39 KEYNOTE SPEAKER KRYN MCCLAIN Dr. Kryn McClain gave excellent advice on the entrepreneurial path by addressing questions and lessons that she faced co-founding Paragon Behavioral Health Services along with business partner, Paulina Colonna. Paragon offers “a range of mental health services including traditional outpatient therapy, autism diagnostic evaluation, immigration evaluation, and autism individual/group community services,” Dean Carroll announced in the introduction. The now five-year-old company started with only two employees, McClain and Colonna, and has now grown to over 76 employees. Last year, it was certified as a great place to work, reached 4.3 million in revenue (starting from zero), and is Humboldt County Office of Education (HCOE) accredited—an indication of commitment to quality and continuous improvement in applied behavior analysis. McClain stated that Paragon leads with passion and is genuine in who they are; a healthcare organization that cares about its employees, so the employees can care for their patients. As healthcare providers themselves, McClain and Colonna understand the nuances of working in the industry causing them to be passionate and genuine in everything they do. “Because when we’re genuine,” she urged, “people take notice and follow.” Furthering the idea of genuineness, McClain shared a story from her recent trip to Iceland, where she and her family attended a lava show. The establishment brought in specific lava rock from the 1918 Katla explosion, which the founder’s grandfather had survived. McClain was captivated by the way in which they portrayed their passion for volcanoes through these small details. “The small details and your words matter and how you portray yourself to your people,” McClain explained. Challenging the crowd, McClain encouraged, “when you have a moment, think about times in your life when you felt good about yourself, and learn about yourself, because you are your own biggest asset, possessing something that nobody else does.” When she thought about this for herself and her business, she recognized that she loves creating, solving problems, and helping people. “Knowing this about myself has helped me develop the unique proposition that we have for our company, and they are what drive me,” she explained. McClain started her business at a stressful time of her life, when she was just coming back from maternity leave after giving birth to her son, finishing up her dissertation, and moving her family into their new home. Instead of getting an expected promotion, she was let go from her job and didn’t know what to do, stating, “there wasn’t really a place I wanted to work, so I decided to create it, and that’s what we did.” When starting out, “it can be very difficult because it takes a bit of risk tolerance in order to get started,” she explained. “My biggest advice would be to find a mentor.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzcxOTE=