The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Riding The Executive Roller Coaster: Medical Staffing Cases by Kelli Christina

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Riding The Executive Roller Coaster: Medical Staffing Cases by Kelli Christina This is a fictionalized book based on real life events and court cases that went unnoticed by the public eye over the period of a decade in this country. The author plays the primary role in the book; the book covers the trials and tribulations of professional offices at their highest and lowest moments .The consequences of handling business and professional issues in the wrong manner or even illegally can escalate and destroy many lives along the way. Too often bosses and employees learn the hard way about employment laws designed to help businesses. When business goes terribly wrong, you can expect attorneys' offices to explode and many court proceedings to follow. One of my greatest wishes in life is for business leaders to learn employment laws prior to trouble, lawsuits, and mass destruction. This book follows the long path of success and falling in despair over lawsuits and loss; it includes all the important life lessons to be learned along life’s path. Our jobs and well-being can affect our families, friends, relationships, and love life. This is a life story rolling through some good and bad experiences and all the people you meet along the life’s journey. We have a lot of survivors and fighters in this world who can relate to the book’s title, “Riding the Executive Roller Coaster—The Cases of Medical Staffing.” Life can be “up” and “down” like a roller coaster; you just must hang on for the ride and keep going. As a woman in today’s world, Kelli Christina attributes her success to her hard work, education and determination. With 20 years of specialized medical recruiting experience and 10 years in business management, she is currently the CEO, owner, and director of recruiting for KD-Staffing. Ms. Christina created KD-Staffing on the idea that “recruiting is an art.” She has perfected her skills in this “art” through a number of managerial and leadership positions since the start of her career; she became a restaurant manager and a boss at nineteen years old. Before she started a career in recruiting, Ms. Christina obtained a bachelor’s degree in business, hotel and restaurant management from the University of North Texas. With 30 years of career experience, her advice to younger generations of women entering the workforce is to remember the importance of education. She also advises them to be strong-willed and to never give up.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.

Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Thanks for being here with us today. Those of you who are listening to the show live on LinkedIn, Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, all those different places, feel free to post your questions. We'll see if we can answer them on the show. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm

really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find

several packages you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Go to youtube.com, Forge Has Chris Voss.

Hit the bell notification that's over there. Also go to goodreads.com, Forge Has Chris Voss. You can find my new author page over there as well as the posting for my new book. You can also go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Jeez, there's all over the place. There's 10 or 20 different groups you can join and get involved with over there. Today, we have an amazing author on the show. We always have amazing authors.

We just put in the Google machine. We say, hey, give us a brilliant authors, and they send us like a whole list. We invite them to the show. They come on, and they blow us away and make you smarter with their intelligence and knowledge. Today we have Kelly Christina on the show. She's the author of the newest book, Riding the Executive Rollercoaster Medical Staffing Cases. This came out this year, just about mid-year 2021. And she's here to tell us about it and all the stuff that went into it. She is an

international best-selling author, public speaker, CEO, and business coach of Current Day. She has worked part-time government projects for over 10 years, and she loves making a difference in today's world. Welcome to the show, Kelly. How are you? Hi, Chris Voss. I'm so excited to be here, and thank you for inviting me. Thank you for coming. It's an honor to have you. Give us your plug so people can find you on the internet. Okay, so for KD Staffing, of course, I'm founded in 2007. You can find us at kdstaffing.org. And then, of course, my newest book and author website is actually listed below because my name's spelling so long, but it's www.kellydennehychristina.com. And you will find, um, riding the executive

roller coaster is my second book, Chris. Awesome. Awesome. Two books. You're a two book author. There you go. What motivated you to want to write this book? So, Chris, that's a very loaded question, and the reason why I bring this up is writing the Executive Rollercoaster Medical Staffing Cases, it's actually a two-year rewrite on an original litigation book. The original litigation book is about 225 pages, and for legal reasons, when you go out there and you want to give the general public what happened and your government litigation legal work, it's going to be a rewrite with fictional characters. But it tells the storyline. And it tells the storyline from 2010 to 2018. Give us an arcing overview of the book, if you would.

So the book has been labeled in a lot of different categories and best-selling. Number one, it is a life story. It's pieces of my life story. So it's an inspirational testimonial book about being on top as an executive, falling flat down into the ditch, And then, oh, by the way, the years of rebuilding. And it's won a lot of laws, legal ethics, politics, a lot of areas of legal. We actually, I beat John Grissom in the spring, which is exciting. Now, I'm a new book, all right? So I'm not going to say I could always beat John Grissom. But in the matter of juicy attorneys, legal, government, FBI, feds, Washington, D.C., what was going down in the medical industry? Chris, it's in that book. There you go.

There you go. So give us, what is this about California helping write this book? Actually, my personal media connections, knowing that I already launched my first government book, the media encouraged me. I've got a lot of friends at Channel 11 Texas, and my news best friend is from Channel 11. They encouraged me to skip the Ghostwriter and rewrite it myself. The way they felt is I had an original. By the way, Chris, this was a federal investigation that I filed myself in 2016.

Oh, wow. Yes, and some people call this the famous Donald Trump book. The litigation book was delivered to Donald Trump in 2018 to the White House, and he had a letter to me in seven days. But the difference is that Donald Trump knew it was coming and he knows me because I applied with his campaign in 2015. The general public wanted the story, what happened in medical staffing. And then, oh, by the way, it's the basis of the laws that I try to change in an industry. And the staffing industry is a little, if we put staffing all together, it's about a $200 billion industry. Yes. And the book goes through an absolute worst lawsuit

that went down in an office in 2010. And how can one major bad lawsuit roll into more cases that would go on through the years? And so give us some more details on it. What was the lawsuit about? What was the context of it? So the context of the worst lawsuit would go down in 2010. Number one, the company owner. Don't ever do this as a company owner. I'm telling you, as a company owner.

Number one, we had a company owner that was trying an employment experiment. And Chris, he hired for a white collar recruiting office, an employee that just came out of the state penitentiary. Okay. That was number one. That's not a good plan. And number two would be the female VP that had an inter office affair with this employee. And that would be the female VP that had an inter-office affair with this employee. And that would start the first lawsuit. My attorneys, I had four attorneys at the time. All right. Every recruiter in the office actually had attorneys at that time.

And you would have to read a little bit more about the inside details on what the men in Texas called this female VP a stalker, and they weren't even exaggerating. Our boss was up to a lot of problems. In this particular office, it's very sad. What the attorneys thought in 2010, number one, they did not understand, number one, the company owner that would hire the employee out of jail. That was number one. But why didn't that company owner fire the female VP that had the affair and keep his employees? There were details on his insurance and it's attorney speculation, but they thought that the company owner was probably getting blackmailed at the time. But this company owner would choose to keep the female VP that had the affair and get rid of his little staff. So he would lose 80% of his production in one year and end up bankrupt.

So I'm Catherine in the book. And what had originally happened is I had opened KD Staffing in 2007. And about middle year and a half into the company, of course, we were headed into a recession. And so I decided to put my company down and go to work in this office. And this is where two years later, the lawsuits would start. And I'm the recruiter. And then I'm not the only one, but I'm the ever famous homeless recruiter, which means the attorneys would call me the whistleblower. In the office, I was asked to lie, change the story for a judge. Oh, witness tampering then, a little bit, or is that the word? Witness tampering then? Yeah, witness tampering, and then you'd have to know the laws on the contingency side of

recruitment. Chris, some of the laws that I fight are the laws that go like this. As a company owner, if you have contingent employees working for you, whether they quit or whether you fire them, the company owner gets to keep the money. I call it greedy loss. In this lawsuit, you're going to see where I was asked to lie to a Texas judge and keep my job. And by the way, keep about $100K at the time. Right.

Commissions. Yes. Or leave. And I would get cut off on all the money. I did stay out of these lawsuits. I've had attorneys for years that keep me very clean. I know a lot about law. And I know a lot about keeping clean and

I can thank my attorneys. But I'm the whistleblower in the book, but I'm also the recruiter that would lose everything and go home. Would it be fair to say this is a true story? The names have been changed to protect getting sued for slander or something? Absolutely. In the matter of having a Texas legal team, which means you've got paralegals, attorneys, security. I learned the legal pieces of legal publishing to protect your rights. And it's also people respect. There are public records. They've been changed, information, names changed to protect people. And then the people that are in the book that you love, but they don't really want their name out there. So legally, I did learn some before we published this book and that's why I would take the litigation book and spend two

years on a rewrite. If that makes sense. Yeah. I just got done doing that with my book. I wrote my book and left the names in and somebody said to me, books are a great way to get sued. You may want to take out those names. And I was oh yeah so i think you know one of them was my brother so i guess somebody can figure out which story that was i'll be honest we have some government officials that said slap a cupper cover on that famous donald trump book and let's sell it for a future election kelly and i had to go back because we pushed the original litigation out to california and my first publisher looked at the book and said, oh, this book is on fire.

You have got to take this book off the shelf for a rewrite. And he would begin to explain. And so we went from there. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. So you say it's an inspirational story. And the book, it's about rebuilding life, being on top, following and rebuilding your company as an industry executives.

And you have some chapters on being homeless in 2011. What was it like being homeless? It's a while. Let me just, my first comment is this. I think the basis of my current day personality and the reason why I try to practice humble success, I'm not known to talk about money or I'm just, I don't like it. But what would change me, Chris, is the year that I would lose everything. And the thing is, Chris, the general with the middle class and the rich, I don't think that we're uncaring individuals and we don't care about what's going on with the underprivileged, but I don't think we, and I think sometimes when I think about the fact that I'm not the type that should have ever ran out of money or you think, oh, this should have never happened to me.

But then what did you learn? And what I learned by walking on the other side of the street is, number one, we have some wonderful people that are underprivileged and they're like any class. They have some protected rights and things that we could do. But I learned, and it was probably three or four years, I would not, whether it's Washington, D.C. government officials or Texas government officials, talk to them about the homeless shelters, the systems we've got going on in the Greyhound bus. Could we have more security for mass transportation? Little things that we really don't know go on for the underprivileged, but they deserve more representation. Chris, if I would have never lost everything, I would have never learned these areas and these paths. Yeah. I've had friends that are homeless advocates because they were homeless themselves and they

work the streets in Los Angeles for down on Skid Row and stuff. And so they try and help a lot of people that they knew when they were homeless to get out of it. And so I know it's a very dire thing. It's very sad that we don't have a better support system to somehow help a lot of these people. But what did you learn from that? How did you grow out of that? If you want to just touch on that, I know I mentioned that's in the book quite extensively. The biggest example that you will learn, and it's very humbling, and some people can do it and somebody can't. And coming out of the pandemic, this is a great time to share this message. Do you have what it takes to get back up? Chris, when I walked out of that, my career, medical staffing, and we are held by law on non-competes, all right, which means if something bad goes down in litigation for a period of time, you are not going to work in your industry.

So then the question is, what are you going to do? Chris, I would end up in 2011 starting back in restaurants. And so I was a boss at 19 years old. And if you've been a boss for top success so many years, then it's really hard and humiliating. And it can be a bit depressing when you step down into a position that you're way overqualified for, and you do it for the money and you do it to rebuild. And it was very hard. In the matter of who I was at the time before I fell down,

when I started back in the restaurants in 2011, Chris, I used to, for 10 years, I ran around with the Dallas Society group and I loved them. They were my best friends. But what do you learn when you lose everything? A lot of times, those type of friends, they are gone. All right. Because now you're an embarrassment. And the worst feeling in my gut was 2011 when my friends would come in and they saw a good old Kelly Christina carrying drinks and they, they turned their noses in and they saw a good old Kelly Christina carrying drinks and they turned their noses up and they pretended like they didn't know me. So that's what I mean about a little bit depressing and teaching yourself humility.

Realizing, oh my gosh, I was spoiled for a lot of years. Did I even realize? But the point is that I would work two and three restaurant jobs and I would rebuild KD staffing to the point, the beginning, it was end of 2015, 2016. I would walk into the bank with the exact amount of money that I started the company with, but it was straight cash and I had saved it. And so the point is that, do you have what it takes to bring in that money and do those jobs, even when you don't want to do those jobs, to rebuild? And then what does it teach you? That's definitely important.

The things about budgeting that I have learned, and I do say it's made me bigger, stronger. Chris, current day, I pay straight cash. If I don't have the cash, I'm not buying. I had 25, 20 years of 25 credit cards in the purse, almost perfect credit. When bad things happen, number one, your credit is going. It's going away. You learn that you can live life with bad credit. But I also learned that I didn't want all those credit cards back. I got a couple for a travel. But little things like adjusting, like a lot of people on their budgets, they don't look at all the utilities or actually all the ways you can actually save money on your budget. I think I'm a smarter budgeter now. I also still ground myself on shopping, okay, where I used to back up the lines for 20 minutes

and to have 20 purchases. Chris, now it's two. Kelly can have two. She's paying cash and goodbye. Goodbye. That's a good way to go, paying cash. You don't want to be in debt because it ends up costing you. It's always funny to me.

It just occurred to me. People go shopping and be like, hey, it's 10% off, but they're paying like 25% a month on their credit card or something. We know the credit card companies would not like me saying this, but there's actually some public speakers out there that do preach about cash. And then how do you retire a little bit more? There's some folks I like, they're called the minimalists. You minimize your life. You cut all that thing.

So that helps. What are some other aspects that we can tease out in the book that we haven't covered? Chris, first, there's experience of losing everything. And this is a very interesting story. And we can say it's entertaining, but, and it is. It's great drama, but it's my life. So first, you go through the period of losing everything. And when you're losing everything, you're going to be coming up with ways and plans.

And what are you going to do? So you start losing your cable. You start losing your TVs. Your utilities go. What do you got? You got candles. I lost my convertible. So for the first time in my life, I'm walking around on foot.

You have no money to move. So how are you going to move? And then, oh, by the way, save your boxes. We were out dumpster diving and I had the attorneys help you move out with the family move out because you don't have the money. But we saved about 80% of my stuff. Something that is entertaining because I do have a network of 65,000 people and people say, Kelly, how so when you're not on the movies and you're not on major media, have you had this strong a network for so many years? It's a lot of love, a lot of relationships and a lot of work. Okay. Anyway, Chris, so you lose your iPhone, right? With a couple thousand

contacts in on. And so in 2010, and this is what happened, people were confused. What happened to Kelly in the first place? And I've got a minute phone from Walmart. That's the backup plan. You got about 10 contacts. So we moved my stuff. We go through the planning and all that happens. And then something, Chris, happens that you're not planning. And I was at my parents' house and I dropped down with heart problems. And my little dog, Bobby, she was in my arms when it happened. And she actually, she woke me up. She's licking my face. Mom, wake up, wake up. So here comes the ambulance. And it's one of those times that your health, that you actually, you expect you're going out of this world and you certainly didn't plan on it. So the reason why I bring it up is yes, I almost died early 2011. If you can work with the medical industry, so if

you can traditionally get through the first night, heart problems is going to be your hardest. And I didn't expect I was going to make it. Long story short, I'm here. I did make it. And the reason why I bring it up is so there was a lot of confusion on what happened. So in a matter of knowing a lot of people, Chris, somebody started a Dallas rumor that I died of a heart attack. Yes. And so the entertaining part of knowing too many people and the wrong story goes around is when I show back up in Dallas, maybe two or three weeks later, and my friends think they're seeing the ghost of Kelly Christina. They thought I died.

I had a friend that was planning my funeral and you got to say, stop. I didn't die. I'm here. I made it. But the point is, Chris, is that was a very scary time in my life. And it was definitely different when somebody starts the wrong rumor and they think you're dead. That's in the book. Oh, wow. That's amazing. That is some wild stuff right there. When in a matter of faith, Chris, in the matter of sometimes how we are or simple or spiritual

life or anything like, I really thought I was going out of that world, but it just, it wasn't my time. I'm still here. I'm one of those, a lot of people call me the great survivor. I probably had more than one time that I should have died, but I just keep making it. There you go. Yes. This is a great story.

It talks about what happens. Have the lawsuits wrapped up now? Is there an ending to this? Chris, the ending, the beautiful part of the lawsuits is that I'm so grateful that I have had my attorneys around that have taught me the laws because I was able to, I was not the female you're going to drag into the courthouse for anything. In other words, I stayed clean. Unfortunately, in this book, you're going to see some of my ex-business partners. And sometimes this happens, by the way. A bad lawsuit hits an office and people are hurt, Chris. And when people are hurt, and now I'm talking about some ex-business partners, sometimes they turn bad, which means now they went from making money honest to let's commit fraud. So in this book, you're going to see some of ex-business

partners that go bad and they get into some very shady business. The end of this was, Chris, I took all of this and had a special appointment. Of course, President Obama ignored it, but the FBI, the feds, they helped me and I spent a lot of time in the courthouses. All of these cases were up in Washington, D.C. All of this information has been with Texas government officials, and it's something that we've fought for about 10 years now. And what I'm trying to do, Chris, current day, is regulate the industry and let's smooth things down. As I told President Obama in 2014, when you have over a dozen attorney offices

in legal fights, medical staffing, it's time to take some of these laws and smooth them out a little bit. Smooth them out. Love attorneys, but too much attorneys to collect your paycheck? Chris, it's bad. It's bad. That'll do it. They can take you to the cleaners if you spend enough money with them. That's bad.

As we go out, anything more you want to plug on the book? Chris, the readers that typically traditionally like this has been called a crime drama for obvious reasons. Drama, inspirational, testimonial. Whenever you have a lot of people, there's always a lot of good juice. Different people take different takes and go, wait a minute, I want to hear about the Greyhound bus story, or I want to hear about the homeless shelter, or oh my gosh, you almost died. I want to hear about that. There's a lot of different and unique stories in this book. Readers, obviously attorneys love this book.

If you like legal, government, FBI, all that spicy drama, we got it all in there. There you go. There you go. That's awesome. That's awesome. So give us your plugs, Kelly, of where people can find you on the internet and, of course, order up the book. Okay.

So we've got my author website. Obviously, writing the executive rollercoaster medical staffing cases is on Amazon, but it's also on my personal website, By Book. We hit international best-selling. I do want to thank my publisher, Sandy Massori. She is in California and she helped me promote the book this spring and we hit international best-selling records in a lot of categories. And then I'm really excited to be going out to Phoenix this fall. ABC 15 gave the book an International Impact Award. So that's pretty exciting. I'll be collecting a trophy. Congratulations. Thank you. Sounds good. So Kelly, it was wonderful to have you on. Thanks today for sharing your book with us and your stories. Chris, you're awesome at these interviews. And I'm just so excited you invited me on this show.

And I just want to wish you a fantastic week. And you too as well. Folks, check out the book, Riding the Executive Rollercoaster, Medical Staffing Cases. It just came out this year. So you want to take and grab a hold of that and read it also find out where fine books are sold go to youtube.com force that's chris boss see all the things we're doing over there go to goodreads.com force that's chris boss follow me over there all the groups on facebook linkedin twitter instagram all that sort of stuff

where all the cool kids are go check them out as well as where the cool kids are go check them out as well that's where the cool kids are so thank you for tuning in everyone we certainly appreciate you and we'll see you guys next time thank you chris thank you bye so we're excited to announce my new book is coming out it's called beacons of leadership inspiring lessons of success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies.

I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon,

you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made, numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out or order the book wherever fine books are sold.