Harnessing AI to Increase Early Breast Cancer Detection with Kaitlin Christine of Gabbi

In our healthcare system, women often struggle to get the support, information, and tests they need. This reality is especially prevalent and dangerous in breast cancer risk assessment and detection where delayed diagnosis can have dire consequences

Drawing from her own experience, Kaitlin Christine, CEO and Founder of Gabbi, is on a mission to increase early breast cancer detection and save lives. With a proprietary AI-driven risk assessment model and  app, Kaitlin and her team are giving women the tools they need to understand their risk, connect, and advocate for the care they need.

In this episode of The Digital Footprint, we speak with Kaitlin about her mission, the highs and lows of startup life, and lessons learned along the way.

Guest-at-a-Glance

💡 Name: Kaitlin Christine

💡 What she does: Founder and CEO of Gabbi.

💡 Company: Gabbi

💡 Noteworthy: Kaitlin Christine is a breast cancer survivor who has dedicated her life to empowering women to understand their bodies and advocate for themselves. Kaitlin has spent over nine years in women's health, and with the Gabbi team, she is on a mission to decrease delayed diagnosis. Kaitlin has been selected as Oregon's Entrepreneur of the Year 2021, the HITLAB Women's Health Tech Challenge winner, and HITLAB's Audience Choice Award.

💡 Where to find Kaitlin: LinkedIn | Website 

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Connect with our cohosts Richard Simms & Carlos Gonzalez on Linkedin

Transcript

E661389B_17 - TT - Digital Footprint - Kaitlin Christine

[00:00:00] Richard Simms: Hello and welcome to the Digital Footprint. I'm Richard Simms. This podcast is brought to you by Tyrannosaurus Tech, an award-winning technology partner, dedicated to designing and developing high-impact software products. I am very excited to be joined today by Kaitlin Christine, Founder and CEO of Gabbi and Oregon's 2021 entrepreneur of the year.

[00:00:56] Very cool. Welcome, Kaitlin. 

[00:00:59] Kaitlin Christine: Thank you, Richard. Very excited to be here.

[00:01:02] Richard Simms: Absolutely. I've been looking forward to that. So, we were introduced pretty recently by a shared connection, someone here

[00:01:08] in Atlanta, that I think is helping support some of your work. You're in Chicago, right? 

[00:01:13] Kaitlin Christine: No, actually, we're in Portland, Oregon, but our head of product is in Chicago. 

[00:01:17] Richard Simms: That's my mistake but I wasn't too far off for at least one team member. But when we were introduced, it was immediately clear to me that you were doing some really important work and have a really powerful story to tell, so I'm really glad you're here as a guest, and let's jump right in.

[00:01:36] So, to kick things off, can you briefly introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about Gabbi? 

[00:01:42] Kaitlin Christine: Sure. So, I'm Kaitlin, I'm the CEO and founder at Gabbi and we are on a mission to increase early detection by decreasing delayed diagnosis. So, we have created an algorithm that can predict a woman's risk of breast cancer, give her a personalized action plan and then navigate her to an early detection.

[00:02:04] So, we aim to be the leading early detection company at a woman's go-to breast specialist.

[00:02:11] Richard Simms: Wow. Okay. Very cool. So, I have always thought that entrepreneurs who set out to solve a problem, they've really experienced, have a bit of an edge, just in terms of really understanding the pain points and empathizing with users. I know that for you, you know, unfortunately, your mission with Gabbi, it comes from a very deeply personal place.

[00:02:34] Do you feel comfortable sharing just a bit about the origin story and how you came to be so passionate about this topic? 

[00:02:41] Kaitlin Christine: Yeah, absolutely. And the foundation of everything that we do here at Gabbi, basically it goes back to my mom. So, my mom died of a delayed diagnosis of breast cancer and it was shortly after she passed that I found a lump in my breast. And, of course, I now knew what questions to ask and how to advocate for myself, but I still had to fight to get the necessary screening from my clinician and

[00:03:10] eventually I chose to have what was supposed to be a preventable surgery or, excuse me, a preventative surgery, and in surgery was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was only 24. And so, it was really those two experiences of losing my mom to delayed diagnosis and experiencing my own delayed diagnosis that fueled me to go into health care.

[00:03:34] And once I was working in health care, I was working for the world's leading genetic testing company and there was this light bulb that went off when I realized that this wasn't just something that affected my mom and I, that there was a bigger problem here. It was affecting thousands of women; thousands of women didn't know their risks and they also weren't getting the right care.

[00:03:56] And so that's really where Gabbi was born.

[00:03:59] Richard Simms: Wow. Well, kudos to you for taking such difficult experiences and turning it into something very positive and trying to help others. I think that's amazing. And yeah, I saw on your website, both in your experience and for other women that you've interviewed and I'm sure just interacted with over the years, a big challenge is getting the needed information, support, tests, et cetera, in our current health care system and

[00:04:27] it seems like women really have to advocate for themselves more than they should have to. So, can you expand just a little bit on, like, this broader systemic problem and kind of what you observed as you started kind of thinking about this bigger picture? 

[00:04:41] Kaitlin Christine: Sure. I think generally it falls into a couple of buckets and I think the first is just treating everyone like everyone else, so the lack of personalization. And the reality is that each of us are unique and different and that translates into almost everything, one of them being the health care and the care that you receive and your personal risk.

[00:05:07] So, I think the first thing is just that there isn't personalized care that's provided to women specifically as it relates to cancer and specifically to breast cancer. The second is just the lack of acceptance, appreciation, believability of when women come to their clinician and say that they have a concern or a symptom, whether that be a breast lump or that be bleeding, whatever it is.

[00:05:38] You know, now there are so many articles and studies done that show that women are ignored, that a certain percent of the time they are not listened to, or they're told there'll be, they're being too emotional and in comparison, to men that, that never really comes up. So, I think that's the second part is women being ignored, not listened to.

[00:05:58] And then the third is really that there's all this data that either isn't being used or isn't being connected, it's not communicating with each other. And so, for example, for us at Gabbi, all this medical data or claims data, when you go in and fill out your new patient paperwork, right now that's being scanned into the EMR

[00:06:23] Kaitlin Christine: and most likely it's never addressed. Well, every time a doctor sees you, are you receivable from your insurance, that's going somewhere. So, there's all this data that isn't being used and that isn't communicating with one another. And so, I think that's the other aspect is that women often feel like they're having to regurgitate their story over and over and over again and of course, they're leaving out details because this is 10th time, they've had to relay the same concern as they've been seeing different people. So, I think a big problem being that the data isn't connected. 

[00:07:00] Richard Simms: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and

[00:07:02] I think one of the examples that you all share, or it's just an interview, right, with a woman who I think had gone with symptoms and the doctor kind of was like, "Well, you're only 26, so you really don't need to be worrying about that" and, of course, I'm sure for you that's especially frustrating and difficult to hear. And yeah, like,

[00:07:23] even just me, if I were going to the doctor with a problem, especially when I was younger and they were like, "Oh no, you're fine. Don't worry about that," you'd be tempting to just make peace with it and move on. So, 

[00:07:33] Kaitlin Christine: And that's actually because doctors are, you know, they go to all this schooling, we hold them in such high regard, we trust them, why wouldn't you, but unfortunately because they are human, they don't have the ability to know everything about everything.

[00:07:49] Richard Simms: Right. Right. Well, I think it's great, obviously, that you all are empowering women to take more ownership of advocating for themselves, like, knowing what their risks are, and then, to your point, I think there's a lot broader potential in applications, like, in the system that can be improved. So, that's all great.

[00:08:10] That's super helpful. I want to pivot a little bit and talk about the technology behind Gabbi. So, I understand, of course, and you referenced this earlier that you all have the Gabbi Risk Assessment Model, you know, where obviously you're helping folks understand, like, their risk exposure, things like that. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and what into, what went into creating this proprietary model? 

[00:08:36] Kaitlin Christine: Yeah. So, the Gabbi Risk Assessment Model or the GRAM, as we affectionately refer to it as, is our proprietary risk model that can predict a woman's two-year and lifetime risk of breast cancer. And what we did is we studied these breast cancer risk models that exist today. So, there are multiple. They're only used in academic institutions,

[00:09:00] they're only appropriate for white women over the age of 35. They're only clinician-facing and they're still not all that accurate. So, we studied these deeply, and then we thought, "Okay, this is only taking in clinician and patient-reported data. It's still not that accurate. It doesn't work for all women and it's not even really being used that much.

[00:09:24] So, how can we use any of the existing data that already exists? How can we improve this, making it more accurate? How can we make it appropriate for women of all ages and all ethnicities? And what other factors can we discover?" And that's exactly what we did. So, we tested and trained our model on the world's largest and most diverse data set and then validated our ability to predict a woman's risk proving that we can do it with higher accuracy, higher sensitivity, and specificity and that it can reach all women of all ages

[00:10:02] and then, because that wasn't enough, it, all the science doesn't matter if it's not being used. So, we packaged the GRAM in a very beautiful, joyful experience that any woman can access anywhere in an app, making it the first-ever consumer-facing risk model.

[00:10:21] Richard Simms: Very cool. Very cool. And that's one thing I was going to ask you about is, I think for a lot of folks it's, like, seemingly obvious that, "Oh, we'll have an app." I'm wondering kind of when you all came to that realization and then, of course, based on the nature of what you're putting together, I think making it accessible and not just accessible, but approachable is so important,

[00:10:42] right? So, like, did you always know you wanted to have an app as a part of this? How did that kind of evolve over time, your vision there? 

[00:10:50] Kaitlin Christine: No, I did not always know that I wanted it to be an app. I think it really came from the number one driver for us which is our end-user, "Who are we building this for? What do they need? What do they say?" And that has informed every step of the process from, there are these risk models that you have to go to a clinician, usually a specialist, maybe your OB-GYN, if you're lucky, but you don't get to see it,

[00:11:15] you may not get the information, you may not know the answers, so what do we do? Well, women want to be able to do it themselves, "Okay. So, we need to put this in the hands of women. What is the best way to do that? What are women using most often? Oh, their cell phone." So, it was a very linear path.

[00:11:33] It sounds very linear and to some extent it was, but for us, the number one was just going to our user and finding, like, "What does she want? Where will she be? Where will she get this information? What does it need to look like?" And I think that's, it's super important to staying, staying really close to the person that you're solving the problem 

[00:11:52] Richard Simms: for.

[00:11:53] For sure. And I definitely got the impression in a very good way from my conversations with your team, like, the degree of thoroughness in customer discovery, not making assumptions about how people will behave, how they'll engage with it. It seems like they, they took a very methodical approach and I'm sure that's still ongoing as it always is,

[00:12:15] but like you said, just really, what are the needs? What are these folks comfortable with? What's their day-to-day like, so I love that. 

[00:12:23] Richard Simms: One thing I was going to ask you about to go, taking a little bit of a step back, but when you were describing GRAM and I remember from looking at your website, again, you've got a great team,

[00:12:34] you've got some really sharp credentialed advisors, like, how did you gather the right folks with expertise to have input on this and as a startup, you know, I'm sure you didn't have tens of millions of dollars to bring these people on, um, so I'm sure that was a difficult to navigate, but I'm sure interesting to pull in those experts and, like, have them validate what you're doing. 

[00:12:58] Kaitlin Christine: Totally. Yes. And I would say one of the most important things for those who are dreaming of being an entrepreneur or have a specific idea but don't know where to start or even have already started a company and are in the early stages is for me, and the strategy that I took that worked was I spent almost a year just talking to anyone and

[00:13:23] everyone who would listen to me. And as time progresses and I become more mature in my role as the CEO and founder of a tech startup, it just continues to affirm that it's all about who you know and relationships. And so, making sure that you have a really strong network that trusts and believes in you, but that also you can tap into is really important.

[00:13:51] So, the first year of R&D for me was you, determining five people that I could go talk to and ask questions and then I didn't leave a single meeting without saying, "Okay, who else do you think I should talk to?" And that led me all around the country. I talked to literally thousands of people and along that way discovered

[00:14:14] some of the people that you see who are on our advisory board, some of the people who are investors, some of our early team members because I was working on building those relationships and what that allows you to do is one, build relationships, but two, it gives them the opportunity to see if you have grit, stick to your word, if you figure it out, by the time that you have come down to a business idea or you have a product, or you know what the solution is, the problem that you need to solve and how to solve it, they will have had a front-row seat to that journey

[00:14:49] and they're like, "I believe that no matter what she's going to figure it out because gosh, last time I saw her she was only here." And so, I would say that's the number one tip. So, how I found all these people was starting by building that base of network of talking to people in normalizing, you know, the problem and my thinking of what may be, the solution can be over a year

[00:15:11] and they all lead me to other people and eventually, as things became more solidified, then it's like, "Okay, who are the people that I need around the table? Who are the experts who have either done this before, who have worked in this space of, whether it's with insurers and we need that perspective or with it's, if it's large employers or investors?" And figuring out the holes that we have and then getting them around the table.

[00:15:38] Richard Simms: Yeah.

[00:15:38] I think that is such good advice. Just good old fashion networking and relationship building is huge and it's a very gradual build. Like, I try 

[00:15:48] to advise people similarly that it has to be ongoing lifelong effort and I think, to your point, at least initially you have to approach people without

[00:16:00] too much of an agenda or an ask, right? 

[00:16:02] Kaitlin Christine: Completely. 

[00:16:03] Richard Simms: Because I think, as you're saying, like, these folks, I'm sure, were infinitely more receptive when you came and said, "Hey, would you like to be on the board?" or whatever that ask was, given that they'd already known you, like, of course, had a good impression of you, you were sticking with it, all that good stuff,

[00:16:18] so, yeah, I love that. I think that's great advice. 

[00:16:21] Kaitlin Christine: The only thing I was asking in the early days was, one, if they would take the time to meet with me I would always buy them a coffee, I would always get their business card and I would always follow up with a handwritten thank-you note. And let me just tell you how far that goes because it's not done today, especially during the pandemic,

[00:16:39] holy cow, what ended up proving being sometimes difficult was getting their address if they didn't have a business card or for your meeting virtually like this. But and so I was, and then maybe at the end of the conversation, I would ask them for an introduction and that was really the most I was asking.

[00:16:54] Other than that, it was just establishing the rapport and the relationship and then maintaining that with things like thank-you cards and whatnot. I, yeah, I think that's an incredibly important and undervalued in today's world for sure.

[00:17:09] Richard Simms: I totally agree. Awesome. Well, that's great advice. So, changing direction a little bit, you know, looking at your background, you clearly have a very extensive background in health care, innovation, I think, I shouldn't assume, but safe to say you're not, like, an engineer, 

[00:17:27] Kaitlin Christine: Correct.

[00:17:28] Richard Simms: so, you know, you're not a coder, right?

[00:17:31] So, kind of a non-technical founder. My question given that we, of course, are technologists and a lot of our listeners and folks that we work with are looking for engineering talent or guidance, or they may be a non-technical founder struggling with like, what are the tangible steps for them to pursue a digital product,

[00:17:52] so my question is just, yeah, how has it been for you navigating the technology side of things? Obviously, creating an AI model, a mobile app, these are not small undertaking, so I'd love to hear for you, any lessons you've learned, any advice you would share on that front? 

[00:18:09] Kaitlin Christine: Yeah. And that's a really good question and it doesn't have a straight answer. Early on, again, over my year or whatnot of talking to everyone, there were many people who said I needed a technical co-founder or if I wasn't technical, I needed to become technical and I obviously chose not to listen to those people, but what I will say is that it would absolutely be easier if I was technical

[00:18:37] and to some extent, it would, definitely there would be some things that would be easier if I had a technical co-founder. But when I did the cost-benefit analysis of first, "Is it worth the time and money to go spend, to get up to speed and to become an engineer, to learn on my own?" was kind of the first question.

[00:19:03] And then the second was, "Am I open to a technical co-founder?" which I was, but then understanding the gravity of what that means and having someone hitch to yours and getting married in your business, "Okay. Then it needs to be the right person." And so, I opened myself up to that possibility and

[00:19:23] Kaitlin Christine: it just didn't happen. The right person never came along. And so, what I decided is that it wasn't worth my time and money to invest in becoming a technical founder personally I was open, but it didn't happen, so I guess that means no, so now how do I solve the fact that I'm not technical? Having people around you who are technical that you trust is really important, but, of course, the first step is figuring out who are those people that you can trust because that can be really scary, being smart enough that I can be dangerous.

[00:19:58] So, educating myself to some extent on different languages, The Civic Tech Stack or the common tech stack that is used in digital health companies, what's reasonable, what's not reasonable when you're assessing dev shops or talking to developers in terms of scope, cost, et cetera. educating myself

[00:20:18] so at least I can have an intelligent conversation and understand on a more than surface level, but the decision was mostly based on the fact of, and this was some of the best advice I eventually received, was, "What am I really good at?" And not just, "Okay. What are the things that I put on a resume?" But, "What can no one else at Gabbi do?

[00:20:43] And is it worth my time to invest more in that? Will that move the business forward or will finding a technical co-founder or becoming more proficient at coding move the business forward more?" And the reality is, "No one knows the space better than I do. No one knows about these risk models that exist today better than I do.

[00:21:05] No one knows about the patient experience, the existing, and what it should be like better than I do. No one can speak to the vision better than I can, you know? And so there's all these things that no one else can do that is uniquely my superpower when it comes to Gabbi, so I need to invest more of my time and resources in those and then find the people whose superpowers are coding, who are building the back-end, building the front-end."

[00:21:34] And so that's kind of how I came to that decision.

[00:21:37] Richard Simms: Yeah.

[00:21:38] That makes total sense. And sincerely, I agree with you and I'm not just saying that to be agreeable. And our company is made of, you know, made up of technologists, but I think that a common trap for early-stage entrepreneurs, non-technical founders is that thought that they have to have a technical co-founder. And you see it a lot where exactly, as you were smart enough to be wary of, folks rush in that decision and bring someone in, either as an equal partner or an equity partner that is, it's very difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube at that point and even though, of course, there's just immense value in the technology side of things, there's a lot of ways to bring in that expertise without yourself. And the last thing I will say, I mean, what you all are doing and I would apply this mindset to, like, 95% of businesses, even tech companies,

[00:22:35] lot of challenge in the implementation and there's importance in getting it right, but the value you're bringing it isn't strictly married to, like, how that code is written, right? I mean, of course, success is about execution, the experience you're creating, the results and that's not at all to imply that, like, the tech component is commoditized, but yeah, like, the strategy and the leadership is what is more important, I think, exactly right.

[00:23:01] You can find that expertise from trusted folks and learn and maybe there's mistakes along the way, but that's a lot better of a, a learning curve than bringing someone in premature that really disrupts the team or your cap table or whatever that is. 

[00:23:17] Kaitlin Christine: Yeah. Yeah. And unfortunately, I know of too many scenarios to count of people who have brought a technical person in early they've split or it's a really hostile situation I honestly don't see the longevity of those companies because about creating a toxic work environment

[00:23:39] and how do you move things forward when that's going on? I will say I did, internally I did invest in bringing on someone from the AI/ML side I mean, I trust her with my life and, like, at least having that rock person helps make some of the other technology decisions and, I mean, I was told time and time again that I needed to either be technical or get a technical co-founder and it's, honestly, it's the harder path I would say, is to, okay,

[00:24:16] I'm actually gonna retract that statement. I think one could argue the harder path is to have a technical co-founder, however, it is, I guess you just have to be confident in your resolve, that's not the right path for you because you're going to be turned down for investment, you're going to be turned down by advisors,

[00:24:35] you're going to be turned down by potential employees, time and time again in the early days when you don't have that and so if you're not able to be confident in that that's the right path forward for you, you're not going to get very far. So, it's still hard. It's still hard. Mostly from, like, an emotional rollercoaster standpoint.

[00:24:54] Richard Simms: Mhm. Mhm. No, I think that all makes sense, but I think, to your point, when you think about, especially longer-term, but even in the relatively short term, like, your skillset is going to be best utilized in a true founder visionary, like, domain expertise, necessarily in the lines of code within the mobile app.

[00:25:15] So, you have the right perspective there, in my opinion. So, going back to the business side of things, health care, of course, is a space that on a lot of fronts is primed for disruption and improvement, tons of room for just improving care access, but I think it's also a difficult space to navigate regulations,

[00:25:39] just entrenched processes, big providers. How's it been for you working to break into that space? What are some of the biggest obstacles that you all have faced?

[00:25:50] Kaitlin Christine: The two big things, but I think they're pretty interconnected. One, and I know I already mentioned this earlier, is just the different types of data and they’re not communicating. So, like, you can take EMRs for example. All of these different electronic medical records systems, not speaking with each other, unable to share medical record if you're at one health system to another clinician in another health system or in another state or something and there's lots of initiatives that are happening to move that forward,

[00:26:23] but I would say that's a big problem that we've seen. The second, which again, interconnected are just, unfortunately, the status quo and the silos and roadblocks of things being done the way they've always been done. So, whether that's the bureaucracy or the process that's set up in order to get through the door because the reality is for something like what we're doing at Gabbi, we need to be able to prove

[00:26:56] outcomes and the only way we can do that is if we have either real users that we follow for a long period of time, but in order for that to be credited we need to do that with an academic institution, or we need to have a grant, we need to do a clinical study. But the process to whether it's get an SBR grant or to get in the door with an academic institution and get some data or work with them side by side, the process is so long and exhaustive,

[00:27:28] they don't understand how we can move so quickly as a startup. And there's so many people that have to sign off and so many different barriers that you have to go through in order to get in, so I would say the second one really is just how difficult it is to change the current 

[00:27:49] system. 

[00:27:51] Richard Simms: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I'm sure there's a lot of tactics and, you know, relationships you've built, but I'm sure a lot of that is just time and persistence, so. 

[00:28:02] Kaitlin Christine: Right. It is. Right. Yeah. It's being patiently persistent.

[00:28:10] Richard Simms: That makes sense. So, one other question I had quickly, in this conversation and when we've spoken in the past, I think initially the main kind of go-to-market model is obviously, like, the mobile app being very consumer-friendly, like, putting it straight in women's hands. How do you envision that evolving over time?

[00:28:30] Because I imagine there's a lot of ways that you can ultimately get in front of more folks and tap into some of these existing and systems. 

[00:28:40] Kaitlin Christine: Yeah. So, we're going to market, actually, with a web app first and launching and partnership with some of these women's health clinics that are both virtual and in-person, other startups really that we're all hearing about across the country and expanding past that, it's then to employers and specifically self-funded employers.

[00:29:03] So, in health care, there's different types of employers, but self-funded employers historically used to be the really, really large employers. They had, you know,10,000 plus employees they're called self-funded is because instead of having to pay a monthly premium to say "United Healthcare," to provide insurance to their employees, they have a pot of money and they're just UnitedHealthcare for the network, but they're paying out of pocket for every bit

[00:29:32] bit of care that is actually used by their employees. So, if you don't go to your annual well-woman exam, in one year, while you're at your employer, they're not paying UnitedHealthcare for that, they only pay when you go. So, there, and the reason they do that because it saves them money once you start having these larger number of employees. Well, today, you'll now start seeing there's some companies that are in,

[00:29:57] Kaitlin Christine: I mean, just over, like, 600 employees that are self-funded because it just makes more financial sense for them. So anyways, after launching these partnerships with these other women's health clinics, we're going to be going to self-funded employers and they will be providing Gabbi as a benefit to their female employees.

[00:30:20] Eventually, even after that further long-term, we hope that insurance companies will offer Gabbi to their members. So, now UnitedHealthcare will also be offering Gabbi to members that are insured by UnitedHealthcare.

[00:30:34] very very cool. So, a step back, like, bigger vision, what does success look like in your mind for Gabbi, let's say one year from now, five years from now, what kind of impact do you hope you all can have? 

[00:30:50] One year from now I want testimonials, I want women who are, “I didn’t know my risk, now I do. Gabby taught me that. Here's what I did about it." And ideally, we helped a woman get an early diagnosis. That's what I want in the next year. I would say further long-term Gabbi will be a household name that a woman's talking with her best friend asking

[00:31:21] Kaitlin Christine: about, "What should I do about this?" And her friend says, "Well, have you asked Gabbi?" And we are the leading early detection company, so we've expanded outside of breast cancer, but to other preventable cancers, so that cancers are found at stage two or earlier and that we're on the path to eradicating late-stage disease.

[00:31:44] Richard Simms: Awesome. Well, that's a great goal to have, so I'm sure it's all gonna come true and you all are doing the right thing, so I'm excited. So, for somewhat, you've already shared some great advice, but if you think about your experience over the years, everything you've navigated someone's in the very early stages of kind of trying to take the plunge and go out and do a startup,

[00:32:08] what's kind of the main advice you

[00:32:10] Richard Simms: would share with them at that stage? 

[00:32:12] Kaitlin Christine: The first thing I would say, or the number one thing I would say is whatever you're thinking about, whatever problem they're thinking about solving and whether you know the solution or not. If the shit hits the fan and there's no money, everything is going wrong, no one believes in you, you've lost all your team, you know, whatever,

[00:32:35] do you still get up in the morning and do you still want to work towards it? Is the problem you're solving important enough that hell or high water you're going to keep going? Because for me, if I wasn't doing something that was so mission-focused, there are so many times that it would have been much easier to quit or even that I would have quit.

[00:33:03] So, I think you wants to ensure that without a doubt, this is what you want to hit your wagon to, that you believe in and that it gets you up every day in the morning.

[00:33:15] I love that advice. And I think oversimplified thing you'll hear people say is, "Fall in love with the problem, not the solution." Right? And I think what you're sharing is like the utmost extreme of that in a good way I totally agree. I mean, there's endless hurdles and discouragement, so you got to really and identify with what you're doing,

[00:33:37] Richard Simms: if you're going to have that longevity. Awesome. Well, I think we're almost at time and that was such a good piece of advice that I think we should close it out there. So, thank you so much, Kaitlin. This has been great. we sign off, where can listeners go to connect with you and learn more about Gabbi?

[00:33:55] Kaitlin Christine: Thank you, Richard. So, you can go to our website, which is begabbi.com and that's B E G A B B I.com. We're also very active on LinkedIn and if you ever want to reach out to us, on our website there's a contact us form. We're looking for early-user testers, so please sign up there too.

[00:34:19] Great. That's what I was going to ask. So, for folks who want to support your get in touch, be an early adopter, that sounds great. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Kaitlin. It's been great having you on the Digital Footprint and we wish you all the best of luck. Thank you. 

[00:34:35] Richard Simms: All right.