My Type 1 Diabetes Diagnosis Prompted Me To Start My Business
I got the call from my doctor confirming the diagnosis a couple of weeks after being told I could be at risk for diabetes.
After referring me to an endocrinologist and diabetes educator, he said, “I suppose you have been doing a lot of research about diabetes and what this could mean to you.”
I had not.
I was 27 years old, and thought I was invincible. I figured that the more detailed blood test the doctor had given me would prove that the reading from the annual health checkup I’d taken at work had been a mistake. That because I went to the gym and didn’t smoke, I wouldn’t have to worry about chronic diseases for several more decades. With the diagnosis, I would need to take at least 5 injections a day and constantly monitor my blood sugar levels avoiding precipitous lows that could give me a seizure, while also avoiding the high blood sugar that more insidiously destroy nerve endings and blood vessels over the years.
Suddenly, like a camera lens, the perspective I had on my life changed focus. I was working at a corporate job that I didn’t like. I was heading toward a golden handcuffs situation where my personal expenses rose concurrently with every ay increase. More importantly, I didn’t like who I was becoming: whiny, entitled, and lazy.
Type 1 diabetes is not a death sentence, and there are many examples of high-performing people like Theresa May, Nick Jonas and Gary Hall Jr who didn’t let the condition stand in the way of their political, entertainment, or Olympic careers.
But people with type 1 diabetes, on average, have shorter life expectancy by about 20 years.
My diagnosis was the prompt that I needed to look critically at what my values were in life, and adjust course so that I’d be proud of how I spent my years.
Staring down your own mortality brings your life priorities into focus.
Freedom and adventure
I realized that I value freedom and agency over how I spend my time. Adventure was also something that would disappear from my life if I continued on the same trajectory. The corporate job had to go.
I had started another business on the side a couple of years prior, but it was nowhere near large enough to match our expenses. So I planned to offer consulting services to replace my salary instead. I was vague on the details but heavy on conviction: I would make it work because I had to. Looking back, it was definitely a “build the airplane while flying” kind of plan.
I gave my notice at work, and started the process of finding clients and defining my service offering. By the end of that year, I had hired my husband and a couple of contractors and we were building Bobsled Marketing — an agency that helps branded manufacturers to grow their Amazon sales.
That paragraph skips past a whole year of extreme self-doubt, minuscule personal income, high risk of failure, and very long work-days. But even in the darkest hours, I was living in alignment with a personal value that I had discovered in my diagnosis: freedom and adventure. In the years since, I have been able to travel extensively and have all kinds of adventures — both with my family and work colleagues.
Investing in insight
I have never been able to keep a diary, but I loved carving out time every week to write for my company blog. It’s not “deep” stuff — generally it’s just discussing marketing tactics and news about retail marketplaces. But the practice of locating some piece of information and unravelling an insight that makes it valuable to the reader was something I dedicated time and energy to every week, right back to the early days of the company.
That discipline over the past five years has established Bobsled as a highly regarded name in our industry, and allowed me to become a podcaster, author and contributor to Forbes Retail. I am still not a great writer, but after 2,600 hours (an average of 10 hours a week over 5 years) of practice, I can quickly articulate my thoughts on a topic within my space. In a fast moving industry like ecommerce, that speed is critical.
Creating a universe that I want to be in
As Bobsled has grown (we are 30-strong today!), the company has its own values system. And it’s a place where I am energized to work every day, to help our clients, be a helpful voice in the industry, and further the personal and career objectives of my colleagues. We use our values to make important decisions about employees, our deliverables with clients, and interaction with the retail community.
Most importantly, we stand for something. When the company’s values align with an employee’s — we’re humming the same tune. And it’s something I personally am eager to invest in every week.
It’s been five and a half years since my Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis.
I’m not sure I would be where I am today without the prompt I needed to examine the kind of life I want to lead. Diabetes — in a word — sucks. But I’m grateful for the lesson that it taught me.
For the record, I don’t believe that I will live 20 years less because of my condition. I spend a lot of time managing my health — something that is possible for anyone who chooses to prioritize it.
I am proud of the person who I have become through this journey. I am far from perfect, but am living a life that’s on-brand for me.
