Things Go Sideways

Stan Gibson built four decades of corporate success — and then watched it dissolve in a single phone call. When the Fortune 100 company he'd given everything to displaced his position, Stan wasn't blindsided by the job loss. He was blindsided by the question underneath it: who are you when the career that defined you is gone? In this conversation, Stan Gibson — executive coach, keynote speaker, an...

Cecilia Satovich was 40, raising three young daughters, and living inside the life she had hoped for. Then she went in for her first mammogram. What started as something routine (an appointment you know you should make, the kind you might delay because life is full and you are busy and also, let's be real, who wants to deal with it?) became the beginning of a breast cancer diagnosis right as the w...

What happens when you've already had your wake-up call — and life sends another one? Lori Zoss Kraska built Growth Owl into a thriving consultancy helping nonprofits and associations land Fortune 1000 sponsorships. Then, in 2022, a doctor's hunch caught bilateral pulmonary embolisms that had no symptoms she could feel.  She was answering client emails from the ER! The lesson stuck — until her moth...

When career, grief, and identity all come apart in the same 30 days, the instinct is to fight harder. Geoff Livingston learned the opposite. In this episode of Things Go Sideways, marketer, author, and Zen Buddhist Geoff Livingston walks through the month his co-founded company Cognitive Path wound down and his father died — and the "think liquid" mindset he built afterward for navigating change y...

What is digital nomad life really like? For Katherine Tuominen — marketing strategist and founder of Catalyst Brand Strategy — it looked nothing like the Instagram version: visa battles, reverse culture shock, lost friendships, and the slow realization that a beautiful destination doesn't outrun an unhealed self. It started during Melbourne's hardest lockdown, when she couldn't leave her house wit...

He Built a $25 Million Business. Then Everything Collapsed. 🔴 JOIN on SUBSTACK: 👉 https://thetrustproject.substack.com/   Shane Barker thought he was building something that mattered. His company grew fast during the mortgage crisis by helping people challenge predatory loans. Within two years, the business exploded to 130 employees and a reported $25 million valuation. Then everything shifted....

If you're the one everyone leans on… this conversation with brain health coach Barbara Gustavson is worth your time. Barbara's path to becoming a brain health coach started with a piece of paper handed to her at a Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving Day — a document that revealed a family history of covered-up crimes, mental illness, and Huntington's Disease. That moment didn't end anything. It started...

Justin Brown was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at 12, and for years he found ways to keep going anyway — ski life in Utah, cooking professionally, staying physically active. Then around 2005 his body stopped cooperating in ways that couldn't be pushed through. A bowel resection changed the baseline. Some of what he'd assumed about himself didn't come back. 👤 Connect With Me On Other Platforms: S...

Mark Wallach was diagnosed with ALS in April 2021. By then, he'd already been losing function in his right arm for years — adapting each time, finding workarounds. He's now a quadriplegic and also a working entrepreneur who recently posted about learning to drive his wheelchair with his eyes. That post reached more than 300 people outside his network. An assistive technology company in Germany rea...

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...

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...

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...

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, an...

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 beca...

A layoff can feel like more than losing a paycheck. It can feel like losing your place in the world. In this episode, KiKi talks with Phil Putnam, a former tech executive who was laid off in October 2023 and had to face the messy middle that followed: the grief, the self-judgment, and the quiet panic of "what now?" Phil shares why job loss hits so hard (even when it's "common"), how workplace iden...

Sherry Whitaker Budziak is known as the helper, the fixer, the leader who can walk into a messy situation and make it workable — until life handed her a year where the disruptions didn't stop: the unexpected loss of her husband, more loss soon after, and a chain of emergencies that made "keeping it together" feel non-negotiable. In this conversation, Sherry shares the moment her "I've got this" id...

What happens when leadership, systems, or roles you trusted stop making sense—and you can't think or perform your way through it? In this episode, KiKi L'Italien speaks with Simon Mont about identity collapse, moral injury, and how to stay oriented and human when values collide with reality. Why this episode now: When trust in leadership and institutions feels fragile, many people are left questio...

After 15 years in the workplace, Dr. Shannon Whittington was outed before she was ready –– and everything changed. In this episode of Things Go Sideways , KiKi L'Italien sits down with Shannon to talk about the quiet moments when dignity is tested: being seen when you didn't choose visibility, losing safety at work, and realizing someone in power is trying to block your future. Shannon reflects on...

Welcome to Things Go Sideways. I'm KiKi L'Italien. In Season 1: Episode 1 of  Things Go Sideways , I'm joined by Stacy Heisey Terrell (career ownership coach and former HR/organizational leader) for a real conversation about burnout, reinvention, identity, and agency, especially in seasons where you're "fine"… but something inside you knows you're not. In this episode, we talk about: The differenc...

When life or leadership go sideways, the story's just getting interesting. Things Go Sideways with KiKi L'Italien shares real stories of transformation, resilience, and trust from leaders, creators, and changemakers navigating disruption. Each episode explores how we rebuild identity, agency, and purpose in a world defined by uncertainty, reinvention, and courage. Listen weekly for authentic conve...