Vidar Hokstad has spent more than 30 years building, scaling, and exiting tech companies. He's started price wars he couldn't win, fired people who didn't deserve it, and hit the kind of burnout that doesn't announce itself—it just slowly narrows your field of vision until all you can see is the next task.

In this conversation, Vidar talks about what it's like when investors override your judgment, when a dot-com crash forces you to cut a team from 50 to 7, and what happens inside you when the company you relocated countries for starts to collapse. He also gets honest about why big corporate jobs felt like a vacation after startup life, why he kept going back to building anyway, and what finally made fractional consulting feel like the right fit—not a fallback.

This episode is for anyone who's building something that looks successful from the outside but feels quietly unsustainable on the inside. Vidar doesn't offer a clean resolution. He offers what 30 years of sideways moments actually taught him: the sooner you take the break, the shorter it needs to be.

At 28, Danielle Duran Baron was building the life she'd planned. Master's degree in hand, career moving, future wide open. Then routine blood work uncovered something no one expected: a massive liver tumor that would require emergency surgery within days. She flatlined three times on the operating table. Five years later, married and looking ahead, the cancer came back.

In this episode, Dani talks about what it's like to be too young for the diagnosis you're given, too healthy for anyone to suspect it, and too early in life to have to tell the people you love that the future isn't guaranteed. She shares how strangers donated blood in record numbers, how her husband navigated a Brazilian hospital in a language he didn't speak, and how a neighbor's words, "it can't rain forever," became the thing she held onto when nothing else worked.

This conversation sits with the reality that recovery doesn't follow a clean upward line. There are setbacks that feel like starting over. And there's a quiet, stubborn choice to keep making plans anyway...not because the fear goes away, but because the time you're here has to matter.

Danielle published her debut book, "Viva para Contar," in 2020, becoming the first Portuguese-language author to delve into the topic of fibrolamellar cancer HCC and survivorship.

Why Listen Now?

Recovery isn't a montage. It's the days between the hard news and the next thing you try. If you're in that stretch right now, or sitting with someone who is, this conversation doesn't rush past it.

00:00 KiKi introduces Danielle Duran Baron and her sideways story

02:23 Dani describes a routine blood test that changed everything

05:03 How a cosmetic consultation uncovered something serious

06:43 The ultrasound room where the doctor's face changed

09:16 A community mobilizes to find the right surgeon

11:19 Surgery, flatlines, and a record number of blood donors

14:49 The cancer returns five years later

18:16 Why honoring the dark moments matters more than staying positive

25:22 "Make it matter"—how diagnosis reshaped her priorities

29:01 A secret blog becomes the foundation for a book

33:26 Why recovery is never the straight line we expect

35:16 The world keeps moving while yours stops

40:21 Volunteering with young cancer patients and losing some of them

43:36 "It can't rain forever"—honest words for a hard season

Resources

LinkedIn — Danielle Duran Baron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielleduranbaron/

About the Things Go Sideways Podcast

When life or leadership goes sideways, the story's just getting interesting

Things Go Sideways with KiKi L'Italien features honest conversations with leaders, creators, and changemakers navigating disruption, uncertainty, and identity shifts. Each episode explores trust, resilience, and what it means to stay human when certainty breaks down.

New episodes share real stories about rebuilding agency and meaning without rushing to quick-fixes, spiritual bypassing, or pretending clarity comes easy.

Sometimes the blanket that keeps you warm is the same one keeping you from seeing clearly. Brian Kirkland's story is about what you find when you finally pull it off—not clarity, exactly, but the beginning of knowing what questions to ask.

Brian Kirkland was a senior director at a major association, able to hold his liquor and show up at 6 a.m. for logistics meetings—and that behavior was rewarded. When he stopped drinking, the security blanket came off, and what was underneath wasn't what he expected.

In this conversation, Brian talks about the long, uneven road after getting sober: chasing dopamine in new forms, walking into a job he knew was wrong within weeks, losing four people close to him in a matter of months, and eventually being told by a coworker in crisis to just leave it at home and get the work done. He also shares how diagnoses of PTSD, ADHD, and autism—arriving years apart—didn't simplify his story but gave him a way to stop calling himself broken.

This isn't a recovery arc with a neat ending. Brian is still in it, still figuring out how to lead with empathy in spaces that don't always make room for it—and now building 501(booze)(free), a resource for the association community around sobriety and harm reduction.

HIGHLIGHTS

00:03 — KiKi introduces Brian and the terrain of this conversation

01:30 — Brian names this chapter: "Pills and Thrills and Belly Aches"

03:43 — What rushes in when the security blanket goes away

05:05 — Chasing dopamine, shame, and the surprise of being supported

09:16 — Why Brian decided to go public about his sobriety

11:08 — What nobody tells you about what comes after you stop numbing

14:04 — The career spiral: burnout, a bad job decision, and a workplace that went Lord of the Flies

16:42 — Four losses in four months and a coworker's devastating response

19:10 — PTSD, ADHD, and autism: diagnoses that arrived years apart

22:06 — From "fundamentally broken" to understanding the wiring

25:25 — 501(booze)(free) and bringing sobriety talk into association spaces

27:42 — What feels risky—and what doesn't—about doing this publicly

33:11 — Brian's biggest takeaway: lead with empathy, not assumptions

34:23 — KiKi's closing: you don't have to be the bravest person tomorrow

Brian Kirkland, CAE — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-kirkland-cae-5296774/

Ungovernable Context — Brian's LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7432243137835753472/

501(booze)(free) — Substack: https://501boozefree.substack.com/

About the Things Go Sideways Podcast

When life or leadership goes sideways, the story's just getting interesting.

Things Go Sideways with KiKi L'Italien features honest conversations with leaders, creators, and changemakers navigating disruption, uncertainty, and identity shifts. Each episode explores trust, resilience, and what it means to stay human when certainty breaks down.

New episodes share real stories about rebuilding agency and meaning without rushing to quick-fixes, spiritual bypassing, or pretending clarity comes easy.

Kathryn Eipl was standing on a rooftop watching thousands of people pour into the park she'd spent months building. It was opening night. It was the moment she'd worked toward her entire adult life. And she felt almost nothing.

That emptiness didn't go away when she ignored it. It just got louder. In this episode, Kathryn traces the years she spent managing that feeling with drinking, overwork, and busyness, until the avoidance stopped working and she had to start paying attention to what her body had been saying all along. We talk about what it actually looks like to leave a lucrative career you trained for: the doubt, the family pushback, and the identity confusion of not knowing who you are without the role you built.

We also talk about how Kathryn developed the Neuro-Resonance Method™ — a nervous system regulation approach drawing on yoga, Reiki, sound healing, and cognitive behavioral techniques — and she didn't create this from a business plan. She discovered her new path by working through her own disorientation over roughly 18 months.

This is a story about what happens when the gap between how your life looks and how it feels grows too wide to keep crossing.

If you've ever built something that should feel like enough — and noticed it doesn't — Kathryn's story is a reminder that the gap between your life on paper and your life in the body is information worth reading.

HIGHLIGHTS

00:00 KiKi opens: what this show exists to do, and who Kathryn is

01:22 The rooftop moment: opening night, thousands arriving, feeling almost nothing

06:32 Staying stuck: drinking and smoking to avoid the misalignment

10:38 The 4am moment: "There has to be more to life than this"

13:00 Returning to yoga: first healthy way to quiet the noise

17:00 One student's comment lands harder than thousands of event attendees

22:00 Living a double life: two wardrobes, two identities, growing inner confusion

25:22 Walking off the overseas project and choosing to leave entertainment

32:42 The doubt out loud: leaving a lucrative career to be a yoga teacher in LA

38:21 How the Neuro-Resonance Method™ developed from her own life, not a plan

45:39 Breaking down the method: physical, mental, emotional, and energetic body

52:16 First step: stop judging your emotions; the two-minute timer practice

57:16 "The right time to start is when you're ready to choose yourself"

58:23 KiKi closes: breakdown is not the opposite of wisdom

RESOURCES:
E.I.P.L. Healing — Kathryn Eipl: https://eiplhealing.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eiplhealing/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@eiplhealing

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eiplhealing

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-eipl/

Free Gift — 1 Neuro-Resonance Strategy Session (use code WELCOME at checkout): https://bit.ly/4o5Uw5y

About the Things Go Sideways Podcast

When life or leadership goes sideways, the story's just getting interesting.

Things Go Sideways with KiKi L'Italien features honest conversations with leaders, creators, and changemakers navigating disruption, uncertainty, and identity shifts. Each episode explores trust, resilience, and what it means to stay human when certainty breaks down.

New episodes share real stories about rebuilding agency and meaning without rushing to quick-fixes, spiritual bypassing, or pretending clarity comes easy.

Sometimes the dream you fought for turns into the thing you have to survive. Liz Dapo's story is about what it costs to hold something together alone—and what becomes possible when you finally set it down.

Liz Dapo is a professional puppeteer, voice actor, and fabricator who has worked with Jim Henson projects, SNL, and National Geographic. None of that prepared her for what happened when she became artistic director of a small puppet theater in D.C.—one week before the pandemic shut everything down.

Over the next four years, Liz inherited a company with $2,000 in the bank and 600 puppets, rebuilt a board from scratch, and held 17 roles at once—directing, performing, designing sets, doing sound, maintaining the building, writing new shows. She was sleeping four hours a night in the theater. She herniated two discs. She crashed her truck from exhaustion. And then a colleague sent a text that said she was bad at her job.

This is a conversation about what happens when the thing you love most becomes the thing that's tearing you apart—and what it takes to stop, walk away, and find a gentler place to land. Liz is still in the middle of figuring out what comes next. That's part of why this one matters.

HIGHLIGHTS

00:01 — KiKi introduces Liz and the art of reinvention

03:14 — Growing up on a Colorado ranch as the family outlier

06:03 — Pushback and defiance: how being told no shaped her path

09:19 — From carpenter to puppeteer: the Little Shop of Horrors moment

11:44 — London, grad school, and staging Shakespeare in a cemetery

17:28 — Why puppets give adults permission to play again

22:04 — The invisible labor behind bringing a puppet to life

24:18 — Which characters reflect who Liz is in the moment

28:32 — Taking over a theater one week before the world shut down

33:49 — Seventeen jobs, 100-hour weeks, and sleeping in the theater

37:14 — The text that broke it: resigning in five hours

44:39 — Finding a gentle place to land and learning to collaborate again

52:08 — Forgiveness, saying yes, and being a work in progress

59:10 — Liz's closing: give yourself time and give yourself grace

Liz Dapo — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-dapo-72009447/

Albie's Elevator — WHYY/Big Howl (Instagram Reel): https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8wg_FTxhMC/

Monkey Boys Productions — Puppets, props, creatures, costumes, and SFX for TV, film, and stage: https://www.monkeyboysproductions.com/

About the Things Go Sideways Podcast

When life or leadership goes sideways, the story's just getting interesting.

Things Go Sideways with KiKi L'Italien features honest conversations with leaders, creators, and changemakers navigating disruption, uncertainty, and identity shifts. Each episode explores trust, resilience, and what it means to stay human when certainty breaks down.

New episodes share real stories about rebuilding agency and meaning without rushing to quick-fixes, spiritual bypassing, or pretending clarity comes easy.