Jennifer: 0:24

Welcome to another episode of Behind the Dreamers. I'm your host, jennifer Loehdding, and we are talking to the achievers, the creators, the magic makers and the dreamers. These are our friends, these are your friends and they are living the extraordinary. My guest today is a trailblazer, dedicating her career to transforming organizations into thriving, learning, growth and fulfillment hubs. With a 35 year journey, her commitment to global transformation through people has shaped her into a catalyst for positive change. Simply transitioning into a portfolio career. Her impact resonates across companies, nonprofits, academia and corporate boardrooms. Permission extends beyond borders, encompassing youth leadership, disability inclusion, mental wellness and the fight against food insecurity. So this is. I love it. I'm going to be so. I'm so excited to chat with her today. You guys are going to be in for a treat. But before we bring her on, I do need to do a quick shout out to our sponsor.

Jennifer: 1:19

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Jennifer: 2:00

So now that we've done that, we get to have our guest on the show. This is going to be so much fun Barbara Spitzer. She's the founder and CEO of Two Rivers Partners LLC. A consulting firm that prepares non-profit, small and mid-sized organizations for today's disruptive forces. She aligns businesses and workforce strategies focusing on leadership, culture, human capital and change, resulting in purpose-driven, large-scale transformation, and also outside of the business world. She's an avid traveler, scuba diver and underwater photographer. She's circumvented the globe five times and she's summited mountain range here, so she's done a lot of cool things. So, barbara, welcome to the show. I'm so thrilled to have you here today.

Barbara: 2:43

Thank you, Jennifer. It's so great to be here. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

Jennifer: 2:48

It's going to be so much fun. You have done so many neat things, and I think that's what's so great about people that are achievers. It's like they don't just excel in one area of their lives, they excel in many areas, and I think that's what makes them so great. And it's so fun to hear the journeys but also see the parallels right, like the parallels in business and in our personal lives, and how they sort of all intersect.

Barbara: 3:10

Yeah, definitely, and when I listen to you say my introduction you can tell I'm a 35-year consultant. There's a lot of consultant words in there and I'm really working on diversifying myself beyond sort of that narrow definition of who I am.

Jennifer: 3:28

Yeah, sometimes I know it's hard, we get into those state of minds of who we are. You know, recently I had to. I was trying to redesign my business card. And I was trying to because I do the same thing. I'm like, okay, well, I'm a consultant, coach, right. And I was trying to find like a different word for that and I'm like, what is it that I really do? And I started, really I went back through my website and started taking all my words and actually went into the chat GPT and started putting them all in there and I was like, give me a title that summarizes all of this up.

Jennifer: 3:55

And it came back with something like a success architect and I was like I love it because it's a different right. It's like different from saying I'm a consultant or I'm a coach or I'm a success coach. It's more like I'm a success architect or a success catalyst right, like helping people create success. So it's fun that we get. You know that we sometimes we do. We get stuck in these the languaging of what we think we are, and then we have to just sort of kind of figure out how do we make that shift to to encompass some different languaging right. And so I use chat GPT and it was huge for me.

Barbara: 4:28

That's amazing. I love that success architect. I think that's brilliant you know, isn't it fun? Yeah.

Jennifer: 4:34

So I put it on my business card now. I have it on there under my name now and I'm like I kind of like then people are like what's a success architect, right? What's that mean? Well, me more. That's what you want them to say.

Barbara: 4:43

Yeah, all right.

Jennifer: 4:46

Well, I want to learn more about you because, I should say, my audience is going to want to learn more about you, because I had the opportunity to talk to you off camera, so I got to learn a little bit about you, but I know they're going to want to know who is Barbara Spitzer. So tell us a little bit about what it is you're doing now, and then I'd love for you to maybe share how you came to this place.

Barbara: 5:02

Yeah, Love it, love it, love it. Yeah, the Terms Portfolio Career. There's a great book called Portfolio Career, written literally 10, 15 years ago, but it's still very relevant. And, by the way, portfolio Career is not just for people 60 and over. I've been talking to a lot of people in their 40s and 30s who are contemplating such things, so it just simply means that you don't just do one thing.

Barbara: 5:25

I was 35 years in large consulting in the human capital arena. I've run practices, accounts, geographies, you name it. I've done it and it was great. It was a really great way to earn a living and it really did well for me. But now I am doing multiple things, as you heard in my introduction. So I sort of describe my portfolio as five domains and right in the middle and probably the most no, not probably the most important are my four F's family, friends, fun and fitness. So I love the theater, I love to scuba dive, I'm reconnecting with friends and whatnot, and then around that are sort of four work domains.

Barbara: 6:11

There's two rivers partners, where I do advise nonprofits and small businesses doing a lot of really fun work, and I am my own boss. The second bucket is my nonprofit. So I'm on three nonprofit boards. I just took a chair role of a global nonprofit and the US chair a restless development that trains youth to lead on issues that matter to them, and I'd love to tell you more about that. I am a corporate board director, secured my first private board seat recently, so applying all my skills to corporate governance and I am a guest lecturer at my alma mater teaches college, columbia University. I'm starting the program in two weeks where I am teaching master's students what it means to be a consultant. So I've put together, you know, this portfolio and it's I'm having the time of my life, if not very busy.

Jennifer: 7:07

Yeah, I love it Well, and I think that's what it's sort of about when I think of, like, living the extraordinary. It's really living life on your terms, but it's also living, you know, within your values and doing the things that are important to you, right, and I love that you talked about the bucket where you have the friends and the family and the fun, because I really feel like, you know, I always go back and I think about Stephen Covey's four quadrants and you probably know what I'm talking about when he talks about the whole. You know where we spend most of our time, and then there's the quadrant that we should spend time in, which is really the us time.

Jennifer: 7:38

It's the personal development and things that bring joy to our lives right, but we spend most of our time in the procrastination, where putting buyers out or helping other people are wasting time right and not doing things that add value to us. I really love that you mentioned that and I like that you said it. In buckets right, like you have these buckets. I think that it really gives us an edge when we have these different things that we're doing right, like we're not just we don't have our eggs all in one basket in one place. We're going up in multiple ways, you know.

Barbara: 8:10

Yeah, yeah, you know what's been challenging is, frankly, not taking on too much. You know, when you work for one employer with multiple clients, as I had, you could compartmentalize what you're doing. And now it's like, oh, I have all these things I'm doing and I volunteer to be the gala chair and I volunteer to do this and it's interesting, you know, sort of the stage of my career to have to learn time management and so. But you know what also is inside that time is having time to meditate, having time to do nothing, having time to go to lunch in the middle of the day or go for a long walk, you know, and so you have to.

Barbara: 8:54

And, by the way, procrastination sometimes can be a good thing. I don't know about you, but I work really well under pressure and I'll worry about something and I'll procrastinate and procrastinate until, okay, I better do something, yeah, and I sit down and I hammer it out. It's like, okay, that wasn't so bad. So you know, it's just, it's a different kind of pressure, you know, and learning how to sort of operate in that way of working has been a big change, a good one, but it's been a change. I'm not saying it's easy.

Jennifer: 9:26

No, and I think there's truth in that. I mean, when you come from a place of where you, you know are working for somebody and then you move into that space, now you're driving all of your time and it is it's a different kind of mindset that you take on, but there's beauty in it because, like I said you mentioned, you really have the ability to do lunch in the middle of the day. You have you get to call the shots versus somebody dictating your schedule. That has always been my fear and you know, I've been sort of doing my own thing for 20-something years, so I've kind of had the luxury of being able to do that in our household. But I have worked. I had jobs before that where I did work and that has always been my fear is to have to be in a place where I have to go back and actually have to have a boss, because I'm like I don't even know if I could be employable at this point because I've been so kind of I don't want to say spoiled, but I've sort of had the luxury of being able to have the freedom to do those things. And so it's crazy because, to your point about doing the meditation and taking the time to do all that.

Jennifer: 10:22

Like I have my, I get up at the same time every day. I get up at 5 am pretty much every day. Saturday I try to sleep till 6. It doesn't really happen. I'm up every day, but I have my routine in the morning that I do and I really don't like to deviate from it. And what I mean by that is like if I have to go to a doctor, be in an appointment before a certain time, I'm kind of like, and it's not because I can't get out of bed, it's just because I value my time in the morning.

Barbara: 10:49

I love that. I love that and I need to establish my morning routine. Wake up at the same time every day, that's that's again. That's something that I've had to relearn. You know, I was on my own for two years but that wasn't really enough to really live that life. But I love that morning routine.

Jennifer: 11:06

It took me a long time just so you know I was a night owl for, like I'm talking, I'm in my early 50s, that's all the way to like my mid 40s, and I was like I was like the night owl, like would stay up late, get up late. I mean, I always had to get up because of my kids, but I'd go back to bed Like I'd be like if they, you know, if I'm like I'm done on TV or I'm like, but now I can't even sleep in anymore, barbara, I'm like I'm not going to put the alarm on and be like I'm going to try, I will wake up, I will be up and I'm ready to go in the morning, like I got things to do. Isn't that funny?

Barbara: 11:38

Well, there's a thing called the five o'clock five am club and I'm not really looked into it. But yeah, I'm an early bird, I'm not a night person. Yeah.

Jennifer: 11:45

Yeah, well, and it's. I just said I mean it's neat. There's a. There's a book you might have read it. A good friend had told me about it. It's by the sleep doctor. It's called the power of wind and it talks about, like how our circadian rhythm, like there's four different animals, like there's a, there's a lion, a bear, a wolf and a dolphin You're probably a lion, like I am I mean we get up, we're ready to go and like breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and but it talks about how, based on these circadian circadian rhythms, how we operate and it tells us, like when's the best time to like exercise, sign contracts, do certain things according to our sleep schedule.

Barbara: 12:22

So like.

Jennifer: 12:22

I was joking. I say so. My husband's a bear, I'm a lion. I always make this joke that the only time that we're really compatible to talk is like on Saturday or Sunday afternoon at 3 pm, because his brain's working and mine's working, because I'm like five o'clock, I'm ready to go, let's start talking. He is like no, not ready. And then he'll come in at eight and he's like wants to talk, and I'm like, um, no, my brain shut down at 7 pm.

Barbara: 12:46

Well, that can work too. You know a little bit of, you know a little distance, and difference is a good thing. Yeah, that is funny. It's a good book.

Jennifer: 12:54

I tell people about it all the time. I'm like you know, because sometimes we get hung up on that whole. Like you know, like I had a client that kept saying I need to be up early in the morning, but he was just struggling and I might wonder if you most effective and he said in the evening. I said, well, maybe that's when you need to work, is when you're effect. That's right.

Barbara: 13:10

That's right. I do my hardest things in the morning. Same me too. I do my toughest thinking in the morning. Yeah, yeah, very cool.

Jennifer: 13:18

So okay, so cool. So you're scuba diving, you got all these buckets and things going on. You said you're you know, the biggest thing for you to spend time management. I don't know, because you came from corporate, you were in that space for a really long time before you moved in here and, other than maybe like the time management, was there any other things that were like, oh my gosh, I had to really make a shift in the way I'm doing my things from how I was doing them from before.

Barbara: 13:42

Yeah, well, you know, I was a partner for 23 years, so I always had people around me right to delegate to. And you know this, when you work on your own, I'm doing my taxes, I'm cleaning up my quick books it's like, oh man, yesterday I sat down it didn't get up for like six hours fixing it up, and so, you know, I love doing the work. By the way, I enjoy getting in and digging deep. I'm also a strategic thinker, but I like putting my ideas into action myself. So, but that's been an adjustment, you know. Look, I'll share with you, like I, my planned retirement day from my full-time 35-year consulting career was February 1st, and my former employee employer accelerated it for me and I was. I negotiated a package in May of 2023. I was planning this portfolio career, but then I got to really build it, you know, without having to work full-time.

Barbara: 14:46

But there is, you know, there's loss. You know when, when you're surrounded by people and clients and you have a leadership role and people need you they call you there's a lot of loss in that. You know Now I'm a raging introvert. People don't believe me when I tell them that, but I get my energy from inside, and so working like this is actually better for me and my personality and who I am. But I think, you know, I had to realize that my story was my story, irrespective of the fact that I left six months before I was planning and I didn't leave on my own terms, you know. But it took me a while to really get over that and stop being angry and stop feeling like, oh, this isn't how I wanted it to happen, and just said you know what? I'm going to write down my story, I'm going to define who I am. So I built my website, I built my board bio, you know, and I I figured out I want to go get a teaching job and I got a, you know. So once I started moving in like different directions than the day-to-day of serving clients, selling work, delivering work, building assets, I was like, oh wow, this is amazing and I'm so happy that I got to sort of be paid while I built it and it happened a lot faster than I thought it would.

Barbara: 16:13

I haven't achieved every goal that I've set out for myself, but I feel really settled in, you know, and comfortable to where I am, about where I am and, frankly, not that my company was toxic, but it was toxic for me, like when I I had this business and then I, they, they, this firm recruited me. I put my company on ice and went to work for them for five years, against my best, my sort, of, my instincts, because I think this is a it can be a toxic way of working for me. I went there, it was great, but it was. There was a certain amount of toxicity associated with it, but you know what it did. It did me quite well.

Barbara: 16:56

You know. I have that on my, on my bio, my resume. It's a great company and I was part of some really amazing practices and work. So you know. But anyway, that's sort of like arc of your career and how you see it, you know, coming to a, the peak and what you do afterwards, that's something that I really had thought about, but I, I, I guess the fact that it was accelerated, having to actually activate it was was an interesting transition. I'll just say that.

Jennifer: 17:27

It's interesting to me too when I hear stories like this. And I have kind of a story somewhere a little different, but it kind of same thing, where I had to step down from, you know, come off of a leadership position, and it just sort of I made the decision to do it but I felt that I had to. And it's interesting, you know, when you're in the moment it seems like such a big deal, but then when you fast forward and you look back you can see how it, like you just said, it really spawns this whole outlay of new things for you. You know and I've shared this on probably several different episodes but I was at Mary Kay for 22 years and when I was, I was dealing with a different health condition at the time and it had just encompassed like four years of my life.

Jennifer: 18:04

Like I was at a breaking point and I had spent six months trying to decide because I was in leadership, so I was in the top 2% of the company building teams, I had an active client base, I mean, I was doing quite a bit within that mentoring, training, and it took me six months to decide to step down and one morning I just I woke up at like five in the morning I rolled over, told my husband I said today's the day I'm letting it go, and I remember being so like, like heartbroken that day and upset and I cried.

Jennifer: 18:33

But the next morning when I got up it was like relief. I had felt like I needed to do that a long time ago and I just was scared to make the change, like because I had been in that position for 15 plus years. It's really all I had known and that was kind of my career right, like I didn't know what it was going to do beyond that. But I look at it now and I think, gosh like, because all the decisions that trailed after that would have never happened Like I wouldn't be doing this podcast, all these other things may have never even occurred had I not made that decision that day. So they seem so big when you're in them, but in hindsight you can go back and you go. No, you know there was a reason I needed to exit, that I needed to be out of that space.

Barbara: 19:16

It takes a lot of courage, you know. But I think when you know, you know.

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Jennifer: 19:59

10, 9, paid on my dues, waited in line 8, 7.

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Jennifer: 20:20

Ready to shine part of another life.

Barbara: 20:24

You know I'm a big believer in the universe and you know, for whatever reason, it sends you signals that this is what you need to go do and you go do it and you have to just be listening and acutely aware of what is going on inside and out. Yeah, that's a great story and I'm hearing more and more people doing that these days, just saying I'm kind of done with the 9 to 5 grind, the corporate world, I can do more, and a lot of people of all ages are really considering making this kind of change.

Jennifer: 20:53

Yeah, well, and again, I think your priorities change. I think, as you get older too, you decide you know, it's funny, you're going to laugh.

Jennifer: 20:59

You're going to love this. So yesterday, I'm just thinking about this. So my watch, it's a Garmin. This thing drives me nuts, like it tracks my sleep, everything. I'm like I have to stop looking at it, because I know what I'm not sleeping by looking at. But the Garmin on my phone has a new beta app and so I'm pulling it up yesterday and I'm looking at it and it's tracking all my stuff and I was going to tell you about this and I'm like my brain, just like we're frozen on it About the Garmin Because I'm tracking all my stuff. Oh, I know what it was. It asked me like what are the things that are important to me? And it used to be. I would put races my activities. Now you're going to love it. Better sleep, less stress. It's been healthy, healthy, like all these things. I'm like dang. My priorities have definitely changed. I want more. I want to be healthy. I want more energy. Forget the racing right now. But it's like what?

Jennifer: 21:50

we're talking about right now, right, like your priorities change and we decided that our lives, like our health, our well-being, our friends, our family, the relationships, all those things become important to us, and all these other things if they're not yet. We have to make money and we have to do things, but we need things that add value to who we are right.

Barbara: 22:10

You know. So I love what you just said. I have been really thinking a lot about the arc of my life. I started out as an army brat moving around, where I really built a lot of resilience and fearlessness, but I also built a lot of anxiety and insecurities Because I always went into new schools. Then we settled and then I went to school, started working, then like 30 to 60, because I'm in my early 60s 30 to 60.

Barbara: 22:40

Ok, that is your wealth creation phase of your life. Now I'm not talking about, oh, I've got to make as much money as I possibly can. Sure, that would be great. But when I look back on it it's like no, it's actually what you need to fund 60 onward. Because I think we all sort of hit 60, give or take. We go, oh, I've got more years behind me than I have ahead of me. How am I going to live the years that I have left? With a sense of purpose, a sense of mission, with a health span, healthfully, because health is so important. How do I control the variables that I can control in my health and what I have to change to do that? But for me it's like making sure that you are thinking about whether you have kids. You don't have kids. You're married, you're not. What do you not? You may not have the specifics of what that 60 plus is going to look like, but you probably know I'm probably not going to be doing the job I'm doing now. And so what do you want to do? And no one retires anymore at 60.

Barbara: 23:47

Make sure that your wealth creation plan includes how are you going to fund what you want to do? So I love to travel the world. I'm providing services to nonprofits and small businesses that can't handle the huge rates. That's OK. And I am on three boards nonprofit boards, which require giving money, and I'm in academia, which doesn't pay well, so it's not about that. So if I hadn't have worked on the wealth creation when it was my peak time, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now. So I think sometimes we don't marry the money with our mission and you have to think about the money as the journey to earn it. And then what are you going to do with it when you have it? And I just think which more young people were more cognizant of that. Yeah, it's not like just making as much as you can, but it's actually funding what you want to do with those years.

Jennifer: 24:46

Yeah, because it doesn't really matter how much money make if you don't have anything to show for it at the end of the day, if you can't retire and live and do the things you want to then you really haven't done anything and you're right.

Jennifer: 24:55

That's an excellent point, because you are right, I think we do. We get so hung up on trying to make more money. Make more money, but is anything going anywhere, like, is anything going into anything to sustain your going forward and how are you gonna live when you retire? And there are so many I think now even baby boomers that aren't even able to retire these days. They're stuck and they're forced to start a business or get a job or do something because they can't. They didn't plan well, that's right, that's right.

Barbara: 25:28

So that's in fact. We're looking back. My younger self I mean I was pretty responsible, but maybe I got started a little bit late. I don't have children. I don't plan on leaving my five nieces and nephews anything. I hope I spend every penny, but you know, just like mapping that journey and knowing where you wanna go and where you wanna be, I think there's happiness and empowerment in that, as opposed to I gotta keep working, I gotta and I know a responsibility to put children through college and be responsible for those things, that those things are really, really important.

Barbara: 26:06

but it shouldn't be drudgery, it should be wow what's gonna happen when I have some more freedom and can do more, more different, unique things that really fuel my passions.

Jennifer: 26:17

I feel that's the same. You know what you're saying, that I feel like that's the same conversation you have when you go like sort of an empty nesting.

Jennifer: 26:23

You know what I mean, like I'm thinking about that right now because my youngest is still in the house, but my kids are all grown now. One's married. The other one moved out in August, since I got one at home and he's working and going to school, and so it's like the first time in like we've been married 28 years and it's like we're like we have free time. Yeah, we have free time now to like do things. Like I haven't had time to do anything since I was in my 20s.

Jennifer: 26:47

Now Now, all of a sudden it's like we don't have to be at a soccer field or a lacrosse field in the morning. We can actually go on vacation now. I mean, we don't have to, like you know, organize around schools and all those things. And so I'm listening and I'm thinking about that.

Jennifer: 26:59

It's like the planning and you can look at it the same way, because I think so many people come out of empty nesting and they're like, oh my gosh, their whole life has been dedicated to their kids and they didn't plan for what are they going to do when the kids leave, right, like, when the kids, what are they going to do? And that is why I'm so thankful that I have always been actively busy in things, because I was home with my kids the whole time and I was thinking about had I not had something that was mine right, and that I was committed to doing things for myself. It would be so easy to get wrapped up and then you go oh my gosh, my kids are gone. What do I do now, you know? So I think it's a different parallel, but kind of a similar. Yes, similar.

Barbara: 27:37

We used to throw away the last third of our lives, you know. You know, zero to 30, 30 to 60, 60 to okay, 90, if you're lucky. We used to throw that away. Are they old? Did they say that? No, it's just as valuable, you know, and we have to think about that value, that phase of life.

Barbara: 27:55

And you know, I'm either a late boomer or an early exer and I argue more toward extras because I identify more with that mindset. Yes, right so, but you know it's like there's a Stanford Center for Longevity believes that, you know, eventually we will all have lived to 100, easily 100. So why do you get your education in the first 25% of your life? You know 22? Then you have to stop learning. Yes, exactly, you know. Why do we retire two thirds into it? Why don't we keep working, you know? So I just that's where. That's what I think is so exciting about where we are today as a world. You know, and you know we, the older ones, need to think about the youth and make sure that they have what they need to lead through what are gonna be some, you know, challenging times.

Jennifer: 28:48

No, I love everything that you're saying and I agree with you. I think that well, and even on education I mean my husband, I just had this conversation the other day I'm like I don't know why we think we have to just like stop learning things. It's like the brains can still pick up things and we just decide oh well, I learned that don't need to learn anything else.

Barbara: 29:03

No, we always need to be learning Exactly, exactly, and I love that you.

Jennifer: 29:09

You've got a whole psychology background. I love all that. I was totally like I saw I was reading your bio down like, oh my gosh, that just means there's so much in that that you can you know, I'm sure have used in your work and what you're doing now and just understanding people and things. And I always love talking to psychology people.

Barbara: 29:26

Yeah, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist, but when I got out of college, my mom made it very clear that I wouldn't have a bedroom in the home. Not that she was mean or anything, but she downsized to a two bedroom for her and my little brother and I was like, oh shoot, I guess I have to, you know, delay going straight into grad school. And so I ended up working for a while, getting my organizational psychology degree, applying that to business, and it was the best thing I ever did. Yeah, I think it's important to understand the emotional world of humans.

Jennifer: 29:58

I agree. I just had a guy on I talked to earlier this week that well, first of all, I worked with a mentor for a while. His mother was a psychologist. It was really fun because we got to learn a lot of applying psychology and sales and working with you know how you get people to do things and stuff like that. It was really good eye-opener. But I had a guy on this week that I interviewed and he wrote a book called Brain Glue. There's more to the title, but the idea is how to get people to buy things, like how to understand, how to differentiate yourself so that people like he was talking about, like the squatty potty and how they you know, like Richard Branson, how he does the virgin records, virgin air, like the way people is wording and stuff.

Jennifer: 30:35

So I think psychology it's not just about understanding people right Like around that are just in your immediate circle, but it applies in sales and business. It transfers really into everything 100%.

Barbara: 30:47

Yeah, but two of my nonprofit clients are. Both projects have been highly political right. One of them is dealing with the union. The other one is dealing with a global board of directors with often opposing needs and wishes, and advising my CEO clients on how do you navigate some of that. Get the stakeholders to yes, be a politician, be really clear in your messaging, stay on message. How do you sound confident when you're trying to really sell your idea when you have a lot of headwinds? That's a life skill that everyone needs to have, certainly for corporate survivability.

Jennifer: 31:31

I didn't actually study anything like you did. I said I've just learned things working with coaches and stuff like that. It's interesting when you start learning how to navigate situations and how people, why people are behaving the way they're behaving, and you can back up. I always talk about subject-object shift and working with people and stuff. It's like once you learn some of those things, you can really. I think it works to your advantage in a lot of ways not in a negative way, more in how you respond to people, react to people, how you recognize what people are doing. Because we can only ever really control ourselves right. We can play a part in everything that happens. I think it's good. I know it certainly has helped you along the way. It's good.

Barbara: 32:18

Well, I'm a woman who is often the only woman on the leadership team, only woman on the account. That's just a function of the demographics of when I grew up the very few mentors. I tried to fit in by acting like a guy and thought being aggressive was the answer. But of course that's the opposite answer for a female, because then she gets labeled as shrill or sharp elbow right. So it's a journey to learn how to be feminine and strong at the same time. There's so many role models nowadays, but back when I was growing up in my career, I really didn't have very many of them, and lots of fumbles and stumbles along the way for sure. But it really is thinking about who your audience is and what is it that you want from them.

Jennifer: 33:10

Right.

Barbara: 33:10

And what's your message and how are you going to get that across?

Jennifer: 33:14

and stick to it.

Barbara: 33:15

That's right, I love it.

Jennifer: 33:16

This has been fun. I wanted to ask you a fun question. I don't think this was in the questions I sent you, but I think it was Okay. Yeah, if you had to sum you up in a word, like a word or two, what would you say?

Barbara: 33:29

Well, yeah, okay Complicated, you know.

Jennifer: 33:35

I love it. Complicated, complex, that's what that's a better way Like complex, complex.

Barbara: 33:43

Yeah, oftentimes I feel misunderstood, you know, and I feel like I've been. I can be polarizing, you know, like over the years, I have a following of people who were junior to me, who I still am such good friends with. I go to their weddings and, you know, and it's not a huge group of people, but you know, these were relationships that were so strong and so deep, you know, and I wanted to form our bosses where that's the truth as well. I look at some other people and they just have this wide, broad network and everybody's in it and that's not me, you know. So, so, right, I think I'm generous and kind, I'm a great listener, relationship builder. I also, though, I'm an anxious person and sometimes that can come across as intense, going it on my own, you know, solo, not slowing down enough for everyone else, and you know it could come across as worried and insecure. Instead, it's more like, oh, I'm sort of ruminating on something and I'm worried about it, yeah, right.

Jennifer: 34:45

And.

Barbara: 34:45

I think that you know that complexity is. You know, over the years you learn how to deal with those sorts of traits that maybe not serve us all as well as we wish that they would, but they're still part of who we are, yeah.

Jennifer: 34:58

So how do you?

Barbara: 34:59

honor that part of who you are, but also move through life with a little more grace for your own mental health but also, you know, just for the fun you know of having fun at work and so so it's been a complicated journey. You know like I got an anxiety diagnosis a formal one in 2021. I was like, oh my God, that explains so much when I was in that meeting and I said that as such a jerk, it wasn't because I was a jerk, it's because I was like feeling all of these things and I was anxious. And so you know, that's that's some. You got to go through life willing to really look inside.

Jennifer: 35:42

I think so too yeah really look inside yourself.

Barbara: 35:46

Google does a lot of stuff around introspective and understanding yourself and I hate it. I don't like it, but so anyway. So it's been a complex existence, but it's a wonderful one.

Jennifer: 36:00

Yeah, no, that's good that you said all that and I, you know I get I ask that question every once in a while and I asked you because I know you have the psychology background is where I really wanted to ask you that. I think it is good. When we go introspective, like we know, because I do that sometimes too I get I'm pretty. I mean I build relationships pretty easy, but I'm not a person that I don't have a lot of like friends that I like hang out with all the time. I know a lot of people and I have no problem having conversations with people, but I'm okay with stopping it right there, like I don't need all of that around.

Jennifer: 36:28

And sometimes I can be a direct and driven and focused and people think I'm just walking on their shoes and it's not. I just want to get done what I got to do. Before I forget to get it done, I need to get it off and check it off the list because I got 500 things going. So I can relate to that in some levels, because people will say I'm intense and it's not that I'm being necessarily intense, it's just I'm. I got to get a job done. I got to get from point A to point B, and if you're not walking with me then I don't have time to mess around. We just got to move.

Barbara: 36:53

Exactly, and that's gotta be okay. Why do we have to look like everybody else in terms of the person that we are and how we show up?

Jennifer: 37:00

I've learned in my house. It's funny because you know, when you have, you know ever different people, personalities in the house, you realize some of the kids are like your husband, some are like you, and it's funny. I always joke about this because I know, like you know, my husband is going to take a little slower moving from point A to point B. I'm like, dude, you're going to do it. You're not going to do it because I'm going to take care of it.

Jennifer: 37:19

I'm like I got to get it done, so I can certainly appreciate what you're saying. So and I like, I like so. If our, let's say, our audience wants to get in touch with you, they want to keep up, see what you're doing, they want to see what this two rivers in partners is about, and all of this good stuff, where do we want to send them?

Barbara: 37:38

Well, you know, I got a website it's to riverspartnerscom, of course, and I'm really active on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn, although I'm a little bit mad at LinkedIn right now because they changed their algorithm yet again. And I never find the people that I want. I follow you. I'm like what where's Jennifer? You know or you know so so. But LinkedIn I'm really active. I have a newsletter and I'm always posting things, but, yeah, probably my website and LinkedIn are probably the best places to locate me.

Jennifer: 38:07

We'll make sure to. When we get all the, when we get the editor gets all the bells and whistles on it, we'll get the webpage in there.

Barbara: 38:12

So people know how to find it in there.

Jennifer: 38:14

So, yeah, all right. Well, I love what you're doing. I enjoy chatting with you. I think you're an amazing person. You're doing a lot of cool things and I love that you're just like still like groovin and doing your thing and like loving it, and that's what I think is the best about when you when I say live in. Extraordinary is that you're being able to call the shots and decide how you want to live your life and do it your way.

Barbara: 38:34

That's right. Freedom really, and yeah so thank you, thank you for having me. I've really enjoyed talking to you, get great energy, thank you you too, and, of course, to our audience.

Jennifer: 38:45

If you enjoy the show, head on over to Apple. You can give us a review over there. Hit that subscribe button on YouTube so we can keep talking to all these fabulous people and sharing the stories. And, as I always say, in order to live, the extraordinary must start, and every start begins with a decision. You guys, take care, be safe, be kind to one another. We will see you next time.