How Not to be a Founder
🎙 How Not to Be a Founder – The Darkly Funny Podcast About Startup Failure 🎙
💀 Startups are hard. Failing is harder. But at least we can laugh about it. 💀
The brutally honest podcast exploring the dark, funny, and painfully real side of startups.
Forget the LinkedIn flexes—this is where founders share their biggest mistakes, worst decisions, and absolute dumpster fire moments. It’s raw, vulnerable, and laced with enough dark humour to make the chaos bearable.
How Not to be a Founder
From Recruiter to DEI Fixer: Jo Major on Free Pilots & Saying No | Ep 06 – How NOT To Be A Founder
After 25 years at a recruitment desk, Jo Major never planned to start until the 2020 social justice wave, which exposed a training gap no one was filling.
She left a trade-body role, ran six free beta programmes, and launched a modular ED&I course that took off during the 2021 boom. Then budgets froze, partners drifted, and Jo had to reinvent everything, while ditching alcohol and hiring a mindset coach.
What you’ll hear:
• Why did she build the whole brand before writing a single invoice?
• The 6-client, no-fee beta that generated her first paid testimonials.
• Pivoting from 6-week courses to 2-hour workshops when L&D cash dried up.
• Killing the “your worth = last month’s billings” habit from agency life.
• Sobriety, strength-training and a coach who reframed confidence.
• The partnership that cost a new Ltd, website and trademarks—then fizzled.
• Final lesson: sell the idea first; build the slides only after someone buys.
A candid playbook on staying relevant when the hype cycle vanishes.