Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
OhHello - Barbara Liss
74 Plays2 years ago
A mom. A marketer. A connector. A builder. A friend (my friend!).
...ANNNND she's funny!
Episode 28, features a #bosslady that understands how to deal with change.
This mentor (aka a 'Hello') is a marketing communications leader with 20+ years of multi-category experience focused on transforming brands. She has brought her passion for connecting consumers with meaningful and impactful experiences to iconic brands like PepsiCo, Motorola Mobility (a Lenovo Company) / Motorola Solutions, General Mills, Beam Suntory, Merrick Pet Care, Inc. and Digitas North America.
Harkening back to her University of Michigan days, as an Environmental Science major, this 'Hello' is taking a renewed interest in the #climatechange crisis and is investing her time to help brands and advertisers understand what they can do to help. She’s been an advisor to Good-Loop and is excited to help the team at Ad Net Zero as well.
Her words of wisdom-- "find #mentors while you're young and never stop picking up mentorship along your journey." She values the importance of #mentorship and #friendships along her own journey (shout out to the FRIENDTORS). Some of the MVPs this 'Hello' wants to give a shout out to:
Amy Jo Martin "Why not now?" (I feel you Amy Jo Martin)
Lisa Cochrane (hiiiiii Lisa!!)
Bonin Bough (change agent)
Michelle Lorge of Simple Mills (friend, great biz leader)
Elizabeth Bleser one of her oldest friends
Julie Saliba's strength
This mentor/expert's most important role is being a proud mom to her tween daughter and their cavapoo. Please let it be known...both keep her on her toes!
Thank you Barbara Liss - we're so excited to have you in our OhHello Inc. tribe and on the OhHello.io platform (once we're outta beta, we'll be launching this summer)!
Recommended
Transcript
Friendly Greetings and Introductions
00:00:00
Speaker
Good grief. Oh, come on, Charlie Brown. Oh, hello, Barbara. Hello. How's it going? It's going good. It's good. It's rainy, but you are a bright light on an otherwise dreary day, my friend.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hey, I will take that. I am always in bloom, some might say. Oh, goodness gracious. Yep, yep. And that sums up our friendship. Yep. Barbara, I know you. I appreciate you being on the pod on the VOD. Thank you for being part of our Oh, hello community. Thank you to those listening to those viewing with us today. Why don't you tell us? Who are you?
Barbara's Personal and Professional Identity
00:00:54
Speaker
Jeremy, that is an excellent question.
00:00:58
Speaker
I would say I'm a very simple person. I think first and foremost, I am a mom. Some days that drives me crazy, but it's here to stay. I am a marketer. I am a connector, a builder, and a friend. And I think that kind of sums up
00:01:21
Speaker
And I am kind of funny. I feel like that sums up. I'll give you, yeah, you're a mom, a builder, a connector, a friend, and funny. I would just say kind of funny and funny. Thank you. So yeah, you've got five things going for you. So of those five things, what defines you, Barbara Liss? Thank you. Someone had to say your last name. Oh, sorry.
00:01:45
Speaker
Well, it's funny, I think those are the things that do define me. I was trying to figure out how to discern between those two questions. Really hard, I know. I think I'm defined a little bit by who I am, but I guess also by what I believe and how I behave. And I think from that point of view, I think kindness, empathy, a little bit of sarcasm, hard work,
00:02:14
Speaker
had a job since I was 16. I think family, that's donuts and french fries, like there, that's it. We're done. That's a kindness, empathy, family fries, fried dough. Makes sense. I respect that. I respect that. Thank you. How would you characterize the character as the skill set that you're going to be sharing with the Oh, hello community as a mentor and as an expert?
Navigating Career Changes and Challenges
00:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a couple of different things I would bring to the table. I mean, there's so many talented people out there that I know you you've already talked to. And I think one of the things that has been a hallmark of my career is change and navigating change. Or is it time to do something different? I'm feeling bored or stalled or not happy or frustrated. And I've made some changes. Some have been for better. Some have been for
00:03:09
Speaker
for worse, but I think being able to help people at various levels in their career navigate that is something that I would love to do, kind of been there, done that. I think getting into the weeds, I love helping people look at resumes, just simple, silly questions, or how do I have challenging conversations, I think is the other one, whether it's with a coworker or a boss. I think there's a lot of people out there
00:03:39
Speaker
handle some of those harder skill things. And I would love to help people with some of the things that you might not think about that you now have access to people to just run things by without anybody judging anything. So just a purely unbiased opinion.
00:03:58
Speaker
And that's the purpose. I love that. That's the purpose of what we're building is to have is to be able to have people come and find unbiased mentorship from people that have been there, done that. Tell us a little bit just for a moment or so about your career journey, places where you've been. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Yeah, I would say kind of have had a couple of different phases of my career.
00:04:28
Speaker
went to business school a long time ago. I don't think the internet even existed. And that really pushed me in a marketing direction. So spent a lot of years in brand management roles with some big companies, General Mills, PepsiCo, spent some time in a digital agency really as kind of Facebook and social media was taking off. I really wanted to understand what that was like. I've done some work with startups. I took
00:04:58
Speaker
a pretty big, we can, you know, happy to walk anyone through talking about taking a risk or making a change. But I took a big risk last year and decided to try something totally different and went into the world of executive search. So I thought, how do I leverage my team building skills, my years of interviewing, my love of, you know, chit chat and helping other people? And how do I, you know, try something different? So,
00:05:24
Speaker
So well said, you've experienced a lot and you've seen the internet break through. Who would have known? Who would have known? Me and Al Gore, baby. Hopefully you can do to others from a mentorship perspective, what Al Gore has done to just from the, from the environmental sense. Right. With that. Yes. Outside of Al Gore. Outside of keeping things green. Okay, good.
The Value of Mentorship and Friend Tours
00:05:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:52
Speaker
What excites you about mentorship? What would you tell your younger self? I would tell my younger self to probably find more mentors. Yes, I am going to be honest. And I think I'd never had early in my career mentors. I saw people around me have them. And I've heard people talk about having had them from that long ago. And maybe I was naive or just in
00:06:22
Speaker
eager beaver. I had some wonderful managers and worked with incredible people, but I just, that is one thing I kind of regret that I didn't work hard to seek that out. And I think I've done that later on in my career. And I think the relationships that I've been able to build
00:06:41
Speaker
are so rewarding. And I think to have somebody who, again, there's no judgment, no bias, that you can pick up the phone and be like, I think I screwed up. How do I fix this? Or I think that that is the most rewarding part is the feeling unjudged and just safe. And I think all of us need somewhere where we can bounce things
00:07:10
Speaker
off of. I mean, it's just such a challenging, complex, fast paced, up and down world these days. At least not even these days just in general. And that's what you and I were talking about beforehand was
00:07:25
Speaker
You had said to me, it wasn't a confidence, I can say it. You said to me, Jeremy, is it cool if I talk about my friend tours versus mentors? And that really struck a chord for me because I feel very similar where I've had a lot of friends that have been friend tours versus mentors. There are a couple of mentors that have had profound impact but didn't hit me until later in life that they did.
00:07:51
Speaker
And would love for you to just pontificate a little bit more on the friend tour. Well, thank you for allowing me to pontificate because that's what friends are for. Might be one of my favorite things to do. I think in lieu of having these mentors, I was really lucky, especially coming out of business school where I made these incredible lifelong friends who I've watched succeed and thrive in some in similar industries than
00:08:22
Speaker
as me, some in not, and they've just become, I did not coin this term frentor, an actual mentor of mine, Amy Jo Martin. I don't know if she coined it, but I got it from
00:08:32
Speaker
I got it from her and it just hit so close to home. I just had lunch with a friend the other day and one of my closest friends, but like the first 30 minutes were like, how can I help you? What can I do? And we just talked through some things that I'm going through career wise and was just able to bounce that off of someone in that same safe
00:08:54
Speaker
space. And I think I'm so grateful that that has kind of filled that gap that maybe I never had having multiple or even just one mentor across the road. And I think those people who know you inside and out in maybe a different way than somebody who is more of a professional mentor can also offer you
00:09:16
Speaker
a different level of advice or counsel, because they know more of the full you than maybe somebody else. Who are a few of those people? Oh, you want me to drop some doubts? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Oh, hello is about altruism. So here's an opportunity for you to say, Hey,
00:09:40
Speaker
I appreciate you. So we'd love for you to be able to give some shouts and kudos to those mentors of yours. Yeah. Well, I think first kind of starting with the mentor piece. I think there's two people that I think of. And one is Amy Jo Martin, who I just met. Amy is the truest sense of a renegade. It's what her company is. And one of her strong mantras is Why Not Now?
00:10:05
Speaker
And I continue to hear that as I navigate phases of my personal life or professional life where sometimes fear gets in the way. And Amy has kind of put her, I don't know, her mind and her actions where her mouth is, I guess. And I'm so grateful. She's one of those people that I'm like, wow, I can't believe I actually get to text her and I know her number. And she's just been a huge champion and supporter. And then I think in a different sense,
00:10:36
Speaker
you actually connected me to the wonderful Lisa Cochran. Lisa is an industry vet. She's been through, she's seen a lot. I don't think she would disagree with me saying she has a big personality like I do. And sometimes finding someone who understands that and see someone succeed in their true
00:11:06
Speaker
individual style or whatever is awesome. And Lisa's kind of been a little bit more of that professional mentor to me and has just helped me think through a lot of different scenarios, whether it's, you know, just how do I have this conversation with a manager or how do I think about what I want to do next? She's been fantastic. And again, I have you, Jeremy Bloom,
00:11:33
Speaker
you think for that. And then I just think in terms of friends, my friend Michelle Lorgi is who I was with the other day, incredibly successful marketer. Everybody go buy simple mills, crackers, and baking mixes. I hope she'll appreciate that with your millions of viewers, sales will skyrocket. But Michelle's just an incredible friend, business leader, mom,
00:12:02
Speaker
And I just feel so lucky to have multiple Michelle's in my circle. So I almost feel bad naming her because I could be naming a ton. Elizabeth Blazer, here's a shout out to you. Yeah, she's great. So I'm so over blessed in the friend tour space that I only hope I can kind of give back to them what they give to me.
00:12:31
Speaker
Well, you're going to have the opportunity through Oh, hello.io to give back to numerous people to be able to be their friend tours and to give back to the communities, to the charities, to the philanthropies of your choice. With that said, what is a cause that's near and dear to your heart, Barbara?
Support for Wonder Glow Foundation
00:12:52
Speaker
So one, I'm just really excited to be part of the Oh, hello community. And I,
00:12:59
Speaker
I love doing this stuff, so hopefully someone will pick me. But I am really excited. I'm a very dear friend of mine and also a friend tour. Julie Saliba-Clower, a friend of mine from business school over 20 years ago, was diagnosed with colon cancer, stage four colon cancer. This is her five-year anniversary of being diagnosed. And for anybody who knows, that is
00:13:24
Speaker
bleeping, amazing. And there is an organization called the Wonder Glow Foundation that is a massive advocate for patients with colon cancer research. They give scholarships to kids whose parents have passed away from colon cancer. And they're just really about allowing the individual and the families to thrive. And so watching Julie just kick ass, no pun intended,
00:13:53
Speaker
It was been intended. I don't know. But anyway, I'm really excited to support them in any way I can. Awesome. Well, Barbara, you rock. So excited to have you be part of the Oh, hello community. This is fun. Thank you for being part of the Todd Todd. Thank you to all of our listeners hours.