Xander Van Scoyoc

I'm Xander Van Scoyoc — entrepreneur, recruiter, and someone who's spent years in the trenches building alongside Arizona's most ambitious founders and operators.

I run Mad Hire, a recruiting company that places top talent with high-growth companies. Through that work, I've had a front-row seat to what separates the operators who scale from those who stall — and those conversations are what inspired this podcast.

I started The Man in the Arena because the most valuable insights I've ever received came from private, unfiltered conversations with founders doing seven, eight, and nine figures. I wanted to bring those conversations to everyone who's building something — or thinking about it.

This podcast is rooted in Arizona's entrepreneurial ecosystem. The desert is quietly producing some of the most impressive operators in the country — people building seven-to-nine-figure businesses without the Silicon Valley hype machine.

My guests are founders who've scaled from zero to millions, operators running complex organizations through chaos, and investors who are betting big on the Southwest. They're building real businesses with real revenue — not chasing vanity metrics.

If you're an entrepreneur, operator, or investor in Arizona (or anywhere) doing meaningful work, this show is for you.

Each episode is a long-form, one-on-one conversation. No time limits. No scripted questions. No sponsors interrupting the flow. Just two people going deep on what matters.

I ask the questions that don't get asked on stage — about the near-failures, the pivots made under pressure, the lessons learned through pain, and the hard-won wisdom that only comes from being in the arena.