Gregg Champion: Founder of Start Up Recovery

Episode 696

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, we’re joined by Gregg Champion, Founder of START UP RECOVERY & WELLNESS—a powerful recovery and reinvention center designed for entrepreneurs, creatives, athletes, and high-performers ready to transform their lives and reconnect with purpose.
Gregg shares why he saw a gap in traditional recovery models and how his background shaping major global brands like NIKE and Mattel helped him create a radically different, high-performance approach to healing. We dive into how he blends elite mentorship, entrepreneurial strategy, and deep personal insight to help individuals navigate burnout, addiction, trauma, and major life transitions.
He also explains what it truly means to shift from addiction to passion, how traits often labeled as “flaws” like failure, ADD, or bad bosses can be fuel for success, and why The Recovery Playbook—his signature framework—is guiding people not just back to baseline, but toward a renewed vision for life and leadership.
Whether you’re a founder facing burnout, a leader seeking clarity, or simply someone looking to turn challenges into catalysts—this is a must-listen episode. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Super excited to have my next guest here. Gregg champion is the founder of Start Up Recovery, and it’s an incredible, incredible initiative with a great story journey that spans global branding. For Gregg, over the past 30 years of personal recovery, he has also helped shape household names like Nike, Mattel, the gap, lots of incredible, incredible businesses that he’s been involved in, and now he’s stepped into the world of purpose driven reinvention. In 2017 he co founded Start Up Recovery, a high impact Wellness Center that combines elite recovery programming, life reset and business mentorship to help individuals not just get back on track, but also build something incredibly better. So I can’t wait to hear more about how Gregg has changed personal transformation for himself into a professional playbook, and what it takes to lead through adversity and how Start Up Recovery is helping founders, athletes, creatives, humans shift from maybe some are have addiction issues, others don’t even know they do, but to following their passion and really making progress. So Gregg, welcome to the show.

Gregg Champion 2:14
Thank you, Kara, great to be here. It’s funny when you said he’s changed for those in the audience, Kara and I went to a higher institution known as Arizona State in the late 80s, and so I definitely have done a major change since those days. Kara, that’s for sure.

Kara Goldin 2:33
Well, it was, it was a lot of fun, for sure. So it’s, it’s, but I love all that you’ve done throughout the year. So I’d love to have you start with what is Start Up Recovery and wellness like when you look at the mission and the purpose of building the business that you have? Can you talk about how to define it?

Gregg Champion 2:55
So we originally built a business called Start Up Recovery. We built it to be a longer term care for people that were suffering from substance abuse disorder or mental health issues. And the way the insurance programs are in the United States is most of them kind of give you 30 days or 45 days. And we just felt it wasn’t enough, so we created a 90 day program that allowed people to come to these beautiful houses in Pacific Palisades, they would tap into executive coaching, 12 step meetings, community, great food. And then we brought in wellness. And we brought in a wellness director who brought in Reiki, cupping, sound bath, breath work. And then more recently, we brought in biohacking. So we have red bed therapy, pimp bed therapy, meditation, dome, frequency medicine. And what it does, it gives you an experience that is different from all other rehabs treatment centers, and it really gives you an individual playbook. And here’s the best part, my goal is to allow whatever is going on in your life, whether it’s addiction, escapism, and a lot of people are trying to escape from things Kara whether it’s the phone or exercise or food. And so what we try to do at startup is we say, Stop doing this behavior and become addicted to something good in your life. And we have seen that’s our tagline, shifting addiction to passion. And so that’s our mission. Is we want you to come and heal one step at a time. Everybody has a different journey, but I definitely have enough Avengers to throw out you that allow you to really go and reset the your life.

Kara Goldin 4:32
I love how you’ve taken your careers and brought it into kind of a vision of, here’s what can happen, right? It’s it’s not like you’re a coach that is telling people I haven’t been here before, right? You’re telling people about these different stages of your life. You had multiple careers and brand strategies. And an entrepreneur and now a recovery leader. Can you talk a little bit about how each phase kind of shaped your approach for startup, recovery and wellness? Yeah,

Gregg Champion 5:11
I love that you asked that question, because, again, I don’t have a degree on the wall from a fancy University in terms of psychology. I don’t have letters by my name, but what I have is experience, and what I mean by that, most times, I always feel like great mentors give you their mistakes. And so what I will tell you is I did not have a mentor in my 20s, and my career really stalled. And it wasn’t until I got a mentor in my early 30s, and he says, Hey, if you do X, Y and Z, you could have your own company. And at first I didn’t believe him, because, guess what? I suffer from imposter syndrome, you know, and so I didn’t believe him. But eventually he stayed the course, and within a year, I had my own media company called champion media entertainment. And one of the things in that company was I wanted to hire interns, right, and give me their first or second job, but I also wanted to mentor them to say, Hey, this is how you get coached. This is how this is a this is the path of least resistance. Let me tell you the mistakes I made so you don’t have to make those mistakes. And what’s great about I’ll just sum it up like this, my coaching style, Kara, is this. I have 55 years on the planet, okay? And I have 30 years of sobriety. And if you come to me and go, Hey, Gregg, I’m going through this, I’m going to pull down that volume of book, because I went through it. So I went through my mother having Alzheimer’s, I went through a sibling committing suicide. I went through a divorce on my first wife. So if you say to me, Hey, can you talk to me about divorce, I’m pulling down that volume, giving you my experience, right? And maybe my solution is somewhere in the solution that you need, and that has been really my gift is, is, um, you know, I jokingly say, and it’s not being egotistical, Kara, but I get paid for being me. I get paid for all that wisdom and all that knowledge and all those scraped knees and battle scars and firings and lost jobs, and, you know, startups that didn’t work and startups that did work, and you can’t, you can’t pay for that in a school. You know, as well as a the best entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs, definitely.

Kara Goldin 7:15
And I love a lot of people view addiction as a liability, and I think that these bad traits, I guess, that you’re trying to fix, you’re really showing people how they can be an asset. Can you talk about, has there been any stories beyond your own where you’ve actually seen this really life changing experience come to life.

Gregg Champion 7:42
So, you know, like I said, the name of the company, Start Up Recovery, and how we got the name was, we thought that many of our clients needed to have the fundamentals of what a startup is. You needed to rebrand, you needed a pitch deck, you needed a mission statement, you need to know how to pivot, right? And you certainly need a board of directors, right? And so if we’re going to push Tim out into the world, or Susan out in the world, we want them to have these sort of things around them, but individually about themselves. And so here’s what would happen if someone would come in. I’ll give you one example. We had a young man who was a graffiti artist in New York City, very talented graffiti artist, but he also went to a very prominent school in New York City for art, but he had a nine year heroin addiction. And what I did is I said, You are so talented. Okay, I’ve seen your work, but I’m gonna be your mentor. My other partners are gonna be your mentors, and you don’t have to worry about all that other stuff, the business stuff, the invoicing, any that kind of stuff, just do your art. And so what we did at one of the houses, Kara, is we turned one of the garages into an art studio, wow. And we said, hey, go in there and paint as much as you can. Okay. And really, what I did is, once he got his first painting done and I looked at it, I almost teared up. I said, his name is Jack. I said, Jack, take the needle out of your arm and put the paintbrush in your hand and watch what happens. And what I can tell you today is that his art is in major galleries. He’s married with a baby, he has three years of sobriety, and he truly has shifted his addiction to his passion to really take off and create his own brand, and he’s doing what he loves to do that’s amazing. All he needed. All he needed was someone who wasn’t his dad, someone who wasn’t his baseball coach, some believer behind him to say, go do this. I believe in you, and we’ve done that dozens of times. What’s great Kara is that we’ve had people come and all sudden, they had this aha moment. This one woman was with us for about 90 days, and she used to make really nice flower arrangements around the house. And we kept saying, Man, you should do this professionally. She started crying. She goes, I’ve always wanted to open up my own flower shop. And I said, Okay, I put together a 10 page stick pitch deck. We went to her husband and said, Hey, forget writing checks to read. Labs anymore. Write a check to help your wife start a business. And guess what? She opened up a flower shop in San Diego. Wow,

Kara Goldin 10:07
that’s amazing. Yeah, that’s That’s great. Now, do people come to your center? Do they stay there? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Gregg Champion 10:15
So we have two parts. We have two parts. We have people. When they come up to the houses, they’re there for 90 days they live there. They have their own room. We have a chef. We have coaches and staff around to take care of and transport them. And then they come down to a five day program in Santa Monica called Startup wellness. And that’s where they actually see a therapist, they see a wellness director, they see a frequency doctor. They coach with me, and it’s two parts. Kara, you can stay at the houses and fall into our five day program, or, if you’re a private citizen, you can just walk in off the street and take in the same amount of wellness opportunity. Some of the things I discussed with you are fair.

Kara Goldin 10:54
That’s That’s amazing. So you’re working with a vast number of people. It’s not just all people with drug addiction, right? People are coming in and actually trying to change something. Do people typically stay for 90 days? Or are there? Is it all over the place? Well,

Gregg Champion 11:14
it’s funny. So one of the things we have an advantage of Kara is Southern, Southern California weather. And so I’ve had people come here from Toronto, New Jersey, Chicago. We had, we had a woman here. She just got 22 months here in Los Angeles. She’s from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, okay? She came out here for 90 days. She bought into California. She bought in the sobriety. She bought into to healing her inner child, right, working on herself. And eventually she goes to her husband. She goes, You know, I really like it out here. Let’s move the family out here. And so now the family has moved from Wisconsin to Los Angeles. Her kids go to local high schools, and now she’s got 22 months of sobriety, she’s healed some of her inner child wounds, you know, trauma, drama, pain and shame and and that’s that’s a unique case, but that’s what happens, because here’s here’s the thing, you can’t just get sober. That’s not enough. You have to, once you get sober, you have to fill it with something that’s meaningful. So whether that’s going back to school, getting your degree, starting a business, taking up art class, you know you have to fulfill it. That’s the transfer of there goes the bad and here comes the good. And that’s what we’re really good at. We’re really, really good at transforming people’s lives.

Kara Goldin 12:40
So when you see these high performers coming to you, or just in general, when you look at high performers, there’s patterns or blind spots across many of these individuals. What do you see that maybe they don’t see yet well,

Gregg Champion 13:03
well for me, the majority of the people that I have seen Kara have some sort of childhood trauma, drama, pain or shame that they’ve never dealt with. And they’ve used workaholism to hide it. They’ve used exercise to hide it. They use gambling, drugs. They’ve used people, you know, people, places and things, to to hide it. And they could only hide for so long, you know. And so, you know, they may be, they may have had a narcissistic parent and they didn’t know it, you know. They may have been really affected by their parents divorce, you know. And their behaviors are based upon that. I can give you my own story. My father was killed in a drunk underground car crash when I was four years old. And so for me, that trauma took me down a road of I feel different because you have a dad, you have a dad, you have a dad, right? And so what happened for me was I acted out in three ways. A I was angry. I was an angry little kid. Two. I loved attention. Kara, I was the prettiest girl in the block. Had blonde, curly hair, big blue eyes, and got a lot of attention. And the last but not least, fantasy, you know, you and I are both kids who grew up in the 70s and 80s. And I wanted to drive to black trans am, you know, I wanted to be Luke Skywalker, and I certainly was going to date all three Charlie’s Angels, you know. And so as a kid, Fantasy was a big thing, and so I was able to camp out with fantasy, anger and attention. And those are all things that medicated me until I was 13, and puberty kicked in. And we can do a lot of data here. Most kids take their first or second take their first drink or drug at 13 or 14 years old.

Kara Goldin 14:47
Wow. Almost 70% that’s incredible. Like, what is the process like? Then, when people come to you and want to get better, one of

Gregg Champion 14:57
the things that, and I don’t. Know, Kara, if you knew I was sober before we got on the product podcast? No, no, right? Okay. Well, one of the things I I’m out there, I tell people I’m sober, that I would not have the life if I wasn’t sober. It’s the foundation. So I’m out there. So a lot of times I get Facebook messages or Instagram messages, hey, can you can you help my son? Can you help my wife? Okay, I’m also part of a 12 step program here in Los Angeles, and a lot of people know that I own a business that does very good work. So I may walk into a meeting and someone pulls me aside after meeting says, Hey, listen, I have an uncle who’s in Colorado. Can you go do an intervention on him? Okay? And then we also have a lot of good partners all over the country who know about the good work we do. And when there is a 911, when a family is in crisis, they put us on the phone and they say, Hey, do you have a bed available? What’s your program like? And I walk them through what our program is, how much it costs, what sort of things, why we’re different. And so, you know, we are, I should put this. We are a program of attraction, if that makes sense. You know that between Southern California, weather, the good programming that we have at Start Up Recovery, all three founders, Patricia, Myers, Jeff band and myself, are all in our own recovery. So we we walk the walk. And if someone walks the walk, they talk the talk. Because here’s why I’m gonna be real honest with 80% of my industry are crooks, thieves and bad people. There is a core 20% of my industry that is there. They are Integris. They have good ethics. They do good work, and best of all, they have meaningful outcomes. You know, my goal at Start Up Recovery is to get everybody to a year of sobriety, because if I get them to a year of sobriety, guess what? The odds of them getting to the second year go up way more.

Kara Goldin 16:56
Yeah, definitely. You’re also involved with university programs and young professionals. And really, I love how the mentorship side of you know, what you’ve enjoyed doing, has come into, really your mission overall. Can you talk a little bit about those programs and kind of, what you get out of that as well,

Gregg Champion 17:20
yeah, well, it’s, you know. So if I can just, you know, I I want to be able to tell a story of of connecting with college kids. I think it’s such a very powerful why, in the road, in someone’s life, you know? And it can go bad, or it can go good, right? And for you and me, it went really good, like we had a nice experience. We have, still have lifelong friends, right? And so with some of the programs that were attached to, you know, I just recently reconnected with ASU and ASU on ASU alumni, Christine Dr, Christine Wilkinson, out there, and I’ve been part of the USC Griff entrepreneurial program as a mentor and coach for now, going on nine years and and what I want to tell tell you Kara is that you know, like on the outside, I may look the part, I may sound the part, but I also I have doubt as well. I have imposter syndrome as well. And what I want to share with your audience is that, you know, for many years, I was a guest lecturer at USC, and I had this wonderful professor who kept asking me back to come in and what he wanted me to tell he wanted me to talk about loss, Gregg, I want you to tell you about the startups that didn’t work. My students need to know about that. And so I come in and I tell them about loss, loss, and then I tell him about a couple wins I had, but back in about 2015 I didn’t have any wins, and it was in December. It was at Christmas time, and my my role in my prior career around television production was was getting smaller. The budgets were getting smaller and the headaches were getting bigger. Kara and I kind of saw the writing on the wall, like, Gregg, your time in this business is not going to be that long. And I go, I, you know, I’m a big believer in the universe. I’m a big believer in the ripple effect. What you put out, you get back, you know? And so I kind of said to the universe, tell me, show me something. I that what direction I need to go. So one of the things I did was, December 28 of 2015 I type up an email, dear professor, Henry, please take me off your guest lecture list, list. I no longer bring value to your class. I haven’t had any success in a few years. Okay? And I, you know, I’m no I’m no good to your students anymore. Kara, I I don’t present. I go on a ski trip with my family, and I get back, I open my I open my email on January 6, and an email coming back to me from Professor Henry says. Is this, dear champ. That’s my that’s my nickname, dear champ. I took on three classes this semester for my 400 level entrepreneurship class. Okay, I’m only available to teach two. I need someone to teach my one that I can’t teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And you’re the first person I think of. And so here I was about to sabotage. But you know what we do, self destruction. We get in our own way. Here I was about to blow my own thing. My own perception of myself was I was a loser. I was not winning there, you know, I was no value. And the complete opposite was true, that of all the people he has speaking over the years, he chose me to take, and what happened was that launched me into sort of a public speaker, a teacher, a confidant, a mentor. And I’m just grateful for that sort of cosmic moment, you know. And I’m a big believer that our only job, Kara, is when a door opens up. Our only job is to walk through it. Is to walk through it.

Kara Goldin 21:10
So how do you help people find meaning in failure? Maybe they, you know, don’t feel worthy, or they don’t feel like they have that professor that you had that just had to write that simple note to you to say, come back in right? They they don’t have that. I mean, how do you get people to get past that?

Gregg Champion 21:34
So there’s a couple of things I do. So I have a curriculum called the recovery playbook, and really, Kara, you and I can do it has nothing to do with addiction. Yes, it’s set up for I’m sober now what, but it’s really the now what. And so I have, I do this thing called the 10 intentions, and you write 10 intentions down that you want to have happen in the next year, right? I have what I call the word of the year, and what it is, is you and I would meditate on a word that you want to either improve in an action or diminish in an accident. So say you suffer from procrastination, right? You would put that word out there. So every every morning, and I have you put the post it where you’re where you brush your teeth, so every morning, you’re looking at it and you’re saying yourself, I’m not going to procrastinate, I’m not going to so also that that behavior goes down, okay? But most of all, the number one thing you have to do is, everybody has a superpower. Everybody has a superpower. And you have to get mentors. You have to get good on on a silent retreat. You have to get in a space to go. What do I really know how to do? And I do it good and naturally, right? And it’s almost like I’m a good Catholic boy. And there’s a great prayer called the Saint Francis prayer, and the opening line of the Saint Francis prayer is, Lord, make me a channel, right? And all you’re doing Kara, you do it. You’ve done it for 30 years, you’ve just been a channel of Kara, and yes, you’ve represented other companies, right when you were at AOL and these other places and time you’re you’re doing and also, then you got your own little baby hint, and you’re like, Okay, I’m going to channel Kara through this brand hint, right? And now you’re doing your show. You’ve been obviously a mother, an entrepreneur or a wife, you’re channeling stories that help other people see it. Because here’s, I can’t tell anybody how to get sober, yeah, I can’t tell anybody how to get how to be successful. I have to show them. I have to show them. And so I feel when I show you that I’m vulnerable, right, that I make mistakes that I don’t have a whole lot, I don’t have a great number of wins. I have probably have less wins, a lot of ties and maybe some losses, right? But also, I also heard this rejection is God’s protection. And I always think about this. I think, like I dated this one girl way back when, and, and thank God that that didn’t pan out, you know, because it was not what was meant to be, right? I got fired from this job, right? And that boss ended up going to prison because he was corrupt. And if I had, if I had been still working in the company there, I would have, you know, and so God protects you. So rejection is God’s protection, and I just give you these tools. And obviously there’s other thought leaders who come up with the same sort of lingo, but you got to buy into it. You got to buy into that. A change is only going to happen if you’re willing to change.

Kara Goldin 24:34
It’s so true. Yeah, it’s so true. Well, I love everything you’re doing, Gregg, startup, recovery and wellness is an amazing, amazing thing that you’ve built. You should be so proud. And we’re going to put everything in the show notes. I want everyone to check out what you’re doing, because I think it’s really amazing. And maybe also people have. Of other people that they think could benefit from your center too. So another reason to check out what you’re doing. So thank you so much for joining us on the show today, and thanks everyone for tuning in. So goodbye for now. Thanks, Gregg, yeah. Thank you Kara. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey. I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now you.

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