IN THIS WEEK’S NEWSLETTER:

• 🚀 Heart Attack at 56. Was Entrepreneurship the Problem?

• 🤦‍♂️ My Peers Confronted Me About Being a Workaholic… 

• 🔨 AI is Moving From Productivity to Execution

• 🤖 AI Tip of the Month

• 💕 Why Passion Still Matters in the Age of AI

There’s no show today. Serial Entrepreneur will be back with ‘Are You the Bottleneck in Your Business?’ next week!

RSVP to This Month’s Clubhouse!

🎙️ Friday, October 9 at 2:00 PM ET – Are You the Bottleneck in Your Business?

Many founders unknowingly become the biggest obstacle to their company’s growth. Join us on Clubhouse with guest speaker Barry Cryan to discuss how to let go of control, empower your team, and build a business that can scale beyond you.

Listen to this newsletter👇

🚀 I Had a Heart Attack at 56. Was Entrepreneurship Part of the Problem?

A couple of weeks ago, at about 8:45 on a Monday morning, I was sitting at home when I suddenly felt a pain in my upper back.

When I stood up, the pain started moving around toward my chest.

Now, I have had arthritis for more than 30 years, so pain is not exactly something new to me. And this wasn't even particularly bad pain, maybe a three out of ten. But it came on quickly and it felt different. My wife and I decided not to take any chances, so she drove me to the hospital.

It turned out I was having a heart attack.

I'm 56 years old.

What made it particularly surprising was that I thought I had been doing a lot of the right things. I had lost about 28 pounds over the last two years. I was doing CrossFit. My blood pressure had improved dramatically. My LDL cholesterol was 78. In fact, I probably felt healthier than I had in years.

So how the hell did I have a heart attack?

Well, there is obviously a hereditary component. My father died of a heart attack when he was only 50, which is one of the reasons my doctors are now doing additional testing.

But this experience has also caused me to think about something we don't talk about enough in the startup world:

What does 30 years of entrepreneurship do to your body?

I love being an entrepreneur. I have started, scaled and exited more than a dozen companies, taken companies public, had some spectacular successes and more than my fair share of spectacular failures. I even wrote a book about the whole crazy process.

I wouldn't trade my entrepreneurial life for a traditional career.

But that doesn't mean it has always been healthy.

For much of my career, I worked constantly. I traveled constantly. In fact, I traveled to over 50 countries for my companies, including China more than a dozen times. I was overweight. I didn't sleep enough. I ate too much, drank too much at times and spent far too many nights worrying about things I couldn't control.

There was always something going on. A financing. A lawsuit. A product launch. A cash crunch. An acquisition. An employee problem. A customer problem. A board problem.

And, of course, the occasional company that looked like it might fall off a cliff.

If you have been an entrepreneur for any length of time, you probably know exactly what I am talking about.

We tell ourselves that we thrive under pressure. And maybe we do. But that doesn't necessarily mean our bodies thrive under it.

I Actually Got a Warning Years Ago

In 2017, something happened that probably changed the direction of my life.

I have been a member of Entrepreneurs' Organization since 1996, and eight entrepreneurs in my EO Forum who knew me extremely well essentially staged an intervention.

They told me I was a workaholic.

At first, I'm sure part of me thought, "Well, of course I am. I'm an entrepreneur."

But they were right.

I had allowed my identity to become too closely connected to my companies. I had missed family time, neglected my health and convinced myself that the stress and exhaustion were simply part of the deal.

That meeting forced me to start changing things.

I began exercising more seriously and eventually got into CrossFit. I started taking more time off with my family. More importantly, I began changing the role I played inside my companies.

For years, I thought delegation meant giving someone a task and having them complete it. I eventually realized that doesn't remove much stress because you still own the outcome. You're still thinking about it at three in the morning.

The bigger breakthrough for me was giving good people ownership over entire areas of the business.

That is very different.

Today, I try to operate more as a coach to the leaders running my companies rather than inserting myself into every decision. I am certainly not perfect at this. Just ask anyone who works with me. But I am a lot better than I was 10 or 20 years ago.

"Delegate responsibilities, not tasks" became a mantra, not just in my book Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. but also in my life.

And something interesting happened when I started letting go.

My companies didn't fall apart.

In many cases, they did better.

Your Business Can Become Too Much of Your Identity

I think this is one of the most dangerous traps in entrepreneurship.

We talk constantly about being passionate about our companies. We tell founders to go all in. We celebrate entrepreneurs who work 80-hour weeks and risk everything they have.

But what happens when the business becomes your entire identity?

If the company is winning, you feel like a winner. If the company is failing, suddenly you feel like you are failing.

I have lived through both.

My first internet company in the 1990s reached a valuation of more than $1 billion. Then the dot-com crash came along and I eventually sold shares that had once traded for $19 for six cents.

That was painful.

But over the years I learned something important: a company can fail without you being a failure.

That sounds obvious when you read it. It is much harder to believe when it is your money, your reputation, your employees and ten years of your life on the line.

This is also why I think entrepreneurs need other entrepreneurs around them. My EO Forum has been part of my life for decades. I have also worked with a psychologist who specializes in stress management. Having people who understand what you are going through and, more importantly, are willing to tell you when you are getting off track can make an enormous difference.

Most entrepreneurs will spend a fortune on lawyers, accountants and consultants to protect the company. Maybe we need to invest a little more in protecting the entrepreneur too.

Take Some Chips Off the Table

There is another lesson that took me years to learn.

You don't have to bet everything you own on every company you start.

When I was younger, I was willing to take enormous financial risks. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they absolutely did not.

As I have gotten older, I have become much more focused on protecting the downside. In successful companies, we have taken money off the table along the way. That helped pay for our home and our kids' education and gave our family financial security regardless of what happened with the next startup.

And there is a psychological benefit to that which I think entrepreneurs underestimate.

When your entire financial life depends on your company surviving, every problem feels like an emergency. When you have some security outside the business, you can often make better decisions inside the business.

That doesn't mean you stop taking risks. I certainly haven't.

It just means you don't need every roll of the dice to determine your future.

Don't Wait Until You Have a Health Scare

This is probably the biggest lesson for me right now.

For years I weighed around 220 pounds. I'm only 5'6", so I was carrying a lot more weight than I should have been.

Fortunately, I started working on this before the heart attack. I began exercising, changed how I ate and lost almost 30 pounds. My blood pressure came down and I was able to get off blood pressure medication for a period of time.

Would I have had this heart attack if I had started doing all of this 20 years earlier?

I have no idea.

Would the heart attack have been worse if I hadn't spent the last few years getting healthier?

I don't know that either.

But I do know that I wish I had taken my health as seriously at 36 as I do at 56.

Entrepreneurs are particularly good at postponing things. We'll get healthy after the financing closes. We'll take the vacation after the product launches. We'll spend more time with our family after we sell the company.

The problem is that there is always another financing, another launch and another company.

Eventually, "after" arrives whether you are ready for it or not.

Maybe We Need a Different Definition of Success

I once asked Joe Foster, the founder of Reebok, what advice he would give to young entrepreneurs.

Joe's answer was three words: "Fun, fun, fun."

At first it sounds almost too simple, especially coming from someone who built one of the most recognizable brands in the world. But the older I get, the more I think he nailed it.

What is the point of building a successful company if you are miserable doing it?

What is the point of making money if you destroy your health in the process?

And what is the point of creating something extraordinary if the people you love never get to see you?

I still love entrepreneurship. My heart attack hasn't changed that. If anything, I am probably as excited about building companies today as I was 30 years ago.

What has changed is the way I think about the scoreboard.

For most of my career, I have lived by dashboards. Revenue, EBITDA, cash, sales, customer acquisition costs, conversion rates and dozens of other numbers that tell you whether a company is healthy.

Now I am paying a lot more attention to another dashboard.

Weight. Blood pressure. Cholesterol. Exercise. Sleep. Stress. Heart rate.

It took me 56 years and a heart attack to finally put that dashboard near the top of the list.

My heart attack was relatively minor. My heart function remains normal, and my doctors have cleared me to exercise. I have more weight to lose and some changes I still need to make, but I feel incredibly fortunate that I got the warning I did.

I want to live a long life. I want to spend time with my wife and kids. I want to travel. I want to help other entrepreneurs. And knowing me, I will probably start a few more companies along the way.

Entrepreneurship can give us an incredible life.

We just need to make sure we are still around long enough to enjoy it.

— Colin C. Campbell

Disclaimer: Startup Club and its AI resources are for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Consult a qualified lawyer for legal matters.

📕 START. SCALE. EXIT. REPEAT JUST WON 2026 NYC Big Book Award!

We’re excited to share that Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. has won a 2026 NYC Big Book Award in the Business: Entrepreneurship & Small Business category, marking the book’s 41st global award.

We’re grateful for the continued recognition and, even more importantly, for the entrepreneurs using the book’s frameworks to make better decisions, avoid common mistakes, and build stronger, more scalable companies.

🚨 Read the announcement

🤦‍♂️ My Peers Confronted Me About Being a Workaholic…

Back in 2017, I was confronted by a group of fellow business owners. We belonged to a peer group that met every month to help each other work through the challenges of running companies.

But this meeting was different. It was an intervention of sorts.

They confronted me about being a workaholic, and they were right. My entire identity was wrapped up in being a successful businessperson. I had let my health deteriorate. I had missed too many family moments. I was burned out from constant travel. And I had convinced myself that this was simply the price of being an entrepreneur.

It wasn't.

After that intervention, I began taking a more balanced approach to life. And ironically, I've become even more successful at starting, scaling and exiting companies. Here's a glimpse at the five ways I learned to survive the toll of entrepreneurial life.

1. Delegate responsibilities, not just tasks

If you delegate only tasks, you're still carrying the mental weight. You're still the person responsible for every outcome.

The real shift happens when you delegate responsibilities. And yes, I now sleep through the night.

2. Create a routine to shift from work mode to home mode

My wife used to tell me, "Stop barking orders at me when you come home." She was right.

My family didn't need a CEO walking through the door. They needed a husband and a father. In the full article, I share the simple daily routine that fixed it, and why it beats the unhealthy ways most entrepreneurs wind down.

3. Your identity isn't your position in the company

I once watched a friend's business collapse almost overnight. What it taught me about separating business failure from personal worth is in the full article.

The other two changes?

One is about the people around you, and it includes something most entrepreneurs are too proud to admit they need. The other is a framework borrowed from product development that turns the chaos of entrepreneurship into a series of clear decisions.

Success doesn't have to cost you everything. You don't have to choose between building a great company and having a life worth coming home to.

👉 Read the full article

🔨 AI is Moving From Productivity to Execution

For the last two years, I've had some version of the same conversation with CEOs. What AI tools should we be using? What is everyone else doing with AI?

They're fair questions, but I think we're asking the wrong question.

The next phase of AI isn't about adding more tools. It's about connecting AI to the way your company actually runs because right now, a lot of companies have AI everywhere, and integrated almost nowhere.

Ask AI which KPI has quietly been red for six weeks, or which strategic initiative has plenty of activity but no measurable progress, and most AI tools can't tell you.

Not because the AI isn't smart enough, but because it doesn't have the context.

Your AI might know almost everything on the internet and still know almost nothing about how your company is actually performing this quarter.

That's the gap. In the full article, I explain the development that's starting to close it, one most CEOs haven't paid attention to yet, but should.

The Shift From Productivity to Execution

Most of the AI conversation has centered around productivity. Can I write this faster? Can I summarize this faster?

Those are good wins; take them. But CEOs should be thinking one level higher: Can AI help my company execute better?

New McKinsey research backs this up, and the numbers suggest most companies are still getting it wrong. I share the finding in the full article, along with what we're learning from testing this in our own world, including whether AI can spot a problem before the CEO does.

The Question for Your Leadership Team

Don't spend your next leadership meeting debating which AI tool everyone should use. The full article gives you the bigger question to ask instead.

Because giving everyone an AI account is adoption. Changing the way information flows, decisions get made, and execution happens? That's integration.

👉 Read the article by Peter Thean

🤖 AI Tip of the Month: Meet Instinct

Startup.club got early access to a new AI called Instinct, and I’ve been playing around with it.

What makes Instinct different is that it’s a personal AI assistant with no app to learn.

You simply text it through WhatsApp or Apple Messages, just like you would text a real assistant.

And it actually does things.

I asked it to book tickets for me, and it did. I asked it to book a restaurant, and it handled that too. You can ask it to search through your email for something you can’t find, check your calendar, pull information from your Google Drive, help coordinate a meeting, research something, or remind you about something later.

The more I use it, the more it learns about me.

One thing I thought was pretty cool was moving my ChatGPT memory over. I’ve spent years using ChatGPT, so the last thing I wanted to do was start all over again with another AI. I simply asked ChatGPT to create a memory file containing everything it knew about me. Bang. I dropped that file into Instinct and it immediately had a huge amount of context about me. 

For sensitive information, Instinct also has a vault where things like credit card information and Social Security numbers can be stored rather than sitting in normal conversations.

You do have to give it permission to access the things you want it to work with. For example, you can simply tell it, “Connect my Gmail and Google Drive,” and it will walk you through connecting them.

I think this is where AI is heading. Less time sitting inside an AI app asking questions and more AI working in the background as an actual personal assistant.

Startup.club has a limited number of early-access invites. If you want to try Instinct, email me at [email protected] and my AI assistant, Instinct, will send you an invite while I still have some left.

They are still under beta and are invite only. And the good news is that it is absolutely free for now. 

Aren’t you glad you read the newsletter now!

📚 Steal these 5 “Cheats” to Make Your Nonfiction Book Stand Out

4,000,000 books will be published in 2027. Just think about that for a second... That's about half of the people in New York City, the world capital of book publishing.

So if you've ever thought about writing a book or you have a half-finished manuscript judging you from your hard drive, you should be asking one big question:

"How will my book stand out?"

As a nonfiction book coach and ghostwriter, I studied the top 25 best-selling business books of all time to figure out if they shared any traits. Authors like Robert Kiyosaki and Simon Sinek didn't have massive platforms when their books first came out. So what did they have?

When I crunched the numbers, I found 11 traits that nonfiction authors can turn into their personal "cheat sheet."

Here's a taste:

Cheat #1. Storytelling Wins. Every time.

Readers remember stories, not stats or lectures.

Cheat #2. Titles Matter. A Ton.

A clear and memorable title is far better than a "clever" title. The title is your book's hook. If the hook doesn't work, the book doesn't work.

Cheat #3. Challenge Conventional Wisdom.

There are two ways to do it, and even if people disagree with you, you're still generating buzz. I break both down in the full article.

The other two cheats? One is a balancing act most authors get wrong, and the other is becoming more valuable every day as AI floods the market with sameness.

👉 Read all 5 in the full article

💕 Why Passion Still Matters in the Age of AI

Building a company is hard.

It takes longer than expected. It costs more than planned. Customers do not always respond. Products fail. Competitors appear overnight.

If you have no genuine interest in the problem, market, or customer, you probably will not stay committed when the business gets difficult.

That is why passion still matters, especially in the age of AI.

In this episode of Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat., the Startup Club community explores how entrepreneurs can combine something they genuinely love with AI to build a stronger, more sustainable business.

Passion Creates Staying Power

Passion alone does not create a successful company. You still need a real customer, a clear problem, and a viable business model. But passion gives you the energy to keep working through the difficult stages.

The episode highlights founders in completely different industries, from pet products to residential cruising, who share a common starting point: genuine interest.

Start With the Problem, Not the Technology

AI makes it easier than ever to create something quickly.

That is both the opportunity and the danger.

A weak idea developed with AI is still a weak idea. The best opportunities begin with a specific problem affecting a recognizable group of customers.

In the full article, we share the six questions every founder should ask before building anything.

AI Removes the Friction Between Ideas and Execution

Many talented people never launch because execution feels overwhelming. They understand an industry but lack technical skills, or know their customer but struggle with marketing or financial planning.

AI can reduce that resistance. As one guest put it: "It is not giving people expertise. It is removing the resistance that allows them to bring their gifts forward."

The full article lists the eight ways founders are using AI to close the gap between insight and execution.

Your Experience Is the Competitive Advantage

Simply adding AI to a product is no longer a meaningful differentiator. Nearly every founder has access to similar tools.

So what makes a business difficult to copy? The full article breaks it down, along with the four questions that can reveal opportunities hiding in what you already know.

Build Something Worth Staying For

The biggest question is no longer whether you can build something.

The better question is whether you have found something worth building.

👉 Read the full article here

🚀 TTSI Update: 2026 seems to be ending with a thud.

We are now estimating U.S. IPO market reaching 330 public offerings in 2026, the Startup.club Time to Sell Index (TTSI) would fall to 24.5, down from 26.8 in 2025.

The calculation is:

TTSI = ((330 – 154) ÷ (873 – 154)) × 100 = 24.5

With a historical trough of 154 IPOs, a peak of 873 IPOs, and an estimated 330 IPOs in 2026, a TTSI of 24.5 suggests the recovery we saw last year has stalled and we remain firmly in a buyer’s market.

🔥 Check Me Out on TikTok!

@startupclubhq

Scaling isn’t luck — it’s momentum, and nobody knows that better than Joe Foster, founder of Reebok. Some entrepreneurs dream of one cozy ... See more

🚀 How to Support Startup Club

You can further support StartUp.Club by:

1. Sharing it with a friend or fellow entrepreneur! We’ve got a great referral program!

2. Responding to this email and letting me know what you think.

3. Picking up your copy of Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat.

And if you made it this far, thank you for reading.

— Colin C. Campbell

Entrepreneur Fact of the Month: Experience compounds. Harvard Business School research found that founders who have already built a successful company succeed about 30% of the time on their next venture, compared to just 18% for first-timers… nearly double the odds.

The patterns are learnable. Start, scale, exit, then do it again with the advantage of everything the last one taught you.

Source: Revenue Memo