How Dr. Kryn McClain Turned a Layoff Into a Bold Exit

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0:35Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, reveal the stories behind their successes, and the lessons they've learned. Join Mark and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a bit of fun. Now, let's dive in. Good morning, America. How are you this morning? We are here on a beautiful day in Philadelphia, and our guest today is Dr. Kryn McLean. I'll formally introduce her in a few minutes. And we have in the studio with us Devin McCrossin and Susan McCrossin, who we just recorded another show with. If you haven't heard it already, it's a great episode.

1:14Please listen to that. And it's great to have you here today, Kryn, if I may call you that. Sure, sure. And we are, so we always have a topic of the day. And the one I want to bring up today is anxiety and how that impacts you. And we will tell your background in a minute, but professionally and maybe even personally and what effect, and I bring this up because, and I told you offline, that it's something I realized, I never realized, I mean, everyone has some anxiety, I would imagine. but I found out through an exercise when I was a member of EO, Entrepreneur's Organization, a few years ago that I found something I didn't discover, which was constant anxiety that I didn't realize I had.

2:00And so now I'm very aware of it and it helps me manage it better and I don't see as much of it probably because I'm aware of it. But, you know, so I have something going on right now in my personal life that caused that. So it had me think about that as a topic that I thought would be appropriate for you. Sure. Yeah, great. Let's dive into that because a lot of people ask about that, believe it or not. And the first thing I always say, there's good anxiety and there's bad anxiety. So there's that anxiety that makes sure that we get our tasks done, right? Like the anxiety of, oh my goodness, I need to pay my bills or I need to make sure I take care of something for work.

2:41That drives that internal motor to make sure we get what we need to done or maybe there's a life event. Even if it's positive, it can still be pretty anxiety producing, like getting married or having a baby, maybe a major life change. And then there's the anxiety that can be a bit more crippling, quote unquote, bad anxiety, where it can be debilitating for people, where it overcomes us and we're not able to continue with those daily functions. You maybe just answered my next question, but I was always aware of stress. And I always said the same thing because coaching people and managing people, there's good stress and there's bad stress.

3:22Right. But anxiety is a little different than stress, I think. How would you define the difference? Sure. So if we want to look into anxiety, of course, there's the clinical definition, which I didn't bring my DSM today. So we're not going to whip that out. But, you know, a big thing with anxiety is we can look at the symptomology. We can look at how much it's impacting us by how long has it been going on, how severe are our symptoms, and how long do they last. So that's a way we can kind of gauge it because you're right. Stress that's in the moment, it's fleeting, it's coming and going, it's not that intense, it's not that long in duration, it doesn't last that for a prolonged period of time.

3:58So that's really the measurement that we use if we want to simplify it down. See, to me, anxiety can cause stress or stress can cause anxiety. But anxiety to me is deeper than stress. Is that fair? Right. Because, again, that's going to be longer duration. That's going to be a deeper intensity. And that's also going to be happening more frequently. Right. Right. Makes sense. Any thoughts, Devin? I think anxiety is what gets me up in the morning and gets me to get my work done. So I have a positive experience of anxiety. That's good anxiety. Right. Right. Nighttime anxiety, not good. Morning anxiety, great.

4:35And I think us women have a different nighttime anxiety because we're running through the grocery list and all the things that we need to do the next day. And, oh, my God, did I schedule that doctor's appointment and all these things that can run through our head? So, yeah, I think it's you and I probably can bond and chat more about that. Yeah. So Dr. Corinne McLean is a trauma therapist by background and founder of Catapalo VR, where she combines clinical expertise with creativity to build immersive real-world training experiences. As a boy mom who loves traveling with her family and unwinding with a good book, she's passionate about solving meaningful problems, whether that's helping someone practice social skills or training teams in high-stakes environments.

5:22There's a lot in that because we'll talk. There is. There's a lot. We'll deep dive into that. We're going to deep dive into that. That's right. So I'm not going to – you have a background, obviously. You have an undergraduate degree from Cuyahoga College, graduate studies at St. Bonaventure, earned your doctorate at A.T. Stoll University. You're from Western New York. but I really want to start with your entrepreneurial journey, which really began after taking maternity leave from a job. Let's talk about that and what happened. Sure, sure. So I had my first son about nine years ago and I came back from maternity leave, as one typically does, to find out the company had restructured and decided to completely eliminate my position.

6:07Not very nice. Not crazy about that decision, but it fueled me to... It was a blessing, right? Yeah, it did. It fueled me to just be done working for somebody else and starting a company that really focused on the employee experience. So you did that and you founded your first company. That's right. And that was, tell us about that. Sure. So that company was called Paragon Behavioral Health Services, and I founded it with a co-partner, Paulina Colonna, back in 2017. and we started that business and just really held firm to the belief that if we take care of our employees, then they'll provide a better mental health quality experience for the clients that we wanted to serve.

6:48So we just really held on to that one fundamental truth. And as we grew, that really cascaded down throughout the company. By the way, I forgot, I was so anxious again in your story, I forgot to reintroduce Devin. Devin McCrossin, who's partner and owner of Boomtown Internet Group, has an MBA and undergraduate degree from Penn State with certifications in Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Lean Six Sigma. And she's lived and worked across the U.S. and internationally and currently is based in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. So welcome again, Devin. Thank you for having me. She was on a previous show that we actually recorded today.

7:25So you'll chime in with questions as you have them for Dr. Kryn. So you really built that company and you grew to about 80 employees, I think. That's right. And you recently completed an exit. I did. So let's talk about that because that in itself was a journey, I think, right? It really was. And just coming to the mutual decision that we were ready to exit was big to talk about with a business partner. What had you decide that you were ready? We both kind of looked at each other. We used to have this annual meeting where we'd go off site every November to really think through what do we want for the business for the next year.

8:02So we would take a whole day, block it, and we just kind of looked at each other. And she was like, don't be afraid to talk to me about selling the business if that's on your mind. And it was almost as if she read my mind. But we're both therapists, so we do that from time to time. and we just started talking about it. And we really knew we were getting to a point where if we wanted to continue to grow the business and hold true to that fundamental, we take care of our employees, we had to take on either an investor or take on an acquisition at this point. So it wasn't like you had suitors, you went out and actually looked for them.

8:36That's correct. How long a process was that from start to finish? I would say from start to finish, about two years. It took a long time. It was difficult, right? It was because we had to go through and organize. And I don't want to say that we were disorganized, but to get together every single piece of information that your business has ever had is quite the feat to accomplish. And then present it in a way that makes people want to invest or purchase you is a tricky, not tricky, but it's a detailed process that you want to get right. And it was a full outright purchase, correct? It was. Complete exit.

9:14It was a complete exit. How did you feel after the exit? It felt great. So it was like, again, it was a two-year process and people were like, oh, you sold your baby. I'm like, no, I sold my kid who was ready to go to college. Right, right, right. This was not a baby anymore. This was way, it grew way beyond our wildest expectations, which we were so happy about. And the legacy is going to continue. And that's what we really cared about in making sure that our people had the benefits and the pay and all the things that we wanted to give them in a way that we knew we couldn't just as to people who bootstrapped the business at that point.

9:49So speaking therapy, therapist speak, my wife's a therapist. Oh, I didn't know that. I think I forgot to tell you that. So family therapist, I call myself a fiscal therapist. So that's my thing, fiscal therapy. But in that kind of speak, you sold in a very healthy kind of way, in a very healthy environment. and you had the right perspective and the right attitude about it, thinking of it not as your baby but as a child ready to go to college. Absolutely. That's a great way to look at it. Do you have any questions about the exit? Because I think you had before, Devin. Yeah, I mean, I think that's such a hard conversation to have with your business partner, so it's glad that she was open to it.

10:30Yeah, absolutely. And the two-year planning and the clean exit, like how much do you think about your old business And do you ever check in on them and see how they're doing? Oh, yeah. I mean, I drive by it almost every day. And it's just I just feel a sense of pride that like, hey, I started that and it's continuing without me. And that's, you know, that's really a dream of a small business owner is finding a legacy plan that knowing that something that you work so hard to create and to build and to stabilize is going to continue without you. Yeah. So, yeah, I just stopped in the other day because I still had to get some of my stuff for my office.

11:06But it was great to see everybody and see how they were doing. And, you know, they were all there and happy and plugging away. So you're an active entrepreneur. It's interesting because we talk a lot about legacy on the show. But you're already at a fairly young age getting to see your legacy in action, which is pretty cool. It is great. So while still operating the first company, you then launched your second business, Katapala VR. Right. Where you're the sole owner this time. And tell us what that company does. Sure. So at Catapala, we're really focused on creating these immersive training experiences that drive behavior change.

11:43So we want to provide an ability for companies to get away from checking a box or a presentation so that we can really focus on the actual outcome. Very good. So this is now a company, just to be clear, that you're working for companies, you're working on concerns of safety primarily, and you're going into the companies. But it's still behavioral teaching and management to a certain extent. Absolutely. We apply lots of different adult learning theories and story-based telling to really drive home that stickiness of the training because what we're all looking for are outcomes, right? And if we're just doing training to check a box, chances are you're not getting the outcome that you're looking for.

12:36So I didn't fully – when we first talked, I didn't fully get it, the VR experience. Maybe you can describe that because you described it really well earlier today for our audience what that means. What are employees looking at when they're going through this experience? Oh, yeah, that's great because I think another person in the studio had asked, you know, what does that actually mean? You know, really what we do differently instead of the click-through, get-it-done-as-quick-as-you-can training, we are putting people in a 360 environment that is their environment where they actually are part of the training.

13:08So we're not a passive learner anymore. We're active. So we have to go through, we have to be able to complete tasks and know there's no fire that lights them up or anything like that or eats them alive if they don't complete a task. But they might have to redo some parts of it if they don't score high enough in certain scenes because we want to provide a training that also verifies that they completed it in a satisfactory. And so as an example, we talked about you as an example, we're in a radio station right now. This is a radio show. So you talked about it might put you in the radio station sitting in the studio when a fire breaks out or something like that.

13:48Yeah, that's a really common one we do actually is how do we make sure all 200 people know how to do a fire drill? Or when there's a new person who comes on, we can't shut down production so that we can do a drill because now we've messed up the batch. Or we've heard all kinds of things. So then that way we can make sure everybody's prepared without stopping operations and getting people out safely. Very, very interesting. It's complicated. We've actually been in a fire drill here before, but it's in a big building with lots of other businesses. This building can be very confusing. It's a little bit of a rat maze.

14:19I'm not going to lie. That is very true. No question about it. Tell us about, I know over the years, your leadership style and the business has evolved. And we're not going to go there now because we're going to take a really quick break. But I want you to think about that. and we're going to hear a little bit about your new company in a quick ad. And then we'll be right back on Founders Forum. A loose wire, a frayed harness, a spill on the floor. One wrong move could mean lost time, lost lives, or a citation that costs you everything. Founded by Dr. Kryn McLean, Catapallo VR is a woman-owned company building custom virtual reality safety training.

14:58Mining, food processing, healthcare, manufacturing, anywhere your people work around real hazards. They don't replace your training. Your team practices real-world scenarios without the real-world risk. Built for your environment before they ever step on the floor. Custom models start at$5 ,000, less than what one workplace injury costs you. Visit catapallovr.com and request your industry-specific demo. It'll get sent straight to your inbox. That's C-A-T-A-P-A-L-L-O-V-R.com. Catapallo VR, like a catapult with VR at the end. Together, we can do virtually anything. We are back on Founders Forum with our guest today, Dr.

15:46Kryn McLean, and my co-host today, Devin McCrossan. I also mentioned that her mom is in the studio. If you listen to that show, the two of them together are great. So Susan is here too, but she's been quiet. So a rarity for her. There you go. So we were just talking about your leadership approach, which and I think you used a similar approach at your former company. But it's evolved. So let's talk about what that involves. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly I can reflect back and I kind of see myself as in chapter one when I first started that new company and had to really button up, you know, transparency.

16:27Interparency was a big one. Before, I was like, oh, yeah, everyone needs to know everything. It's like, nope, nope, not at that level. Well, and by the way, I just want to stop for a second because you were a therapist before that. So you came in. Now you're leading a company of a lot of people. That's a fairly heavy transition. It is. It is. And I didn't have a whole lot of leadership experience, and I didn't have any great role models in my entire career journey until I joined Vistage a few years into my Paragon journey. So it's really evolved from Chapter 1 to Chapter 20 where – So you learn from coaching and other entrepreneurs to a large extent, right?

17:02Absolutely. Absolutely. Vistage is a great organization. It really is. And I had a great Vistage coach who really helped me, great HR coaches, and really thankful that I was able to assemble a team to help me become a much better leader to get the company so that I could be prepared for exit. my personal experience knowing a lot of therapists kind of grown up around them in a way not everybody's open that way there's sort of a built-in thing you have a lot of knowledge already and all so you had a lot of openness a lot of respect to you for being able to do that sure sure and we had you know great communication skills and that was never really an issue it was what we're going to communicate which is a major shift i think it is because we have to put guardrails in place just like we have guardrails in place for what we will and will not say to a client.

17:48I had to transfer that skill into leadership as well. Right. Probably as a therapist, you know, accountability was something you were familiar with, but, you know, having more structure, that's probably not something you were as familiar with as an example, right? Sure. And structure, but also how to appropriately hold people accountable who aren't your clients, right? Right. That's right. Different relationship. Different relationship. And the accountability had to matter. It wasn't like a client where it's like, yeah, if you don't do it, it doesn't really affect my life. That's your choice. You know, don't dump your boyfriend.

18:20I don't really care. But when it came to running a business, I do care. Right. This does affect me. So these are things that we do need to button up in a way that's going to be consistent with what we need. By the way, you ever watch the TV show on Apple that shrink, shrinking, shrink, shrink. I don't watch a lot of quote unquote shrink shows. I don't really like how Hollywood portrays a therapist by large. There's a few shows I will say they've got it right. You would definitely not like this one. There you go. But in terms of how they portray therapists, but it's funny. It's a very funny show.

18:53I use it for comic relief. Sure. But anyway, I know you used elements of EOS, which is for those many of you will know who are listening because you're entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurial operating system for the new company. You've used that for your operating guidelines to a certain extent. Right. And how many – you don't really have employees. You have contractors today. This one's a relatively small company compared to the other one, right? Oh, absolutely. We're trying to keep it small because we can do a lot without having to hire 80 people. So that's kind of the beauty. It's the inverse of the other company.

19:29We are a service-based company. We needed people to provide the service in order to generate their revenue. But now we need people who are going to produce either VR modules or help us with marketing or sales and things of that nature. So we have about seven or eight in-house people who do a combination of one of those things I just mentioned. So when we talked about your other company, we've intuitively talked about some of the challenges you've had because you had some ways you had to grow and the way you had to approach leadership, things like that. But what kind of challenges are you having with this company?

19:59Sure. So it's really figuring out a new company structure. So growing Paragon, it was right in my wheelhouse. I could see very clearly how to grow it because I had already worked in that industry for my entire career. Whereas this company I have and I've never been in tech or things like that. So it's figuring out from the ground up how to build this company in a responsible way, in a structured way, so that it can scale responsibly. You really are what seems like a fearless entrepreneur because you're going into things twice that you didn't really know anything about. Sometimes that's the way you got to go.

20:32Ignorance can be bliss because if I would have known about it, I might not have done it. So hold your nose and jump in. Yeah, exactly. Right. Devin, you probably have another question or two at this point, I would think. Yeah. I mean, I want to go back to your original start for Paragon when you said you came off maternity leave, like balancing being a new mom with growing a business is something that's like closer to what I'm dealing with now. So I'd love to hear from you. Like we don't have kids yet. My husband's a business owner. I'd love to hear a bit about like how you balance that. Yeah, sure.

21:05So it was more of a juggling act than a balance act. And I had to be really mindful which balls I was juggling were glass and which were rubber. So if you think about it like that, what would break if I dropped it versus what would bounce back? So I had to be mindful of that, you know, spending time with my son. Even now, you know, I'm like, guys, I got to leave after this. I have to go pick him up and I'd love to go to lunch with you, but that's a glass ball I can't drop. So it's something that I've carried with me throughout my journey to make sure I'm not losing sight of what's actually important in my life.

21:39Wow, what a great visualization and lesson. You want to carry that one with you. Definitely. Wish I'd heard about that 30 years ago. I will for sure carry that one with me. I hear that a lot. I think all of my balls are glass and I think I need to realize more of them are rubber. Exactly, because we realize that. I was like, well, if that drops, I'm not curing cancer here. That email can wait till tomorrow. Yeah. And allow somebody else to step up. If you think all the balls are glass, I think that provokes anxiety. Right. Just saying. Yeah. So, well, fortunately, as I said, I'm married to a therapist, so I did have some awareness.

22:14It was pointed out to me at times which ones were glass. When you told her you think you have anxiety, did she laugh and say, my God, finally you figured it out? Pretty much. That was the way that went down. She said, oh, really? I had no idea. Kind of funny. but of course she has you know therapists they're therapists for a reason everyone has their own stuff so I've become part time therapist and she would say that as well you know it's part of marriage right so you all have to contribute so I know other challenges you've mentioned to me at one point you know for this company market awareness and visibility or something you had to develop How's that going?

22:57Yeah, it's going great, actually. And I just sat down the past couple of weeks and really took a deep look at the company and how am I going to formulate a package with all the products that we have. So really making a clear umbrella and the language solid around that, you know, we're a behavior company first focused on those changes and outcomes through the vehicle of whether it's VR, whether it's explainer videos, whatever it is, you know. But the core message stays the same in that we want to help drive behavior changes within companies and organizations. Corinne, when we first talked, we discussed your one-year, three-year, and ten-year business plans.

23:37But you've chosen to talk about, as many do, I think the most manageable one maybe, which is your three-year plan. Tell us if this were 2029 and you and I are talking again and I say, how did it go? and you come back and say, you know, tell me what that would have to look like for you to say that was a great three-year period in your business and or your life, if you'd like to. Sure, sure. So, yeah, it's always evolving. You know, as I'd mentioned, I have littles at home. So in three years from now, I'll have a kindergartner and a middle schooler. So that will be exciting in its own ways. But as far as the business, you know, we've even just looking back at a year, we've forexed our revenue by just really sitting down and really getting serious about how we're going to grow and scale the company.

24:25So I'd like to say we continue on that trajectory and really start to penetrate the market in our community in Southeast Pennsylvania, but also a bit nationwide. I would like to follow up on Devin's question. I know you're married, you have a wife, and you have two boys, right? And what does your wife do? She is an OBGYN. And a medical director, I believe. That's right. Yeah, she just got that promotion. I'll help you out there. Thanks for that. And what kind of personal growth is it taking as a partner in a family?

25:09As you're evolving your business as an entrepreneur, are there things, we talked about that a little bit, balancing the balls, But is there anything else, any observations you have about your growth in that area? Yeah, and it's certainly including her on a lot of decisions and discussions, even though obviously she's not in the business. But that doesn't mean to throw up a wall and not provide that transparency there, too. So she knows where I'm at, how I'm growing and what I'm doing. And including your spouse, I think, is just so helpful as entrepreneurs because I think sometimes we get these blinders on, we get laser focused on the business.

25:41But then it can be all-consuming. it can become almost, you know, addiction to be like, oh, my God, I got to be up and thinking about this. And, you know, you're up and you're working, but you got to make that time to spend. That communication and learning, I assume, is a communication and sharing is a learned experience, I would think. It is. I've gotten in trouble a few times. So even as therapists don't get it right. Haven't we all? No, I get that. You're a reader, I know. Yes. What are you currently reading? Right now, oh God, I think I'm reading three books right now. I shouldn't have asked you this, but I'm reading The Royal Assassin, which is the second book in the Farseer trilogies.

26:23And I see we got some nods in the studio. So that's awesome. We're right up into battle as I was rolling in here. So that's my audio book right now. And then I'm reading, oh God, what's it called? Air Awakens. That's on my Kindle Unlimited. And then I've got an actual book that I'm reading. It's George Falls Through Time. So a couple really lighthearted sci-fi fantasy mix, and then I've got my heavy, deep concentration of, you know, all the things that are going on inside the Royal Assassin. This is all up Devon's alley, right? Tell me about your book club really quick. Oh, we're doing the classic books, the ones that inspired like early sci-fi and discussions around them.

27:05A lot of dystopian. Oh, I love that. But it's been very fun. And I don't know if we're enjoying it, but we enjoy the conversation. Oh, that's good. Yes. What books are you reading? This last one we read was The Electric Sheep. Do androids. Do androids like electric sleep? Yeah, something like that. Do androids like electric sleep? That sounds fascinating. It was what inspired Blade Runner. Oh, okay. Really funny on the show how we book two shows a week and almost always there's unexpected synergies. And that happened on this one again. So, so, and with that, it really is. Corinne, thank you so much for being here.

27:46Dr. Corinne McLean. Thank you, Devin McCrossin and Susan McCrossin for being here again. And thank you TJ for engineering and thank you all for listening today on founders forum. Hope you have a wonderful day. I hope this is part of your learning and growth experiencing, listening to the show. And we look forward to seeing you again next week on founders forum.