Exceptional Success, Crushing Pain & Back Again with Colin Christensen (Part 2)

Exceptional Success, Crushing Pain & Back Again (Part 2)

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome back to the Business Development Podcast. You are listening to episode 18 today, and today we have one of the most exceptional episodes that I've had the pleasure to put together. This is Exceptional Success, Crushing Pain, and back again with calling Christians in part two. And you need to stay tuned today for one of the most amazing recovery stories you may have ever heard.

Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal, and we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business, brought to you by Capital Business Development capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to the Business Development Podcast. Today we have our part two interview with Colin Christensen. And while typically our typical business development podcast is a lot about business growth or entrepreneurial, and you know what this is, this is that. However, Colin has a very, very, very inspiring story, which I want to touch on today, and I think you will all find extreme value and resilience in Collin.

Thank you so much for coming back to the Business Development podcast. Thank you for doing a two-parter with me. This is my very first two-parter, by the way, and I, I couldn't have had it with someone better frankly. It's been, it's been amazing. I look up to you immensely as an entrepreneur, as a mentor.

Heck, we've had, we've had lunch, we've had lots of great conversations and I find you an incredibly inspiring person and I'm so thankful to have you back on the show. Today we're gonna talk about something that I think for a lot of people would be incredibly challenging. You, you are incredibly successful.

Let me just start off by saying that you, you, I'm sure you were successful before and you are successful now, but you've had a few hiccups, some pretty bad ones. You've had a hiccup that frankly, I I am, I have no idea how you come back from and can we touch on that today? Can you, yeah. Can you tell the story of, of what happened?

You lost everything.

Colin Christensen: For sure. Yeah, thanks. I mean, for starters, thanks for having me on again, Kelly, it, it's good to talk and, you know, you hold me in high regard, which I'm encouraged by, and frankly just grateful to be a part of things. And if there's anything that I've learned and known one and figured out over the years, it's only to give it back to everybody else so that.

We can avoid some of those landmines. I, I really, I, I heard a story once, and this might help kind of contextualize things a little bit, but somebody described entrepreneurship once is, you know, you're kind of walking down a road and out of the nowhere you, you fall into a hole and that's a big, dark, black, scary thing, and you have no idea what you're doing.

You have no idea where you are, you're not sure anything that's around you. You can't see anything. And so you're groping around in the darkness trying to find anything, and eventually you find maybe a lighter and you kind of light it up and you can see two feet in front of you, and then maybe a morsel of food and you feed yourself and then hopefully, ultimately maybe a ladder.

And you climb your way out of the hole a little bit, only to walk 10 more feet and fall into another hole. Yeah. The thing is the second hole, you're like, okay, you have some hope. You believe that there's something in here and you could probably figure out a way to get out of it. And then you do. And then the funny trick about it is if you change streets because you're froze so frustrated with that street and you go to another street, you're gonna walk 10 feet down that one and fall into another hole.

So it's almost inevitable. But I think that's life, right? I mean, we, we talk about failure. Failure is not a finished state. It can't be. Mm-hmm. Everybody, any, every one of us have probably learned to walk and maybe ride a bike and maybe learned to swim and, you know, maybe learn to speak or whatever. And we've failed at all of it.

Mm-hmm. We've failed miserably Right. At all of them. Right. And it's only by trying again and trying to figure it out. And we got better at it. And, and I love, one of the analogies I like is the idea of a paper airplane. Right. Maybe our, our, our father made a paper airplane for us one day and he threw it and we are like, coolest thing ever.

That's so amazing. Yeah. And we go and we start folding a piece of paper and we throw it only to have it fall at our feet or go backwards even. And we, most of the time in entrepreneurs, we give up, we try it once, and that was a failure. And we never wanna feel that again. So we go bury ourselves in a back into our job.

Mm-hmm. Only to find out that we get kicked out through COVID three months later or whatever. Right. Like that. This is reality. Yeah. We're gonna fail in almost anything we do. So how do we deal with the failure is, is probably a big part of it. So I want that to be the context that once we start, Figuring out how to fold the paper and what kind of things make that paper airplane fly and float and move to the other side of the room.

We start to get better at it and we improve on it, and we can learn from those things. But when we walk into entrepreneurship, we have no clue. And so just like anything else, we, we are bound to fail really. Mm-hmm. So let's get over ourselves and not think we're gonna get it right the first time. Some of us had the luck, and sometimes those are the most arrogant people ever because they, they think they're all that in a bag of chips.

Mm-hmm. They're gonna fail and they're gonna fail hard and it's gonna hurt. Yeah. And maybe they don't and that's awesome. But, you know, some of us have, and I continually have done all the stupid things and because I've done all the stupid things, I try to take some of those stupid things that I've learned lessons from and give 'em back So, That's kind of my concept.

I'll let you say anything if you want to, and then I'll go into the story.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and, and I guess, you know, I mean, I've been in, we have, me and you have talked about this. I've been incredibly fortunate and I do try to, I do try to take things carefully, take things slowly, think, think my way through things, but I also realize that I'm human and I am going to miss something.

And I'm, you know, ma, I'm hoping that when I do miss something that it's minor. But the reality is I know for a fact that I will make mistakes. Mistakes will happen. And I just hope that when they do that, either, either I've spoken with people such as yourself who are inspiring, who have also had mistakes, who can kind of give me ideas on how to, how to.

How to come back instead of just give up and, and that, and that whatever mistakes that I make that hopefully I can fix them and hopefully I can dig myself outta that hole. Hopefully I can find my ladder, as you would say, and know that yeah, for sure. I'm going to fall into another hole, but I need to find ways to stay optimistic and come out the other side.

And yeah. Why don't we just lead right in. Why don't you just tell me, tell me the story. You know, man, I'm, I'm gonna just prep my listeners a little bit. Honestly, I'm also hearing this story for the first time, and I'm happy I am because I'm gonna be able to have like a very realistic response when I hear it.

But the gist of it is Colin had it wa it was a, was it a golf business, Colin?

Colin Christensen: Yeah, it was a franchise I ended up buying into.

Kelly Kennedy: And unfortunately this franchise ran into some bad luck and and, and fell. And Colin, Colin lost everything. And I, you know what? I'm just gonna take a step back.

Tell me the story Colin.

Colin Christensen: Yeah, I was gonna say one more thing there. Oh, and I can't remember what it was. It'll probably come back to me later, but the trick to failure, there's a reason we put training wheels on a bike. And by the way, as a person who has three teens or, well, three, almost young, really young adults now, I learned mistakes with the first two trying to get them to ride a bike the traditional way.

Yeah. My daughter was so terrified. My youngest was so terrified of riding a bike that I couldn't get her to do it. I'd tried riding behind her and pushing her and stuff like that. Finally, what I did is, as I went the other model, which is a strider model. Mm-hmm. I didn't buy her a strider. I just pulled the pedals off the bike that she had and she, I got her on it and in three hours I put the pedals back on and she was riding her bike.

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: So the same thing happened with our kid too.

Colin Christensen: So my point is, how can we fail in a small and less painful way? Hmm. And I think that that's the crux of it. If I was to go back now that like I'm generally, I'm still an entrepreneur and I still, you know, embody risk in a lot of ways, but I, my risk tolerance is way different now than it was before.

And part of that is because I know how painful it can be to fail big. Mm-hmm. And we're talking four and a half million dollars big. By the way. That's the kind of the number we're gonna talk about. Wow. So when, now I don't take the same risks that I used to. And that's because, so I tried now to figure out how can we prove something is gonna go well in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of money.

Hmm. And if, if I can get every entrepreneur to think that way, first and foremost, I think. Done it better. So everybody wants to go, oh, I'm gonna build an app. I spent 150 grand on an app. I don't think you need to spend that to find out if it's a good app or not. Mm-hmm. Like, there's a lot of things you can do in advance, and I had spent years of iterating on different levels until I ultimately said, Hmm, an app is gonna be in a good outcome.

So don't blow all your money on an app that nobody cares about. So try it. Can you do flashcards? Could you do a website for 20 bucks? Could you, you know, ask a bunch of questions. Like there's a thousand ways to try it in a short amount of time with the least amount of money so that you fail, but you failed in a little way.

Mm-hmm. And it doesn't cost you everything like it did me. So, okay. So I'll give you the kind of the story. So I had been in and out of businesses since I was 10. Love entrepreneurship, always looking for things and looking for opportunities. And I ended up going down to a, a An event a big convention of some sort on business down in, in about 2006.

And I, and on the way down, I kind of was thinking about what to do with my life and what I wanted to do. And I was looking at sales. I was a successful recruiter, very successful recruiter making boatloads of cash and doing really well. We had built a, a, a great team, and I got introduced to an opportunity down there.

One of the guys that was presenting who said, you know, had this ad that said, love golf, join the club. And it, it was, I'm like, I like golf. I yeah, golf a lot, right? And so I'm like, I'm interested in that. So we, I got to talking, I started doing, going through the interviews. What's really interesting is my wife and I were working on another business idea that we were looking at building and then of ultimately franchising.

And so I was really kind of trying to figure out between this business and the other one, which one I wanted. Lots of advice, lots of talking to different people, lots of asking questions, lots of wing things out. And I'm like, well, the ultimate outcome for me was where am I gonna learn the most? I wanna be a mentor.

I love mentoring. You know, you talked about, you know, what, what were we here put here for? I was put here, I think, to help other entrepreneurs. And, and so I was like, I really wanna say whatever happens, or in the next several years, I wanna learn it as much as I can so that I can be more useful and more helpful to entrepreneurs.

Well, I got my wish, by the way. Not in the way that I thought I would, but so we, we looked at these two opportunities. I took the one that was the franchise with this other team, this, this golf company, and. Went and visited and I said, okay, well if this works, I need to raise some money. Well, we had a lot of success.

We ended up raising a hundred thousand dollars in 30 days. Wow. From friends and family that I knew, like friends associates that I knew. And it was like easy, easy capital. Within a year we had raised over a million dollars very rapidly and mean, never have done any really fundraising before, but we realized that what we were selling with golf.

Kind of legal cocaine. Right. I mean, it was, you know, everybody loves golf. Mm-hmm. And they're willing to spend stupid money to do it. Sure. Including me, right? Yeah. So me too. So the whole idea was this indoor golf training center, and so we were building a golf training center here, and it was gonna be down on King's Way.

We ended up looking around and doing all the stuff, and we found the 35,000 square foot building. We ended up jumping into things faster than we were. We got ahead of ourselves. It's really ultimately where things started to go. So about a year in, we were. Tons of money coming in, everything was going super successful.

But rather than going and getting all the capital that we needed, we started diving in and moving ahead cuz everything was going great. Well, 2007 hit, 2008 hit, you know, and things started to turn really, really rapidly. So we ended up getting to the point where we had a lot of development on this large building, 40,000 square feet.

Everything was looking really great. It was coming along awesome, but then all of a sudden some funding dropped. It like fell out and then some more funding dropped out. And so I remember going to the, the head of the franchise, the company that we were working with, and I said, I think we need to pull back and scale, you know, turn back and, and stop everything and just pull off.

Mm-hmm. And they made a promise to me at that point. They said, well, I'm gonna tell you something. Nobody knows we're gonna you. We're gonna go public and when we do, you know, we're gonna help you. Cuz I was the fastest growing and the most advanced guy. I was raised in the most capital and you know, blah, blah, blah.

Business development stuff. I was really good at it too. Yeah. And so we are doing really successful. Everything was coming. We had, by the way, just to give you some stats, I mean, we had sold 850. Memberships, pre memberships, and please forgive me to anybody who I'm talking to that might have bought one of those memberships for 50 bucks or whatever, because that was part of the failure.

So it, it hurt, it hurt a lot. And, and I had friends who had put money in that were you know, that was their life savings or they had, you know, put another mortgage on her house or, you know, things, people close to me, friends of mine. Mm-hmm. And they had trusted me with their money and, and the whole thing blew apart.

And we lost ultimately everything, about four and a half million dollars. Right. Wow. So it was a brutal outcome. But what had happened is we got going and we're starting to build, and everything was starting to come together, was really successful. People were coming in and everybody, we had a hundred percent closing rate for like a year and a half.

Wow. Every single person, 850 pre-sold memberships, right? Like it was just yeah, phenomenal how well it was going. Substantial. And but everything's, the, the wheels had started to come off when we st we missed that deal. I had to let a bunch of people that we had literally just hired, they were finishing on a Friday their jobs on a Friday and to start on Monday, and everything fell apart that weekend.

And I remember phoning them and saying, I can't have you start on Monday. We don't have any money. Right. Horrifying. Feeling horrifying. I was getting death threats because we were, you know, had all this money and then everything wasn't going fast. So we went into this 18 month period of, of emergency where we were just trying to stay alive and, and everything from my personal life, you know, I'd given up a, you know, quarter mill job, a a quarter mill year job to go into this full-time.

And then it stopped paying me. And then we had debt like crazy. I was driving, you know, this BMW X five that I had paid for two years in advance on a lease. So it was the cheapest car I could possibly drive. All my friends thought, why are you driving a Beamer? You don't have any money. I'm like, it's the only car I can afford.

Yeah. I didn't, I paid for it already. Right. It was stupid. Like, it was just insane. The things that had happened. Anyways, we had gotten all this stuff, everything was coming together. So for a year and a half, we were just playing catchup you know, we were trying to find extra funding. We had tried all these different sources.

Everything would kind of, a little bit would come in, but we'd bleeded it back in. Our run rate was terrible. Everything was falling apart and managing about a million dollars in debt personally. And like through our house and through our the credit cards and all the things that, you know, from living in a quarter million dollar a year lifestyle, yeah, it all got taken away.

And all of a sudden now we're trying to balance this with no income. So we spent about a year living as a family of five, three younger kids with $16,000 for a year, right? Like, I, I, if you try to do the math on that, it doesn't work no matter how you slice it. So it, it was it was very difficult.

Anyway, so we're going through all of that, and then we finally, okay. So just as things are, you know, everything is looking pretty dark My wife and I go to a concert with some friends of hers from outta town. That night I'm walking on, I was in judo. I I love judo, and I'm, I'm walking back to the car and I'm like, I can't, I can barely walk.

Like, and I'm thinking, this is weird. Why does my leg hurt so much? And I was thinking what it was is, you know, in judo you sweep a lot. Mm-hmm. Right? You're sweeping legs a lot. And so I thought my legs were so bruised. I had an old motorcycle injury, but it wasn't even that leg that was hurting. Yeah. So I'm like, well, this is weird.

Why is that leg hurting so much? And I thought it was judo and I just, I was standing all day and, and so my blood was, it was swelling up and stuff like that, right? So like, this is, this is bizarre. So I went, tried to go to sleep, woke up, felt like people were slicing my legs open, right? And I'm like, something's weird.

So I got a tensor bandage and I tried fixing it. Woke up in the morning and. Barfing everywhere. I thought I had a cold or something. And my wife and her, two friends from out of country, they went down to a trip to Banff from Edmonton, right? Yeah. So they drove four hours away and they were driving away, and my wife, one of her friends is a nurse.

And, and they finally phone phoned me and said, you should probably go to the hospital. Mm-hmm. Right? Because I, I couldn't move. I, I, I couldn't get, even get outta bed. I'd have a, a sip of water and I'd just throw it up, you know, everything. I was in massive pain, violently ill, and I have no idea what's going on to me.

And finally a buddy of mine came over and looked after my kids. I went to the hospital. It was one of those times, so it's like, yeah, it's gonna be about six hours. I'm like, are you kidding me? Yeah. So I'm lying there and I'm literally, I'm going in and out of consciousness and every time I take a sip of water, I'm so thirsty, I just go and throw it up again.

And, you know, I, they, they look at me and they go, okay, that's probably cellulitis, you know, which is just a s swelling of the cells. And I'm like, okay, fine, whatever. I'll just go home and I'll talk to my doctor and I'm like, you really should stay. Just hold on, we're gonna get you in right away. And I'm like, okay, I will.

So I listened to them. I stayed, and as soon as I got in, they started drawing on my leg. They started, you know, calling disease control. They started going ballistic. I was in emergency, and they figured out it started doing blood tests. And ultimately it turned out I had flesh eating disease, necrotizing faciitis.

And I was, I, I was almost dead. Like in that first three days I was in and out of consciousness, almost dying. My wife literally had to wrestle with this and figure out okay. Brought the kids and to say their last goodbyes. Wow. Right? Cause everything thought they looked like I was not gonna make it. Right.

And so that was in, in a week. And so finally they got me through that first week and they got me into a room and they stabilized me with this toxin of, you know, this antibiotic, you know, mixture of stuff. And they're stabilized everything, but they kept drawing on my leg slowly. Things got really, really bad for my leg, but mostly centralized.

All kinds of grossness happening. Let, let's not go into that, but I stabilize. But while I'm sitting in the hospital going through all of this, yeah. You know, I'm opening, I get my laptop, I'm opening my laptop, and I get my lease termination from my building that we had. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, I'm sitting there IV three times a day, you know, wondering what's gonna happen.

Barely alive. And then, you know, I find out my business is completely, basically shut down. They've locked us outta the building and everything's kind of going to hell in a hand basket really, really rapidly. Still phoning, still doing everything I can, still trying to make good for all my investors still, you know, making phone calls every day, sitting in the hospital, talking nurses, you know, everything.

And then making phone calls like hustling, like crazy, trying to get capital in. We find a guy and he comes in from Toronto and we're talking about a three and a half million dollar deal. He comes in and he, we get access. We talk to the landlords and we say, Hey, can we get access to the building? So he's like, yeah.

So I get outta the hospital. I'm literally, I have an IV hanging outta my arm. We have no electricity, no nothing. The building's dark. I get access to the building. I'm giving this tour to this investor for three and a half million dollars in the dark with a flashlight, with an IV hanging under my arm. And at the end of the tour, he says, you know, he says, I know a lot about these style of businesses.

I've invested in tons of them. You nailed every single point that we knew was gonna be a risk, and you nailed it. We're in, you know, pending due diligence. We're in for the money. So he turned his plane around. Literally, we flew back to Vancouver. Talked to his team there, they started doing due diligence over the next couple weeks.

I'm still in the hospital in another, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Three times a day I have to get IVs stuck in my arms. And in that time they decided, holy crap, we need to get you in for surgery. Like they were really cautious on surgery cuz it would open up the skin. Mm-hmm. And they didn't wanna do that.

But finally, the, one of the older doctors, a guy that was like 70 said, you're coming in tomorrow morning. And so literally from 10 o'clock that night, the next morning I was in the hospital at 6:00 AM and they were doing surgery and trying to fix my leg so I didn't lose my leg with all the, the disease.

Right. Anyway, so we do all that. Get back in surgery, another surgery later, you know, and just crazy stuff for a long time. I won't go into the pain and crazy stuff with that. But through all of this, I'm trying to manage all this debt and we're losing our house and everything's kind of falling apart around us.

Finally, we get through a lot of it and the guy comes back to me one day, the investor, and he says, we can't invest in you. I'm like, what are you talking about? He says, well, the franchise, we talked at the headquarters and the franchise is probably gonna be shut down in 30 to 60 days. I'm like, what? Wow.

Like what? I'm like, okay, so can we do anything? Like I'm the most successful fundraiser they've ever had in the business. Yeah. You know, a lot of guys have brought their own money in, but I was able to go out the outside crowd and get a lot of investment, you know, much to my downside, because it was other people's money, right?

Mm-hmm. So, and they're like, are, are you kidding me? Like, can we change our name? Can we do anything to get out of this? Like, we were trying to qua out of the toilet that was flushing, and we got literally sucked into it and lost everything. So we had one last hurrah. We tried to raise a couple of bucks and it, it just, it didn't go, the whole thing shut down.

Finally, my, aside from maybe three or four of the hundred investors or so that we. Who thought I was flying to Hawaii and taking the money. Most of the investors knew what was going on with my personal life that we were in desperate, desperate straits. And they finally said, Colin, you need to just quit.

Like, stop it. You're dragging a dead horse. Please go and get a job. Take care of your family and do things. So we, I, I ended up getting another job and just going back into an industry that I knew and recruiting and, and trying to work with folks and get some help slowly started to rebuild. You know, ultimately, but the, the, the headspace was the, probably the most difficult part.

It's like, here I am, I just went and, you know, kind of probably exercised every person I knew to try to get this thing going, raising four and a half million dollars only to have the whole thing get flushed almost overnight, you know, I mean, it was a long road to failure, but, you know, it was a very painful one.

And, and ultimately the whole thing just. Lost, right? So when we were starting to come back, it was, okay, what am I good at? Like, I really don't know. I mean, maybe it's business development. I mean, I, I've raised funds, but I don't wanna do that. I remember an experience I had, I, I joined this team and I, you know, we went for a, a team building day and we worked through a disc profile, right?

Like the whole workshop was around the disc profile, understanding how we can work together and, and all that kind of stuff. And I remember taking my disc profile up to my the facilitator and I said, you know, can you help me with this? I'm trying to ask a question about, she, she looks at it and she's like, okay, by what I'm seeing here, you have a high eye, which is influencer, right?

She says, but it's clearly depressed this down low. And I'm like, she's like, what happened? Like, what's going on? And I. Really, you know, I just spent, you know, the last three, two years of my life, three years of my life trying to fundraise four and a half million, only have everything go away. I don't wanna influence anybody anymore, right?

Like, you know what I mean? I've lost all heart for trying to help other people, you know invest in something cool, right? Mm-hmm. So that, that was a really interesting kind of physical and emotional outcome, measuring where I was at. But then I started going, okay, well, you know, I wanna start a business again.

So, I mean, I started, I was driving truck, like, you know, just something I needed to pay for the family. Yeah. So I was doing all kinds of different things and I had a couple of different jobs in that time. One of them was, I was driving truck, but I negotiated with the guy I was driving truck to say, Hey, you know what, I'm really trying to build a business.

I could use a couple of hours in the middle of the day. So he's like, well, actually I can do that. I'm gonna let you drive a truck, and then you start at six and end at six, but you're gonna have two hours in the middle where you can do whatever the heck you want. So I started meeting with clients again and just started, but again, still even trying to figure out what am I actually good at?

What can I do? How do I believe that if I can't feel like I can run a business, how can I help other people run a business? Mm-hmm. But I just started trying to review some of the things I believe in and some of the things I know that are true when it comes to business and understanding. And certainly a whole heap of lessons that I've learned and what to where the signals were to, you know, on leadership, on team building, on on execution, on fundraising, on marketing, on all the things like that.

And I'm like, how do I turn this into something valuable for other people? And in a relatively short time, I was getting paid, not a lot. Driving truck, but happy to do it. Lots of podcast listening, by the way. Yeah. And and I, ultimately, I sat, I, I ended up closing a deal to work with somebody for one day a week for twice the amount per month that I was working with trucking company.

So I was able to sort of stop that and get back into kind of consulting and working with that. And then I turned that into more and more clients and ultimately grew into more and more stuff. And, you know, kinda evolved over the last, you know, 12 years 15 years or so into what it's today. So,

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Like I ca Oh, where do I even start, Colin? That is unbelievable. That is an unbelievable story. I feel like, I feel like if you were, if, if I didn't know you, And you just kind of told me this. I don't know if I would believe it. It's that hard to believe.

Colin Christensen: A friend of mine and I, he, he's gone through some pretty crazy disasters as well.

And so he is one of my best buddies. I think I mentioned this in the last podcast, this idea that the people that I know that have gone through stuff like this, we have this deep connection and trust. I would do anything with him in business because I know where he stands. Right. You don't know what's gonna come out until you squeeze that, you know that fruit and find out what really comes out.

Right. And, and we've been through that ringer. But it's funny because we talk about this all the time, it's like, even if we wrote this down, nobody would believe it. Mm-hmm. Right. Like, and so the, the book I have, you could read the book, but it, it seems like a fiction book at times. So.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Like, okay. So, you know, I mean, like you said, at this point you've essentially, you've gotten all of your friends to invest, you've probably gotten family, everyone you knew, people that trusted you.

And did you ever get those relationships back?

Colin Christensen: Honestly aside, I, I still have coffee with some of my chief investors. I stay in touch with a lot of people. A lot of them were even through my church and, you know, I still have relationships with them. It, it, it took some time like, you know, these are are some pretty deep wounds that caused a lot of hurt and a, a lot of what would you call it?

I mean, physical life change, right? Mm-hmm. Like people's in retirement funds or inheritances or things like that. And so it took a lot of pain, but we were able to grow through it because I was completely transparent. I very much as open as I could be. I took my lumps too. I mean, you know, certainly I sat in a room and I literally had a whole bunch of people from one circle sit around and like, and like my church friends and we just sat and talked about it.

Mm-hmm. And I heard, you know, the, all the ugliness and all the, the, the challenges and all the, the, the, the pain that it caused them and what it did. And, you know, I took full ownership of it and just listened and, you know, empathized and, you know but at the same time they knew what I was going through too.

And so mm-hmm. We just kind of, you know, had a group, you know, cry if you wanna call it, and, you know, slowly started to rebuild relationships. A lot of them, not all of them for sure, cuz some of them don't have the means to, but a lot of them I think would, I've had people talk to me about investing again.

Mm-hmm. In, in different things I'm doing. Partly because, like I said, You can't tell what's gonna happen with a person until you see what happens when they fail. Mm-hmm. And, and I think that that was an element that made a huge difference is when the chips were down, when everything was falling apart, when the thing did, I worked my butt off and tried to do everything to honor every element of the relationship, communication and or, you know return of capital wherever possible.

Kelly Kennedy: So, thank you. Thank you. By the way, I, you know what, I just wanna acknowledge, I just wanna acknowledge, Colin I really appreciate you coming on and telling this story. We talked about it before and you said that, you know what, Kelly, there's nothing you couldn't ask me like that. You know, you, you've kind of gone through this, you, you've healed from it.

But I do just want to acknowledge that I. I can't imagine what this must have been like for you and to come out publicly and have this conversation with me. Thank you so much. I, and thank you from my listeners cause I know they appreciate it as well. They appreciate your honesty and your candor because it's not every day you meet somebody who was incredibly successful, had had a venture with High Promise that just ended up in a bad space.

You know, we don't control the economy. No one could have predicted that 2008 crash and you had to fall. You essentially lost everything, had to fall out from that, and then had to deal with almost something that killed you. And still had to deal with this situation. And I, I don't think many people could have done that.

And I just wanna say like, your resilience is truly impressive and thanks. And, and admirable,

Colin Christensen: honestly, I mean, I think admirable Sure. You know, that. And it could have anybody done it. Yes. I actually truly believe that. I mean, we talked about it before, but the idea that, you know, what is inside of us is much bigger than what's outside of us.

We have to believe that. And we're not gonna really, truly believe it until we get there. But it's amazing, no matter how deep you go and how far you go, it, you still have the strength inside of you somewhere. But there's a few things that made a difference for me. Certainly one is my incredible wife who somehow managed to stay with me through all of that mess.

And my kids who, it's changed their view of the world, but in a, in a surprisingly, and an encouraging and, and, and strong way. Mm-hmm. But also to the friends and the people around me. Who you know, I could go to and I could talk to and I could scream and yell at, and, you know, just kind of bear with it to God, who, you know, I would come home on my way home, I'd stop by the lake and walk around the lake and scream and yell and cry and mm-hmm.

Swear and, you know, just outlet. And then ultimately kind of mellow out, surrender, and then go home to try to deal with my family on top of it all. And so, you know, those are, those are the things we need. And I think any of us have that if we're willing to look around and recognize that there's somebody beside us.

We're all human. We all have similar fears and challenges and, and life. Mine might be slightly more colorful today than yours, but when you go through it, I'm there for you too. Right. And I think as entrepreneurs it's very easily to feel isolated and or unique. Yes. And that's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing.

And so, and, and here's the thing. I mean, what I've discovered is this, you know, your. Friends ask you how it's going. Oh, it's going awesome, right? Your investors ask how it's going? Well, it's going awesome. Trust me, I got your money. Right? Your customers ask, how's it going? Well, it's going awesome because you wanna do business with me.

You know, your vendors, your investors, your spouse, you know, everybody wants to know, and you've got to kind of have this front of it's going awesome. Mm-hmm. But it's not, and we know it's not. So who are you talking to? To tell the truth? Mm-hmm. And one, I think it's not as bad to explain to the people around you, including your investors, including your customers, including your spouse, including your friends, that it's not always going so awesome.

Especially to those who can handle it like a peer, another entrepreneur. And, and so when I talk about this and I try to talk about it in forums, when I get asked to speak about stuff, I'll talk about failure cuz I want people to have it as more of an open discussion, especially in a closed room where it's a bunch of entrepreneurs.

Yeah. Because we all feel it, but we don't talk about it. So what are you doing about it to let out that vent and have it, rather than just turn to heavy drinking and pot. Right? Yeah,

Kelly Kennedy: A hundred percent. And, and I I just wanna speak to that for a second because I totally, I totally get what you're saying.

Especially as you know, I mean for me, I'm an entrepreneur. But I'll be honest, out of my, out of my friends, my close friends, the ones I grew up with, I'm pretty much the only entrepreneur, right? So I, I actually have a lot more conversations open about my life and business, frankly, with my clients, because I feel like they understand the stresses that we're under.

They understand because like, I could say like, man, like I had a crazy week, or like, this happened and I'm feeling incredibly stressed out. Or I'm working, I've worked 15 hours for the past two weeks straight, and I'm feeling burnt out, but I still gotta keep going because people depend on me. The podcast has to keep going.

My clients need me to perform. And sometimes it can be very hard to be open about how you're truly feeling, especially as an entrepreneur entrepreneur. Even if your business is going well, you might be burning out or are exhausted. And I will speak for that. I regularly work to a point where I'm like, oh, man, I need, I need my weekend.

If I didn't have my weekend and just to rest and recoup, I don't know what I would do. But I think I'm not alone in this uh, being, in the fact that like, there's a lot of entrepreneurs who are kind of like, they're winging it on their own and they may not have a supportive peer group that understand them.

Colin Christensen: Well, I'll, I'll give you an example. I mean, and this is, I mean, I'm, I'm glad you're, you're kind of pulling this stuff out of it a little bit more because I think that that's very true. People would ask me how I could sleep at night and, you know, and it, it frankly, I mean, I get that like there's, there's no understanding.

I have this weirdly unique ability it seems, cuz I say unique because it doesn't seem to anybody else. They are kept up at night. I can sleep almost anytime. Because I can generally be better at stuffing things outta my brain, or at least getting it outta my head long enough so I can get a good sleep.

Mm-hmm. Like sleep is one of the core elements to everything I do. I try to get to bed by around 10 :30 and I try to, you know, I'm up almost natural and I don't use an alarm. I'm usually up around six Yeah. Almost every morning. And so that's a good amount of sleep. And I can sustain myself forever if I go too long cause I'm playing games too late or doing something stupid or whatever.

You know, it's, it's just, it doesn't work very well. And I find myself degraded. I'm not a young guy anymore. And so I find that my performance drops a little bit because of that. But it's like any muscle. I mean, if you're into bought a building, if you're into kind of nutrition, if you're into health, muscles need time to stress and then rest.

Mm-hmm. And without the rest, they will die. And, and I think that, you know, entrepreneurs among anybody else are super athletes. Like they're super high performers. Mm-hmm. Right. We. You know, Connor McDavid love the guy. Right. You know, amazing player. And he is gonna play for, you know, probably a, a few more years for sure.

And, and do that. But, you know, we go 40, 45, 50 years of entrepreneurship, full steam, 16, 15 hours a day or whatever. Mm-hmm. We have to be able to sustain ourselves and do well and be healthy. And so we have to make sure that we get rest. I mean, you talked about weekends. Great. I wish more people would make sure they took weekends too, but get a good sleep, you know, nothing's gonna happen.

Like we think that by some stretch, everything we do, everything's gonna cost you at least twice as much and take three times as long as you think it does. Yeah. So, Don't stress about it. Like just do what you can do today and then put it on a shelf, pick it up tomorrow and do it again. That's, that's some of the lessons I wish I could get across to people because entrepreneurs, we, I'm working with a guy now, he's out of India and he's here and his team is in India.

Guess what? He's pulled 24 hour days every day, all the time. Cuz they're exactly 12 hours different from us. Yeah. So he'll work with his team and then he'll do his stuff here and then he'll work with his team. It's like, dude, you are killing yourself. Yeah. Right. And I don't care how successful you think you are, you're not gonna be successful when you're dead.

Yeah. Right.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, You know, I also get, like, I also get that drive though, right? It's like, you know, no one's gonna operate your business but you. So if you wanna be successful, you gotta put it in time. So on one hand, totally get, totally get it. But on the other hand, like, good for him. For being that committed.

Colin Christensen: Yes, but here's the thing, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, yes, a hundred percent. I get it. I'm gonna ask a couple things. So we talked about this before when we had lunch, I think too. So who would you want to have as husband to your wife or father to your kids? That's your role. Mm-hmm. Your business is a bonus if you really think about it.

So it's not about like you are gonna say no to something, you have to say no to something. We can't do everything. Mm-hmm. So you gotta figure out where you draw your lines on what you say no to. Yeah. Right. Like even when I was like, I'm wrestling, like, okay, so I'll give you a cycle. You know, I've got American Express, I dunno, $50,000 American Express Bill or whatever that I'm working with.

Yeah. And they phone once a week and ask for an update. And I don't have any money, don't have any sight of money, and have no way of figuring out how to pay them. And every three months, it was kind of some really interesting lessons. There's tons of lessons we could learn here, but every three months it cycles the collection guy that I'm talking to changes.

Ok. Cause it has to go off a level or whatever. Ultimately they just come in with a firing squad and they sh shoot you and burn your house down, I guess. I dunno, I never gotta that level fortunately. But, but every time, and so I'd get this. It would ev inevitably go back and forth. Good cop, bad cop. I'd get a, a guy that's just yelling and ranting and raving and screaming and yelling and, you know, trying to do everything he can to try to get me to pay.

And I'm like, sorry dude. Like, what do you want from me? I mean, I don't have anything, you know, come and take a look. I got nothing. Yeah. Right. And then the next guy would be, okay, you know what, I totally get you, you know, keep in communication with me and let me know. And I would, and who do you think got more?

You know? Yeah. Input and help and support from, you know, from my side. Absolutely. And, and so I could stress and freak out and, and try to do everything I can to push against, but I, I have no levers to pull. Mm-hmm. I am so done. I don't have anything. And so I've gotta do what is most important, which. Be a dad to my kids.

Mm-hmm. Be a husband to my wife, and then everything else is a bonus if I can get through it. Right. And so that's survival and that's the way to maintain. But I also noticed that whether I worked my butt off and stressed about it 24 7 or just did what I was able to do that day in the eight hours that I spent there.

Yeah. I tried to make sure I was home for dinner every time and then I would go out and I'd work hard after hours and stuff like that. But my point is, didn't make a difference. I don't think it changed anything. The more I worked, it didn't cause me to do any more success or less success. Hmm. It just ha And it didn't really happen any faster, any slower.

So it wasn't a function of how hard or how heroic I was working. Mm-hmm. It was a function of just things playing out and I just try to guide them every day when I pick up the, the tools. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: So I, I want to touch on this. So obviously you were incredibly successful before this happened, and you're incredibly successful now.

But obviously you went through that change. Would you say that you're, you value your family more now than you did before, before you lost everything? Like did you, do you feel like you were different before or do you think, do you think that family became a key value after everything that happened?

Colin Christensen: No.

Well, it's, it, that's a really great question. It's an interesting one because it's that situation certainly had some changes or some consequences, and I didn't mean consequences in good and bad, like outcomes. Right. I would've considered myself a great family guy before. Mm-hmm. Like, I would love my kids.

I fought, like I said, every day I'd fight to come home and have dinner with my family. Right. I still sucked as a father and I sucked as a husband and, and there was some situations where I wasn't sure we were gonna stay married anymore, be through all of this, right? Mm-hmm. But we fought for it. We worked hard at it.

And so now, What it did was give me a swift kick of humility in my face so that I could change who I was. So the view of me being a good father and a good husband hadn't changed much how I did it. And what I learned now is, man, I socked at it. Mm-hmm. Before. Mm-hmm. Right. And, and a common thing for me that would come up would be like, you know, especially, okay, so I was doing recruiting and recruiting paid really well.

And so I could golf and I'd pay, go with clients, and I had crap loads of money. And we'd do all this stuff. I spent it all on me and, you know, doing stuff and going out and my wife would be at home with the kids. And, and, and I got to learn that that was really, really selfish. I didn't even think about it.

And I wasn't trying to, I would still make sure she had everything. She had a great car, had tons of fun. She could do anything she wanted, but that wasn't the point. The point was I wasn't doing it with her. Mm-hmm. Or I wasn't being what, I wasn't living up to the expectations that she was hoping for in this marriage.

And I'm like, oh, how did I miss that? Like, I'm considering that I'm good at this. Mm-hmm. But I'm not listening intently. And, and it took a situation like that where, you know, my life and my wellbeing and everything about us is completely destroyed. To really go, you know what, the only thing that's important here is my wife and my kids.

And so how do I restore that? How do I fix it? How do I listen to the needs of my wife? And in such a way, and my wife is amazing because she was vocal mm-hmm. About the whole thing. And, and not in a detrimental way, but in a way that just like, I don't know if you know this, but this is how it's going right now for me.

I'm like, whoa.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So, How I genuinely want to know, because I, I, I, I'm an incredibly hardworking person. Yeah. Could I be a better father? Could I be a better partner? A hundred percent. I don't always know how. Right. And so like, one of the questions that I have for you is, what did you do differently?

Like, obviously I totally got what you're saying with regards to like, I took clients out and, you know, my partner's at home. It's just, it is what it is. It's just the business. Yeah. How did you find balance in that? What does balance look like now for you in that situation? Well,

Colin Christensen: I mean, so, you know, maybe you've heard of the different five Love languages, right?

Yes. I mean, that's a, a thing that I think more people know about now, you know, what I value versus what my wife values are sometimes different. But there's only one way to find any of that out, and that's spend time together and, and actually ask about it and talk about it and listen and really understand, like, you know, if it's that whole communication thing, it's like she's like, da da da da da, and I'm like, da da da da da.

And she's like, no, da da da, da da. I'm like, da da da da da. No. I'm like, okay, da da da da da, no, da da da da da, eh, close. Okay. You know, and it's like 17 translations of that to get to the point it's like, oh yeah, right. Like, so we got really, really good at verbalizing what's important to us. So one of the things about, you know, a marriage in my mind is not like denying everything that you are to suit the other person.

Mm-hmm. And if anybody's doing that in a relationship, it's one of the two parties is probably dying slowly. Right. But it's maximizing who you are and allowing it to be converted or changed or improved by the other person. Hmm. So when I say compromise, it's not truly about compromises and I'm going to not do not be me, but it's about finding how I can be a hundred percent me, with my wife being able to be a hundred percent who she is.

Mm-hmm. And then finding out how those two things come together, which means the only way to do that is. Fighting sometimes challenges and vocalizing what our needs are and listening and then trying to actually meet those needs in a way that makes sense to me for her. I don't always do it, but we're still best friends.

Mm-hmm. And we, we've worked through a lot of this and, and my kids for some magical reason have turned out to be frigging awesome. Like, my kids are amazing. I love them and they're great kids. They're all here in the house still. And, and you know, I somewhat can't get rid of them, but No, but you know what I mean.

But it's really like even my son, my son, nothing ever worked for with him. No discipline ever changed him. Yeah. Right. We talked about this. Yeah. Frigging drove me nuts. Finally at like nine years old, I'm like, maybe I should try a different way of doing things. Yeah. And this is me learning to be me in a better way for him to, cuz it's not about me exercising my authority over him, it's about him becoming the best him.

And me being the best me. And so I had to learn how to do that. And curiosity and humility, we talked about that before. And so that was, that was the big lesson. I started listening to him and asking questions, and all of a sudden I'm like, really? I had no idea. Mm-hmm. That's fascinating. And now it's like, okay, now I'm just gonna, like, I'm gonna ask him questions because now I'm like, I can, I can totally jive off this instead of trying to tell him what to do all the time.

And we became best friends. Yeah. Right. And that was the part that was so amazing to me.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And I think every parent hopes to be best friends with their kids. We really do. Obviously, it can be incredibly challenging to be a, a close friend and a parent, because sometimes they just don't, they don't match.

Right. Sometimes it's hard. It's hard to be a parent and a friend at the same time, but we

Colin Christensen: definitely try, well, you can't be a friend necessarily. It. You know, 8, 9, 10, 11. Yes. 12. You've gotta be a friend by the time they're 18. Yes. But there's some things that you gotta do in order to get there. Right? That's the way, yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: You're like, you need to do that like transition phase where like, right now I'm teaching you life, but at some point I just wanna, I just wanna live life with you.

Colin Christensen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I, the trick is to have them be comfortable to come back and want to be there. Yes. So that's, that is a big outcome that you gotta strive for in my mind.

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: No, a hundred percent. I, I really love, I love what you're saying about, about how this really brought family front and center for you. And I, I think for a lot of us, hardworking people, you know, especially entrepreneurs, we bust our ass, you know, we, we work hard to win and succeed and sometimes it is the detriment of our family.

And I think what you're saying with, you know, come back, realize that the business is going to be okay because you care about it. You don't have to be working working at 150%. You can work at 90% and make sure that you're still giving your family the time that they truly deserve from you.

Colin Christensen: Well, I would say, You know, like, it's funny cuz people talk about this work-life balance thing and I don't think that's quite the right way to look at it.

Different times require different measures and at times I've, you know, sorry I can't have dinner tonight cuz I really need to do this or whatever, right? Mm-hmm. But that's not every night. And it's certainly not the habit. The habit is to try to come back to a norm that I expect. And so I have a, a methodology I like to call the ideal week.

Like if I could have a perfect week, what would look like? And I try to work fairly closely to that, like time in the morning for, for me, for scripture and prayer and things like that. But also time at dinner time. We have everybody in the household knows, and we always have for, you know, 20 some odd years is dinner's at 6:00 PM right?

And we have dinner and. You know, those kind of rhythm elements that happen. Same with the business for crying out loud, like every morning you should have a little standup with your team. Once a week you should have a all hands on deck. Once a quarter you should do some strategy planning. Like this is a rhythm that you try to set as a leader.

Mm-hmm. To help the company thrive and survive and be great. So do that. Do it with family. It's, it's a hundred percent of the old worlds. You are, you, are you the entrepreneur, but you also take it with you to be a dad and a, and a and a parent, and a husband and a friend, and a, and a hockey player, and a, you know, and a, and an entrepreneur all the same.

It's wherever you go, it's you. Right. So, but make sure that it's not so much. Like you can't run full on and it's not so much about going at 90%. I'm just kind of going off what you said there. Yeah. It's not so it is still a hundred percent, but do your a hundred percent for the time that you allocate for that set up, that structure as the thing that is the restricting element, not what needs to get done.

You can leave everything on the plate and come back to it and it's still gonna be there tomorrow. Yes. There's not as many emergencies and entrepreneurship as people think there are. And, and if we do, we're just gonna stress out and die instead of just allowing it to happen. And I, and I'm saying that on the heel of what we just talked about.

I literally trying to balance, I've got death threats coming in. I've got investors who thinks I'm embezzling money. I've got, you know a whole bunch of people I owe money to because of their, the work that they've done. And employees that are, you know, somewhat hate me because they all quit their job.

I've got more stressors than the average bear. And it's not gonna go away anytime soon. But I gotta still bear with it. And I, what surprised me or what the outcome of it was all I would do, what I could do for the time I had to do it and then go home and rest well, because I gotta do it again tomorrow.

Kelly Kennedy: When, when this was kind of at its peak, I, I imagine that was when you were probably still, still in the hospital and dealing, realizing that this thing is, is going to fall through, you know, your investor can't, can't move forward. It looks like the franchise is gonna collapse. Well, what, you know, I mean, I, I can't imagine what you must have been feeling and thinking.

Can you, can you maybe take us to what, what that was like for you? Did you think that you were ever gonna recover at that point?

Colin Christensen: I don't know. I mean I would say so. Like, again, it's just a thing, the biggest wrestle that I had every day, literally every day. And again, you know, for me, the faith and the, the prayer was literally like cursing and swearing and yelling and, and going like, listen, okay. Cause remember my sta my view on this.

Okay, here's the big picture of it. I got a lot of advice, prayed a lot about it, thought a lot about it, planned a lot about it, and the doors flew open. Mm-hmm. A hundred thousand dollars raised in three, you know, in, in, in 30 days. A million dollars in the first year. Just doors flooded open. Everything started coming together really, really rapidly.

Mm-hmm. Really, really successfully. Everything got open. They opened the doors, I walked in the room, everything started going well, and then bang, the doors slammed, everything started shutting down. Everything started falling apart. And I'm like, what the heck, God. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like you just opened every door, everything went a hundred percent.

Yeah. Got me inside and then crushed me. Uhhuh, what's going on? Right. So my, it was an anger and outburst of, and then this massive thing. So literally every day for me was fighting and wrestling and, and screaming at God going, what the heck? And then going, okay, listen. Bargaining in a sense of, I, I don't care if I come out of this alive, please help everybody else to get out of this alive.

Mm-hmm. Like, these guys are innocent. Look at, they've done this, they've put their money in. It's all, all they had to survive on. And that was their choice and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, like, they trusted me and I'm losing their trust by screwing it over. Mm-hmm. And so it wasn't so much about whether I would survive.

My biggest concern was much more for the people that had taken their money and given it to me and how do I try to make them whole from it? I knew I would be fine. Like I can, you know, whatever. I can build a log cabin and live in the bush with nothing if I need to. I know how to trap, I know how to fish and hunt and, you know, whatever.

Right. I can survive. Mm-hmm. But it was much more about. You know, I mean, there was absolutely the mental, I don't wanna downplay that, but the, the mental mind games that goes on there. But it wasn't so much about me as much as it was about how do I not even establish my brand? That sounds really arrogant, but I'm a guy that people have put trust in and the only thing I'm gonna walk out of here with is my name.

Yeah. It's not gonna succeed. So I don't have any money. I don't have a brand, I don't have all I have is a reputation in a little chunk of equity being equity, relationship equity with anybody that has trusted me. Mm-hmm. So my best friend in business is a guy, one of my first investors. And him and I are buddies through and through.

He's been through the ringer, I've been through the ringer, but he put a bunch of his money in and I lost it all. We're still buddies. Right? A lot of my friends are those, some of those early investors, and we've remained friends, but because the emphasis was on my relationship with them over and above the money, over and above the business, the business is gonna come and go and things happen.

Right. Yeah. So that, that was probably more the, the head stuff that was going on.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Like, like, you know, I mean obviously I can't, no one can, no one can imagine this first off. Like I don't think anybody listening to this show can, can imagine what you must have been going through. The challenges, obviously from the external, but not only challenges from external, your own personal feelings of self-worth, I'm sure in this moment.

And then obviously, you know, you love your family and you realize too that like, you know, they are going to have consequences from this and you're. I can't, I truly can't imagine what this must have been like for you. I, I, you know, I mean, I hate to say this, but I, I think there's a lot of people that wouldn't, that wouldn't have recovered from this, that ultimately may not, may not ever recover from what's happened.

And yeah. Yeah. Just shows a lot to the resilience, I guess. How, how were you able to stay optimistic? Cuz I know, you know, I mean, I know you personally. I, we've, we've, we've actually met, we've had a great lunch together and I see your energy and your optimism and your kindness and your faith. But I imagine in these moments, you must have been just, Grabbing for anything you could to feel optimistic and hopeful in this moment.

For, for, for people who may be going through something similar, I guess, you know, maybe, maybe not quite the same thing, but maybe they are struggling, maybe their business is starting to fail, or maybe they're, their, their, they're having trouble balancing life and they're realizing that their business is taking more from them than, than helping them.

Do you have any words for them?

Colin Christensen: Well, you know, maybe a couple of thoughts that come to mind. It sounds so terrible to say, I think, but I think I could actually find solace in the idea that it could get worse. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, you know, I'm dying on, on, on, you know, and really sometimes the only thing I'm focused on is just trying to make sure I can take another breath and survive, like literally physically because of the, the disease and stuff that I was going through and, and but you know, Getting that next step forward.

I mean, I don't know if I'm just because I'm a fighter or a tenacious, you know, bullheaded bugger. But you know, I, I, it wasn't so much about searching for optimism as much as pure unabashed rebellion a against the world, and, and knowing that, you know, I can handle this even though I can't, like, I mean, it's not like I can sit there and go, I got this.

Yeah. But, but it's the idea that like, I think anybody can, like, I, I'm, nobody's special. It's just, I'm, I'm not gonna give up very easily. And, and like I said, the focus wasn't on. Yes. One day this is all gonna turn around and I'm gonna be, it's gonna be great. I'm like, no. In a moment I'm like, I can't see more than a foot in front of me.

It's like that hole I talked about. You know, I'm like, I'm just groping around in the darkness trying to find anything that makes sense. Like, who am I, what am I good at? How can I do any of this? Do people still believe in me? And every day I'd get in front of the phone and pick up the phone and ask for more money because we're trying to survive, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, I didn't know it was dying until the very last minute, and then when I realized it was dead, I'm not gonna fundraise anymore. Yeah. But until that moment, I'm gonna keep trying to fundraise. I, I stopped fundraising from individuals and started fundraising a lot more from, you know corporations or bigger entities that could, you know, kind of bear the weight of a, a failure.

Mm-hmm. But it wasn't so much like, I think anybody can do it. It's a matter of, you know, just, it can always get worse. Not that you're looking for worse, but it can always get worse. I could have lost my leg. I could have lost my life. You know? I, I, because I, I, I've seen kids die. You know, I've, I've seen, you know, my, my son addicted to morphine at a newborn.

Like, these are not things that anybody I would wish on anybody. Mm-hmm. But at the same time, I, if you think in any moment, you know, you, you got it bad, there's probably a couple more things that would make it worse. Yeah. Right.

Kelly Kennedy: That, that's fair. I, you know, I don't know. I don't know if. I don't know if I would've thought about that in that situation.

Like it, like I said, it's like, it's like your brain is grasping for a way to move forward without giving up. And it's like, it's amazing that that's the direction that you went in order to find hope.

Colin Christensen: Yeah. Yeah. Well it's, it's true. And that's the thing. It's like, well, I could be right there. Like I could be in a lot of trouble right there, but I'm here and that's a little bit better.

Right. And I, and I think that that's part of it is, is okay, well if, if that's part of it, there's probably more. Yeah. And, and you know, I mean, and I believe that. We can solve this. Like maybe not solve it in the way that I hope it would be solved. Like, I mean, I had a very different outcome in mind. Not only going into it, but at the tail end of it.

You know? I, the miraculous thing being pulled outta your rear end and everything kind of turning out fine. Right? Like we all hope like that three and a half million dollar glimmer of hope. Mm-hmm. A big, joyful balloon rising into the sky and then pop that goes too. And you're like, Seriously. Seriously.

Oh my God. Yeah. Like, so, so, you know, it can always be worse. Sure. You know, and I, I mean, I, you know, I joke about it, but it's, it's like, and, and I don't wanna make light of anybody going through a tough situation. I mean, there, there is a real thing, you know, entrepreneur suicide, but I think part of it is have friends have faith.

Believe that you've got the stuff that's in is bigger than what's outside of you. You're a lot strongly, there's, there's actually a scripture for this, you know? God God says in Corinthians, it says, you know, he'll never give you more than you can bear. Right. Which is ironic by the way, because, you know, we're talking about this and you would never want to go through what I went through, and I'm sure I would never want to go through things you've gone through.

Right. But ironically, when we are pressed, there's always a way out. Mm-hmm. It's just a matter of how we do it and how we have to be changed. There's one of my favorite scriptures, actually. I, you know, not to make this into anything, but it's really important. One of, and it's always been my favorite scripture before this ever happened, was this idea.

It says you know, no discipline seems pleasant at the time,

but for those who have gone have been changed by it, it brings a harvest of righteousness, a harvest of, you know, change, a good thing's happening afterwards. Mm-hmm. So no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. But later on, for those who are willing to be changed by it, they have a great harvest, right?

Mm-hmm. And so that's the thing, I think, like I am so grateful for every bad situation I've gone through, and I think that's another part of it, is gratitude. Even in the moment, it can be worse. So I'm grateful I'm here. Mm-hmm. And any step forward. Even a step backwards still means that it could be worse and there's better.

Right? So I think gratitude is one element of it, but remembering that this discipline, what did I say when I was choosing between the businesses? I wanted the one, it was going to be the most helpful for entrepreneurs in the future. I got it. Yeah. That's what I make my living at and this is what I do, and I I love it every minute of the day.

Right. And so can things still go sideways? Yeah. And always be worse. Yeah. Yeah. They can always get better.

Kelly Kennedy: No, absolutely. It's it's truly an amazing story, Collin. It's, it's an amazing story of resilience, of bravery of just rock bottom, but not giving up. And I think you've inspired a lot of people today, frankly.

I really do. And, and and I, and I also just wanna say, I just can't. Yeah, I can't, I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine what that must have been like for you and, and to be able to essentially recover, you know, and, and make those changes and be able to step back into entrepreneurship, to be able to step back in, even, even with the pain of the last time, you know, and to be able to take that risk again and keep going.

It truly just shows your entrepreneurial spirit, your spirit, and just your, your never give up attitude and, and frankly, the fact that you've just completely rebuilt yourself since that time succeeded again and continue to succeed and continue to, to not just succeed, but help others succeed. It's it's amazing.

It's amazing. I think you're a very inspiring person and it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Colin.

Colin Christensen: Appreciate being here, Kelly. I mean, honestly. We're all human. We all kind of experience a lot of the same things. Whether it's a high, high, or a low low. We all have what we consider pain and pleasure and you know, and it's different for everybody, but entrepreneurship especially, I mean, I don't do the same stupid things I used to do.

Excuse me. To me, to me now, taking a risk, what I would consider like that previous, it's not on a table. Like I don't do it the same way. Did I take a risk? I did. I know where I took the risks and where I made mistakes and so I won't do that again. Mm-hmm. Would I raise the money again? You know? And I have in different ways and shapes and forms for sure.

Right. But not in the same way and not with the same risk exposure that I would before. So I have changed. I have learned a lot. I have jumped back into it, but nowhere near to the same. Profile, if you will, that I did before.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Just speaking to this, since you kind of hopped onto the, onto the topic, what would you say were the biggest life lessons that you learned from this?

Colin Christensen: Don't be optimistic. Like and, and hear me out on this. I mean, you know, I'm still an optimist, but I'm a pragmatic optimist. Like now I look at things with a lot more open eyes as to what could happen. Mm-hmm. Like, don't pay attention. It's like I mean, to make it as simple as we could on this, I was thinking about it.

I, well, I play magic, you know, I don't magic the gathering. It's kind of a fun card game. It's like chess for, you know, cards, right? Yeah. But even a game of poker, right. People will go all in. Right. And then they wonder why they're out of the game. Mm-hmm. Well, that was stupid. Could you have played that differently so that you only expose a little bit of risk?

Could you shut down your ego for crying out loud for a minute, just to go, you know what, I'm gonna fold and I'm gonna step back. And, and I think that that's one of the situations where entrepreneurs, they are so optimistic that they press forward regardless of the, the obvious or sometimes maybe less obvious, but there's some areas there, you know?

And, and, and so one of the tools I teach my entrepreneurs is a saying called pretzel. Some people call pestle pestle P E S T L E, right? And I say pretzel with an s, so p r e t s e l. I'm trying to figure out how to spell. But these are a great way to kind of list the potential nightmares that could happen to you.

Political, relational. People don't think about that. What's your reputation and your relationship that could go wrong if this goes wrong. Mm-hmm. Look at Colin for a second and learn a lesson from his page. Right. Economic, what could change with the economy and things like that. Mm-hmm. T technology, what technologies could happen, right?

Siri versus iPhone versus a new technology coming out. Whatever teleportation. Think about it. Just give a moment to think about these areas and think about it. So, t s social pandemic hits. Mm-hmm. I know what happens there, you know? E Econo, or sorry, environmental and then legal. What are those landscapes?

If you were to look at each of those letters and try to define what could happen, what could go wrong, take some time and think about it and how you might do it. It might never happen, but it might, and if it does, what are you gonna do about it? If you've got employees that are relying on you, a family that's relying on you, investors that are relying on you, customers that love what you do, and you can't deliver because of one of those things hitting you.

Who's the iresponsible one in this? Hmm. Right. So you asked what changed? My optimism. I'm still optimistic. My wife laughs at me cuz I'm so optimistic, but I'm way more pragmatic about everything and I punch holes in everything now because I can see what's coming around the corner. And I think that's what most entrepreneurs don't pay attention to and they think it'll all go fine.

And my question is, what happens if it doesn't?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Like the way that I kind of look at it to you, it. The money that we make at Capital I, I take very little of it and I don't intend to change that, to change that attitude. The reason being is, like you said, do you know what I've seen has helped a lot of businesses through tough times, big bank accounts to be able to rely back on instead of pulling all their money out or having, you know, shareholder dividends pulling all the money out and having nothing left to fall back on.

I watched that happen with multiple companies and so the lesson that I learned is pay yourself a reasonable salary. Take only what you need, leave some money in your accounts because the reality is you might need that money on a rainy day. Yeah. And yeah, like, I guess that's one way that I've tried to look forward with capital.

But you know, like you said, it's like sometimes you don't know what's coming. You don't know what technology's gonna come out and maybe, maybe make things real hard for you for a little bit. Yeah. Or yeah, like you said, maybe, maybe there's another covid. Can you survive a covid? What would you do if a covid happened?

Nobody thinks about those things.

Colin Christensen: We we built right into our USA with my investors this time around. Not the last time around, per se but we don't pay any dividends until we have a year's worth of savings. Oh, awesome. Right. So, and that's specifically that. And one of the lessons we learned was from a buddy of mine who has, you know, 13 businesses and when the pandemic hit, they didn't fire anybody.

They got everybody into a room, much to the screen of all the investors who were driving nuts, why don't you pay me some in dividends? Mm-hmm. And he is like, just, you never know. Right. And sure enough, the pandemic hit. He took, you know, three to six months to totally rejig and re and pivot his business and def something new.

Didn't have to fire one person, didn't have to change much of anything, but once they tweaked it, went off in a new tangent and hit the ball running. And they've been successful since. Wow. Right. But they had the capital to be able to do that. Yeah, because they're, again, you can't. Guard against everything, but there's a lot that you could probably guard against if you think about it for a minute.

And again, are humble and curious and be willing to go there and get some great advice, get some good mentors. Right.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. And I think it's like important too. You realize that business is not the same month over month. So when you are doing your forecasting, you gotta re, you gotta plan for a couple bad months because that's just life, right?

Like, I wish things work perfect all the time, but they just don't. And so you have to always plan ahead and you have to realize that there's gonna be a couple months that might be slow and you gotta be planning for that. So hundred percent. Like you said, I think it's better to, it's better to play a reserved game than it is to be all in.

Yeah.

Colin Christensen: It is, it, it, it, you know. Yeah. Shortest amount of time, least amount of money. Figure out how to do things and then slowly scale it up and have a big tail bank account behind you. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, a hundred percent. Yeah, I, I don't think that I have much more to talk about. I think we've, we've provided so much value.

If, if you haven't, if you haven't essentially listened, there's a previous episode to this, there's gonna be a part one. So if you, if you are just catching this, this is part two, but there's a part one that goes over Colin Christensen, a lot of his work and and kind of like a lot of the projects that he is working on currently is background, that sort of thing.

So if you wanna learn a little bit more about Colin Christensen, please make sure that you're listening to part one. Colin, I don't want to just end this episode right here, though. What I do want you to talk a little bit about your current business, about your consulting services, and maybe if there's some people listening that are looking for some help, maybe what you could do for them.

Colin Christensen: Sure. Not gonna be much in that way. There's, there's two areas that I'm trying to really leverage. One, I want to create pathways for any entrepreneur who has an idea. I don't care if it's $500 a month business outta your basement. You just wanna make some grocery money to building the next, you know, super tech, deep tech AI thing of a jiggy that does that.

I don't care. None of that matters to me. What matters is you're building something meaningful for you. There are some things that you can do right and wrong to make sure that those, it goes as smoothly as possible. And I have an app for that called route right Now, or Pocket Mentor is what we're changing the name to.

But on Route Entrepreneur Roadmap, R O O T I you have it posted somewhere, I'm sure for everybody, Kelly. And that plays two parts that to me are vital. One is gives the entrepreneurs some stuff to chew on and think through and work on. And, and in a way it's kinda like having me sitting over your shoulder asking you a bunch of questions.

That's what it's for. That's what it was designed for. That's how it's designed to work. The other side of that is obviously anybody who mentors other entrepreneurs, right? I train mentors all the time and I use the app as a framework. So if you think of a thing like Eeo s entrepreneur operating system, or scaling up or some of the big books that are out there on how to run a business, they're usually designed for the SMEs and you can go and get certified in them for $30,000.

I do training and coaching and helping mentors get trained. A fraction of that one to 10%. I'm changing the price from two 50 to 2,500, so Oh, wow. At some point I haven't yet, so, you know, get in now when you want. That's not even a marketing ploy. I'm just, I'm waiting to see, make sure it works the way I want it to.

But the mentors so far that I, I've trained are like, oh my goodness, where have you been all my life? This is fantastic. Everybody wants to mentor, you know, they want really want to help entrepreneurs like you and I help entrepreneurs. But they don't have a framework that they can kind of wrap everything around.

The app is designed to be that. Okay, now I have other avenues. I, I mentor for 500 Global. I run a, a, a early stage startup stuff going on at McCuen University as an e i r and entrepreneur and residence. It's called McCuen Venture Lab. You know, all of these things are little tools that I can do, but, you know, reach out to Kelly, reach out to me and, you know, get ahold of me and there's tons I can do to try to point you in the right direction.

I'm, I'm a navigator first and foremost. I can't solve every problem, but I know who can.

Kelly Kennedy: That's awesome. Do you still do one-on-one business consulting?

Colin Christensen: I do but I charge so much stinking money. It's a whole lot easier for, like, I, I do that, but I, I don't even enjoy it for the bigger companies. Mm-hmm. I, I will, and I can set that up, but most of the time I end up.

Setting up something that's very, very low risk financially for the entrepreneur, but I just give them more responsibility to do themselves. If you want me to stand over your shoulder, it's gonna be expensive. Sure. Right. So I try to do things that are really high touch, high leverage, sorry. Low touch, high leverage that don't cost you a lot.

Mm-hmm. So that's making sure you get introduced to the right people. I've got different ecosystem partners that that can help support financial elements to pay for different type of mentoring and different things like that. I, you know, I, I'm happy to do though, I like doing this where I'm one to many.

And hopefully give some wisdom to a whole bunch of people instead of just one-on-one. And I can do that, but it's really expensive to do that.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. No, fair enough. I just, I thought, I thought potentially there might be some opportunity there for you, but yes, I totally understand that avenue and, and, mm-hmm.

And the costs and the cost of people.

Colin Christensen: Yeah. I mean, reach out. I mean, the think site is, is is one place to do that, but it's more of a placeholder site and, and inevitably when an entrepreneur comes to me, I sit down and have a coffee and we have a great chat and, and if I'm the right person for them, I'm happy to help.

But it's, it's very, very rarely, like we talked about this before with sales. I'm not for everybody and I don't want to be for everybody. I want to make sure I get them in front of the right person who is, I don't need more money necessarily. I don't need more, you know I, I more impact for sure is what I'm trying to do, but I just want to help people get off on the right foot.

And a lot of the time I can do a couple of simple things that'll really move people forward without me having to do much.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome. It cost much, I guess. Fair enough. Well, I, I always give my, my guests an option here if they would like to. Do you have a question that you might want to ask me, Colin?

Colin Christensen: Oh, that's a good question.

Actually no. Well, what's your dog's name?

Kelly Kennedy: My dog's name is Hunter. We actually have two dogs named Hunter because my fiance, when we met Hadden, had another lab named Hunter. So we have two labs named Hunter, so we actually call them Old Hunter and Little Hunter.

Colin Christensen: There you go. Yeah. That's awesome. I like that story.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's a good one. Can you, for anyone wanting to get a hold of you, Colin, what's the best way for my listeners to reach you if they do want some services or they want to get in touch?

Colin Christensen: What would be the best way, and I mean, there's probably a couple of ways. One is LinkedIn. Like I, I, I have a lot of connections on LinkedIn and that's a good place to connect with me.

I try to connect. People, as long as they're not selling me some kind of stupid marketing thing. Mm-hmm. Then I get all, every day I feel, ask me a legitimate question and I will give you a real answer. So LinkedIn is a great place to reach out to me. And then you could hello@thnq.ca is a good place to reach out.

So just hello@thnq.ca and that's it. I mean, my websites, there's a couple of different ones. I'm hanging around McEwen as an entrepreneur in residence. I, you know, threw a lot of the different channels in the Edmonton ecosystem. You can find me. There's a bunch of different ways that way.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Nope, that's awesome.

Well this has been episode 17, I suppose of the, or no, this will be episode 18 actually, because you're gonna have a Sunday. Sunday. So episode 18 of the Business Development podcast. This has been with Colin Christensen and I just wanted to say thank you, Collin. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on for this episode.

I So inspiring man. So inspiring. And I, and I am, I'm in awe. I'm in awe of you. And it's been a pleasure having you and I hope that this episode is everything that you expected it would be. And I hope that we reach an absolute ton of people and we inspire some people today, so.

Colin Christensen: Hundred percent.

That's, that's why we do what we do. We just wanna reach out and we're all humans just trying to move forward three feet at a time, you know? So let's let's do that together and anything I can do to help is fantastic in my mind. Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, thanks again, Collin. You've been listening to the Business Development Podcast.

I'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

Intro: The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.