    Every Founder, at some point, faces similar decisions to those Tony had to make. Hearing how he made his decisions could change how you make yours.

    Press play and hear how a 13-time world pizza champion built Slice House and his pizza empire on his own terms, one bold decision at a time.
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    47 mins
  • How Jae Kim is Scaling Chi’Lantro

    How Jae Kim is Scaling Chi’Lantro
    Jun 16 2026
    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 mins
  • How best friends are building their pizza and brew empire

    How best friends are building their pizza and brew empire
    Jun 3 2026
    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 mins
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