From Wall Street To Purpose: Kristine Delano’s Inspirational Reinvention On Calling, Burnout & Faith (Inspirational)

Have you ever felt successful on paper—but still knew deep down you were called to something more, and you’re ready for an inspirational motivational push to reinvent your life?

In this inspirational, motivational, and purpose-driven episode, Reginald D sits down with Kristine Delano, a former Wall Street executive who spent over 20 years balancing leadership, marriage, and motherhood—before stepping into a new season as an author, storyteller, and podcast host of We Talk Careers.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, burned out, or unsure how to pivot into what you’re truly called to do, this conversation is packed with inspirational motivation, practical reinvention steps, and faith-based wisdom. Kristine shares how God redirected her identity from “being the general” to becoming “the soldier,” what reinvention really looks like after a high-pressure career, and how women can pursue purpose without chasing perfection.

This episode is for the listener who wants inspirational motivation to make a change, but needs clarity, courage, and a realistic path forward. Kristine breaks down how reinvention starts with small steps—getting around the right people, leaning into your calling, and building a life rooted in faith, not pressure. If you’ve been craving a motivational speech-style conversation that speaks to purpose, career pivots, communication, ambition, and identity—this will hit home.

Press play now for this inspirational, motivational conversation and leave with a purpose-driven reinvention mindset you can apply today—without fear, burnout, or pressure.

Kristine's contact info:

Website:  https://kristinedelano.com
Instagram: @kristine.delano.writer
Facebook: @KristineDelano.Writer
LinkedIn: @kristinedelano
Podcast: We Talk Careers
Substack: Wall Street Suspense
New Book:  The Lies We Trade: https://mediacenter.tyndale.com

Want to be a guest? Send Reginald D a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1750939591066108e35121bf3

inspirational life stories, faith based motivation, business, motivational speech, motivational, Inspiration, Inspirational, Motivational and Inspirational, Self improvement,  career reinvention, faith,

Transcript

Reginald D: Welcome to Real Talk with Reginald D. I'm your host, Reginald D. On today's episode, we're talking with the woman who understands pressure, purpose, and the power of reinvention. My guest today is Kristine is a former Wall street executive who spent more than 20 years in the constant balancing act of leadership, marriage, and motherhood. Kristine traded the boardroom for the writer's desk and stepped boldly into her calling as an author. Kristine is also the host of We Talk Careers podcast. Welcome to the show, Kristine.

Kristine Delano: Oh, thank you for having me, Reginald. That's, like, one of the best intros I've gotten. Thank you so much. That was awesome.

Reginald D: Well, thank you. Thank you so much. So, Kristine, I'd like to start out with. With one question with my guest. Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood and where you grew up?

Kristine Delano: Sure. My father was enlisted in the Navy, so we lived everywhere from Maine to Tennessee to D.C. to Guam and lots of places in between. I had a life of just moving a lot. I'm the oldest of three sisters, and I had a younger sister who really was great about jumping in and finding friends right away. And I found books and I found story, and I never thought I'd write them, but I loved the idea that I could jump into somebody's life or I could find compassion for different people at a very early age. And so I've been a lover of books and novels and all different types my entire life.

Reginald D: Okay, so then, Kristine, you spent more than 20 years navigating the intensity of Wall street before walking away to reinvent yourself as an author and storyteller. What was the moment you knew God was calling you into a season of this?

Kristine Delano: Wow. So around 2019 or so, I had an opportunity to leave my firm. I'd been, like you said, I'd been a couple decades more than that in and around Wall street, so working for very large firms. Last one was Morgan Stanley. And I had this incredible opportunity to sort of retire early, and I took it. The pandemic hit, and it actually ended up being a very fortuitous time to sort of pull out of the industry. And I had lots of ideas. I feel like my journey had been a lot of, hey, God, come along with me as I do this. And what he had taught me over my career was that I needed to be following him. And so I had been looking for a time to sort of come out of my day to day Wall street job. And when he finally granted that to me, I had all these ideas. I thought, okay, I'm going to fill my time with being a strategic consultant sitting on boards. I had lots and lots of ideas, and some of them came true. I do sit on a couple of corporate boards as well as some large nonprofit boards. But what I didn't know was that he was going to just infuse my brain with stories. I couldn't even have a moment of quiet in my head. I had characters talking. I was talking to my husband about it. I'm like, telling him these stories, and he's like, you gotta write that down. And before I knew it, I had written a novel. And I didn't know really what that meant. I just thought, well, that was cathartic. It felt good to sort of work through a lot of what it was like to work in the industry that I worked in. And maybe it was maybe a little bit more autobiographical than I wanted. But after that, I started taking lots of classes, and I just knew I had this just peace about me, that I was living out what God wanted me to do. And he wanted me to bring light to an area that people, you know, they've got either a Wolf of Wall street view of Wall street, or they've got some sort of warped media sense of what it's like to work with people that sort of have the foundation of our financial system at their fingertips. And I thought it would be a really fun place to set a thriller. And so my journey started about five years ago. And the Lies We Trade, which is my first novel to come out by Tyndale, is actually the fourth novel that I wrote because I wanted to get good at it before I sent it out into the world.

Reginald D: Right. So let me ask you this, Kristine . A lot of people feel stuck, you know, between who they are and who they want to become. What advice do you have for someone listening who knows they need to reinvent themselves, such as yourself, but are afraid to take the first step?

Kristine Delano: I think that God has uniquely created everyone with a passion and a calling. And I think sometimes we get stuck in what we think we should be doing or ought to be doing or need to be doing. And there are seasons for that. There's seasons where we are stuck. We have a family to support, and we need to be doing the things that we're doing. And. But when we start to get those nudges that say, hey, start looking at this, start understanding it, following your passion into something. It isn't about a, you know, a doom scroll on your phone. It's about actually getting in the place where these things are happening. So for me, it was okay, I gotta find other writers that are doing what I'm doing. I gotta start actually participating in classes and understanding what this world of publishing looks like. So my advice for people is to just start leaning in, start moving in the direction where people are doing the thing that you are feeling. You have a calling to do. And if you get there and you think, oh, this isn't right, pivot, you know, it's, there's an exciting world out there and there's lots and different ways that the thing that we're good at can actually play out into a career.

Reginald D: Now I'm going to ask you this, what did you learn about yourself in the process of leaving a powerful career to pursue a purpose driven life?

Kristine Delano: Probably one of the biggest things that I learned was that there is so much power in being a soldier versus being the general. And I had really prided myself on being a good manager, being a great leader, being a managing director of a large area, having the answers and being able to direct people. The idea of sitting back and being led by God, by other people, working on a team where people's voices became quite important to my ability to be successful at any of it. There is so much excitement for me now to, of course, you know, I sit down at my desk and write by myself for long periods of time. But I am in constant communication with people. I am much more of this idea of God is leading me with this and I am his soldier on this journey. As opposed to having to assume that my success or my failure is only on my own shoulders.

Reginald D: Yes, exactly. Because he's a general. You're just a soldier with all this. Right, right.

Kristine Delano: But the world tells you you gotta be a general. The world tells you, be the general, be the general all the time. And you know, I think it's the lie that I would trade with people all the time is who's in charge. And you know, and it's, you're always sort of fighting for that top spot and getting to understand that your place in this, this place of being in surrender and in just communion with God is so much more powerful. Yeah.

Reginald D: And I always say, you know, some people get it twisted in the world, you know, just like me in leadership, I'm not the general, I'm a servant. And my job is to serve other people, to help with the cause that we're trying to get accomplished. At the end of the day, you know, if I'm 50ft above you, you on the ground, it's going to be hard for you. To understand what I'm saying or what we got going on. So I have to be on the ground with you and serve you for everybody to be great at the end of the day.

Kristine Delano: Absolutely. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.

Reginald D: So your novel, which releases in January 2026.

Kristine Delano: That's correct.

Reginald D: The Lies We Trade is a dispense set in the high pressure world of finance. What inspired you to write your book and to explore real life things women face in leadership, marriage and identity?

Kristine Delano: I love big, hairy puzzles and projects and just different ways of thinking about the world. And so the question at the heart of my novel started with, what if there was a woman who went in on her best day of work and was told she needed to sign a restraining order against her second in command? And it just sort of came up to me, this idea of what happens if one of the worst things that could happen in your work happened on the best day that it was supposed to be? And what would that look like? How would she be able to continue to do the celebration and invite people in while having to do the thing that she didn't do, want to do, but was in some ways forced to do? And what would make a company have to sign a restraining order over someone? People are fired all the time. People leave, they're fined. But restraining orders are something quite personal. So that question just sort of swirled and swirled around in me, and I just thought, who is this Meredith who has worked so hard for this career? Her marriage is in a bit of crisis, her teenage daughter is having trouble, and now she comes in on what she thinks is going to be a celebration and she's forced to do something that she doesn't want to do. How would she behave? What can we learn from her? And, you know, how does that journey take us? And so that was sort of the genesis of why I started it. And I really wanted to write a novel with a journey that didn't tie everything up in a bow at all. But you could see real growth in not only Meredith's character, but her husband, her teen, and other people that she worked with. You could see where they started and where they ended after, you know, working through the issues at hand.

Reginald D: That's very creative. That is very creative. I know why you do what you do.

Kristine Delano: Thank you.

Reginald D: So, Kristine  you talked openly about burnout and recognizing the warning signs before it breaks you. What were some of the signs you ignored in your own life? And how can listeners identify those signs sooner?

Kristine Delano: Yes, one of. I'm going to answer that two different ways. Sometimes we Have a false sense of burnout. And it is something I learned earlier on in my career. And it's a piece of advice I give to a lot of, especially young women and younger men that are in their career really trying to make something of their title and their management capabilities. And it's that sometimes we wake up every day and we ask the question, am I in the job that I should be doing? Like, am I balancing the right thing? Am I doing this? Am I doing enough? Am I enough? And that, I think, sometimes gives us a false sense of burnout, a false sense that we are failing at the thing that we're meant to do. What I came to realize, and am just so thankful that I had a career that allowed me to have the space to do this, as well as a husband that walked alongside me with this, is that I think we should be quarterly, just like very successful companies, taking a look at the business of our career and our family and those things that we are operating within. And quarterly. We sit down with the sort of the board of directors that we've assembled around us, so it could be our husband and our best friend that can kind of see into us and some of our colleagues, those that are the trusted advisors in our life, and we ask those big questions, and we make some pivots. We adjust. If we really are truly at the place of burnout, we put in a plan to get ourselves out of what we are doing. We put in place boundaries, we put in place different strategies that enable us to be successful every day. And then we put that to rest. And we feel the comfort of having worked through this. If you're a person of faith like I am, then you're doing this alongside a lot of prayer, a lot of contemplation with God over what the calling is and where you are in your current season of life, for being able to. To work through what he's called you to do. But what you're not doing is waking up every day and questioning yourself and creating an imposter syndrome view of your world. You are actually going into the world with excitement and just a sense of making progress and being content with the plan that you have put in place.

Reginald D: Right, exactly. So let me ask you this. What does having it all really mean? And is that even a fair expectation for women today?

Kristine Delano: Yeah, I mean, it biblically can't be what we're after. We live in a fallen world. We live in something that's already imperfect. So expecting perfection from ourselves, expecting our lives to reflect what everyone puts out on Social media, in their very best moments can't be something that we attain to. But I think that if you are surrounding yourself, steeping yourself in faith, steeping yourself in prayer, surrounding yourself with people that care about you, I think you can create a plan for your life that helps you live in a joyful contentedness. Right. Which I think supersedes this idea of, like, I can have it all, I can do it all, and I can do it with this, and I can take on the cognitive load of not only my job, but my. My marriage and my life and all of that. And instead you feel like you've got partners that are working toward this goal. I think that the idea of this joyful contentedness is far superior to the idea of having it all.

Reginald D: Yeah. Because when I say. I hear a lot of people tell people if they are speaking to somebody or motivational speaking or whatever, they say one thing that, you know, that I kind of go against. They kind of say, if you do A, B and C and D, then you can do anything you want in life. You know, anything you want, you can do it. And I don't think it works like that. You know, I think everybody has an assignment. Like you said, a call, too. Yeah. I think you just can't just do anything you want. It's what you're called to do. And I get it that it's empowering you to do what you want to do, but it's actually empowering you to do what you're assigned to do, right?

Kristine Delano: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that assignment and recognizing that assignment is so important. You know, in college, I was a neuroscience major, so I thought I was going to med school. And then I did Teach for America in between college and med school, and I taught high school in Baltimore. Inner city, really rough. And so I had a engineering company that came in and. And sponsored. Helped sponsor my classroom and helped me with things, and I ended up getting a job with them. While I was now applying to engineering school instead of going to med school and got my master's in engineering. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna sit in companies and help solve problems. But the first company I really did that work for in a major way was a Wall street firm. So all of a sudden, now I'm in finance. And so I feel like sometimes, you know, so if someone had said earlier on, oh, you're gonna, you know, work on Wall Street, I would have been like, that's not my calling. That's not. I don't have passion for that. But the Passion was, is that I really like to solve complex problems, and I like to do that in teams, and I like to do that over long periods of time that add value to the people around me. And I think there's lots of different places I could have applied myself for doing that. But if I didn't have people that were speaking into my life and if I wasn't looking to God to really understand what that calling was, I could have, you know, even kind of become a doctor. And then every day did nothing toward this idea of my calling of solving larger problems and telling stories and, you know, impacting people around me. So I think it's hard sometimes even. I have a son who's just started college, and people are asking him all the time, like, what's your major? And what are you going to do with it? And what are you going to do with it? And I'm like, I understand why we ask it, because we want to, you know, we want to encourage him and we want to make sure that, you know, he's got some ideas. But frankly, what we want to be asking is, like, what are the things you like to do with the knowledge you're gaining? You know, like, what are you learning in your classes? That just lights you up and. And, you know, what are you thinking about when you wake up in the morning, about some of the classes that you're taking? Because I think those are the things that are going to help him understand what his calling, what his assignment ultimately is.

Reginald D: Yes, absolutely. That was well put. That was well put. And that's how you get into entrepreneurship.

Kristine Delano: Right?

Reginald D: You know, when you really, really know.

Kristine Delano: Yes, yes, yes. And sometimes, you know, it's. Entrepreneurship can actually lead you to. Then finding people to partner with. One of the things in Maine, there's a Maine community bank, and they put on kind of a shark tank in Maine. It's called Launchpad. And we have, you know, hundreds of companies apply for it. And I've been privileged enough to be sort of the head judge on it the last few years. And we've been able to give out a lot of money to companies, entrepreneurs that are trying to do this. And it's fascinating the problems that people find, the solutions that they come together, and then over years, when you watch them, they start finding each other, and then they form bigger companies or those companies get bought. And it's the idea that people can take their passion and really turn it into a business that impacts others is. It's just so exciting to me.

Reginald D: Yeah, that's amazing. So your Book features a marriage under pressure. In your experience, what makes or breaks a relationship when ambition is high and time is limited?

Kristine Delano: Communication. You know, it's Meredith and Clint. Their biggest issue in the book is their inability to hear each other, their inability to hear past what it is they assume the other person is saying, and their willingness to sort of step in, into that messy communication that sometimes we have to go to to find the truth of what it is that we want to say to each other. And what's heartbreaking about a marriage like theirs is that they truly love each other. They found each other, they built a life together, they admire the work that each one of them does, and yet they're in this place where they barely say words to each other for fear of setting the other one off. And I have seen marriages like this over and over again. One of my great privileges in working where I did was that people would know of my faith. And instead of me preaching it out to them, I would become the person that, when a colleague was struggling with his inability to sort of understand why his wife was so unhappy, he would come to me and ask me, what could he do? How, you know, like, you seem to be different. You seem to talk differently, you seem to behave differently. What am I doing and how can I do this? And universally, I would ask if I could pray with him. Always said yes, always. And I feel like marriages that don't have a foundation of God, I don't know how they do it, because I think marriage is hard. And I love my husband, and he's amazing, but I feel like that idea of if we stop talking to each other, if we stop trying to understand each other, that silence breeds such discontent. And the idea that, you know, maybe we don't love each other anymore. And I think that's definitely the danger zone.

Reginald D: Yeah, it is. Especially the busier you get. You know, life keeps calling. You know, things keep calling. You get more busier, More busier, and you start kind of drifting away. But you got to get back to the foundation when it's all said and done, you know, and take that time out to make the real thing. The real thing.

Kristine Delano: Right. And that's hard to do sometimes, just knowing that question, because sometimes you just think, I just know what he's going to say. I just know what she's going to say. Oh, I just know. Oh, you know, she's saying that because it's a statement of what I did yesterday. And, you know, it's all coming back. Like we. We create all these assumptions. So how do we create moments that allow us to sort of strip those things away and, you know, find ways to communicate, you know, in the lies we trade, they go through a lot, and they're sort of forced to have to communicate in order for their, you know, family to sort of survive what's going on, which, in a lot of ways, can put even that much more pressure on a marriage. So their willingness to try to start talking has got to be the first step, right?

Reginald D: Exactly. So, Kristine, you have a podcast called We Talk Careers, where you interview leaders about growth and purpose. What inspired you to start this podcast? And what's one unexpected thing you've learned about success that world doesn't talk enough about?

Kristine Delano: So when I left my day job on Wall street, because I still. I'm so surrounded by it all the time, but left my day job, I had a lot of people want to get either a real or virtual coffee with me to ask me questions about, you know, how can I get from here to here? Or I'm having trouble with this boss, or I'm having trouble with this, you know, crazy pivot my company's taking, and I'm not sure how. How and when to speak up about it. And my network was such that I knew such amazing people over the course of my career that I would say, oh, you know what? You really, really need to talk to Julie about that. Or you really, really need to talk to Dan, because he went through that exact thing, and he's got such a story to tell. And I was constantly just being this connector. I was constantly either telling part of their story because I love it, I get a little bit, and I can make a big story about it that's, you know, fun and all of that. But I really wanted them to connect. I. I really wanted people to find each other and recognize that what they felt like they were alone in that no one had sort of experienced. And it was almost shameful a little bit. There were many people that shared that, and over the years, I had been lucky enough to hear so many of their stories. And it just. One day, I was at a board meeting with women in ETFs, which is a large connect, support, and inspire organization on Wall Street. And I kind of blurted out this idea of, you know, it would be great if we had a podcast where people could share those stories and then they could actually find each other and recognize, like, oh, that would make a great mentor, or, I would love to mentor that person. And of course, you know, when you put out an idea, you. You sometimes have to be willing to do it yourself. So I thought I would interview like my 12 kind of best friends and then someone else would want to take this from me. And now we're like three years in and, and I love it so much. And I think the biggest thing that I've learned, maybe not even the biggest, but maybe the most surprising thing that I've learned is that when I asked some of the most successful, most driven, just by every standard, have sort of made it in the industry and I asked them if you could have one trait in somebody that you surrounded yourself in, in like a team in order to get something done in order to be successful, what would that one trait be? And for the most part, I would say 70% of the time it's curiosity. It's not, you know, a demanding work ethic, although you have to have it to be successful. And it wasn't the idea that, you know, you had to be a good communicator, you had to be a strong leader or anything else. They all felt if someone had curiosity and every day came with this idea that they wanted to learn more and they wanted to share what they'd learned and, and they wanted to sort of lean into all that was going on, they could teach all the other things. The thing that they had a hard time teaching was curiosity and people that just weren't curious. And I've always kind of come back to that with, I think that comes with people who have followed their job to make something happen. Maybe it's their time of their life, they need the money, they need, you know, things in their life, but they haven't found their calling, they haven't found their passion, they haven't been able to bring curiosity to what they're doing. And it really shows in their ability to be successful in what they do.

Reginald D: So let me ask you this, Kristine. What's one moment in your career or personal life that almost broke you but ended up becoming the foundation of your strength?

Kristine Delano: Wow. What an amazing question. Okay. I think many, many times things have broken my heart or come close to it. I think working in such a high pressure, high value position and loving people deeply around me, my heart is constantly at risk. When I first started, my first job was with the largest independent broker dealer in the world. And I was too young to have the team that I did. I'd been sort of over promoted and I wasn't even full time. I was a consultant, so I wasn't even full time at that one job. And right as we were going in to do the final presentation for the team. I went into one of the sort of managers of the customer service area that had hired us and he said, this is why you will never work for us again. And he had some real specific concerns over my team. Now, I had been communicating with him throughout and he hadn't raised these before, but I also knew that I had been pretty myopic on the actual task itself and hadn't really built a lot of the relationships that later on in my career I'd recognize as being incredibly important. And so I didn't know what to do. I just apologized and I didn't even have the authority to say I could refund his money. I could no idea what my boss was going to do about this. I was thinking, okay, I'm going to be fired and I'm not sure how I'm going to make him whole. So I just took responsibility, I apologized, and then I asked him what he wanted me to do about it now because we were just about to step into a boardroom with the, you know, chiefs of all of the areas, and I was going to present what my team had come up with. And he says, oh, I'm not presenting it. I don't even know what you've come up with. So you're going to go in and do that and then that'll be the last time we see you. I said, I understand. So I walked in. I had been so nervous. I had been so concerned about, like, how do I not only present this, but get the next job and, like, show to my boss that, like, I can take a great client and make it even better by them seeing that we're so good that we can get work everywhere. I had all these competing goals. I had none of those. Now I came in, I just needed to get done. I just needed to present what we had done. It was good work. I had to tell them their baby was ugly. I was going to try to couch it. Now I had no reason to because, you know, honestly, I didn't have anything to lose. And I gave the presentation with that mentality of, I'm going to be as honest as I can. I'm going to give them everything I can because this is the last time I'm going to see them. And I'm just not going to worry about everything else. I'm just going to be present in what I'm providing. And an hour long presentation turned into like three, where the chief information officer just laid out all the work that we needed to do over the next couple of Years asked me to start putting estimates to together. I kept looking over at the guy that had fired me, and I was thinking, at what point he's going to step up and say, actually, she can't do this because I fired her? Well, it was 10 years later, and I, you know, now worked at the company. He and I worked on many projects together. He was, you know, I. I was a senior vice president at that point. We never talked about it again. He never raised it. He never even hinted that he had fired me before we walked into the room. And it took me a lot of reflection over the years to recognize the value he gave to me. Like, at the time, I thought that was, like, one of the worst things you could do to this poor person, going in to do a presentation. But he actually freed me. And every time I would go in to do something big and hairy like that, I would think back to what was it that resonated with all those people? And it was that I was fully present. I was willing to be truthful. I was willing to just the task at hand, get that done and be as responsive to the folks that were in that room and not worry about all the other things that may be waiting for me. And he did me a great service by firing me.

Reginald D: Yeah. But, you know, the good thing about it, you know, you got to look at it. I think one of the biggest things with you, which your courage is your mentality, your mindset. You say, all right, I'm going in here. I don't have nothing else to lose. I'm just going to do it and let the chips fall where they may. And then we have that mentality sometimes in life. It's like, I don't have nothing else to lose, man. I might as well go do it. You'll be surprised how things get turned around.

Kristine Delano: Yes, yes, absolutely. And I feel like if I had been focused on me, I would be constantly trying to figure out, well, do I look good while I'm saying this? Do I? You know, am I coming off the right way? And I feel like that's what God wants us to do all the time, is constantly saying, hey, I got this. You just go in, be yourself, be fully present, be truthful, and just share what you were created to share. And I think when we release ourselves, like, that is when the magic happens. And. And I've seen it over and over again. I would say that it took me a long time to recognize that. I mean, I. I struggled through all the things that people struggle through, you know, imposter Syndrome and managing people poorly and, you know, all the things, you know, tasks over people, all the things that come with maturing and continue to struggle with many things. But that thing of recognizing that if we are living in our purpose, then all we can do is be fully present and do the best job that we can, as opposed to thinking about all the different ways that it can go wrong.

Reginald D: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, Kristine  that was amazing. I want to know this. What is God teaching you right now in this season of your life and your steps in the world that you're in now, your author and all the things you're doing? What are you being taught through the process?

Kristine Delano: Where I get my value is what I'm being taught right now. I have had a career where my reputation, what people say about me, was often informed by what they knew about me personally. So they had worked with me or they knew someone who had worked with me. The work that I did, all of that I felt like I could sort of manage. And it was important to me, especially as a woman of faith, you know, to always live with an amount of, you know, sort of dignity and character and all of that. And what I'm learning now is that all that's still true. But I know that God has set me on this path. I don't get to know, nor do I know what the outcome will be of the book that I have coming out or the next book that I have coming out. The relationship that I have with my publisher, who's amazing, Tyndale, and my agent. Like, I'm so thankful for all those things. But people come to me and say, oh, you're going to be a bestseller. Oh, you're going to do this. And I said, I don't. I don't have any of those guarantees. And I am okay with it. And I know that the book will hit well, some people, and maybe some people won't like it. And I've got to be okay with all of that because I am doing what I know God called me to do. I've just never sat in this space before where people can sort of comment about me on Amazon reviews or Goodreads or anything like that. It hasn't even started yet, and I'm still like, have to constantly pull myself back from panic and remind myself that I never started this because I wanted the reviews. I started this because I knew that this is what God called me to do. And that's all I can care about right now.

Reginald D: Yes. And when you have that mentality, I was told that one Time when I went into the ministry, my pastor, which is my cousin, he said that there's a set of amount of people in the world waiting on you. So when you go back to what you're saying, the book you're writing, the things you're doing is meant for a set amount of people, not the whole world.

Kristine Delano: Right.

Reginald D: Hopefully. But as a set amount of people just assigned to you that God has assigned to you, that's waiting on you.

Kristine Delano: Yes. And it's freeing. It's freeing to think that I don't have. I don't have the responsibility, you know, God's not looking down on me and being like, oh, you know, Alice out in Oklahoma City didn't like your book. Now I'm really disappointed in you. You know, like, I. I hope Alice loves it, but I don't have control over those things. And so I just keep having to sort of pull myself back from, you know, really recognizing that. I hope that, you know, anyone picking it up that's in, like, work life, balance issues and, you know, kind of likes a hopeful thriller and likes pacing and all of that will pick it up and enjoy it. But I can't go into it finding my value from whether people, like, get or review it well or any of those things.

Reginald D: Exactly. You hit the nail right on the head. You hit it right on the head.

Kristine Delano: I'm practicing. Do you see? Like, this is what I'm learning, so I'm, like, speaking it into existence.

Reginald D: That's it. That's it. Kristine , if you could leave my listeners with one message of hope, especially women juggling leadership and family, what will it be?

Kristine Delano: Especially coming into this season of. We're watching a lot of, like, Hallmark movies and all of these, and it's like the woman leaving the job to go back to the Harvest Festival to, you know, find their true love and leave behind all of the things that you know, their work and their satisfaction and all of that. And that's all bad. And, you know, you need to kind of move out of your whole world in order to find this, like, better world somewhere else. I would say, please take a breath. And my hope for everyone is that a book like mine, the Lies We Trade, might give you a glimpse that maybe where you're sitting is actually a beautiful sweet spot. It's just that you're looking at it from the wrong lens or you're not communicating with the people that you should. Or there maybe is some bad guys in there that we need to, like, weed out. But it's not always a retreat that's necessary. It's the idea of like finding your calling, leaning into your faith, leaning into what God has told you you are, and then finding people around you that can help support that vision.

Reginald D: Absolutely. Absolutely. So lastly, Kristine , how can this one follow your work, listen to your podcast or stay updated on your new upcoming book release?

Kristine Delano: Thank you. Well, I've got a website, Kristinedelano.com and it has links to all those things. It's been exciting to pull all that together. My podcast release every other week and I interview leaders in finance but in lots of different walks of life to talk about what they've learned. So that's available anywhere people get podcasts. And my book is on pre order right now and will be out January 20th. And so I'm excited if people want to give it a read to give it a shot on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any place that they buy their books.

Reginald D: There you have it. Kristine  Delano. Christine, thank you so much for your time tonight. I am very inspired. Man. I really love this.

Kristine Delano: Thank you. Thank you. It was so fun talking to you.

Reginald D: I know. I had a good time.

Kristine Delano: Thank you.

Reginald D: Thank you for listening to Real Talk With Reginald D. If you enjoy listening to Real Talk With Reginald D. Please rate and review on Apple Podcasts. See you next time.