Redesigning Life: Insights from Ryan Rigterink on Leadership and Talent Management

In this episode, host Kyle Ariel Knowles sits down with Ryan Rigterink, founder of Leaders Ops and Workgaze. Ryan shares his journey from traditional industries to entrepreneurship, discussing the importance of strategic talent management and creating workplaces where people and results thrive.

Here are three key takeaways that I believe every entrepreneur and manager should consider:

1. Empowering Individual Visions: One of the most profound insights from Ryan was the importance of recognizing that every employee has their own vision for their career and life. As leaders, it's crucial to not only focus on the company's vision but also to understand and support the personal aspirations of our team members. We can drive engagement and productivity by fostering an environment where employees feel valued and understood. This shift from a paycheck mindset to a purpose-driven approach can transform workplace culture.
2. The Role of AI in Leadership: Ryan shared his perspective on how AI reshapes the future of leadership and talent management. He emphasized that AI should not just be about generating more data but about leveraging insights to understand ourselves and our teams better. This new paradigm of "ecosystem leadership" will require us to manage not only people but also technology and their interactions. We can create more effective and empathetic workplaces as we embrace these changes.
3. Personal Development Through Adversity: Ryan's journey is a testament to the power of resilience and personal growth. After being let go during the pandemic, he took the opportunity to reflect and write his book, "Redesign Life." His experiences highlight that the most significant changes in our careers sometimes come from unexpected challenges. Embracing these moments can lead to profound personal and professional development.

Ryan dives into the impact of AI and technology on leadership and talent management, emphasizing the need for a paradigm shift in how we view the employer-employee relationship. He also reflects on his background in psychology and how it has shaped his approach to leadership and personal development.

In addition to his entrepreneurial ventures, Ryan is the author of "Redesign Life: Finding Purpose and Balance Amidst Chaos and Uncertainty." He discusses the inspiration behind his book, the process of writing it, and how it connects to his work with LeadersOps and WorkGaze.

Join us as we explore topics such as:

• The evolution of leadership in the age of AI
• The significance of personal vision in the workplace
• Strategies for enhancing employee engagement
• Insights from Ryan's personal experiences and family legacy

Don't miss this insightful conversation filled with valuable takeaways for entrepreneurs, managers, and anyone looking to make a positive impact in their professional lives!

LINKS

• Follow Ryan on LinkedIn
• Leaders Ops
• Workgaze
• Redesign Life: Finding Purpose and Balance Amidst Chaos and Uncertainty by Ryan Rigterink
• Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It by April Dunford
• Follow Kyle on LinkedIn

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
• 1:03 Ryan's Background and Transition to Leaders Ops
• 2:30 The Role of AI in Leadership and Talent Management
• 4:34 Ryan's Educational Journey and Early Career
• 6:10 Initial Jobs and Experience Before Entrepreneurship
• 7:47 The Business Incubator Experience
• 9:11 Transitioning from Healthcare to LeadersOps
• 10:31 Writing 'Redesign Life' During COVID
• 11:46 Keynote Speaking Journey
• 12:42 The Writing Process of 'Redesign Life'
• 14:26 Frameworks and Insights from 'Redesign Life'
• 17:22 Integration of 'Redesign Life' with Current Work
• 20:27 Workshops and Online Content Availability
• 21:59 Engagement Strategies for Business Owners
• 23:12 The Importance of Personal Vision in the Workplace
• 25:53 AI Tools and Workflows Used by Ryan
• 27:50 Aha Moments with AI
• 30:00 Personal Insights and Current Projects
• 32:50 Ryan's Number One Skill
• 34:41 Emotional Moments and Family Legacy
• 39:17 Recommended Reading Beyond 'Redesign Life'
• 40:42 Lightning Round Questions
• 42:04 The Worst and Best Parts of Entrepreneurship
• 42:57 Closing Remarks and Acknowledgments

Transcript

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Hello there. Welcome to the Maker-Manager Money Podcast, a podcast to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going and wantrepreneurs to just start. My name is Kyle Ariel Knowles and today's guest is Ryan Rigterink. Ryan founded LeadersOps, a platform dedicated to empowering leaders through strategic talent management, and creating workplaces where people and results thrive. He is also actively involved with WorkGaze, a platform focused on helping job seekers and recruiters find a great fit beyond the traditional resume. Since January 2023, Ryan has been simplifying the process of finding the right talent by leveraging WorkGaze's data-driven insights into areas like motivation, growth potential, and team alignment. Understanding the challenges entrepreneurs face in building motivated and engaged teams, Brian's experience with both LeadersOps and WorkGaze provides a unique perspective on attracting, retaining, and leading top talent for long-term success. Ryan is also the author of Redesign Life, Finding Purpose and Balance Amidst Chaos and Uncertainty. Welcome to the show, Ryan. Thanks for having me. That's an extensive intro. Thank you. Okay. Where are you dialing in from today? I'm up in Michigan, Saginaw, Michigan. How about yourself? I'm in Highland, Utah, just 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City. Nice. Are you originally from Michigan then?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, I grew up in West Michigan. I went to school at Michigan State in the middle of the state and then about 20 some years ago, originally for a job reload, came to this area and we've been here ever since.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: What inspired you to transition from traditional industries to founding Leaders Ops?

Ryan Rigterink: did a lot of training and management and innovation across four different industries. The bulk of that was in healthcare. And in that process, I got to see a lot of, I got a firsthand experience working with hundreds of businesses, as well as was kind of one of the people that a lot of people went to. when things were not going well. And so leadership style, leadership, how people lead themselves and others, the culture that we create. I had an unusual front row seat to that, both on the individual human level, as well as literally working in and out of hundreds of businesses. And so it became something that I saw was actually quite broken and started to think about what kind of world I want my kids to grow up in and what is, what is the workplace that I want them to encounter and realize that, unfortunately, that was the exception instead of the rule. And so that was, that was sort of the genesis of kind of the heart motivation of, of why LeadersOps came into existence.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That makes sense. And how do you believe AI and technology will continue to shape the future of leadership and talent management?

Ryan Rigterink: So, you know, I probably have a strong perspective on this that, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of other perspectives that are equally good and might be slightly different. I think what we're building with WorkAce is really leveraging AI and new types of insights that aren't just about like creating more data, but it's understanding or accessing more data and computation, which is I think one of the core benefits of AI, but to leverage AI into actually understanding ourselves and other people better. And so I think there's going to be major paradigm shifts that happen in leadership and how the employer-employee relationship gets shifted and changed in terms of leadership's approaches. You know, there's been an evolution of leadership across the pre-industrial revolution and then the post-industrial revolution. And now we're sort of entering, I think, a new phase where leadership's not just going to be about managing people. It's going to be about managing bots and technology and all the interactions that go into this. And so I think something that I talk about is called ecosystem management or ecosystem leadership that I think is going to become more prominent, along with, you know, new frameworks of understanding how roles are going to shift and how we can ultimately build better relationships and optimize creating value for each other as an individual or as collectively as a team or company.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay. And let's, let's go back before you started, you know, your career, and you went to Michigan State, you said, and you got a bachelor's degree in psychology.

Ryan Rigterink: I did.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: From psychology to being an entrepreneur. So let's talk about your career before starting your own business. And how did the psychology degree kind of work into the initial jobs that you got out of college? And how has that helped you as an entrepreneur?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, so I think some context that applies before that is even before I went to college. So I grew up in a family business, an agricultural business. And so I literally had been working, started working alongside my father when I was three. And he was very innovative and open-minded. And so I grew up literally in business and in leading. I was leading people older than myself. you know, in my adolescent years. And so that business mindset and that entrepreneurial spirit was sort of what I grew up in. And so a very strange transition that happened in college was I went to school originally for crop and soil science and ended up switching to psychology, which is quite a leap. Those two interests of like the human piece and sort of the scientific piece have continued on in what I'm doing now and actually inform it from kind of both paradigms, if that makes sense. It does.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, so right out of college, then what were some of the initial jobs? You worked corporate for a while and what were some of those jobs before you started your own business?

Ryan Rigterink: Yes, I worked in nonprofit. I worked in direct sales and retail. I worked in real estate, which was entrepreneurial. I had some investments in that as well. I also worked in all forms of different healthcare across almost every specialty, from business development, sales, management, and then almost a decade in a specific area of healthcare called genomics and proteomics. So it's oncology, diagnostics, and a really human-centered science, if that makes sense. It's actually called precision science or precision medicine. So something that had a predictive value for each person, if a particular therapy would work for them was, I I was in that space, but also innovating new business models in that space. And so, I've had this strange kind of road of a mix of science and analytics, very human-centered psychology and practical approaches, and then also this whole innovation piece. Eventually, I actually developed a business incubator. So that was my first, I'd say, strong step into the entrepreneurial ecosystem and have been in love with entrepreneurship ever since, from guest lecturing to helping fellow entrepreneurs to now working in a number of capacities.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's awesome. And so for the audience to talk about this business incubator, you started what, what is it? What was it? And what kind of businesses did you help incubate?

Ryan Rigterink: You know, at the time, I think Michigan was 50th out of 50 states economically. And we're in an area here that was one of the lowest within the state of Michigan in terms of just economic prosperity back at the time. And so the very practical way was how do we help people and actually love people, if that makes sense from in a practical way, by not just platitudes or goodwill, but how can we do something that practically helps people? And so that was birthed out of that motivation of trying to practically help people step into autonomy and entrepreneurship and launching something that they could do either in place of or in parallel with their career. And so it was a bunch of different light commercial from retail to just light service. So it was, I guess, a combination, if you think of it as a combination of brick and mortar and light commercial service. I think we had 34 businesses in there at one point. And unfortunately, that sort of went sideways in the real estate bubble crash, some really bad timing on on that piece of it, but learned a lot of lessons, met a lot of great people and have leveraged some of those experiences in what I'm doing afterwards.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Were you working in healthcare before you started Leaders Ops?

Ryan Rigterink: I was, yeah.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So you're working in healthcare. And what was the aha moment for you to go, no, I'm going to go do something different. And did you do that all of a sudden, or did you do it on the side for a while? Just talk about what made you kind of make that decision to go, go at your own.

Ryan Rigterink: Well, it was sort of made for me. COVID happened. And so our entire department of the company was in an instant let go. And so I spent some time writing a book back in 2020. That's where the Redesign Life came out of was experience of probably the 15 to 20 years before that. But that was the period of time that that was written in. And then it was sort of using some of my own things that I was teaching others to apply to myself. Like, what do I want to do next? What is my next step? And so that's what was the genesis or the, it would have been, I had a great job at the time. And so It's probably, in hindsight, it's one of those things where it probably was good that I had that push because it was, as you know, it's hard to leave a good situation to just take a giant risk.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: When you were let go because of COVID, and what was the, I guess, what made you decide to write a book during that period?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, that's a good question. I think I had always wanted to. I had gone through quite a process where initially what became the book started out as more of a cathartic process of internal processing and writing as a form of just getting thoughts and things on the paper. And then it was rewritten and rewritten and rewritten and rewritten into a format that could serve other people. And so I think it just really provided the time and space for me to focus on it and not feel like I was you know, pulled in several other directions. And, you know, I think if you're going to write a book, I could go back and do it now and carve out time and, and build that discipline. But that period of time with, with renewed margin, really allowed for me to kind of focus and double down on that. So I was that was a kind of fortunate, fortunate byproduct of that, that time.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay. And were you doing keynote speeches before the book or did that come after you wrote the book?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah. So keynotes came after, but it's interesting. I spoke at a conference and I was pulled aside by a couple of professional speakers and they basically said, have you thought about doing this professionally? And I'm like, Not really, quite honestly. It's like, oh, you're pretty good at it. You should think about doing it. And I'm like, well, I never really thought about it as an industry or a business. I had been speaking on behalf of companies, most of which in healthcare for 20 some years, even training others how to speak and present and train and interact and things like that. And so the underlying skills were there, but I hadn't really thought about applying them in a a professional speaking capacity for myself. So that was somebody else kind of helping me recognize the opportunity there.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay. How long did it take you to write Redesign Life then?

Ryan Rigterink: Well, that's a great question. The original manuscripts, which are not published, and I don't even think they're around anymore, that happened over the course of a couple of years before this. What COVID was, was me taking a fresh look at all this stuff that I had written and take a look at how can I rewrite that in a way that can serve other people? And so there, I would say the original writing over probably two to three years, the rewriting, it's a good question. I would say probably over the course of maybe four months or something like that. I, it's a little bit of a guess on my part. I don't, I don't remember the timeline exactly.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, and originally when you were writing the manuscripts then you, you know, I've gone through your book and you were, you were processing a lot of things, and the title itself redesign life in several different areas that you identify in here. There were, let's put it bluntly, maybe problems in different areas of your life, and you worked through those. And the manuscript that you originally wrote was kind of working through each of these areas. And I assume when you had time during COVID for those four months, you were taking stories and different things you had sort of worked through as maybe, like, your original manuscript might have been more like journaling and kind of working through exactly how hard it was and the things that you did that helped and you know writing down these stories but then formatting it in a way that would be helpful to other people and coming up with the questions and the frameworks that are or found within Redesign Life.

Ryan Rigterink: I can add to that real quick. I think part of what I would add to what I said earlier was part of it was also recognizing that I had gone through a process that if I framed out that process could serve other people. And so it wasn't just making sense of like the journaling content. It was recognizing that there was actually a path of sensemaking that I went through that actually was just exploration and trying to make sense of all this and certainly processing it. But ultimately, it was the framework that came out of that, that asks the questions, provides the sort of buckets to think about these things and a sort of a guided process for sensemaking that in and of itself reordered the content, if that makes sense.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. And so that was the goal when you, when you tackled it for four, four months then.

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, absolutely. You've got all these disparate pieces. Some of them were actual chapters. Some of them were, were things that, you know, I, I noticed sort of pattern recognition that, you know what, all these things kind of are different pieces of this particular module of the puzzle. And, and so, and then what's the, Ultimately, what came about was I launched a conference after that book called Accelerate Your Purpose. And it got actually further refined even after the writing of the book into kind of three macro domains, who we are by design, who we are by experience, and who we want to become by intention. And that internal, that middle one, that experience piece is about understanding our own lens and our makeup. Because as we experience things, it's unique how we experience it. And that helps inform not only what we're experiencing, but the experience that we're offering to others. And so it ends up being a pretty strong indicator, if you will, of where I found I had things that maybe I had scratches on my lens, or certain things were distorted that were on my lens. And so it became really a relationship builder and a self-leadership kind of tool that you could think of that middle piece as almost like emotional intelligence on steroids. It's really not just understanding our emotional makeup, but how we view the world and how we experience the world and the things that have happened to us and how we might then interpret what happens to others. And so it's kind of a That piece, I think, is a great foundation for increasing empathy, for increasing understanding across differences of perspective. There's a lot of things in that particular piece that have served me and have started to serve some others as well.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And how does your book, Redesign Life, how does it, is it complimentary then to the businesses you're involved in right now with LeadersOps and with WorkGaze? Do you bring some of these principles into the workplace or is this, do you feel like it's more for outside of work and more, you know, personal domain?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, that's a great question. So that was actually you outlined kind of my journey that that that redesign life and accelerate your purpose was really about personal purpose in terms of sort of the context. And I ended up launching at a couple of business colleges, universities, and then also diving into the organizational version of this, which is what really leaders ops is about. And so it's, it's thinking about purpose management and leading people, leading ourselves from the inside out is sort of the first piece. And then the case study that I did, that was really the the cornerstone of what LeadersOps offers to leaders of organizations is the organizational version of that. And so even within WorkGaze, we've got three different types of insights. We've got, which are all future present insights versus just recruiting and identifying talent based on what somebody has done in the past alone. That was one of the key paradigm shifts out of the case study was, you know, we traditionally or historically, We recruit based on the past, we manage the present, but what both the employer and the future perspective employee wants is how do we build the most valuable shared future? And realize that the infrastructure around hiring and managing talent and people is very one-sided towards an organization is actually missing this individual piece. And so, you know, in the personal purpose domain, it's who we are by design, experience, intention. In the fit connection and talent acquisition, it's the team fit, the motivation fit, and the career growth fit that are the parallel sort of equivalents that both employers and job seekers can now get greater insights into how to identify, you know, the places I want to work for the career I want to have and where I want to navigate to and who I want to become. And then vice versa, how do we identify hidden talent that maybe all their qualifications aren't perfect or 100%, but they're really vested in the future value proposition that we could offer them. And so it ends up being a predictor of engagement and retention by adding some of these missing insights into the you know, more holistic 3D picture of people.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: You talked about workshops that you took it, took the book into universities, and it sounds like you did some courses and workshops and things like that. Are those still available? Do you have some online content related to redesign life that people can tap into?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, so I have Accelerate Your Purpose as sort of the personal purpose piece of that. So I do offer coaching and some cohorts from time to time on that. I also, we're in the process of launching WorkGaze in terms of that. So we're enrolling. You can join the waitlist if you're a job seeker or an employer and you want to gain these sort of different kinds of insights for that. And then I do, through Leaders Ops, have a few different offers. So AI and leadership, I offer a engagement package where it's basically a SWOT analysis, both on threat, strengths, weaknesses, threats in terms of your particular business, and really thinking about it from a future present perspective, where are Where could AI disrupt your value creation model? And where can it actually come alongside and amplify it? And so that's both innovation and sort of AI analysis on a business model approach. Okay.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And that's leadersops.com where you can find more information about that. And then, and then workgaze, G-A-Z-E.com is where you can find information about WorkGaze. And, and, and again, that's a platform. That's a, that's a software. It is correct. Yeah. For what, what we were talking about earlier.

Ryan Rigterink: Did forget to mention, I have a eight-week program that is really about re-engineering and redesigning the human experience. So taking the insights that came out of the case study and the key paradigm shifts and some frameworks and applications where we had some phenomenal results that came out of that. But how do we apply that across every stage of the employee lifecycle? And so it's sort of like if you think about you hire a designer and an architect, If you're going to build a human experience in your restaurant or whatever you're building, this is sort of the human equivalent of that, of how do we actually reverse engineer and greatly improve the interactions and the relationship between employers and employees that translate into what most employers are looking for, which is higher productivity, genuine natural engagement, discretionary effort, retention, like all the things we're after. This is building the right foundations to accomplish that.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, and if you could summarize, what are three things that business owners or managers can do to help with engagement?

Ryan Rigterink: So one is directly correlated with one of the one of the paradigm shifts is, you know, what's much more powerful than one company vision is recognizing that everybody hopefully has their own vision for their life and their career. And so recognizing that as a business leader, I'm not just hiring people to serve my vision, but the more I can show up to serve their vision, the more people will be invested and accelerate towards self-management. And so it's getting, recognizing that, getting curious about what is meaningful to each person, and then driving those conversations and just, you know, you know, hey, what, why do you work here? What is a value? What have you experienced that you love that, you know, what would you like to see change? I think if we can do those things and make those shifts and implement on that, it has a huge impact on really the human side of work. We all know practically, we've all had those bosses where we do what we have to and not anymore. And then we've got others that we will run through a wall for because we just know, you know, they're there for us. And we're really invested in that. And so it's, I think it's when it comes to leading people, it's about a lot of these human elements that, you know, we've optimized for efficiency, we've optimized for so many things in business, but I don't think we've optimized well, for human experience. and engagement. And that is really, it's about the individuals that work for you. And what is understanding what's the value that I create for them beyond the paycheck? Because, you know, they can go down the road and make, you know, as much or in some cases more. I know Lots of people who have actually taken a pay cut to go someplace where they feel valued, they're more invested, they enjoy the culture, the work, whatever. And so, it's getting out of the paycheck mindset. Obviously, we work for pay, right? That doesn't go away, but it's recognizing that's only part of the picture is a good starting point.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I love that answer because I feel like a lot of companies, it's the company way, it's the company vision. And I like that kind of different approach where, of course, the company has a vision, but everyone that works there has their own personal vision of what they want out of their own career and helping them succeed with their vision can help you succeed with the company vision as well.

Ryan Rigterink: Absolutely. It's kind of the golden rule in practice, right? If the organization is focused on helping their people, the people are more invested to help the company succeed. And so when you get both of those working together, it's a powerful combination. Yeah, that's great.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So we've talked about AI a little bit. What kind of AI tools do you use personally for yourself personally and for work? What kind of AI tools and workflows have you adopted?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, ChatGPT is a big one. We're actually starting to experiment with some other models for WorkGate specifically. So building some automation bots on a number of different things. So personally, I get a lot of benefit just out of leveraging ChatGPT. It's a great thought partner. It's probably the way I use it the most. But there's a lot of capabilities that I need to probably use it in more ways than I do in my current routines. How about you? Do you have certain tools that you use in AI and automation?

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I'm bouncing between Perplexity and ChatGBT and Claude. Yeah. Asking, you know, doing similar prompts with each and, you know, with perplexity, it's kind of replaced Google as my search engine, especially if I'm trying to learn something or find, find out something, but chat GPT, I like the best because you know, it, it's remembering all of our conversations. So over time, it, it really knows me like Claude doesn't. I like the way Claude writes, uh, sometimes better than chat GPT. It seems. ChatGPT sometimes seems too kind of hypey or salesy, I guess. Yeah. Market sneak. Yeah. And Claude is a little more maybe academic or less like salesy. So, but yeah, I'm bouncing between those three, but I haven't gone into automation and I hear, you know, Zapier or Make and utilizing those is really helping people. to improve their productivity. So I want to kind of dive into those. Have you had an aha moment with AI or something you did with AI where you went, oh my word, this is amazing?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, I think several times where putting in, uploading a document, like it's a search engine on steroids, but I've been really impressed with the granularity of using it as a thought partner. And sometimes I will put in what I write, and I think very technically sometimes, and I put that in there. And then what it spits out is so much clearer in terms of communication, because sometimes I'm so in the weeds on a topic that I'm thinking about too many things and trying to articulate maybe too much at one time. And so it, It's been a great thought partner for not only offering a different lens at times, but also taking my own language and making it more effective and more succinct. And so that's, that's been powerful.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I love it. One of the use cases that I, uh, I did a few weeks ago was just to have chat GPT. I just was going on a walk and I just used conversation mode and, and asked chat GPT to read me the constitution. And it's, it's so amazing. I can't wait till we get to the point and maybe there is some app out there that you can do this, but I would love to take, you know, redesign life and have the audio version or at least upload the title and have chat GPT read it to me. because then you can start asking questions related to anything. So you could say, go back to chapter one and remind me about, you know, the questions at the end of chapter one. What were those questions again? And you can have this whole conversation as you're listening to a book instead of just listening to it.

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, that's it sounds like the future of reading right there.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, yeah, it's great. Because then you have the teacher or the author, someone that knows the book intimately, can have a conversation with you about it.

Ryan Rigterink: I would even be interested in hearing Chad GPT's summarize the book for me. It's not something I've done, but that would be interesting. If you've got the manuscript, you could just upload it and have it summarized. Exactly. Yeah. You're giving me ideas. I love it.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. Yeah. The other tool that I use a ton and I use it as my, uh, my secret for my podcast and that's a notebook LM. It's by Google. I don't know if you've used it yet, but I just heard about it, but I have not used it yet. Yeah. If you have a, if you have a Gmail account, you can just go to notebook, lm.google.com. And basically it allows you up to upload. I think right now it's up to 50 documents. So I can go take your LinkedIn profile. I can take your website. You can, you know, link to websites and upload transcripts or anything you want. And then it basically that little notebook you just created is its own GPT. So then you can ask questions about the documents in there. You can have it analyzed. You can have it summary, summarize it. And then you can also click to generate a podcast. From all those documents. So for all my guests, I have, I listened to probably a 10 to 20 minute podcast about them. Once I load all these things in and then I can write down different questions or. things like that. And it will help me write intros and things like that.

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, excellent. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, if you would forward that to me, I would love to hear what it produced for you.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, for sure. And you can just download the audio file. So I'll just text it to you and you can take a listen to it.

Ryan Rigterink: Excellent. Appreciate that.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Awesome. Okay, Ryan, I have just a few more questions to get to know you a little bit more personally. First of all, what's the most exciting thing you're working on right now?

Ryan Rigterink: I'm working on a couple things that I can't disclose yet. That's honestly the first thing that comes to mind. Some things I can disclose, there's a talent coalition coming together in our region to really think about some of the things that I'm proposing and others are advocating for as well that are the unification of the talent gaps and a lack of unification across high school, higher ed, and the workforce is a problem that is actually in some ways growing over time. And so we're looking at tackling that, and that's getting a group of PhDs in the same room, all with a heart and some pretty strong intellect to tackle that. I'm very excited about that. The other thing I'd say that I'm really energized about is we're actually doing some data infrastructure changes that are going to set up some some really never seen before functionality on what we're building in WorkGaze. So I'm excited about what's to come on that. That's really cool.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Ryan, what's your number one skill?

Ryan Rigterink: I don't know if my wife would agree with this, but I would say listening. Okay. So that is, I've literally made a career out of out of asking questions. So I'm insanely curious and I love to learn. And so I ask a lot of questions and I have trained myself to not be thinking of my response, but to thoroughly, when I'm not distracted, let me throw that caveat in there, when I'm not distracted, really invested in their answer, not my response to their answer. And so that's accelerated my career, it's accelerated relationships, or improved relationships, and it's served me well. I think if I had to pick one, that would probably be it.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I like that. And I think being a good listener, it takes asking questions to listen, right? I mean, so being a good question asker is also important. I've heard it said before, questions are the answer. So I love that you included in Redesign Life at the end of every chapter, there's some, you know, questions that really make you think. I mean, this book is not something that you can like read in a week and be done with it because the questions kind of take a long time to answer. If you go through each question, there must be I don't know how many chapters, there's 31 chapters with questions in every chapter, there's three or four questions at least. And so that's a lot of questions to get through. So I appreciate that answer. And I think your psychology degree probably helped you with that as well, being a good listener and understanding a little bit about the human experience and human psychology.

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah. And I have to say, I have to credit my parents created an environment in our family that allowed for uncomfortable questions. And so that was, that was also a part of my upbringing. There was some of this natural curiosity that I think some of it I have innately and some of it I think, I think was probably attributed to that. So that's, I, I'm, I, I'm appreciating that more and more over time, quite honestly. That's great.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: It sounded like you had great parents.

Ryan Rigterink: Definitely.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: When did you last cry the hardest?

Ryan Rigterink: Oh boy. You're going to make me cry on camera.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: When my dad died. He must have had a really significant impact in your life. It sounds like. Yeah. Beyond worse. What was his name? Loren. Loren. Okay. And how long ago did he pass away?

Ryan Rigterink: About three years now.

null: Okay.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: And I know you, you also went through hardship. You talk about in your book, uh, with finding out that your mom had breast cancer, uh, when she, when you were 16.

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, it was, I was in high school. Yup.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. And then during, uh, I guess the course, I don't know if it was writing the book. So years and years later, she passed away from, from cancer. Is that correct?

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, so she had cancer three different times throughout my, I guess, adult years and adolescence. So she beat cancer twice and then eventually passed from it on the third time.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Wow, she really fought a lot. You talk about in here how she was going to beat it and she had such a positive mental attitude about it.

Ryan Rigterink: And my parents were very innovative back in their day. They didn't just go with the first thing that was said to do. They did their own research and looked at a whole bunch of different approaches that were possible. And so, you know, that innovative mindset and thinking critically, and understanding even the industry that's informing our decisions and what's the context that that's coming out of for good or for bad or maybe limitations. So, I mean, we looked at remedies all over the world in that process. And so, I talk about open-minded, critical thinking, willing to do what maybe most other people aren't. I mean, that's… That's who I, that was my father. So, uh, it was, it was pretty amazing. But it's, you know, the, the, what I write in the book regarding my mom is one of the jewels that came out of that was, you know, I still remember in our living room where she got the news and the doctor originally, um, gave her six months to live. And so we had. We had a large family crying session with obviously devastating news. And I remember her laying on the couch and all of us gathered around. And it was one of those moments where it was like she was giving her last words of advice. And you know, anytime there's that type of context, right, it leaves a mark and it's way elevated in importance. And I remember her telling all of us, love God, love people. That's it. So, it was profound because of the context and the moment that it happened, but we can talk about all these things that are complicated and our world is getting more and more complex. And I can make something simple complex. I think anybody can. I think the real challenge is to take complexity and bring it down to something simple. And that was definitely a moment in time that was that.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: It's amazing advice, amazing advice at that time. And what was your mom's name? Sharon. Sharon. Okay. So Loren and Sharon.

Ryan Rigterink: Loren and Sharon. Yep. Legacy right there.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. That's so great. And, uh, you're carrying on, uh, what they, the advice they've given and, and, and the life they, the lives they lived as well. So thank you for sharing that. Other than redesign life, your book, is there any other book that you recommend the most to people?

Ryan Rigterink: Oh, that's a really good question. I have hundreds, if not thousands of books. This might be a strange one to mention, but there's one called Obviously Awesome. It's actually about a marketing position, but I really love it in the process it takes, mentally takes you through to think about. It can be applied towards so many things because how we, the paradigm and how we go about thinking about a thing actually sets the boundaries that we build within. And from a marketing positioning standpoint, it's powerful because it gives, it sets the context of which somebody thinks about your product or service. But it's so true from like even a personal identity or an industry or even a macro society paradigm. The reason I say that is because I'm now involved with what's really considered ecosystem entrepreneurship. And the core of that is actually changing the paradigm that people are thinking through. And that book is a guided process on on how to think and it's it's tailored for like marketing and marketing positioning kind of thing. But the underlying process, I think is brilliant for applying towards a whole host of things.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Obviously Awesome. 

Ryan Rigterink: Yeah, it's a orange cover. Okay, I'll check it out for sure. 

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Now I have a just a lightning round of questions for you, Ryan, and we can wrap up here. Just to get to know you a little bit better. What's your favorite candy bar? 

Ryan Rigterink: Um, Payday?

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Favorite music artist? 

Ryan Rigterink: Oh, probably Tim McGraw. I was gonna say this particular song, Be Patient and Kind, I think is amazing. 

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Favorite cereal? 

Ryan Rigterink: Oh, I don't, I don't eat cereal, but I would say growing up it was like Rice Krispies or Froot Loops or something like that. But it's, I haven't had cereal in a couple of decades. 

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Mac or PC? I use PCs and I aspire to use more Macs.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Google or Microsoft?

Ryan Rigterink: Oh gosh. I, I, I have mixed feelings about both.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That means you use both then. Yes, I do. Dogs or cats? Dogs. That's an easy one. Phantom or Les Mis? Oh, Les Mis. And last question for you, Ryan, what's the worst thing about being an entrepreneur and what's the best thing about being an entrepreneur?

Ryan Rigterink: Worst thing is, is it takes you headlong into unknowns and all the worst problems are yours to solve. And so it's literally creating a map at times and it's doing it in the context where We don't know what we don't know. And so it can be terrorizing. I'd say the best thing is also the flip side of that same coin. It is the ultimate personal development process that allows us to put something into the world to make a difference. And we get to put our fingerprint on that, which I think is amazing.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I love that those answers, Ryan, thank you so much for being generous with your time today. I've loved learning about leaders ops and work gaze and learning more about redesign life your book. And I can't wait to share your episode with the world. Thank you for being here today.

Ryan Rigterink: Thank you so much for having me on. I really enjoyed the conversation and and even tearing up remembering my folks. So thanks for those questions as well. 

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Shout out to Loren and Sharon.