Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
SPECIAL EPISODE: Insights on Overcoming Personal Trials with Gavin Christensen
5 Plays3 years ago
Entrepreneurs are expected to do it all. Run a company, develop great relationships with their investors, keep up with their personal life… all while needing to keep yourself together. But—like everyone else—founders struggle with their own personal battles. Today we're talking with someone familiar. Someone who has overcome major challenges and reached success. Join us in today's conversation with investor Gavin Christensen of Kickstart (a VC firm for startups in Utah, Colorado, and the Mountain West) for a special episode of Perfect Pitch. In this episode, we'll talk about:
Gavin's diagnosis of Addison's Disease & how he moved forward
How entrepreneurs can learn to balance their personal trials with their startups
Why you should use regret to fuel better decision-making
Why Gavin believes we should be less impressed by working "overtime"
Recommended
Transcript
Entrepreneurial Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Entrepreneurs are expected to do it all.
00:00:03
Speaker
Run a company, develop great relationships with your investors, keep up with your personal life, all while needing to keep yourself together.
00:00:10
Speaker
But like everyone else, founders struggle with their own personal battles.
Introduction to Gavin Christensen
00:00:14
Speaker
Today, we're talking with someone familiar, someone who has overcome major challenges and reached success.
00:00:20
Speaker
Join us in today's conversation with investor Gavin Christensen for a special episode of Perfect Pitch.
Gavin's Career Journey
00:00:36
Speaker
Perfect Pitch is a podcast from Kickstart that reveals the minds of both investors and entrepreneurs throughout a startup's journey.
00:00:45
Speaker
I'm your host, Karen Zelnick.
00:00:47
Speaker
Gavin, thank you so much for being here today.
00:00:50
Speaker
You bet.
00:00:51
Speaker
You've paved the way for seed funding in Utah and really kind of the Mountain West, which we're going to talk about.
00:00:57
Speaker
But before Kickstart, you were an analyst, associate, and principal at vSpring Capital, which is now Signal Peak.
Reading Habits and Interests
00:01:03
Speaker
And outside of Kickstart, you enjoy one-wheeling, gaming on VR with your family and the Kickstart team and playing tennis.
00:01:10
Speaker
And because it's our favorite question to ask you, what are you currently reading?
00:01:14
Speaker
I try to do one biography history, then one kind of sci-fi fantasy thriller and then alternate.
00:01:20
Speaker
And I've been on a little bit of a fun run listing and reading a bunch of Neal Stephenson novels recently.
00:01:27
Speaker
He did a bunch of stuff that was kind of really topical related to the future, kind of in pandemic land, which I found fascinating.
00:01:34
Speaker
So I've kind of focused on that.
00:01:35
Speaker
That's great.
00:01:36
Speaker
I tend to read multiple books at a time, but I'm the same.
00:01:39
Speaker
I have like a serious book.
00:01:41
Speaker
I have a fun book.
Early Career and Health Diagnosis
00:01:42
Speaker
So Gavin, let's press rewind and look back at your life before founding Kickstart.
00:01:47
Speaker
Walk us through what you were up to in the years prior to 2008.
00:01:51
Speaker
Like many things in my life, I tend to apply for something I'm trying to achieve or get accepted to and fail at least once or twice.
00:01:59
Speaker
So I tried to get into management consulting in 99 and totally whiffed.
00:02:03
Speaker
Didn't get any offers.
00:02:05
Speaker
I took a job with Fidelity downtown.
00:02:08
Speaker
I was on the phones doing sales for them.
00:02:11
Speaker
And learned a lot about investing.
00:02:13
Speaker
I did get tired of taking IRA calls to help people with, you know, choosing which mutual fund they wanted to do.
00:02:18
Speaker
But I learned a lot about investing and really fell in love with investing there, which was really interesting.
00:02:23
Speaker
Was able a year later to get an offer from several firms in consulting.
00:02:28
Speaker
I chose to join Monitor in Boston.
00:02:31
Speaker
That's where I really did strategy consulting, learned a lot about just generally about business and what I was interested in doing.
00:02:37
Speaker
Eventually decided to take an offer to come back to Utah to join vSpring, which was really a startup venture firm that was really the first to focus on Utah.
00:02:46
Speaker
But probably the most formative thing that happened during that period was me getting diagnosed with something called Addison's disease.
Managing Addison's Disease
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, tell us about that.
00:02:57
Speaker
And I would preface this by saying, everybody has things in life that are challenging.
00:03:02
Speaker
These struggles tend to define us and make us who we are.
00:03:05
Speaker
And so for me, my story of being diagnosed with Addison's disease when I was in Boston really is a big part of that.
00:03:12
Speaker
So I had been totally healthy my entire life.
00:03:16
Speaker
Back in 99, I was feeling good.
00:03:18
Speaker
I had whiffed on getting into the industry I wanted, but I had just gotten married to an amazing woman, my wife, Lindsay, and I eventually got this job in Boston.
00:03:27
Speaker
We were driving out to Boston, kind of seeing the country.
00:03:30
Speaker
We were driving our 87 Buick, staying in hotels, which is so amazing.
00:03:34
Speaker
We're staying in these hotels.
00:03:35
Speaker
This is amazing.
00:03:37
Speaker
Eating fast food, it felt very luxurious to us.
00:03:40
Speaker
There's some of the clues that kind of happened along the way that something was really not right.
00:03:44
Speaker
I had been feeling pretty run down for a while.
00:03:47
Speaker
Like I would often get nauseated.
00:03:48
Speaker
I've always been very active, but I was having trouble exercising.
00:03:53
Speaker
And I remember we're at the Mall of America, you know, kind of crossing the country and we're walking around.
00:03:57
Speaker
I had this like full body muscle cramp where I was just laying on the ground, writhing in pain while many Minnesotans looked on wondering what was going on.
00:04:07
Speaker
And I
00:04:08
Speaker
joined Monitor, who were living in Boston, and it's an incredibly intense work environment there, 80 hours a week, pretty normal weeks.
00:04:17
Speaker
And I was just really struggling.
00:04:19
Speaker
I had lost a bunch of weight.
00:04:20
Speaker
It eventually hit a crisis point where I had lost, let's say I weigh about 170 pounds.
Daily Life with Addison's Disease
00:04:26
Speaker
I was down to like 125 pounds.
00:04:28
Speaker
And I got to the point where I couldn't walk upstairs.
00:04:31
Speaker
Oh my goodness.
00:04:32
Speaker
Which is kind of crazy.
00:04:33
Speaker
We actually lived on the second or third story at the time.
00:04:36
Speaker
I'm 24 and I can't walk upstairs.
00:04:38
Speaker
I would throw up every morning, went to as a doctor saying like, wow, there's something just really wrong with me.
00:04:45
Speaker
And I passed out while he was taking my blood pressure.
00:04:48
Speaker
He couldn't actually register any blood pressure.
00:04:50
Speaker
And he took me to the ambulance at Mass General.
00:04:53
Speaker
So Dr. Wall, my doctor in Boston, was a big JFK fan.
00:04:58
Speaker
And so he noticed some of the really subtle clues that I had in something called Addison's disease, which basically means that you no longer have adrenal glands.
00:05:09
Speaker
It registers when it, and the adrenal glands play a really key role in the body.
00:05:13
Speaker
They regulate everything from blood pressure to metabolism to mood, and they release certain steroids and hormones, which you don't have if you don't have adrenal glands.
00:05:22
Speaker
And so it's irreversible and it's a chronic illness that you can manage, but you have to manage manually.
00:05:31
Speaker
It really took me years and even decades to figure out how to live with a chronic illness.
00:05:37
Speaker
If I'm a type 1 diabetic, there's such great technology now.
00:05:41
Speaker
I have a pump and I can look at my levels that are measured for me.
00:05:44
Speaker
So I kind of know if I'm high or low and what I need to do.
00:05:47
Speaker
It's still really challenging.
00:05:48
Speaker
Unfortunately, Addison's is rare enough that there is no pump.
00:05:52
Speaker
I just have to do everything by feel.
00:05:54
Speaker
And so there's just this constant sort of meta-
00:05:57
Speaker
analysis that I have going on in my mind of like, how am I doing?
00:06:00
Speaker
Do I need more steroid?
00:06:02
Speaker
A couple of different steroids that I take, oral steroid.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so I always, when I play tennis, I always joke that I'm doping.
00:06:07
Speaker
I literally am taking steroids.
00:06:09
Speaker
Your body would naturally secrete more steroid when you exercise and mine doesn't.
Impact on Work and Overcoming Illness
00:06:13
Speaker
So I have to add, just to give you an idea, if I don't manage my medication appropriately, and let's say I didn't have medication for
00:06:23
Speaker
you know, I got cut off for a few days, it probably would take me about three to four days to die.
00:06:29
Speaker
You know, I have to set an alarm, wake up, take my medicine, get medicine and go back to sleep and then wake up because, you know, that's how you wake up in the morning is your body releases cortisol and other mineral corticoids to wake you up.
00:06:42
Speaker
So it's a manual wake up, which I'm used to now, but
00:06:45
Speaker
One of the things that took me too long to figure out is when I'm really stressed out emotionally, your body reacts to that too.
00:06:52
Speaker
And so I have to do that manually.
00:06:54
Speaker
Do you have an example of a time when you were working really hard on something and had to overcome the symptoms of Addison's and what you did?
00:07:03
Speaker
And just a very specific example, if you have one.
00:07:07
Speaker
In the early days of Kickstart, I was trying to get Kickstart off the ground and
00:07:13
Speaker
And I was also spending time with one of the partners of eSpring helping to get a fund in Mexico off the ground, the one that Dalton was eventually part of.
00:07:22
Speaker
I got an illness.
00:07:24
Speaker
And with Addison's, it's tricky.
00:07:25
Speaker
You can get illnesses and they can quickly kind of spin out of control.
00:07:28
Speaker
And it like got really bad.
00:07:30
Speaker
And, you know, I started throwing up and went to the ER.
00:07:32
Speaker
And what they do is they give you this injection of cortisol.
00:07:36
Speaker
They also inject me with morphine.
00:07:38
Speaker
They gave me this heated blanket.
00:07:41
Speaker
And I remember thinking, man, that blanket was amazing.
00:07:43
Speaker
You know, I still, I still actually think back about that blanket.
00:07:45
Speaker
Like, wow, that was such a great blanket.
00:07:47
Speaker
Like, do they sell that anywhere?
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:49
Speaker
And it obviously was the morphine that was very helpful for a calming effect.
00:07:53
Speaker
But, you know, I think it just is a good example for me of, okay, I pushed it beyond the physical limit.
00:08:00
Speaker
But a lot of it was the mental stress that I was not compensating for.
00:08:04
Speaker
It kind of pushed me over the edge.
00:08:07
Speaker
You know, I got better and, you know, kind of got back at
Mindset Changes and Advice
00:08:10
Speaker
it.
00:08:10
Speaker
But those were the kind of things that would happen.
00:08:13
Speaker
That would give me a whole kind of cycle of self-doubt after things like that.
00:08:18
Speaker
Like, wow, can I even do this?
00:08:21
Speaker
You know, is this, who am I kidding?
00:08:23
Speaker
Like I remember when I was newly diagnosed, I was visiting my brother and his new wife.
00:08:29
Speaker
We were trying to find our car and you know, whatever, you can't find your car.
00:08:33
Speaker
But I was for whatever reason, a little bit off on these steroids.
00:08:37
Speaker
And so I was like, where is our car?
00:08:40
Speaker
And I broke down and started crying.
00:08:43
Speaker
And so it really changed my mindset.
00:08:45
Speaker
And for several years after I got it, I was like, obviously, I'm not going to have the career that I thought I would.
00:08:50
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to ask, how did that diagnosis impact how you saw your life moving forward?
00:08:56
Speaker
You know, I'd always been pretty used to being very kind of mentally quick.
00:09:02
Speaker
And there's a lot of brain fog associated with Addison's because of sometimes you literally don't have enough oxygen in your brain, right?
00:09:08
Speaker
And so...
00:09:10
Speaker
I became more quiet.
00:09:11
Speaker
I started to really be very thoughtful about what I would say and be careful.
00:09:16
Speaker
It really affected my confidence for years.
00:09:18
Speaker
And so I really started dialing back my expectations about what I could achieve.
00:09:21
Speaker
And I don't know how long I will be able to work was a constant worry of mine because I don't know how long I have.
00:09:31
Speaker
Gavin, that's a really sobering thing to have happen, especially when you're so young.
00:09:36
Speaker
There are a lot of founders who carry something like this.
00:09:39
Speaker
What advice would you give to them?
00:09:41
Speaker
It's no coincidence that I'm talking about this now, 15 years in, because I would be very afraid of what my first investors would have thought of me knowing I had this illness.
00:09:54
Speaker
At some level, most people said no to kickstart no matter what I did, right?
00:09:59
Speaker
So people didn't need another reason to say no.
00:10:02
Speaker
And I think the world has changed a bit about the challenges that people have and that most people have something and then they can be overcome in careers and in personal life.
00:10:15
Speaker
But...
00:10:15
Speaker
you know, we're still not there.
00:10:17
Speaker
On the one hand, I hope it inspires people that maybe they have some kind of physical or mental deficiency that as they see it, that they can overcome and still do great things.
00:10:26
Speaker
And so that's partly why I share it now.
00:10:29
Speaker
So that was my decision.
00:10:30
Speaker
And I think it was probably wise, sadly.
00:10:33
Speaker
That's a lot to carry, especially with the burden of also then starting something.
00:10:38
Speaker
Like you said, it wasn't right for you to talk about it at the time.
00:10:40
Speaker
And we're really grateful you're talking about it now and that people can be inspired by it and lifted up and learn from it.
00:10:46
Speaker
But what advice would you give to people who feel they can't tell their investors what can they take away from this?
00:10:54
Speaker
Hopefully be inspired saying, hey, maybe I can overcome my challenges and make it happen.
00:11:00
Speaker
The journey of the founder is always lonely and hard, and it's hard to share with others.
00:11:05
Speaker
Sadly, I felt this.
00:11:07
Speaker
Sharing weakness isn't always rewarded with understanding and trust, and it sometimes can lead people who you want to share with to doubt you.
00:11:17
Speaker
That said, I think struggling with this issue and its implications...
00:11:21
Speaker
has created maybe a little bit of a superpower in the behavior I've developed, which is kind of an always a meta analysis of like, Hey, how am I feeling?
00:11:28
Speaker
How am I doing?
00:11:29
Speaker
That's really helped me to have a lot of emotional control over what's happening around me.
00:11:35
Speaker
You know, that coupled with someone who felt like I could have died in my twenties and didn't has really left me with conviction that there's no guarantee about how long I live.
Regrets and Sharing Burdens
00:11:46
Speaker
And so try to live deliberately and
00:11:49
Speaker
The day-to-day drama of building a business is hard and challenging, but I can sort of pace myself through it and help others to pace themselves through it.
00:11:57
Speaker
So I think that's something that I've learned to do from this illness.
00:12:03
Speaker
I really appreciate you sharing what you've learned and the things that have helped you.
00:12:07
Speaker
And I'm also curious, are there things that you would do differently looking back that you would change now?
00:12:14
Speaker
Most of my regrets are in the category of over-correcting, feeling so worried about taking care of my family and having this business work that I build a castle wall, then a moat, and another moat around my ability to control my health.
00:12:34
Speaker
And I think I probably should have been much more willing to share the burden with those that work closest to me.
00:12:42
Speaker
And I think a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to that of like, hey, you got to have some safe people in your life that you can share the burden with.
00:12:48
Speaker
You're actually not doing them a favor by protecting them from it.
00:12:53
Speaker
I like how everyone can learn something from that.
00:12:55
Speaker
Sometimes the instinct is to put moats on top of moats.
00:12:58
Speaker
And so just start where you're at and kind of work and try to be better moving forward.
00:13:04
Speaker
The cool thing that I think I've learned, especially the last five to seven years of, hey, a lot of marriage counseling, a lot of personal counseling, a lot of perspective is it's never too late to get it right and to improve and move on.
00:13:18
Speaker
And so...
00:13:20
Speaker
If we let go of our conception of who we are, as soon as you let it go, you realize, what am I even protecting?
00:13:26
Speaker
Who cares?
00:13:28
Speaker
I'm so far from infallible.
00:13:30
Speaker
I just let go of this conception we have of ourselves.
00:13:34
Speaker
And it's pretty freeing.
00:13:35
Speaker
You're like, oh, I'll just focus on learning and getting better as a person as opposed to trying to
00:13:41
Speaker
protect some false conception of who I wish I were or, hey, that was the dad I wish I was or the husband I wish I was or the leader I wish I was.
00:13:49
Speaker
It's like, well, I can let that go and just focus on being the best I can be now with others saying, yeah, that's actually where you are.
00:13:57
Speaker
I think that's really beautiful.
00:13:58
Speaker
And I actually recently read an article about not being afraid of or beating yourself up about regret, but using it to your point of letting go of just all the conceptions of what you should be.
00:14:09
Speaker
Stop shitting yourself and say, oh, I should have been this.
00:14:12
Speaker
But moving forward and saying, hey, tomorrow I can be this.
00:14:16
Speaker
Tomorrow I want
Awareness and Balanced Living
00:14:17
Speaker
to be this.
00:14:18
Speaker
It's a really freeing perspective and reframe, I think.
00:14:21
Speaker
So I love that you brought that up.
00:14:24
Speaker
Is there anything else you would like to share with listeners?
00:14:27
Speaker
So April is National Adrenal Disease Month, which many of you probably do not know.
00:14:33
Speaker
But as part of the board of the National Adrenal Disease Foundation, we're trying to spread awareness about Addison's disease, specifically to allow emergency room physicians to know
00:14:43
Speaker
these symptoms so that they can help save these individuals.
00:14:48
Speaker
And so to support that effort this month, you know, we're going to attach a link to this podcast and on our social to allow you to donate to NADF.
00:14:59
Speaker
And I would be happy to match any donations that come through to a reasonable level.
00:15:05
Speaker
We do know some people with a lot of shooting power and hey, let's hope that becomes a problem.
00:15:09
Speaker
But I'm really excited to match those donations.
00:15:13
Speaker
That's so exciting.
00:15:14
Speaker
Thanks, Gavin.
00:15:15
Speaker
We'll be sure to include a link.
00:15:17
Speaker
And Gavin, you know, this is something we like to ask everyone.
00:15:20
Speaker
So I'm going to ask you as well.
00:15:21
Speaker
What's an effective practice that you've implemented in your work or personal life that you think has had a great impact on your success?
00:15:29
Speaker
So for me, getting to a good spot with Addison's disease is probably as much about just holistic health as anything.
00:15:36
Speaker
I have to take this certain steroids every day or I just eventually will die.
00:15:40
Speaker
So that's pretty easy to do that.
00:15:42
Speaker
And if I miss it by 30 minutes or an hour, I know.
00:15:46
Speaker
There's kind of the emergency stuff, which is an Addisonian crisis where I have to have people around me that can give me these shots and stuff like that, which my partners know about.
00:15:54
Speaker
But then there's just general health.
00:15:56
Speaker
What's a good, healthy norm for me in terms of sleep being just as important as exercise and diet, right?
00:16:02
Speaker
Which I think is something that our community of entrepreneurs really tends to sacrifice for other things is sleep.
00:16:10
Speaker
And I've just learned to listen to my body and to know, okay, these people are talking to me and they're saying similar things that they normally say, but like literally everything they're saying is bugging me.
00:16:19
Speaker
So that's probably me, not them.
00:16:21
Speaker
Those kind of things that come with a little bit of self-awareness.
00:16:25
Speaker
So those are some of the things that have worked, you know, and paying close attention to mental health.
00:16:30
Speaker
And for me, that's a lot of things I do in terms of spending time with family, religious observance, but also having fun is a big deal for me.
00:16:40
Speaker
I find that my energy for life gets sucked away if I'm not having fun.
00:16:45
Speaker
And I love Kickstarter and building and helping companies, startups build.
00:16:49
Speaker
But I also like to just have fun.
00:16:52
Speaker
I'm not a guy that just needs to work all the time.
00:16:55
Speaker
I've done that, but I'm trying to not do that now.
00:16:58
Speaker
And
00:16:59
Speaker
So whether that's tennis, one wheel, VR, other board sports, we have to find those things that refuel us.
00:17:05
Speaker
And my advice to entrepreneurs is in our team is always, Hey, I'm way less impressed with people that can work insane hours because they tend to burn out and make bad choices or do bad work.
00:17:19
Speaker
It's all about consistent productivity over time.
00:17:23
Speaker
That's what gets it done.
00:17:24
Speaker
That's what creates great companies.
00:17:26
Speaker
I think pacing ourselves a little bit, recognizing that it's hard to take the quantity out of entrepreneurship.
00:17:31
Speaker
It's sort of part of the deal, but also finding things that renew us is a really big deal.
00:17:37
Speaker
I feel like I needed to be taking bulleted notes on every single one of those points.
00:17:41
Speaker
And I'm so grateful that you shared all of them.
00:17:43
Speaker
I've had so many aha moments and moments of gratitude for you being willing to, one, just share so openly about your story and spread awareness about this important issue.
00:17:52
Speaker
And so I'm grateful we're able to help bring awareness to that.
00:17:56
Speaker
Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
00:17:58
Speaker
And I really appreciate some ways.
00:18:00
Speaker
It's sort of sad that it's taken me this long to be open about this, but I'm so grateful I'm in a position I can be.
00:18:06
Speaker
And I hope it inspires others that have some weakness, real or perceived that they feel like other people would maybe discount them if they knew to recognize that they can achieve great things and have a fulfilling life.
00:18:24
Speaker
I'm confident it will.
00:18:25
Speaker
Being able to create
Closing Remarks
00:18:26
Speaker
awareness and dialogue around this just gives people the space to do that.
00:18:30
Speaker
So I think it will.
00:18:32
Speaker
Gavin, thank you for being here today.
00:18:34
Speaker
And of course, thank you for listening as we dive deep into what it takes to create the perfect pitch.
00:18:39
Speaker
If you want to learn more about our investor, Gavin Christensen from Kickstart, we'll have a link to his profile and a longer bio in our show notes at kickstartfund.com.
00:18:47
Speaker
You can listen to more episodes of Perfect Pitch wherever you listen to your podcast.
00:18:51
Speaker
And if you like what you're learning, leave us a reviewer rating.
00:18:55
Speaker
We'll be back next time with more insights from entrepreneurs and the investors who fund them.
00:18:59
Speaker
So be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing.