The Hidden Problem Facing Women in Leadership | Hannah Wrixon, KELLA

🔔🔔 Hannah Wrixon explains why the most successful women are often the least supported; and why she’s building a global network to change that 🔔🔔

Hannah Wrixon joins Business Builders to share the story behind Keller and why she believes one of the biggest challenges facing women in leadership is something few people talk about.

After building and exiting multiple businesses, Hannah noticed a surprising pattern. While countless initiatives exist to support startups and emerging leaders, many of the women who had already “made it” were quietly carrying enormous responsibilities with very little support themselves. The executives and founders mentoring everyone else often had nobody to turn to when they faced their own challenges.

That insight led Hannah to launch KELLA, a private global community for senior women leaders and entrepreneurs designed around peer-to-peer support, leadership development, and meaningful connections.

Alongside the story of Keller, Hannah reflects on building and selling Get the Shifts, navigating Covid, understanding her own strengths as an entrepreneur, and why ambition and personal fulfilment are not always the same thing.

She also shares her experiences as a woman entering heavily male-dominated industries in the 1990s, the importance of risk-taking, and why she proudly describes herself as “unapologetically ambitious”.

This is a conversation about entrepreneurship, leadership, ambition, identity, and what success really means.

“That’s all wonderful. But who’s mentoring you? Silence. Full stop.”  

🎧 In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why the most successful women are often the least supported
 • The story behind founding Keller and its mission to support women leaders
 • Why Hannah’s first attempt at building Keller went badly wrong
 • The costly mistake she made with Builder.ai
 • How she built and exited Get the Shifts
 • Why she sold the business after Covid
 • The challenges of balancing ambition with family life
 • Why knowing your strengths matters as a founder
 • How a conversation with her son changed how she thinks about identity
 • Why she believes women should be unapologetically ambitious
 • What success means to her today
 • How Keller plans to become a global network for women leaders

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 - Cold open
 01:03 - Introducing Hannah Wrixon and Keller
 02:55 - Why she founded Keller
 05:18 - “Who’s mentoring you?”
 05:47 - The mistakes she made building Keller
 08:38 - Why the original tech platform failed
 10:27 - Losing money on Builder.ai
 12:08 - How Keller works today
 18:47 - Expansion into the UK and global ambitions
 22:45 - The story behind Get the Shifts
 27:34 - The reality of entrepreneurship and cash flow
 29:50 - The bank almost stopped payroll
 32:21 - Covid and reinventing the business
 36:21 - Why she sold the company
 37:37 - “You’re my hardest-working, poorest friend”
 38:48 - Why entrepreneurs don’t work normally
 39:14 - Work addiction and identity
 41:07 - Her relationship with her son Callum
 43:02 - Why selling the company felt disappointing
 46:22 - Finding purpose through Keller
 50:34 - Being told there were no jobs for women in engineering
 55:03 - The challenges women leaders still face
 58:19 - Becoming an accidental entrepreneur
 59:37 - Why she isn’t afraid of failure
 01:01:10 - Being “unapologetically ambitious”
 01:02:47 - What she wants written on her gravestone

Topics covered:

Women in business, women in leadership, entrepreneurship, startups, founder mindset, leadership, ambition, purpose, identity, work-life balance, business exits, scaling companies, peer networks, executive leadership, female founders, mentoring, gender equality, confidence, family, personal development, business growth, Keller, Get the Shifts, leadership development, founder psychology.