In 1999, after 10 years speaking and exhibiting at the National Retail Federation's Big Show, Paul McGlade watched Kathryn present the successful, self-teaching learning system she'd built for the United States Marine Corps. bases, worldwide. He approached her afterward with an urgent request: build something like that for his business, Champion Sports. It was the start of a 22-year partnership — and it began with Kathryn getting on a plane to Ireland, committed to deeply listen.

She sat with Paul for several hours and emptied his cup. What poured out was disgust — Paul had lost all patience with his managers, dismissed them as hopeless, and wanted Kathryn to gather them and fix them. So she did the first Empty the Cup session of what would become a decades-long practice. And what the managers told her surprised no one more than Paul: the biggest obstacle standing between them and everything they wanted wasn't each other. It was Paul himself.

Kathryn didn't repeat that back to shame anyone. She encouraged the room to look past it and build anyway — and they left that session lighter than they'd walked in, visibly elevated. Paul noticed. He asked her to run the same process with his managers from other parts of the country, and to meet with him again once she had.

When they sat down, Kathryn told him the truth as she'd heard it: he had an exceptional group of people who wanted nothing but the best for the business. The real obstacle was that Paul had stopped trusting them — ever since he brought a Managing Director in from Scotland, hired on the strength of his credentials and he was expected to fix everything. That expensive hire had turned out to be a serious disappointment. She asked Paul, plainly, whether that single disappointment was the root of everything that had broken since. He sat with it, and said: yes.

That was the beginning. Together, they built the Training Cards and ran the Road Shows that would define Profitivity's methodology for decades. Champion Sports doubled in six months. They went on to buy out their competitor and align both companies into a dominant share of the market — not by fixing Paul's managers, but by helping Paul trust them again.

Paul suddenly passed in 2024. The businesses they built together are still thriving today — proof that the work Kathryn does isn't a framework that looks good in a slide deck. It's a collaborative model that outlasts the person who first said yes to it.