Episode 162: Succeeding As A Family Business & Protecting Your Key Relationships With Krista Ryan
Krista Ryan, CEO and Founder of KfG Coaching LLC, shares her family’s multigenerational journey in the community banking industry—from her grandfather’s early role to her own leadership path. In this insightful conversation, Krista reveals key strategies for sustaining a successful family business and navigating leadership transitions. She also explores how unexpected life events impact our closest relationships and offers practical tips on showing up with intention and awareness.
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Succeeding As A Family Business & Protecting Your Key Relationships With Krista Ryan
In this episode, I interview Krista Ryan. With decades of experience as a human resources director, Krista is the CEO and Founder of KFG Coaching. She's a Bravely Pro Coach and a Room Tilter with Limitless Minds, a mental conditioning organization that unites personal growth and business success through the power of neutral thinking.
She's the author of the new book, Keep F*!#ing Going: A Step-by-Step Guide to Successfully Navigating Change. During this episode with Krista, we talk about her family's journey, starting with her grandfather, being a part of a family community bank, and the tips to make it successful and transition leadership throughout the generations.
We also discuss her own journey of unexpected events in her life that deeply affected her and her relationships and what she learned, and how she became aware of how she was showing up and how to shift it. I look forward for you reading this episode with Krista. There are so many great lessons in it, and I hope you share it with your colleagues, family, friends, anyone that could use this advice.
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I am here with Krista Ryan. Krista, do you want to just start us off with a little bit about yourself before we get started?
Family Background & Early Career In Banking
Yes, of course. I live in Minnesota. I’m actually born and raised here in Minnesota, and I like to say I'm a third-generation bank owner/recovering HR director. What I’ve done for the past few years is human resources within the financial organization that my husband and I own and operate. I come from HR background I absolutely love being around other individuals. I love supporting teams. I just absolutely adore all things.
I have three amazing children, a son and two daughters. I’m just enjoying life in general. We enjoy traveling the world. We travel the globe. If your readers could see behind me, I have a world map because one of my to-dos is to place little pinpoints on all the places I’ve been because we just love exploring the world and meeting new people and having conversations like you and I are going to have. I'm really happy to be here, Amy. I don't know how much in depth you want me to go, because I could talk for three hours about my history and who I am and how I got here.
We're going to go there. Before that, with your love of travel, what's the most interesting place you've traveled to?
Monte Carlo. Talk about a different world. Bougie wasn't a word that I used often until I went there. I'm like, “Everyone hears bougie. Bougie this and bougie that.” It was absolutely amazing, but it was such fun people watching because I just kept thinking, “What do they do in their day to day.” The lifestyle is so foreign to me. Growing up in the Midwest, it's just not the same. The whole atmosphere was simply amazing.
It's always interesting to see what stands out in your head.
I almost said Amsterdam because I traveled there as well and that place was next level because of how many bikes are there. I almost got my life taken away four times by different bicycles and how fast they navigate the streets. Another place that's so bizarre, but so beautiful.
You started talking off that you grew up in Minnesota. Actually, my heritage is from Minnesota as well. I don't live there now, but my grandparents and my great-grandparents immigrated from Russia and ended up in St. Paul. They eventually went to Minneapolis.
I'm like 50 miles from the Twin Cities. We're connected that way as well. I'm Norwegian, so I'm not Russian.
I know. It's a lot of Norwegian. Why don't you give me a little background on growing up there? What did your parents do for a living and do you have siblings?
Yes. I’ve got one brother. He's in the Twin Cities. He's currently living and residing there as well. My parents, they've always been in the banking world. My grandfather was a banker. He got involved in the banking business in the mid-‘70s. My parents got involved and then my husband and I got involved.
Family Business: We absolutely loved the world of community banking—working in small communities where we know our customers, their children, and their families.
What does that mean, they were involved? What did your grandparents do?
Bank owners. Buy and sell community banks. We're a community banking family.
How did they get started with that?
They got started by my grandfather. For years, he was like a salesman for investing. He did the door-to-door travel salesman career. When I talked to my mom about it, she doesn't remember a lot of growing up with my grandfather, like in the house or around, because he was always traveling, always on the road. He just got really thirsty for the financial world and didn't want to do the door-to-door sales anymore. He and his brother actually partnered and purchased a small little Minnesota town bank and got their feet wet together in the world of banking. It's crazy looking back at that now because he just saw great success in it. He absolutely loved the competitive edge that it involved.
What would've been his competitive edge?
He was more, I don't want to use the word ruthless, because that sounds irresponsible, but he was more willing to take risk. Not quite as conservative, I would say.
That would mean like taking on clients with not as like high of a credit or you might take on more credit risk with someone.
Thinking outside the box like, “We're going to try to support this individual even though other places maybe wouldn't.” Great at communication and networking with other individuals. Great at schmoozing and finding some high-end clients really early on that were great referrals. He was really good. He's like the Frank Sinatra of banking. Fun fact, he’s turning 99.
He's still alive. That's awesome.
He's still alive. He's still in his home in Northern Minnesota and we talk every other day on the phone. He's still like, “How's the banking world?” He wants to hear everything about it because it's what gave him fuel for his whole life.
Besides being a competitive person, maybe, was there any purpose behind trying to help people that did have a higher credit risk or take risk on those people?
I don't know. I’ve never asked him. That's going to be a question I’ll ask him during the birthday. I do know he's very open of his involvement in World War II. He was in the Navy and he has a lot of stories that he's always open about sharing of his involvement in World War II and being in the Navy. I think that taught him at a very early age. The age of nineteen is when he got out of the Navy. I think that taught him a lot of discipline and that servant heart of trying to help others. I think that was instilled in him very early on. He brought that home with him and just wanted to do something where he was doing something to help support others in whatever that looked like. I would guess that would be a lot of where his purpose came from.
Was your father working in the business then early on?
When he and my mom got married, as newlyweds, they had moved to Colorado and he was a school teacher and she was a bank teller in a bank out there. It was a conversation. My grandfather called and said, “Do you want to get involved in the family business? If you did, here's what it would look like. Move back to Minnesota,” and they did. They had a fantastic career in community banking as well.
Family Business: You have to be able to communicate for things to be successful. Not everyone will agree all the time, but you still have to make the best choice and keep moving forward.
Ironically, it's how my husband and I got involved as well. We both graduated from college, we met in college in South Dakota. We both moved to West Des Moines, Iowa. We worked for Wells Fargo Financial for years. We're very happy there. We had wonderful careers, wonderful success. An amazing organization to work for.
We then got the phone call pretty much and said, “Do you want to get involved with the family business and work in community banking?” We gave it a five-year trial plan. We had just had my son, who was three months old, and we gave it a 5-year trial where we will see how this works for 5 years. We never looked back. We absolutely loved the world of community banking and working in small communities. We know our customers, we know their children, we know their families. We know their stories. We tried to do anything we can to support them and their success. It's just a very homey feel and it's been such a great ride.
The Call To Join The Family Business
That's a leap from being a school teacher. Originally, was he trying to avoid going into the family business or what?
No. He and my mom got married. In college, Elementary Education was his major in college. He never really even thought about it. Never even explored that it would be an option. When they got married, he was a well-loved teacher. His father-in-law, who's my grandfather, gave him the call and he is like, “Okay. This is a whole different world, but yeah, I’ll give it a shot.”
It was your mom that was related, correct?
Yes. It's my mom's father.
She was a bank teller having grown up in the industry. When you were young, did you know in your head this is what was going to happen?
No. I was the person that grew up in Minnesota and was like, “The second I graduate high school here, I'm moving to California and I'm going to live out there and I'm going to do all things and I'm getting involved in the family business,” and then life happens. It's so funny looking back and it makes me giggle because my kids are now at the age where they're exploring their futures and they're me. Especially my teen daughter, she's cut from me. She's my mirror image years ago. I remember thinking like, “No way, never going to happen.” I think there's a sense of maturity and understanding of what an opportunity it is to have someone say, “Do you want to join the family business and give it a shot? Let's see where this goes.”
Life Lessons From Working In A Family Business
It would be a whole other episode, Amy, to talk about working in a family business. There's been ups and downs and twists and turns, but we're so close. We're such a closely connected family and it's all based on, you have to be able to communicate for that to be successful. Not every one's going to agree all times, but you have to still make the best choice and keep moving forward. It's really been great but never ever was this on my life resume.
What did you want to be?
I don't even know. I probably wanted to be like seven different things. I went through a school teacher. I thought that would be fun. An interior designer. I thought for a while my major was going to be broadcast. I wanted to be on the news. I wanted to be a broadcaster. My internship really showed me that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to have a family and the hours were horrific. I wanted to go into culinary. I wanted to cook and be a chef. There were so many wild things. I'm very grateful for where I'm at now. I just had to have some time to play and really figure out who I am.
What was your major in college?
Communications. I was definitely using it. It's so funny. People are like, “Your major was Communications?” I'm like, “Yes.” Now, this is what I do. I'm a professional speaker that I travel the globe talking, so it's so funny. There is a career in that.
How did you choose the Communications major?
Family Business: You can’t make a family business work if you come in with an 'it's my way or the highway' attitude.
I had been on the broadcast and going into the news. Once I got almost to the finish line, I think I changed my very start of my senior year. It was the, oh no moment of like, “I don't really know what I want to do.” I went into Communications because it hit all the areas that I already had all my credit and I knew I loved talking to people. I knew there's a skill. Even if I stepped into a different organization, there's a skill if you're able to communicate effectively or able to have meetings and conversations and give feedback. There's just a skill that's powerful with it.
I want to dive into one thing you said, and that was this five-year trial. What was the parameters? How did you have to set your mindset to get through five years? Initially, were there any rules that you put in place? Besides it being five years, anything else to be able to give it a clear shot and chance?
I think number one, we had to really mentally set ourselves up for success. We are stepping into the family business. We're a small organization like 13 to 15 full-time employees. It's a small community bank. My father was the CEO and then stepping in as the boss's daughter and son-in-law, it was definitely a challenge right off the start. What we had to do is get out of our own heads about how maybe we're not worthy of this opportunity because it looks like it was gifted to us, which in essence, it was a great opportunity. We had to mature really quick, to be honest with you. We had to grow up really quick, step into our value and our worth, and then really start acting as if.
It was very clear and open that the long-term plan was to have my husband take over the business and run the bank in essence. That was clear upfront, but it was challenging at first because we were many years younger than some of the seasoned employees that had worked there for years. It was a very interesting situation that taught my husband and I a lot of confidence and just how to act professionally and really know our value and our worth in a very caring, supportive, and professional way.
I think that was probably the most, like, “We can do this.” We had to own it and really be accountable for it. I think it didn't take five years to know that this was the right plan. I would say it took about 2 to 3. We were like, “We love this.” We love the community banking. We love being in a smaller town for our children growing up. We love our staff, our employees became very much family and it was very clear that they had the trust of my husband and myself to run the business. It was just off to the races.
Building Trust Over Time
How did you build that trust, though? When people have that idea that something's gifted, you still have to overcome their opinion even if it's right or wrong. How did you build the trust so that they did respect you?
We saw it happening. It was happening slowly over time. Really, the turning point was when my father started to give control to my husband as the president. It was like, “Alright, now you run the meeting. You run the board meeting. You do this.” He started to step away from some of that responsibility. I see this a lot in organizations too, where they're trying to figure out the game plan. It's hard for the accountability, the visionary to really step away from that role.
Until they do that, it's hard to gain trust because it's like the disconnect, staff's like looking like, “Who do I report to? Who's the person that I'm actually going to?” When my father retired, it was years ago, that's really where everyone just really locked in, leaned in, really aligned with Chris and myself. We're like, “We’re all rowing in the same direction. We see your plan, we see your vision, we're here for it.” It took a long time. Little baby steps of growth. It certainly does not happen overnight. I'd be kidding myself, Amy, if I said, “In five years, we had all 100% trust.” No. We've been there for twenty. It was probably a good ten years of baby steps before they're like, “Yes, let's do this.”
Through that process, did you learn anything different? I see it as a CPA when I’ve worked with family businesses. So many things that you've said. One thing is that just being able to set someone up to look like a leader, but you respect them. That's an important thing. The second thing is that I see ends up being a struggle, and we have it a ton in the CPA profession because there's a lot of family CPA practices and businesses where the younger child.
Learning From The Past & Avoiding Quick Fixes
They're being groomed to take that position, but they have a lot of new ideas as far as technology, the way business works. You had been at Wells Fargo, so you've seen this like at a scale that most of those people have probably never seen a bank. How did that work or working over time to bring in new initiatives?
Stepping in green, right away, we really took on the role of, we are the mentees, my father's mentoring us. For years the, I'd say maybe the first five years, we just watched how he ran the business. We watched how it worked. Of course there was things that we would do differently or maybe shake up a couple things here or there. We always knew our boundaries and we would vocalize to him some ideas and suggestions, but we never came in like a bull in the China shop. We never came in with like, “Alright, we're going to shake it up and here's a brand new way of thinking about things.” We really took a respectful route which I'm very proud of. I don't think you can make a family business work if you're going to come in and just be like, “alright, it's my way or the highway.” It's not going to work.
This was my father's life and career and he was successful. We wanted to learn and be sponges to absorb all of his knowledge and see how did this work, the ins and outs of community banking, because like you said, it's very different than the Wells Fargo's of the world. We were able to bring in little pieces of both sides and say like, “Interesting. Have we ever thought about this?” It's more of asking curious questions than coming in with, “Here's my game plan, here's what I want to do. Let's put on the boxing gloves and see the back and forth forever about it. It was very much a, we want to learn as much as possible.
I think it's not even just family business. This is a leadership lesson as well that. I think a lot of new leaders feel like coming in like they should just know and know. They come in like that. Even if you do know your craft, it's still important to understand how things got to be the way they are. There might be a reason for it.
It may not be applicable anymore, but it's still the underlying thing to seek and understand before you just assume something's wrong. There's nothing more frustrating than working at a company where new leaders come in and they're like, “We have this idea.” You're like, “Yeah, that idea has happened five times and it failed.” You're not the first person that thought of that. Learn from the people that are there.
Family Business: Leaders today are hesitant to give fast feedback, and it sabotages success more than anything else we see.
Mental Resilience In Crisis
We had to embrace the struggle. We really did. When we started, when we came back and gave this a shot, we went through the 2008 during all that crazy crisis. We saw some crazy things happening in the world of finance that, looking back, I'm so grateful for, because we had to really get some mental strengthening tools in place. We had to really see how to navigate those waters and flex that resilience muscle and be creative. That's where we really got to watch my father be the leader that kept everyone focused, staying neutral, keep moving forward. It helped us get seasoned, I would say. Fast forward into owning and running the business now ourselves.
What would be some of those mental strengthening tools that you would share with people to utilize?
I'm using them now, which we'll I'm sure dive into just based on a couple of major breakdowns, but I think always coming from a neutral place. We're hardwired to go negative no matter what. Especially in a crisis, whether it's personal, professional, political, financial, whatever, we're hardwired to go negative. I think the power of how to stay neutral and not layer on toxic positivity, like, “We're going to be fine. Everything's great.” That doesn't help in some situations.
It's staying neutral, which is all about just really focusing on facts, what is true, like what is the truth in this moment. Staying in that neutral space and then looking to support each other through whatever it is you're navigating. Looking for the next best step. Avoiding the rear-view mirror because a lot of times, where organizations and companies go is looking at what didn't work and how messy that just was. There's a lot of wasted time and energy looking in the rearview mirror. We can learn the lessons from it, but it's a lot of wasted time and energy. Forward focused and staying neutral are some of the most powerful tools that we still use on the daily.
With your father, you said you looked to him of how he stayed focused. What things did you learn from him?
Humility. Super humble and calm. Calming presence, but also not afraid to give really fast feedback. I think that is one of his superpowers. He is very loving, caring. I'd say he'd give you the shirt off his back. If you were chilly, it's yours. That's the type of person he is. In the same aspect, I really respected how if something wasn't going according to plan, whether it be with family or with an employee or a coworker or client, he was fast with feedback. That person or individual knew immediately how they could do better, maybe what didn't work so well. The creative solutions came in place. I feel that leaders today are hesitant on really fast feedback and it sabotages success more than anything else that I see.
The Importance Of Feedback & Communication
It comes back to communication. I think people are afraid to do that, but when you catch something early, like if you catch it, it's going to happen again if someone doesn't know that it's an issue. To your point, keep balance that with being humble, loving and caring. I think there's a difference between fast feedback and feeling like you can't trust that person or they're not in your corner versus fast feedback and someone personally cares about you
I say it's a difference between trigger tongue. Trigger tongue is when you're firing off verbal bullets. When you're unhappy about something and you're just giving that feedback and like firing off verbal bullets, but they're not in a caring or beneficial way, that's triggering. That feedback can sabotage trust and breakdown relationships and teams. Feedback that I love is when it's as a gift. I always tell leaders, “If you're holding onto feedback because it makes you uncomfortable, that is one of the most selfish moves that you can do.”
That individual needs to know that you care enough about them, that you can do hard things and that you can give this hard feedback and make yourself uncomfortable and maybe them because you can see a better solution. If they can acknowledge that and say like, “This isn't working, I have to give you some feedback, then together, we'll come up with some creative ideas on what we can do to improve. It's so powerful. My prayer is that no employees go home at the end of the day like, “I don't know how I'm doing. I don't have a clue.” That just means that there's not communication happening.
I would just say I have very rarely seen in my years as a CPA that people maintain good personal relationships and professional relationships when it's a family business because it all becomes so intertwined and then they're talking about the business outside of work or anything that happens inside of work affects them personally and so forth. How did you manage the family aspect of this?
Managing Boundaries In Family Businesses
Boundaries, because to your point, you're right. Even at holidays, at gatherings at dinner, everywhere, work comes up. We have a code word and it's peanut butter. If you're ever in front of my family and you hear the word peanut butter, it means that we brought something up and this is not the time or place for it. We had to establish boundaries early on.
We also use peanut butter if we're rehashing something in the past, like, “Why are we bringing this up? There's no benefit, there's nothing of use to come from this other than we're verbally venting. We don't need to do this.” We'll just say peanut butter and then we'll all like look at each other and smile or laugh and be like, “We’ve got to move on. Let's move on.” It was all about forward progress motion and knowing your boundaries, and it was also having the awareness too that you don't have to see eye to eye.
You absolutely will not. You're not always going to agree on something, but you can still support a decision and move forward. Even if you're not 100% aligned with it. You have to trust each other enough to be like, “We're going to give this a shot. I'm not necessarily on board with it, but I believe in us as unit more than I do in me being right.”
We have to sometimes get our egos out of the way. I also say the right conversation in the wrong mood is the wrong conversation. We always have to make sure that our discussions are never emotionally charged. There's power in the pause, take a breather, take a break, come back to it, have it when everyone's more grounded. There's just a lot of that resilience and mental strength that we've brought into our relationships and
Family Business: The right conversation in the wrong mood is the wrong conversation.
Do you think you having the degree you had has what helped in these situations or was this passed down?
Yeah, it's all of it. All things. I’ve seen some relationships not work, so I know what I don't want to do. I think that's also important to acknowledge and say like, “This doesn't work this way. I know I don't want to do it that way.” I do believe that my training, just how I’ve been able to learn and actually witness what does and doesn't work, though, has been extremely beneficial in how I communicate with my family and our whole family unit and employees at the bank. There's a gift of vulnerability too. When we're not perfect, we always talk about what went wrong so that we can highlight, like, “We're human, we're all allowed to make mistakes and we forgive fast, love hard, and move on.”
Did you and your husband, or you and your husband and your father come up with job descriptions? How did you make sure you stayed in your lanes?
We actually implemented EOS that helped us adjust. Are you familiar with EOS?
Yeah. Maybe explain it to the readers.
It's Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. We started doing that. It really helps us learn how to communicate. It's, it's like quarterly conversations, touch points. It's just a tracking system for small businesses in essence. I highly recommend if you're a small business owner or family business owner, look into EOS. It's an investment, but it's been absolutely beneficial. That keeps us accountable on track, redefining job descriptions. Making sure that we have, it's called RPRS, Right People, Right Seat, making sure we don't have people in the business just because we love and care about them, but because they're actually in the right seat helping us grow the business and move it forward. That's been huge for our family business at the bank.
As a mom, how have you balanced all this?
That's a daily struggle. No, actually, I stepped away personally from the bank. I'm still an owner, but I'm not working within the walls of the bank anymore. I stepped away in 2019. That's when I started professionally speaking and doing workshops and facilitations. I remember the day I walked into my husband's office because he is also my boss. I was the human resources director and he's the CEO president. I walked into his office and I said, “You know what I think I'm doing, I think I'm having a lot of conversations with the staff and supporting them in their growth and spreading their wings and helping them get in the right seat. I think I'm doing a lot of what would be called executive or business coaching.”
At this time, that was very foreign in the Midwest. He and I agreed, like I wanted to make sure I wasn't playing with them. I wanted to make sure I was doing it in a professional way. I went out and got a two-year executive business coaching certification out in Boulder, Colorado. When I graduated from that program, I came back and I actually stepped away from my role at the bank. I quickly realized as a human resources director and an owner of the business, I was already in the way of them truly being able to have vulnerable conversations about maybe what is or is not working because at the end of the day, I'm an owner.
Vulnerability As A Leadership Tool
I stepped away from that role and we got someone in place better aligned and fit to support them. I started doing executive and business coaching for organizations on a global scale. What really the pivotal moment was four days after I graduated from this coaching certification, my husband and I flew out to Las Vegas because we love live music. This was our second time going to Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas. People know that night, because it was 2017, as the Las Vegas mass shooting. He and I were involved in that.
Keep in mind, I had just graduated four days earlier from this intensive program. I had all sorts of these tools about mental resiliency and how to navigate crisis and change. I came back from that event and it took a couple years of mental healing to like process that. I learned from that exposure and from that event was how you, as a leader, being vulnerable and exposing when you're not okay even to your team or your staff.
Allow and let them support you just by even saying like, “How are you doing? Is there anything I can do?” Actually having that heart to heart conversation that built trust to a level that I did not even know that we could get to. When you start allowing people to be part of your life, part of your experience, I'm not talking like pull out all the skeletons in your closet.
Have a conversation with your team and be like, “I'm navigating something that's really a challenge and I'm working hard to heal from it. It is tough. If you see me having an off day, you can approach me and talk to me about it because maybe I need a little reality check. B, maybe I need to have a conversation.” Just having that open dialect and open dialogue and saying like, “You can approach me, we can be in this together,” that brought us to a whole different level of trust.
I think too, sometimes people think it's them if you don’t bring it up.
Family Business: We're not perfect. We're human. We're allowed to make mistakes—we forgive fast, love hard, and move on.
Everyone has their own story. Someone walks into the room and they're in a bad mood because they just got cut off in traffic. They walk in and they have some emotion on their face. Whoever sees them walks in has their own story like, “They're so upset about that Zoom meeting yesterday. Look at how mad they are.” No one knows what's going on.
It's hard enough every day to get up when you don't have something challenging happening in your life and be there for everyone else, especially in leadership roles, you have to be.
Cancer Diagnosis & Vulnerability In Leadership
My son was set to graduate and four days before his graduation from high school, I was actually diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer. I had no symptoms. I'm one of those weird unicorns. I had no symptoms. I was under the age of where they would recommend getting a colonoscopy. It was just by accident. I went in and got a colonoscopy because I had heard a friend, I asked her to tell me her story because she was going through a cancer diagnosis.
I asked her for her story and then I heard like this weird whisper like, “Krista, just go check yourself out. You might as well get a baseline, double check, whatever.” I got diagnosed with stage three. I had no idea. Even navigating that, I’ve been 100% open and honest with our staff. They know exactly what's going on. We have such trust with each other. They know my husband, if he's having an off day, they know they can talk to him and ask him questions.
I can say now, the biggest gifts that have ever happened to me were the biggest breakdowns of my life, the Las Vegas mass shooting and the stage three cancer diagnosis. It's because of the way that we chose to show up and communicate through them and not become like a victim to the story. So many times, in teams, organizations, we can become victims to our story. We were like, “No, we can't choose what's happening to us, but we get to choose how to respond to it.” Even that in organizations and teams is so powerful. You don't have to like things, but guess what you get to do? You get to choose how you respond to whatever's going on in your world.
How are you doing right now?
I’m doing really well. I had my last surgery. They reconnected me and removed all the cancerous area. I went through 4 rounds of chemotherapy and 4 surgeries. Now I'm happy to say, knock on wood, because got my clean scans and everything looks like it's moving in the right direction.
That's awesome. That's great to hear.
Thank you. You can hear it in my voice once in a while, all these side effects of chemo. I get like froggy gargly throat once in a while. Hopefully, you can't hear it too Bad.
No, not at all. How did you transition to doing this globally when you said that you go internationally to help people?
The Impact Of The Las Vegas Shooting On Leadership
Yeah, so after the Las Vegas experience and event, like I said, I broke down for about two years and I was being a fraud because I was doing executive coaching, but I was self-sabotaging at home. I realized I'm supporting organizations on a global scale, helping them be resilient, navigate change but I am hypocrite because I'm really not doing a good job of it myself.
I started to really investigate myself. I broke myself apart, dissected what I was doing right, what I was doing wrong in, in regards to support. I came up with a three-step process and then I started to coach and train my teams that I was already supporting about it. They started saying, “Krista, can you bring this to my other team?”
Oddly enough, Amy, it’s called Keep Freaking Going, KFG, because people, when I came back from Las Vegas and I was coaching them, they'd say like, “What were you thinking out there? What were you thinking?” All I was thinking is I wanted to get home to my kids. I was running for my life. I was saying, KFG, keep freaking going. Run. It quickly became that's the action step for all of us. Keep freaking going. Don't stop, don't get stuck. Always put one foot in front of the other. I came up with this formula, KFG, keep freaking going, that breaks it down into three steps and it just took off like wildfire.
Teams and organizations are just having others trained on it so that there's someone that can help navigate changes. Yet never was this on my life resume. Now I just traveled the world talking through the KFG steps and getting in front of teams and organizations. The banking world loves my banking history. They find that so unique and then they're like, “Will you come teach my bank employees how to keep freaking going”? I'm like, “Yes, absolutely.”
Family Business: Just having open dialogue and saying, 'You can approach me—we're in this together,' brings people to a whole new level of trust.
It's just become such a gift. Honestly, I remember the moment that it all changed because I was looking out the back window over our green grass in the backyard and it was like something just clicked in me that I realized at the Las Vegas mass shooting, that one person made the decision to cause that chaos and try to destroy as many lives as possible and 58 people did not go home.
He killed 58 people. I realized that the way I was choosing to live my life after that, I was stuck as a victim to that situation. I realized like he still wins. He still wins if I don't figure this out. That gave me such fuel and power and it like flipped the narrative on its head and I was like, “I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to actually go out and I'm going to try to KFG and tell others how to KFG in their own lives.”
Using The KFG Method To Overcome Life Challenges
I just want to do the ripple effect so that like, it's the exact opposite. He meant to destroy. What he did is he empowered me and he woke me up and now it is my why. My purpose is to honor those that didn't go home. To also be like, “No, you don't get to choose. I'm still here. You didn't take that from me and now I'm not going to let the fact that you tried to sabotage me for the rest of my life.” I had to break free of those handcuffs. I'm so glad I did because when I was diagnosed with cancer, I immediately did not go negative. I was like, “Alright, what do I need to do? Let's KFG.” I already had the tools
Stay neutral.
Power in the pause.
It's hard stuff. I think for whatever anyone goes through, and I have found it fascinating I'm at 51 at this stage and just how the brain works and there's always new openings and discoveries when you allow yourself to observe your brain and your thoughts. So many of us are trapped in our minds and stay there versus or maybe try to avoid it because it's too hard to stop and pause. Our brains, our minds are just fascinating. You can have the same story going on your whole life and then all of a sudden, you're like, “I'm going to flip. That story just took on a new meeting for some reason.”
The Mind-Body Connection & The Impact Of Trauma
The thing is, if you just try to fake it, your body knows the difference. I'm blessed enough in Minnesota to doctor at the Mayo Clinic. They’re the world's best doctors and they're taking such good care of me, but my doctor has done so much, I'm actually writing a book about this because it's insane. There is such a connection between the mind and the gut. When I was diagnosed with stage three cancer, they think I’ve had it somewhere between 7 to 10 years that this cancer's been slowly growing in my body. The Las Vegas mass shooting happened eight years ago.
Isn't that unbelievable? There's like a connection between when you go through a traumatic situation, you've got to do your hardest. I'm a cheerleader for therapy, PTSD therapy. You do whatever you need to do to get yourself on the other side of that so it can be a story that will empower you and not claim you. Your mind absolutely can make you ill through your body if you're not caring for both at the same time. You can't just focus on one. You have to focus on them both.
It's fascinating. It's another thing we have in common. My ex-husband had gotten very sick and we were at the Mayo Clinic and I learned so much just observing those doctors at the Mayo Clinic. I don't think I ever understood what's different about one place versus another. It's such a research hospital. I'm a yogi. They were talking about so much mindfulness in his healing and. It's actually pretty funny.
I just remembered a conversation when you said that because we had gotten back and I had had a yoga studio and they were talking about all these things at the Mayo Clinic for you are your disease if you have it in your mind. You are not your disease if you think differently. I kept telling him, “This is yoga.” We went at the time to the movie Dr. Strange, the Marvel character. We left and he's like, “Do you think your mind could actually change your prognosis?” I was like, “It took Dr. Strange.”
Not the doctors at Mayo Clinic. That is hilarious. That's so funny. It's true, though, the mental, and here's the thing. There's so many people when you go through something hard, it's easy to obsess about it. I'm not putting any shame or judgment because maybe for some it supports, but there's still a survivor's page from the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on Facebook that people post about their night terrors and how all they're having such a hard time.
There's 22,000 people in attendance that night. I just think I want to just hug all of them and say like, “It is up to you to move on from this. Do not let that person that did this claim your life. Do absolutely whatever you can to get beyond it.” Same with any cancer diagnosis, anything. There's such a power in the mental and physical piece. You have to focus on both.
We could keep talking, I'm sure, but I'm going to end it with rapid fire questions that I like to ask at the end of our show. Pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Let's do family and friends.
Family Business: Your mind can make you ill through your body if you're not caring for both at the same time. You can't just focus on one—you have to care for them both.
The Importance Of Presence & Connection with Loved Ones
Things or actions that I don't have that I want to have with my family and friends.
I'm getting much better with my family, so I want to spend more time in present time awareness with them. What that means is we're going out for girl’s dinner on this Friday, and I swear we haven't done that for six months. That's unacceptable. They are my girls, they're my sisters, they're my best friends. When I'm together with them, I want to make sure I embrace every moment with them. I'm present and aware and my phone is away and I am locked in and making eye contact and fully engaged. Present moment awareness with them.
Things are actions I do have that I want to keep.
Communication. Even though we're not in body, I love just sending them a text with a heart that just means like, “I love you. You just popped into my mind and I'm letting you know right away.” We all do that together and I love it. I think just having open dialect, I love that I can tell them when I'm not okay. If I'm having a hard day or I'm mad, I allow myself the grace to be so and have a bad day and that they're my parachute people. They're the people that help me land softly. When I'm on a free fall. They'll pull the cord for me. They're my parachute people. I want to make sure I'm always honest and vulnerable with them. My parents and my friends.
Things are actions that I don't have that I don't want to have.
Where I start making excuses not to show up. If that happens, it means something's not okay with Krista. My two values are joy and con connection. I need to connect to people on a human level face-to-face. If I start saying no to dinners, movies, date nights with my husband, going to my kids' sporting events and making the excuse, “I'm too busy. I got too much going on,” that's a red flag. I don't have that right now, but I did in the past.
I think cancer shook me awake to being like, “What's this all for?” This is for those moments that I'm saying no to. I need to make sure that I'm not sabotaging my special moments because I'm telling myself I'm too busy. I'm not. No one's too busy to spend time with those that they love ever. I don't want that back. I don't have it right now. I don't want it.
That's the thing, too. A lot of times, when we're going through stuff, we're so aware and it's like, how do you stay aware of that when you're in regular life and not in trauma?
Exactly. How do you not take this gift of life for granted? I don't want to take it for granted ever again. It's not going to happen. I need to keep that awareness right here forefront.
Last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want.
I have a tendency, especially with my husband, that when I want something done, I want it done yesterday and I'm extremely bossy and irritable. I have that and I don't want it. I do a better job of being aware when it's happening and allowing a little bit of space and grace to say, “I would like this done maybe within the next week. It doesn't have to get done in Krista's timeframe, which is the next five minutes.” I know that doesn't make him feel valued or respected, but I get that urgency effect in my head and it's not urgent.
Before we close out, anything that you want to make sure that you say to the audience or reemphasize before we close our conversation?
I think I would just love to remind everyone that we're built to do hard things. We are actually built to do hard things. That you're not supposed to figure it out alone. If you feel like, “I can do this, I don't need anyone, I got this,” you're lying to yourself. The human experience, we're better and stronger together. Please allow people to be part of your journey, whether it's your professional career or your personal life.
Thank you so much for joining. So many great lessons and I appreciate you sharing your story.
Yes, thank you for having me.
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Family Business: We're built to do hard things, and we're not meant to do it alone. If you think you can handle it all by yourself, you're lying to yourself. As humans, we're stronger together. Let others be part of your journey, whether in your career or personal life.
Now from my Mindful Moments with this episode with Krista. I thought this story is fascinating and it's such a great story of how the generations learned to work together in a family business and also be able to protect their personal relationships as well. We talked about how her grandfather started this community bank in their family and eventually he transferred this to her father and then her father eventually transferring it to her husband and herself.
All the twists along the way of being able to understand how to create those boundaries and make sure that their family life was protected in this family business. I know so many of you probably are experiencing the same thing of being in a family business or work with clients that might be in a family business and see the struggles that happen. One thing that I really took away from this was the intentionality of how they went about the decisions that they made.
Especially the one when her father talked to her and her husband about moving back to Minnesota and being a part of this community bank and her and her husband making the decision that it was a five-year trial. Doing something like that is really important, but also putting parameters around it, knowing that the beginning's going to be hard and there's going to be things that you don't even know that's going to come along your way when you start on an endeavor like this and how to create success for this.
One of the things that she talked about was how communication is so critical for a family business and to not avoid it. I think families avoid communication. I think we all avoid communication, whether that's our family, friends, colleagues, whoever it may be, but especially in this case of making sure that you are surfacing things at the appropriate times in the appropriate way and you've got agreed upon way that you are going to communicate.
One of the things that she talked about was to be mentally set up for success. They didn't want to look like it was gifted to them, that they wanted to make sure that they really got to know the business and were making the right decisions for the business, but also honoring and respecting her father that had been this leader for so many years and what was really working under his leadership too, so that they didn't just make assumptions when they came in the door.
I think this can happen in a family business or just coming into a new leadership role that you might think on the surface that certain things are incorrect. As you get into the details, you realize that there's reasons that things developed over time. If you're going to make changes, it might be more complex than you assumed it was going to be.
We also talked about how important it was to have boundaries and making sure that you weren't talking about work during family time and vice versa. I loved when we talked about this code word that they had of peanut butter when they were at in family situations to make sure that they're not talking about work when it wasn't appropriate. Also, maybe when they were starting to go back on things that had already been decided and they're rehashing and not being future focused. These were really great tips, I think, in any working relationship, but especially family relationships that are crossing those lines.
One of the other things that we did talk about as far as leadership was vulnerability. That vulnerability that happens when there are things happening in our life that maybe we don't expect that could be affecting our energy or our mood with the people around us. We haven't let them know that something is going on in our lives.
She's really talked about two extreme things that happened in her life, one in 2017 with that Las Vegas shooting that she happened to be present in. You're in the moment of just exhilaration and excitement being at a music festival and all of a sudden life, changes very fast and what that is and where you give that power in your life. Understanding that there's time for reflection and making sure that you do the right healing, but being vulnerable with the people around you to let them know that that healing is happening and your energy might be affected so they don't take that personally. Also, her getting this cancer diagnosis and the effect that that has had on her and her being intentional about her relationships, how she uses her time and staying very focused on what is important.
I love her model of the acronym of her company, which is KFG, which is Keep Freaking Going. She said that this was something that started in her head when the shooting happened in 2017, so that she survived. This is basically how we make sure that we continue to put one step in front of the other when things are hard, when change is happening, and making sure we know how to navigate that change.
When we are more vulnerable, when we communicate better with the people around us of what's going on in our lives, what it does is create a stronger community. It creates a stronger business, it creates stronger relationships. Really important to think about that as you're moving through your day and where this might be appropriate and where it might be appropriate to be more vulnerable and open up with someone around you now to just let them know what's going on and not take something personally.
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Krista. I know I did, and are able to take some lessons away from it and make sure that you share it with your friends, your family, your colleagues. Know that by being intentional with your energy, it's contagious and helps the people around you when you are really pausing to understand what is affecting you, how you're feeling, and what is the impact, how do you want to show up in your day. Thank you again for reading, and I look forward to having you as a guest for our next episode.
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About Krista Ryan
Krista Ryan, PCC, is a highly sought-after business coach, facilitator, speaker, and Workplace Performance expert known for helping clients effectively navigate uncertainty and promoting collaboration, communication, and confidence. Her global clients include C-suite executives, startup entrepreneurs, individual contributors, elite athletes, and performers.
With nearly two decades of experience as a human resources director, Krista is the CEO and founder of KfG Coaching, LLC. She’s a Bravely Pro Coach and a Room Tilter with Limitless Minds, a mental conditioning organization that unites personal growth with business success through the power of neutral thinking. She is the author of the new book, Keep Freaking Going: A step-by-step guide to successfully navigate change.