"How CEOs Break Out of Overwhelm" - The Fast Slow Motion Podcast - Ep 065

In this episode of The Fast Slow Motion Podcast, Eric Housh and Matt Dyar sit down with Krista Crawford, a Vistage chair who works closely with founders and executives navigating the pressures of growth. Krista brings a candid perspective on what CEOs actually admit when no one from their company is in the room, and what it takes to move from overwhelm to clarity.

The conversation covers the warning signs that a leader is carrying too much, why handing off decision-making authority requires self-trust before it requires team trust, and how Krista's framework of clarity, confidence, and cadence gives leaders a practical path forward. They also dig into psychological safety, the emotional weight of delegation, and why peer groups give CEOs something neither their team nor their family can. 

For the full episode video, show notes, and related resources, visit: https://loom.ly/PqoJTh0

Fast Slow Motion has a new book out that's all about how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. To get a FREE copy of "The Scalable Business Framework," learn more: https://loom.ly/iAfjzpw

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Leadership is ripe with imposter syndrome. So when you're the CEO founder, you did everything and you knew everything because you were crafting it as you went along. But as you grow, and as you gentlemen definitely know, as you scale, things change. And learning to admit, I'm not the expert in this. I hire experts. My job is to be the vision. And so we see it all the time in our rooms. Once you establish that safe environment, then all the vulnerabilities can pop up.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

This podcast is brought to you by Fast Slow Motion, a team of expert consultants that have helped thousands of growing businesses build scalable systems on the HubSpot and Salesforce platforms. To learn more, visit www.fastslowmotion.com. Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion Podcast, where we explore how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. I'm your host, Eric Hush, and today joined by a very good friend of mine, Fast Slow Motion's Chief Operating Officer, Matt Dyer. Matt, awesome to have you on the show. Happy to be here, Eric. Today we're going to dive into a topic that almost every founder and CEO experiences at some point in the life of their company. As your business grows, complexity grows with it. Teams get bigger, decisions multiply, expectations increase, and the leader who once felt energized by the business can suddenly feel buried by it. So today we're going to talk about how CEOs break out of overwhelm. And to help us explore that, we're joined by someone who is an expert on this. She spends a lot of time in rooms with CEOs, having very honest conversations about leadership. Krista Crawford is a vistage chair who closely works with founders and executives navigating the pressures of growth and leadership. And in her role, she sees patterns across many different types of organizations, and she's got a front row seat to the challenges leaders face as their companies scale. Krista, great to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Thank you so much. I'm excited to share today with you.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

We are excited to have you here because you have a unique vantage point. You're regularly sitting down with CEOs in environments where they can be vulnerable and honest about what that pressure of leadership really feels like. So, Krista, let's start there. In those rooms with the CEOs, what are some of the things leaders admit privately that they rarely say out loud inside their companies?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

I think before I can answer that question, I want to make sure that I have to establish a safe environment for them so that they can actually speak and say the things that they can't say normally in front of their employees. So that's really one of the most important parts is that you establish the room to have that. We use the phrase all the time, psychologically safe environment. And it really needs to be that. So it's sacred. It doesn't go outside of the room. What we say in the room stays in the room. And what they often talk about are all the things that employees are often talking about with overwhelm. There's too much on my plate. Um underwater, leadership is ripe with imposter syndrome. So when you're the CEO founder, you did everything and you knew everything because you were crafting it as you went along. But as you grow, and as you gentlemen definitely know, as you scale, things change. And learning to admit, I'm not the expert in this. I hire experts. My job is to be the vision. And so we see it all the time in our rooms. Once you establish that safe environment, then all the vulnerabilities can pop up.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Krista, will you unpack for just a minute how you create a safe environment? Because there's an art to it. Uh there's tactics that you have to employ. You can't just come into a room and say, ta-da, you're in a safe space now. So help help out the CEOs that are listening. What are some things that they can use with their with their teams to create that sort of psychological safety you talk about?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

In leadership, we often talk about don't ask employees to do something you wouldn't do yourself. That's a phrase we use. I m try to model everything that we do. So if if I know we're gonna go to a really deep place with a member in the room, either personally or business-wise, I'm gonna start out with a story in my life and I open up. And I think that brings the temperature down a little bit. But also we go back to basics in business. We sign agreements that confidentiality is held in that room. So sometimes I'll say, just reminder, when you join Vestive, remember we signed that confidentiality agreement. And if we know something big, maybe a CEO is thinking of selling their company, but they don't want their employees to know. One just whisper of that potential can cause chaos. So sometimes it's it's being more direct. But the best way that we establish that is creating those connections both in the room, throughout their vistage journey, and outside of the room, encouraging them to do networking together, have lunch. If you've got an issue and you can't wait until the next monthly vestige meeting, pick up the phone and call one of your colleagues. It's that connection that I can't control, but I completely encourage. And so there are different pieces that you can do. But I think modeling is really important for whoever's chairing or leading an organization.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Aaron Powell We were talking about, you know, CEOs are carrying a lot. Um what percentage of that would you say you're unpacking personal issues versus professional issues?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

And you know, this is not hard data. I don't keep tick marks throughout meetings, but I'm gonna say about 40% of what we discuss has to do in some way about personal and the rest is business because they're interrelated. If you if things are not going well, if you have a sick parent, significant other or child, you can't fully focus and be in the room. If you're having your own health issues, you can't fully focus and be in the room. So just bring it to the group. There will be someone in that room that has had a similar experience. I think the best learning often goes, I went through that and here's what I did, and it failed. If I had to do it over again, this is what I would do. Those the people in the room have the best resources. They know the other attorneys and the CPAs and the counselors and the psychologists and the psychiatrists in their geographic region, more so than I do. The power in the group members. My job is just to facilitate the discussion.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Nobody's out there on an island, right? There's always someone who's been there, done that, has a perspective on it. Uh we talked about complexity in the business, and I think we're probably going to circle back to that. We talked about this identity shift that happens as businesses scale. We talked about just now leaders feeling like they're on an island, they're on a they're alone. Where, what other sources do you see that sense of overwhelm come from?

SPEAKER_00 7:02

The number of decisions that they have to make. If you haven't trained your executive leadership team to absorb a lot of that decision making, then CEOs will feel that it all is on their shoulders. So part of what we do in Vistage is to encourage them to get their organizations to the point that you need, you want to go away for a month, you should have a team that can handle it. Yeah, you might need to check in a few times, but decision making, the number of decisions that leaders make, from dollars to people to products to vendors, they should have a stream that you want to you lanes that they can send things to. I'm going out of town, you have it. You have control. If you need me, grab me. But otherwise, I trust you. So you have to build to that level of trust. If you don't have the people reporting to you that you trust to make those decisions, that's another discussion we need to have in the room. You need to get there. Otherwise, you'll never be able to step away from your business. So the great number of decisions that they have to make. The idea of you said the isolationism. The other part is who can you turn to? Who are those trusted advisors? Where are the fast slow folks trying to help us, you know, get to scale? Identifying those trusted advisors that you can pick up the phone and call, and they're going to help you. And that requires encouraging our vestige members to talk to a lot of people, get to know a lot of resources. The more they know you and the more they know your company, the more they can help you. So reaching out, learning that it is okay to say, I can't do this on my own, nor should I. I should not be the expert on everything because I'm missing so much if I think I am.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yeah. Where do you see that that tipping point occur inside organizations? Because a lot of companies are started with a hero model. You know, they the entrepreneur starts the business, it's a flat organization. They they do it all, and for a while that works. So where do you see that tipping point happen where you know the the rent comes due? You know, like it all backs up. And now uh they they they don't have that that leadership team to turn to. They they don't have those trusted advisors. When should they be looking out for that tipping point?

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Here's one, and this is not official by any means whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

We're unofficial here, Krista. This is all unofficial. All right. This is experience talking.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

When I start hearing them saying, I think I need an administrative assistant, then I know they they need an administrative assistant and they probably need a chief operating officer, and they probably need um to go beyond just the bookkeeper. But when they start thinking, I think, I think I need administrative assistant, it's like, um, then you definitely do. And you need XXX. I asked my members, you know, how many appointments have you missed in the last month? How many calls do you have to return or emails or LinkedIn messages that are backed up? All of those are signs that you just can't do it all. And it's time to invest in quality leadership folks to help you.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Chris, I imagine that shift almost leaning into their own vulnerability, right? Realizing just how isolated they are. That that mental shift of realizing, um, hey, it looks like I have all the control, but I really need a hand here. Uh, I imagine that can cause some emotional strife for for folks uh in this transition. How real is that from what you see in your work?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Sure. You're the one who's been the marketing person, you're the one who's made the finance decisions. What a leap of faith to hire someone and hand that over. Now you don't just obviously hand it over immediately. There should be a plan and a training program and ways to identify when some corrections need to be made, but you have to do it. And so you have to hire someone that fits your culture, that fits your values and your purpose, and someone that either has a track record in your industry or not. Maybe you bring in someone that you just trust and has skills and you train them. But at some point, there has to be a leap of faith. At some point, you have to stop holding hands, stop going to the meetings with them and say, today's the day, you're on your own. I'm a text away if you need me. And if that goes well, then then you've just opened up space and time for that CEO to focus on the most important part, growth. If you are so overwhelmed that you can't take on this next client because you don't have the space, growth is another thing that where we see that people decide, oh, I really do need some help. And that's the whole purpose of our business, right? Um, to grow. Whether it's to grow, you know, in multiples, or whether it's just to grow in terms of providing more resources for your staff or more benefits for your staff, whatever that CEO's definition is growth is. They want a lifestyle business, you still have to grow. You want to be uh have a business that's in the billions in revenues, you really need to grow.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

So for for leaders who are looking to scale their organization and they have this moment of isolation and they don't have the team, is there is there a framework you've seen on how to develop a leadership team around you to elevate employees into those leadership positions? Is there somewhere you see you see entrepreneurs starting? Do they start in operations? Do they start in marketing? Do they start in sales? Do they start in finance? Uh is there a playbook here that you've you've seen work?

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Yes. The answer is all of those. Think thinking about the members in my vestige group, um, without giving any details, because confidentiality is prime. I have someone who started their very successful business out of the back of their pickup truck. Um, and I have others that started the subsidiary of a European organization, the first US subsidiary. So they had some structure to go with, but they started it from ground zero. I have people that were bookkeepers that went on to be CPAs, that went on to have successful, maybe that have I have someone who has 30 CPAs that work for them, and they started just from the very beginning. Um, some with, you know, degrees and some not. I just interviewed someone who's not in my group, but I interviewed someone a couple of weeks ago and they were living out of a car. And then about 20 years later, they sold their business for $250 million without a degree. Ultimately, they got a degree. But it there isn't a mag. I wish I could give you the magic formula that if you do A, B, C, and D, you'll have this. We do have things you can do that will obviously help you. But I can't tell you, here's the starting point. It's not like the Monopoly game where you start every place, you know, we go back to jail and start all over again. Um, there isn't, as far as I can tell, a magic formula for that. Vista peer groups uh can help you. And that's why I do what I do, because you learn from the frameworks that an or that our organization presents, the content, brand and materials that we have, but you learn the most from the other individuals in the room. You learn from their successes and you learn from their failures, and you grow together. What I love about working with the company that I do is the entire reason people are in that room is to grow and to help each other's grow. That's it. That's the reason they're there. That's the reason I'm there. And it helps me grow as a human each time.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Krista, I'm in interested in leaning into the inflection point where you've dealt with and helped and seen a lot of leaders that moved from this space of isolation and overwhelm to clarity and confidence. What do you or have you seen anything that tends to mark that turning point?

SPEAKER_00 15:17

A couple of things. When you when someone starts talking about an operations manager, right, right. Yeah. Um, because that's really letting go of a lot of the verticals and a lot of the horizontals that that they're doing. So with that ops manager is kind of the key. And when you hear them start using language like processes, execution, um, need to improve the onboarding and training process when they really start honing into those important critical pieces of the formula for successful business. Their language changes just a little bit. It takes a while for them to get comfortable with that. And some it takes longer than others to let go of some of those pieces. But once they start to open up and let go and they get some successes, then they're open to other things. If they have failures, then you might take some, you go back a little bit. You got to get the confidence back up. I don't know about you guys, but you know, I have a background in HR and not everybody I hired worked out well. It it just happens. But it it does, people tend to personalize that. Like, what did I do wrong? Sometimes you didn't do anything wrong. It looks like a great fit. You've done the training, it just didn't work out. Sometimes some processes could be improved and the onboarding could be improved.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

So correct me if I'm wrong, but you you said you've been in HR, I believe, for almost 30 years. So you've got a lot of experience. You you've been doing HR consulting for 30 plus years, um, which probably led you into the vistage community and and being a chair. Specifically, what HR advice would you give to leaders of organizations um as they're starting to scale?

SPEAKER_00 17:04

So, first I want to say I no longer do direct HR consulting because the rules and regs are so different for communities, cities, states, nationally, and I don't devote the time to stay up to date on that. But the way you approach people in general shouldn't change that much. So I do discuss, you know, ways to handle what what I see happening in HR and what you deal with is this um scaling and automation. How do you handle massive numbers? As your company grows, how do you deal with all of that? And how do you stay on top of it? How do you know that should you get audited or should are you following all regulations? So reaching out to organizations that can help you do that. You can't possibly stay on top of everything. One of the mantras that I've used for 30 years is treat people the way you want to be treated. And if you keep that mantra, it's not always the same, because maybe you've got a tougher skin than some people, but ask yourself if someone were to need to let me go, how would I want them to do that? Would I want them to slowly pull the band-aid off, or would I want them to rip the band-aid off? Would I want them to provide some medication to help the healing? How would you handle it? What fits your purpose, what fits your values in your organization, and what fits you in terms of how you handle employees?

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Okay, last HR question, because I'm I'm curious. There's usually two schools of thoughts here, but as as leaders are growing and adding to their headcount, uh, do you have any recommendations to them around outsourcing the recruitment for versus doing it in-house?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

I think it comes down to the industry. If you deal with a lot of 1099s, so people that aren't direct employees, they're contract employees, outsourcing might be the right way to go. If you have a boutique type of business, then my gut reaction to that would be you need to be doing that yourself. If people are coming into a brick and mortar organization, the more you can engage with them personally, I think the better. But so many of the organizations now work remotely and they do not have a brick and mortar. They have an address that things can go to and that you can fill out contracts on. But then outsourcing might might be the appropriate way. It depends on your culture. And do you want to have one-on-one personal relationships with your between your leadership staff and your employees? Doing it yourself might be better. Um, if not, if they're spread out all over the country, I don't know how you can keep all of that in-house unless you basically hire your own outsource inside your company.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Let's actually stay there for a minute, Matt, because I think this is something we do pretty well, you know, being a completely dispersed company, not really having an HQ, so to speak. Talk through some of the strategies we at FSM use to find onboard and get people bought into our culture.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Yeah. So networking, um, being out and about, um, with finding a an outsourcing organization that specializes in the types of products. No one has exactly your product. I know that. Um, but the processes that you use, just any outsourcing HR group isn't going to fit what you do. So interviewing a minimum of three to five outsourcing companies. Um interview them just like you're hiring them as an employee. You ask them all similar questions, but then have unique questions for each organization. And I would give them, if it were me, I would set up some mock situations. We need to hire X, Y at this rate and da-da-da-da-da. Tell me what your plan is. I'm going to give you 24 hours to come back with some possible candidates and see what they do. Test them. Because there are a lot of HR outsourcing companies out there now, and you should have lots of choices. Was that helpful?

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Eric, it's it's it's almost like Krista's read our playbook. It's almost like she did. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Um, Kristy, you mentioned process earlier, and um, I think we see this a lot, and that folks will come in, they'll buy a CRM. They think the CRM is going to be this silver bullet that fixes their business. And what we try to do um is get them to back up a bit and get them to think about the process and how the process should be architected. And that's a that's a shift almost from from reactive um to proactive, right? They're they're starting. Starting to think now, uh, instead of what's on fire here, how should I be thinking differently about my business? When you see leaders make that shift from reactive to being more intentional, what are some of the common themes you see and how they approach decisions differently?

SPEAKER_00 22:16

So you have to give authority if you're going to share decision making, then if then you must give authority. And that's really hard for CEO, particularly CEO founders, because they've had the final decision-making authority, giving people dollar amounts or headcounts, giving them some metrics to work within. So if it's between X and $1,000, go for it, or X and $10,000, or X and $100,000, depending on the size of your company, um, run with it. Initially, when you are building out your processes, bring put in those little checkpoints. Okay, for the first month, check in with me every other day and let's see how things are going. Or for the next two weeks, whatever your time frame is, depending on how your how long your process is in going from start to finish of your your product. So giving people some rope, but giving them a safe space to land too. So that if a mista if a mistake is made and mistakes will be made, we're all human, that those initial mistakes are caught to where they don't continue to snowball and get bigger and bigger and bigger. That's one of those ways you establish psychological safety is giving people some protection, giving them their uh safety belt, if you will, their seatbelt to stay safe.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Krista, what it what it kind of sounded like, and we've heard it uh a couple times, I like, I like the way that you said it around giving authority. Um internally we talk about kind of the I may get it wrong, but it's like the five stages of delegation is kind of what I heard from you. Um you know, it's really hard to give authority without trust. And this is something that a lot of leaders struggle with. Uh, totally get it, totally understand it, can empathize with it. But what what we talk about as a leader is like you do it and let someone, you do it. And then stage two is you do it and let someone watch. Um, and then stage three, it kind of progresses from then they do the activity and you watch, and then they do the activity and bring it back to you, and then and then finally they can fully do the activity and and get the authority. So what I would say is it it is really difficult to give trust and authority day one. That's what you work towards utilizing kind of a delegation framework.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Yeah. So in the medical field, it's see one, do one, teach one.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

And that's basically what you know you want to do in terms of business as well. That trust factor, everything comes back to trust. I posted something this week on LinkedIn about self-trust. It takes strong self-trust to let go and trust others. So you have to trust yourself that you're already making good decisions, that you can train well, that you can show them the right thing to do. And I see leaders losing that self-trust sometimes, and you have to build that back up again. Next question you're gonna ask me is how do you build that back up? So I'm gonna go ahead and answer it. So um you ask questions of yourself. How did you get here? How did I get here? What have I done that was that I did really, really well this week? Because we do start to doubt ourselves at times when the company starts slipping through no fault of your own, it happens. You know, businesses have cycles. You need to have those. Here's here's what I did really well this week. You need to pat yourself on the back. You also need that trusted advisor, that trusted friend, preferably one that's not in your company, preferably one you have in a peer group, preferably one that you know that they're gonna be honest with you in a caring way, that they're not gonna see you through a negative lens. They're gonna see you as being authentic. They're gonna know that if they do this for you and they give you an honest feedback, that you're gonna do the same for them when it's needed. So establishing those relationships and having that person outside of your business and outside of your family.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Uh as you know, Krista, Eric and I are both in vestige groups here in the in the Birmingham area. And we we went through an exercise here recently that really supports what you're talking about. We actually walked through the vestige values, and two of them uh are caring and challenge. And what you just described, how you communicate as a team, really takes me back to Kim Scott's radical candor because I mean, y'all's values line up 100% with radical candor and that you know you care personally and you challenge directly. I mean, it's right there, two of your four values outline this very, very clearly. And I would encourage listeners to not only um seek out a peer group where those values exist, but work really hard to build the culture of your organization around radical candor as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

A phrase that we have in vista is being care frontational. So it's a made-up word, but it's someone giving you advice, direct advice, but in a caring manner. And the hard truths, we need to hear them. And who is going to give another CEO a hard truth other than a CEO? Your employees can't for fear they'll lose their job, even even if you've given them psychological safety. You can't talk about things to your with your family because you might frighten them. And you don't want to do that. You can't talk about if something's not going well. It's not in and that's plus, that's not good dinner conversation. So you want to have a real human personal life at home. And so finding a peer that you can talk with is really important. And just be honest, as honest as you can be to yourself. So it takes that self-trust to do that as well.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

One of the things we say internally is clarity is kindness. It's not always comfortable, but uh it is absolutely the path forward. Chrissy, you just mentioned something uh around the impact of these business changes and these intentional shifts and the shift from clarity to confidence. How does that impact the CEO's family and and how does that impact them personally and their social spheres, maybe outside of the business?

SPEAKER_00 28:31

They're completely related, you know, what happens at home and what happens in business. Back in a previous century, we were taught to keep business and home completely separate. And you weren't supposed to talk about your personal life and you weren't you weren't supposed to bring any of that. And fortunately, uh we have learned in the business community that doesn't work because everything impacts. And we kind of mentioned it, I mentioned it earlier. If someone is sick in your family, it's hard to be 100% focused in your business. So what I recommend that leaders do is bring that into your business. Say, look, I'm a little off today. Um, my kid has strep throat. I didn't get very much sleep last night. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be as present as I can. But if it looks like I'm not paying attention to you, just snap fingers and let me know I'm a little sleepy. It is amazing how vulnerability, which once you do that, then employees feel free that they can say too. They don't have to fake it. They can say, look, I'm here, but I don't feel 100%. I think since COVID, when we hear someone say they don't feel 100%, we tend to say, well, why don't you go home? You can work from home today. Um, but people didn't have that permission before, and now we do. We can own that. So um trying to protect their families from from not needing to know all the chatter that's going on in their business. I think it's important. I also think in some families it's also important that they know what's going on. A significant number of businesses are family-owned businesses, and that's where you really need some peer support outside of the family because you need a safe space to talk about. But a significant number of, you know, peer groups and businesses are family-owned, whether it's 100% family-owned or a portion.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

So I know you have uh a whole presentation around how to bring fun into the workplace. Um, is there anything else that you can draw from that framework that would assist in say um CEO kind of reaching that that place where they're enjoying work again?

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Yeah, absolutely. I think um thinking about why they started the business, then we get back to the why. And encouraging them to remember when they had, when they were at the height of enjoying the business and trying to figure out what they were doing at that time. Was it the ideation, the creation, was it the networking? What is it that they were doing? There's a technique we have in the HR field called job crafting, where you figure out the pieces that give you the most enjoyment. And usually for leaders, we're getting the most joy when we're giving the most. It may not be what we're doing, it's what we're giving. So getting back to those basics and figure out how you can do more of that. And maybe that's offloading some tasks that take up a lot of your time, but they're not moving the company forward. Figure out the things that invigorate you and energize you. Sometimes it's as simple as going out and managing by walking around, whether that's virtually or whether that's truly walking around and just checking in with people, getting to know your employees, getting to hear what's going on with their families for those that want to share. Not every employee wants to share. Trying not to establish a company that's cookie cutter where we treat everyone exactly the same because we're not the same. And I think those are old rules that don't apply anymore. We have to break that up. So figure those things out. Uh, the example that I share is, you know, if you like doing spreadsheets, do more spreadsheets. I'm sure there's a place you can do that. Me, I like presenting and being in front of groups, and I'm very social. So I'm a vestige chair now. I went from being an HR director to being an adjunct to chairing a peer group. It's not my job to be the smartest person in the room. It's my job to facilitate those really smart people to do what they do. That's my job now. And I love it. So I've crafted or vestige crafted for me. I just didn't know it existed. And um, so I get to do what I really love to do. And I think you guys do too.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Absolutely. Krista, we've hit on a lot today. I feel like this is just going to be a really powerful episode for a lot of folks out there in our audience. Is there anything when you talk about this shift from overwhelming to clarity that we haven't hit on yet that you feel like maybe really important to bring up?

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Yeah, I think it's, and I I work with the three C's: clarity, confidence, and cadence. So if you are clear about what the goals are, the metrics, your why, your purpose, your values, and employees can then have clarity. They can be confident that they're going to be able to execute for you because everybody's aligned on those. But I think clarity is so important to begin with. And to get that clarity, you have to have your foundationals. It always comes back to foundationals. If you don't really know why you're doing what you're doing, how are employees supposed to know that? And then as the organization changes, you can recraft some of that because you're responding to market needs. How you go about doing things right now should be completely different than it was two years ago. If you're not leaning into AI and processes and scaling, then you know you're missing so many opportunities. And then finding your cadence. The cadence in how you interact with others, the cadence in how you're going to deliver what it is and you're part of the process, and the cadence of when to go home and get refreshed. The old oxygen mask first, you know, it's tried and true. If you are not sleeping, you cannot be effective as effective at work. If you don't have a safe space to go home to, then you need to work on that. You need to put as much attention in growing your home life as you do in your business on balance. It doesn't always work out every day that way, and I know that. But on balance, it needs to be a place that recharges you, that you can give there and get just as much as you give and get in your place of business.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

Love that. Krista, as we draw close to our time together, we always like to ask our guests one final question. Uh, what's one quote or piece of advice that's made a super significant impact on you personally as a leader?

SPEAKER_00 34:55

I read a lot of business leaders, but I'm going to quote my grandmother on this. My grandmother finished the eighth grade formally, but she was one of the most well-read. She was she listened to music. She was just an amazing country Ozark woman. And the phrase that she used with me is not, she taught, she would say, Krista, the difference between if and when, not if you're going to do something, but when you do something. And the place she started with that is she said, not if you go to college, when you go to college. So it was never in doubt for me. So talking with employees, try to get rid of the ifs some of the times and put the when's in there. And that can be W-H-E-N or W-I-N. It's a long quote, but grandma, I miss you.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Matt, any final thoughts? Rap wrapping this this all. I love that you brought it back to the why. I think that's so powerful. And uh and love the quote from your grandmother. I think that's that that's really applicable as well. So no, thank you so much for being on here, Chris. I think we learned a lot today. Uh, really appreciate all of your your experience and your wisdom. And uh, you know, keep keep investing in those uh those leaders and um thank you for all that you do.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Thank you so much. This was fun. And you know me, I like to have some fun while I do my work.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

Awesome. Well, Krista, again, thank you. Just to echo Matt here. If you want to, if you're listening, you want to learn more about Krista and her work with executive leaders, we're gonna have a bunch of links and resources in the show notes. You can all catch our previous episodes at Fastlowmotion.com slash podcast or on your favorite podcast platform. And we covet your feedback. If you have any ideas of topics you want us to hit on or ways we could re architect the show to make it better and more effective for you, please let us know at fastlowmotion.comslash podcast. Thanks, and we'll see you next time.