My nightmare of a rollercoaster ADDventure in 2019, attempting to rapidly scale-up ADDvocacy with the goal to triple revenue/staff in one fiscal year!

According to an article published in Inc Magazine on January 5th, 2018:

Behind every startup founder is a looming statistic:

Thirty-two percent of entrepreneurs struggle with two or more mental health conditions. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 US adults--43.8 million, or 18.5 percent--experience mental illness in a given year.

2019 was the hardest year in business that I personally faced, in my 8 years in business as the Chief Empowerment Officer of ADDvocacy. I also live with ADHD, Depression, Anxiety, a processing/learning disorder in Math, and struggle with sleep apnea.

In December of 2018, I decided to bring on a co-founder in order to rapidly scale our 1-1 coaching business. I thought that we could increase our capacity for 1-1 coaching from 50-75 clients a week to 200 by February 2020 and 900 by 2025 with over 35 internal employees.

My crucial *mistake* was that we started, on my co-founders advice implementing TOP DOWN management principals for that growth.

I started to feel the internal pain of this decision and year ago on March 1st, 2019 when I slipped into the first of 2 of the worst major mental health breakdowns of my entire life. I found myself up at 2am, researching the quickest that least painful way to end my life.

The next day, I had to coach and because I hate letting other people down, I felt obligated to finish this last day of coaching before ending my life.

My first 2 clients phoned me in the morning and cancelled, which was a huge relief! I walked into my 3rd appointment, who was a new entrepreneur in the Self Employment Benefits program from the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Education and Development in Halifax, Nova Scotia and saw a bottle of sleeping pills sitting on my desk

I asked my client..."Ummmm...what are those?"

She replied, "Well Keith I was just at my doctor's and picked these up this morning. Tonight I am going to take them all and kill myself, what should I do"

We both sat in silence together for what seemed like 40 minutes, through my tears I responded "I honestly don't know, 6 hours ago I researched a way to kill myself too!"

I then made a call to the:

Nova Scotia Mental Health Crisis Line 1-888-429-8167 (toll free)

Telephone crisis support and mobile response support are offered for work, home, school, and community agencies Service is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week]

Guess what, I got directed to an answering machine and left this message...

"Hi, my name is Keith Gelhorn and I own ADDvocacy. I am in the midst of suicidal thoughts and so is my client!"

Thankfully, we both worked through that day and the pain that came along with it, for both of us. I reached out for some additional coaching and enrolled in a 6 month Dialectical Behavioral Therapy program to help fight the horrible internal dialogue that was played on repeat in my head for the next 4 months.

My client went on to graduate from the SEB program and I was there to cheer her on!

My co-founder and I decided to go all in, in June 2019 and took out a $100,000 operating line of credit from the BDC to increase capacity for the goal of hitting 200 clients a week by September. However, by August 2019, it was evident that despite our financial projections, this strategy was riddled with holes.

We doubled our staff, increased our overhead 3 fold and were running 30k a month in overhead by September 2019, the start of our *busy season* as students returned to high school, college and university. I had enrolled in a $5000 training course to improve our online group coaching and training programs and also had a 2 month sales trip planned to visit every high school as part of the Atlantic Association of Registrars and Admissions Officers Fair, in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and attend conferences in St John Newfoundland, Charlottetown Prince Edward Island, Toronto Ontario, San Francisco, Colorado and Philadelphia from September 20th to November 20th 2019.

Events over the month almost sunk ADDvocacy and myself!

Our main *REFER'ER* of students at one local NSCC campus retired in June 2019, resulting in a drop in students from 40 to 2 by September. For some reason I couldn't see coming through my fog over the summer. That one school would have almost filled up the 2 new coaches I'd just hired . I also discovered that my co-founder was in way over his head and had a much different agenda and values than the rest of our team, which lead to a total breakdown in communication between him and I and obliterated the systems Alana and Bailey worked so hard to develop for us over that year to support the scale up.

On September 10th, 2019 my co-founder left on medical leave. A day after that I found out he got into a program through the Wallace McCain Institute, that he got into their Strategic Executives program, He recognized he was in over his head and asked for my support find a program that would support him. I did and he got in, but it was too little, too late.

I got an email from the lender that same week that we would have to start paying back the $100k loan at $2500 per month, starting in October, over the next 5 years. I then checked the bank account and realized that the $100k that I'd just taken out in June was gone and that I wouldn't have enough $$ to make payroll by the end of the month, let alone pay that back.

I was living every entrepreneurs worst nightmare. Out of control overhead and low receivables. I thought "how could this have happened?" I thought I had taken all the necessary measures to mitigate my risk, put the systems in place and formed a classic business structure that was sure to succeed!

My executive assistant quit two days after my COO left and I had to lay off our two newest coaches over the next 3 weeks. I had just enough clients to keep our two senior coaches going to pay for their wages till the end of the year.

My crucial mistake in all of this, was trying to delegate the operations out to someone else.

I ended up cancelling my 2 entire month sales trip the day after the first day of it, in Mid September. I also neglected to follow up on a huge prospects I got in that time, including a sales pitch that done with 25 Employment Service providers in Prince Edward Island, who all wanted professional development training for their staff on best coaching practices..this was exactly the opportunity I needed to turn things around but I couldn't get out of my own head in thinking I was a total failure!

"How could I leave my team at this point in in time? What was the point of it anyways, this whole thing is going to shit and there's nothing I can do to stop it!

My dad, Ken Gelhorn , 75 years old and a retired accountant and former founder and CEO of his own company, Gelhorn Information Systems Limited, had to fly out from Vancouver the next week, leaving my mom who was too unwell to join him, as I was in the midst of the worst mental health crisis in my entire life.

He stayed helped me slash all unnecessary overhead, off-site book accounting, marketing, HR, sales, expensive tech solutions, etc.

In mid October, after going through all my books which were a total disaster, he started to ask "where did multiple X thousands of $$ go" and I couldn't answer him! I had no idea what was happening in the business anymore and when he asked "Keith, this is YOUR company, what do YOU want to do?"

I said "FUCK IT, QUIT! Let's just plan to shut everything down before Christmas 2019."

As soon as those words left my mouth, he came over, put his arm around me and walked me over to the window. Across the street was a small paving crew building driveways. It all started with a new neighbor who moved in down the street and had hired them to come pave his driveway. He also paid it forward an paid to pave his elderly neighbors driveway, they literally came as we were standing there, my dad's arm around me and looking at this amazing act of kindness unfolding across the street.

My dad said to me "Keith, look at that little paving, what do you see?"

I said "A FUCKING PAVING CREW, obviously!"

Calmly, he said "NO, let me tell you what I see, are you up for that?

I was like "FUCK, whatever!"

What he saw was a small crew. "Keith, there is the owner who does the sales, oversees that the project gets done properly and supports his team. Their foreman drives the truck and steamroller and their crew of laborers execute all the rest of the work that needs to be done. That little crew probably does $500k in a year and produces enough money to get them though the year with a little left over for profit at the end of the year."

I said "Why would I want to JUST do $500k? I want a $500 Million dollar company!

"But since I screwed all this up, to hell with it, I quit! I am just going to become a truck driver, that way I don't have to think, no one will depend on me, and I can just live a simple life"

My dad said, "Keith as you know, entrepreneurs face this kind of problem all the time, and so do your coaching clients, you wouldn't tell them to just give up, would you?"

"Fuck off, I'm going back to bed" were the last words that came out of my mouth that day.

I contemplated suicide that night, who would blame me if I did it anyways? I had failed myself, my team, my clients and most importantly my Dad, who all I had wanted to do, was make him proud of me, my whole life.

Fortunately, one of my #ADHD #superpowers is #resilience. I took my dad to the airport and 2 days later I was on a flight to San Francisco and Colorado to visit my sister and nephews Noah (5), Connor (2) and Izzy (1). Spending time with them, started to push the needle of my "stinking thinking" and I came back to Nova Scotia in with just a little bit of hope that I could turn this around.

December 16th, I go the news that my co-founder would not be returning to ADDvocacy. This proved to be a blessing....

4 days later, I was back on a plane to Colorado, to spend the holidays with my family (including my parents). During that time, I started reflecting on the past 8 years in business which in turn reignited my passion for WHY I started ADDvocacy.org in the first place.

I was on my home on new years eve, trying to make it back in time for 10:30pm when the flight was SUPPOSED to land in Halifax to spend that time with my freinds.

My last flight was delayed and that "stinking thinking" started filling my thoughts again....

"Just my luck" I thought, "only to me, this would happen"

Then a magical thing happened, the flight attendant interrupted my movie and the started the countdown to midnight...

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!!

Everyone was cheering and giving each other high fives! It was in that moment that this year could be a clean slate!

On January 2nd 2020, I sat down 1-on-1 with Bailey, my employee of the last 1.5 years and said "When was the last time we had a whole day together, just the 2 of us?"

She replied softly "Ummmmm, the interview I think"

I replied, "Bailey, I am sorry. I can't express enough how much I value you and the expertise you have brought to ADDvocacy. What do you really like to do?

She said "I love coaching, curriculum development, creating and delivering workshops, social media and developing content"

"Great" I said, "do that then!"

The following Monday, I had a similar face to face meeting with Alana, my head coach and the first person I met when I came to Nova Scotia in 2011. Alana was only 18 when I met her in my first year of Nova Scotia Community College , Truro Campus, in our first year of Social Services. When she went on to university for her degree in Child and Youth studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, I told her to "look me up when you graduate and I will give you a job" (because she helped and coached me so much when I was in school). I hired her 3 months before she graduated in the spring of 2016.

"Alana, what do you really like to do?

Alana replied "Keith, I really like being the head coach, your second in command, and training and mentoring new coaches, as well as training educators, employers and front line workers on best practices in coaching"

"Great" I said, "Do that then!"

I also expressed my authentic self and came clean around the fact that my strengths are in networking, sales and thinking up the big ideas but when it comes time to digging into the details, I struggled with that.

Both Alana and Bailey told me "We love that part and we have your back in terms of taking care of that for you! We are a team, let's kick ass as a team"

I instantly felt like 2020 and beyond, was going to be different..

Catch my next Post for part 2.... #Resiliency is my #ADHD #Superpower