This week I present Carolyn Barber and as usual the interview will be in two parts. I have known Carolyn for about 13 years, but I learned things that I didn't know about her while interviewing her. Think back to a time when you made a drastic change in your life, what happened to trigger that change?
Can you imagine being on a flight and told that there is a possibility that the plane will crash because the landing gear isn't functioning? Carolyn was on such a flight, and nearly the entire flight, the passengers were going through crash landing drills. Some passengers felt they had lived a good life so dying would be okay, others were terrified and crying. Carolyn didn't think they were going to die, but it made her think about her life, and she realized that she would have to make drastic changes.
She was given a second chance, and she decided that she didn't like her job, so she made a plan, and a year later she took early retirement , retrained and started a new career which she is still doing. Using Carolyn as an example, it's never too late to try new things.
Carolyn talks about mentoring in the video below. I am experimenting and it's a bit dark but you can hear what she says.
Interview With Carolyn Barber from Avil Beckford on Vimeo.
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Carolyn Barber: I am a 70-year old, single woman living in Riverdale, Toronto. I have a part-time business in nutritional counseling that I started when I was 62 after retiring early as a nutritionist in public health. My career is a fairly important to me and it takes up a couple of days of my life. I am quite involved with my church and it’s a big part of my life and friendships. And perhaps the main reason for me being at the church is the community that it offers to me aside from the spiritual aspect which would be secondary for me. My family of three kids and four grandchildren are also really important to me. I am also a very active person. My favourite outdoor activities are camping and canoeing together. I also like biking and hiking, and for indoors, my passion is cooking. I am quite interested in the art scene in Toronto: opera, theatre, and music of various sorts such as the Toronto Consort. I keep quite busy.
What’s a typical day like for you?
Carolyn Barber: I do not have many typical days, I try to keep Mondays and Tuesdays for my business so I am often up around 7:00, 7:30 am. I use an auto share car to get to a Mississauga rehab clinic where I do nutritional counseling. After that I see private clients in my home. In the evenings I am often on the phone inviting friends to come over for dinner.
How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
Carolyn Barber: I think that a lot of my motivation comes from being active, keeping fit, going to the gym frequently, hiking and biking. I seem to naturally feel motivated in all aspects of my life, and my family and social life helps me to stay on track and the motivation just is there for me. It isn’t so often a problem.
If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Carolyn Barber: I would have paid more attention to my unique interests in my work and even in my home life. I would have looked at the things that I like to do and treasure, honor and explore them more. I think your passions lead you deeper into activities.
What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?
Carolyn Barber: Working with my clients I get very excited about nutrition, and I was amazed that I still maintain my passion for nutrition. Many times when I woke up in the mornings I thought for sure that my passion was gone, that I was no longer keen, but when I start talking to a client I have that interest again and I’m finding that stays with me which is a surprise and like a discovery.
What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?
Carolyn Barber: There is a lot of new research into holistic, alternative, complementary nutrition. It’s finding its way into the mainstream and that’s affecting my business, it’s improving my business.
What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?
Carolyn Barber:
- Age is a threat to how I handle my business and what I’d do in my business. I already see that my interests and passions change and my energy changes so I have to change with that. Age very much affects my life at this point in terms of what I would do in the later stage of my career.
- How much money I have is another threat. Lack of money drove me into a career when most people would have stopped, and because I still need to look for money I have to find creative ways to get it. A lack of money has actually been a bonus to me because it helped me to move ahead.
What’s unique about the service that you provide?
Carolyn Barber: I am a registered dietitian but I have training in complementary nutrition. There are very few dieticians in Toronto who have that training.
What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?
Carolyn Barber: I think that dietitians are not paying enough attention to the alternative stream, the complementary stream of nutrition, and I think that they are missing the boat because that’s where the clientele is going. I wouldn’t say they are doing something badly, but they are not using their full skills and they are not benefiting the clients as much as they could. I feel that I have an edge there.
Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it.
Carolyn Barber: When I retired early from Public Health I had no form of income and I had to find something, and how I resolved it was by really writing and reading books which I will talk about later. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is a book that I’d recommend because it helps you to see who you are, honor who you are, and you get to see your entire self, your longings. Out of that process I got a notebook and wrote down the things that I wanted to explore, and I kept making lists and checking them off and forcing myself to do one thing every day and keep working away until a path emerged.
What lessons did you learn in the process?
Carolyn Barber:
- Pay attention to the things that interests you, that excites you
- Build on your strengths instead of thinking I’ll start a completely different career because the other one didn’t completely meet my needs
- Plug away
Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Carolyn Barber: I didn’t necessarily have one big break. Changing my career to me was a break and I’ve talked about that. But a recent break that I had was when I started working in the insurance field doing independent examination for nutrition claims, and that really happened through a chance piece of work that I got, and me researching what other opportunities were in that field.
Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
Carolyn Barber: I would say that as a manager at Public Health, I didn’t feel that I excelled at being a manager. I am not a very social person though I am great at one-to-one interactions. I got out of that because I thought that wasn’t my niche. And I ended up doing something that I like much better.
What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?
Carolyn Barber: Not having a male partner in my life has been my biggest disappointment. It’s something that I think about every day. I keep working at meeting people. My husband died when I was 35 and I have not really had any long-term relationships since then except for a four-year relationship.
What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
Carolyn Barber: I have never found any decision that was so difficult to make. They seem to just come to me. It’s quite natural for me to make decisions and I cannot think of any decisions that I really had to agonize over, but one would probably be to stop my work in public health. That happened when I was on a flight back from Newfoundland and there was danger that the flight was going to crash, luckily we landed up okay. But during that time I had some very difficult emotional times and I felt that I wasn’t getting everything that I needed out of my life and I had to make changes.
I started to think this isn’t the end of my life, I am not happy, and I had to change. So the next year I set my plan into motion and left Public Health.
What are three events that helped to shape your life?
Carolyn Barber:
- The plane I was on nearly crashed
- My husband died when we were both young, in our thirties. He was a dominant person so I had to really learn to handle everything after his death, which I had previously unlearned
- I grew up on a farm, which influenced my life in that I always saw myself as a working class person, and from that background I never saw myself as an elite and I was never comfortable in that environment. The way I was brought up was to be a good person, and it wasn’t about being the best you could be or be a success. So I was never taught that, “you must do your very best, I know that you are going to be something great.” Sometimes when I have thought that I am doing really well here, I would often tone myself down and think “don’t think you are so smart.” I think that aspect of my upbringing has been a detriment to me at certain times, and a conflict
What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?
Carolyn Barber: Starting my business and going back to school at age 61
How did mentors influence your life?
Carolyn Barber: I do not have a sense of many mentors in my life. I feel as if I have done a lot of things on my own. Obviously in talking to friends, I must have used them as sounding boards, but I was mostly on my own. In my recent years, there have been certain nutrition people who I look up to, and take the courses that they offer. Aileen Burford-Mason, a nutritionist is someone who I consider to be a mentor.
What are five takeaways from Carolyn's interview?
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