WyseUp with Chelsie Wyse

'Trusting Yourself' with Barbara Rapaport

• Chelsie Wyse • Season 1 • Episode 4

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In this episode of WyseUp, I chat with business owner and executive coach, Barbara Rapaport! Barbara is the principal of Realtime Perspectives, a boutique consulting firm, committed to uncovering hidden barriers that help clients respond effectively to volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous market forces.

For 30+ years, Barbara has been supporting and holding space for her clients, allowing them to discover the answers already existent within them. 

In our conversation, we talk about being vulnerable, how to be your own best friend, and saying 'no' to competition.

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Navigating the chaotic waters of Marketing can be murky and riddled with not-so-helpful paywalls and “fancy speak.” We all deserve better and should expect better.

Since 2010, I’ve been challenging the Marketing and Advertising industries, questioning the true impact of KPIs, paid social media ads, and terms like ‘content creation’ and ‘sustainable growth.’

WyseUp is a weekly podcast that unearths the realities of the entrepreneurship, marketing, and what it actually means to 'work smarter, not harder.' In each episode, I’ll give you tips and tools you can start using as soon as the episode is done.

Let’s talk about Marketing and business growth in a no-nonsense way. Let’s WyseUp.

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Chelsie Wyse:

Hello, welcome to WyseUp Podcast with Chelsie Wyse. Today I'm very excited to have a special guest with me, Ms. Barbara Rapaport of Real-time Perspectives. You are a leadership aficionado, a executive coach, a seer into the third eye of all people's minds.

Barbara Rapaport:

Oh gosh...!

Chelsie Wyse:

I'm really excited to have you on my show and to talk more about what you've learned running and operating your own business and then how you take care of your business, as a business owner. How do you take care of yourself and replenish? Thank you so much for coming on my podcast!

Barbara Rapaport:

Well, you know, it's always an honor to be asked and I was thinking back to when you and I first met years ago in a store and I was so taken because you came up to me, right? And he started chatting with me. Not knowing who I was. We just, we knew similar people.

Chelsie Wyse:

I think I knew your daughter, Leigh, at the time

Barbara Rapaport:

Yeah.

Chelsie Wyse:

It was Black Lamb. I remember. Oh yeah. So sweet.

Barbara Rapaport:

That was right. I couldn't think of the name of the store. I know where it was.

Chelsie Wyse:

Oh, I miss it. It's, I don't think it's, it's not open anymore.

Barbara Rapaport:

Right.

Chelsie Wyse:

And I miss it cuz it was that eclectic, almost like east coast vibe to it had a, a difference and it's, that's so fun. Thank you for sharing that memory!

Barbara Rapaport:

Yes. I remember how it struck me that you put yourself out that way. And that's a big thing I like to talk about with women is like, don't be afraid to do that.

Chelsie Wyse:

Another thing I gleaned so many awesome insights from you when I went through leading Edge, and that's really what rocked my, at the time I was working full-time? Part-time?.. At another agency... I had taken a dormant position within my own company. I had started my company in 2015, and then in 2019 I was like, I'm tired... I'm gonna go in house somewhere and see what happens there. And that Fall was enrolled in your program and totally rocked my world and made me question a lot of things and be very introspective, which anybody who knows me now knows I love that stuff. Thought leadership, thought work, personal and professional development is my love language, and there were just lots of really beautiful things about that program. I'd love to hear what your favorites are about the programs that you teach. So you have a few that you had through The Chamber, but then you have a few in your own business, Real-time Perspectives, too. Please tell me some more about those.

Barbara Rapaport:

I'd be happy to. I think there's a common theme actually in all of them, which is a phrase you're going to know and people who've worked with me know, which is I have this tremendously firm belief that people know their own answers to what they're challenged by and questioning, and all that introspection that can lead to making different choices that are more satisfying in life. That outside experts can be helpful, but they don't have your answers. Only you have your answers. So people know me, know that I always said when I work with them, you know, the first thing you have to know about me is I believe the answers are in the room. And what I try to do is create an environment for those answers to surface. So whether it was for the Chamber for 15 years, I ran talent development programs for them, you know, leadership- focused. Now, of course I always had my own practice, Real-time Perspectives. But again, at the core, I may have different topics like resilience. Uh, one I did recently in the Athena Forum last week: How to be Your Own Best Friend, peer-coaching, Uncovering Hidden Barriers. I mean, whatever they are, it's always to open up a sense of safety. And being courageous about finding your own answers and not trying to avoid them or run away from them or hide from them, and at least pay attention to them in new ways.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. When I remember when I first heard the words, like"the answers are already here, they're already within you..." it's just being still and quiet enough to allow, like you said, to create safety enough. When you say that, do you get a lot"it can't be that easy." Like,"what do you mean the answers are in any room? Don't we have to do like all of this data collection and surveys and experiments and all of these things to know what direction, the business, department, strategy, whatever... should go?"

Barbara Rapaport:

I guess in fairness, I have to tell you, I have never had anyone resist the notion.

Chelsie Wyse:

Oh, good.

Barbara Rapaport:

Now the hard work around it, certainly resistance can surfaces and that's perfectly normal because all of the things that hold us back are actually there in most of my experience to protect ourselves. So we shouldn't give that up so easily. We be thoughtful about, well, what the, the thresholds are that we're willing to push beyond. But I guess. I don't know. You know, Chelsie, other people who've seen me at work would have to weigh in on this. I can only, as, you know, give you my perspective. Um, it's so much better to know and make intentional choices about knowing.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

Then to live in that uncertainty and anxiety of not knowing and trying to defend against something that actually may never even come your way.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm.

Barbara Rapaport:

And it's such a drain of energy to do that, and it leaves many moments of dissatisfaction for some people. So it's pretty important to me that any work I do, whether it's one-on-one, group, speeches... doesn't matter. I do all of this. I do HR consulting. We still have to make sure that we create an environment where it's safe.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

And I'll use the word over and over and over, but it, it may sound cliche, but man, I didn't.

Chelsie Wyse:

100%. I'm, I am I coach my own clients on that when it comes to marketing and leveling up their business and the, what the nervous system has to do with you as a business owner when you're marketing your business, when you're offering a new service or a new product or whatever that you're wanting to launch. And being aware of that response, because like you said, you don't wanna get rid of that response because it's there to protect you. But how do we reframe it in a way where we can express gratitude,"thank you for trying to keep me safe", like reassuring that'fight or flight', or I like to call that inner, um, side of me, Bert. It was a name that I gave that, uh, through business coaching. Bert likes to come up and he has so many reasons why I shouldn't be doing this podcast. Why I shouldn't be putting myself on social media. Why I shouldn't be just coming up to people and telling them about my business. Because what if they don't like me and what if they don't like the services? Great, thanks, Burt! I think"I got this", like,"I got like, thank you so much for trying to protect me" hand on my heart,"but I got this", so I resonate so much with that work of creating safety and becoming your own best friend and your nervous system's own best friend. How do you do that for yourself as a business owner? You do so much of this impactful coaching for and consulting and thought work... How do you regulate your own safety and your own nervous system through this work? Because it's probably, I don't wanna say it's not threatening, but it can be exhausting. It can be very maybe unsettling asking these questions in different groups of people and not sure the response coming up. How do you regulate your yourself?

Barbara Rapaport:

I guess the first part of the answer to that, from my vantage point, would be, I don't take ownership when I'm in the room with people of what the answer is for them. Right. I kind of alluded to that earlier. So it's much easier actually in the room with people not to get anxious and not to panic and not to think I'm in over my head because when those'trigger emotions' happen because I'm human, right? I can feel like,"Whoa...". Like in Athena, we had a full house. Mm-hmm. As you know, you were there, sold out crowd. I was like,"am I gonna be able to do this?" The whole ride there was like, eh, you know,"can I do this?" But once I'm in the room, it's really the responsibility of the individuals with me to make choices about what's meaningful to them at that moment in time. So, for example, if I were facilitating a group that needed to get to a problem- solution, if they're not getting there, my role, as I see it, is to do a pause and ask the group, based on what I'm observing,"what would you like to do about it?" and it takes all the anxiety away because they get to choose. So when I'm out of that, I, because I am an introvert like you, I put in my full days, my full weeks, some weeks more full than others, some with more things going on that create that initial"can I do it" question.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm. But I need a lot of alone time. And it's really interesting because my husband and I are totally different. He just wants to be with people all the time. He is always looking to see what our social life can be. I come home and I work on the New York Times puzzles. I read, um, I'm a voracious reader of fiction to keep myself like in this other world of ideas and thoughts and character development and, and what motivates people. So I need to do that for myself as a human being. But the business certainly sets expectations around how much time I can put in and need to put in. And if I don't modulate that, I can be just as overwhelmed as anybody else, in over my head and asking myself, is that really what I want today in my life? Mmm... I like all of that. The part that came out to me was when you, I get this, when I'm meeting with a client and asking them, um, we're going over a strategy or a campaign and what's the best practice on how to move forward based off of the results that we wanna see and where the business is headed. And, you're like a facilitator of the mind, you know, a trusted partner in their mind- space. To reassure them when things get maybe a little dark or scary or unknown, like,"no, no, it's okay. It's okay. We're still here. We're good." As business owners, you know, I think maybe we take on an immense amount of responsibility on ourselves to make sure everything goes well, but, forgetting sometimes that there's another person on the other side of that relationship that's just as involved... how can we remind ourselves of that? Well, I think there's a couple things. I hope I remember them both now that I said that. One is a belief that as adults we go through stages of our own capacity. To handle things that feel overwhelming and complex. And I think you can just even imagine moving from, you know, teenager to mature adult who has grandchildren, right? There's that whole span could be many, many, many years. You're not the same person typically that you were as a teenager when you're that person who's got the grandchildren. And that's because you have maturity and wisdom based on experience, and a realization, oftentimes, that the things you worried about the most were not really the most important to you. Mm.

Barbara Rapaport:

So having that understanding is really, really helpful. That a moment in time is not your whole life. So when you're worried about these things in your business and can you pull it all together? You can pull it together well enough if you set your own standard as to what's well enough, not setting some abstract standard. That you don't even know is relevant, what you're trying to achieve.

Chelsie Wyse:

You are allowed to change. You can change your mind. You can evolve into something else.

Barbara Rapaport:

Yeah.

Chelsie Wyse:

Give your business a new name. Change the services. Modify things. I remember, especially when I started my business being so afraid of that and now having undergone a rebrand and a lot of this work with my coach, you realize like, oh, nobody really cares. Can they still trust me? Am I still being honest and adding valuable information? Am I educating myself to make sure that I'm providing the best answer in this moment in time? Yes, I am. Okay. Well, they don't care what it looks like then. They just wanna know that they can trust you. That you'll take care, hold space for them, et cetera.

Barbara Rapaport:

That's a great example of setting your own standards. It's very hard to do that because we are all wired for connection, as Brene Brown says, right?

Chelsie Wyse:

Giving yourself permission to evolve, to change, and stripping away the fear of, well, what are people gonna think if I'm like this? If I show the messy parts of my evolution, and what I've learned over the last year is. That's actually a really great point of connection for people if you're honest about like,"Hey, I did this in my business for X amount of years and it was really helpful for these reasons, but this is what I'm seeing shift in the landscape of..." I'm gonna talk about marketing specifically in the landscape of marketing, in the landscape of small business development. We can't sell all the time. People don't wanna, don't wanna listen to that anymore. So we have to adjust and provide an immense amount of value and the relationship first. Allowing the messy parts of evolution to be seen, because that helps generate trust, too.

Barbara Rapaport:

I think people in, in accordance with that take value from you when you think in a way that's really compelling. And that's what they value. So even in part of my work, I actually evaluate coaches. And I had one of them yesterday, and they turned in their material, I read it in advance, give them feedback, and the woman's thinking was out of this world. And she was a brand new coach. Doesn't have a coaching practice yet. And when I looked at her material, there was just something there that was missing. And I said to her,"it's okay that you didn't do it perfectly."

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

"Where you are in time and the great thinking capacity you have your analytical abilities, your ability to take an information that's totally foreign to you and make immediate sense of it." That's what matters. So that process that you bring to clients, that I bring to clients, I think that's pretty powerful. And I also think it speaks to this issue that many women owners, some men, too. But I see it mostly in women is,"well, no, no, we have to be perfect." And I stand by my belief that it's not something we should aspire to.

Chelsie Wyse:

Well, it doesn't exist.

Barbara Rapaport:

Perfection.

Chelsie Wyse:

Yeah.

Barbara Rapaport:

Perfection really gets in the way.

Chelsie Wyse:

Yeah.

Barbara Rapaport:

It gets in the way. I think you don't understand that it's more fun to see how the imperfect, along with whatever is wonderful, integrates in a way that makes everything more meaningful, everything, more value add, because you're not hiding from a part of the human experience.

Chelsie Wyse:

I'm trying to strip away the words perfect and imperfect and making them just like imperfect is now just human. Like there's a human element and I send newsletters out every week. There's probably a few grammatical errors and spelling errors in there. But I was in that mode and writing and it was full of passion, so I'm just gonna send it because that's gonna come through stronger. If I read it again and I'm like, Ugh. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that because somebody might get offended or this might

Barbara Rapaport:

Mm-hmm..

Chelsie Wyse:

I wish I could talk to you for forever. How long have you had your business again?

Barbara Rapaport:

I was in the corporate world. I left after 20 or 20 year career there that was preceded by, um, a career mostly in college administration.

Chelsie Wyse:

So I get clients that are, this, this, uh, viewership, uh, listenership would be interested in and like, What made that, they often ask me like, what made you wanna start your own business? And mine was, I just felt this gut passion to do things differently. I didn't care for the red tape anymore. I wanted to be able to speak unfiltered, to be the champion of my own destiny to like do all of this. What was that for you?

Barbara Rapaport:

For me, it was coming out of a corporate career. I was on the executive team at Steelcase. I had a phenomenal career there, as I said, for 20 years. But the last part of that was post-9/11 and a tremendous percentage of our employees were terminated.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm.

Barbara Rapaport:

Through a reduction in force. And I was a big part of that experience, helping people make that transition. Both those who left and those who stayed. And it was very hard to live under those conditions because there wasn't a whole lot of hope. And I actually was thinking about talking to you today and I realized the only time that same sense of hopelessness came to me was actually during Covid.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm.

Barbara Rapaport:

When I talked to my clients who were experiencing what I experienced back, you know, post 2001. So I wanted a kinda career path where I could see hopefulness, joy, potential... short-term. Right. I had done a lot of major projects at Steelcase and I had done my last big project. There was a global culture analysis and it took, you know, ages for the research to come together, and then the reports to be created, and then the checking of the data and then putting it out into the universe, you know, year and a half easy.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

And now when I work with a client one-on-one, I know in the hour. What that person is taking in or not taking in, because I ask, and I'm curious, and I see where we can go next, and there's this immediacy of helping people move to that cliche phrase of, so what are your answers and what's the potential that the next level, yeah, whatever. Yeah. So that's what made me do it, and I was well positioned to do it. I had a great set of competencies and skills that...

Chelsie Wyse:

mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

...fit what I'm doing now.

Chelsie Wyse:

Did you ever have a season where you're like,"I don't know if this is gonna sustain me..."? As things are changing, there's a next gen, there's a generation and a generation after that coming up and there's all these tools now and AI's gonna take over our jobs. It's not, I used it today. It's a tool.

Barbara Rapaport:

I know, I know.

Chelsie Wyse:

I think it's normal. I don't wanna use that word.

Barbara Rapaport:

Mm-hmm.

Chelsie Wyse:

But it's a part of the human experience to question,"is this a good fit for me? Am I in the right spot? Do I know enough to compete with what's coming behind me, is the next generation?" How do you care for your, your thoughts or your headspace during that?

Barbara Rapaport:

Interesting. You used the word'compete' because I think what I've learned in the last couple of days thinking about speaking with you was... my competition has actually always been with myself.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm.

Barbara Rapaport:

When I do the spelling bee puzzle in the New York Times every day, I wanna get to genius level. No one in the universe knows whether I get to genius level or not, but I have this compulsion, right? Because I'm competing against myself. I don't need to do that anymore. And I think part of that is just experience and also my age. I'm in that third phase of career path. If there's three, I'm in the third, which is a lot of giving back and I don't feel in competition with the younger generations. I wanna let go so they can take over, bring their perspectives... Because I'm all about perspective taking and I can't have the perspectives they have and frankly, I didn't want to show up as if I were trying. So I am making changes, but you well know and I wanna tell your listeners this, if they don't know if they wanna see the quality of your work, check my website.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

Real-time Perspectives, because you just redid it.

Chelsie Wyse:

Thank you!

Barbara Rapaport:

And even though we're tweaking a few more things.

Chelsie Wyse:

Yes. Even at this, always refining. Yeah.

Barbara Rapaport:

Yeah. Because I wanna show a different focal point than I did in the past. And this one, the real big one is peer coaching. Where I really wanna take my skills and not try to be the thought leader that I became, because I have my own point of view around leadership, but more the, how can I bring more to scale this capability of coaching one another. Because I thought in my programs, like the one you were in Leading Edge.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

We allowed all of you in the program over all those years to coach one another and you were masterful at it. All of you. But you needed the right conditions.

Chelsie Wyse:

It was really wonderful to be in that type of space where, yeah, really the only person holding me back was myself because it we had this understanding in our group, and you lay out the expectations at the beginning, that this is, we're trying to create an environment where we can allow our thoughts to dance, we can allow ideas to be explored. We can allow some of maybe the messy answers that we weren't, we didn't know were there as they get uncovered to maybe like shake the dust off a little bit and see if we like them or if we wanna modify them, or just being honest and aware of those things. I'm excited that you have launched this peer coaching because I think there's so much value in rewriting the story that, well, there's competition out there and we need to be better than so and so, and that's just not, there's eight and a half billion people on this planet. Competition is. Fabricated.

Barbara Rapaport:

Yeah.

Chelsie Wyse:

The market is a marketing lie.

Barbara Rapaport:

I have a great story about that and I know he'll be okay with it. My elder child is my son, a lawyer, and he was fortunate to go to Harvard Law School after being a... really... um... I'm guessing probably number one in his high school.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

Not sure, but if he wasn't one, he was real close.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

Um, he got into Harvard, even undergrad. He didn't go, but he did go for, for law school, and he called me about three weeks in and he said,"mom, I'm not the smartest person in the room anymore." That's speaking to what you just said, like, you'll never get there.

Chelsie Wyse:

If you think you are, go into a different room.

Barbara Rapaport:

Yeah. And so if you have a lot of'shoulds' in your life, you said some of the words you're getting rid of,'imperfect' or'perfect'.

Chelsie Wyse:

Yeah.

Barbara Rapaport:

Also I encourage people get rid of'should.' And I'd love something else you said, which is when you have this openness to think, here's the thing, you don't have to change your mind just because you think about it. No one's taking away your own agency, your own ability to make your choices guide yourself. But what's it to her? If you open your mind, maybe you'll be surprised in a good way.

Chelsie Wyse:

I think that's scary. You know, that's something I learned in therapy around some relationship conversations and stuff with friends and family members that I'm not sure if something serves me anymore. And she's like, okay. I said, but what should I do about it? And she's like," you don't have to do anything. You can just give it space to just..."

Barbara Rapaport:

yeah.

Chelsie Wyse:

"...be the answer."

Barbara Rapaport:

good. All right.

Chelsie Wyse:

It's unsettling for a lot of people, and myself included, depending on the subject, but don't I need to, I'm such a, um, I'm a high achiever in wanting to get things done and, uh, I'm a recovering perfectionist, but the achievement in me is still like, I just like doing stuff and getting and creating and do... allowing there just to be a thought or an idea... it in this season of your life, it can just, just be an answer.

Barbara Rapaport:

Yeah. Wherever, or maybe it's a catalyst and again, I have this little thought that came to me, uh, within the last few weeks, which was I was feeling with my life choices now with my family decisions to be closer to children.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

Where my daughter lives is New York and we have a place to go back and forth from Grand Rapids and we're living in both places. And I was feeling, here was the phrase'untethered', and I literally woke up last weekend and asked myself well,"What could be good about being untethered?"

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm.

Barbara Rapaport:

And the world opened up in a miraculous way and it was just taking the same thing and asking the alternative question and seeing what surface, and we realized how we wanna go back and forth. How often do we wanna refurbish, you know, the place we bought? Do we wanna hold onto it but maybe sell it, move to something different there or whatever. And it was, we got clarity. Because we're untethered in a way that brings adventure and fun and the unknown.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

Love it.

Chelsie Wyse:

It was your version of Bert being like, hold up a second. I feel like I should be in one spot. How am I gonna be in two? I'm not quite sure. And you're like, yeah, but what if, what would be fun about this? If you're gonna give airtime to the shitty thoughts, you need to give equal airtime to the imaginative, hopeful, happy thoughts, too.

Barbara Rapaport:

Yeah. You can always change your mind. I don't have Bert, but I have GI Jane.

Chelsie Wyse:

Mm.

Barbara Rapaport:

That's the name I give to my executive functioning part, which is always in control and always mastering the schedule and you know...

Chelsie Wyse:

mm-hmm.

Barbara Rapaport:

...juggling the stuff and anticipating when others don't even think about. And I have to tell GI I Jane to shut up. She's still there when she needs to be. I like her when she needs to be. Because she gets a lot done.

Chelsie Wyse:

Yeah.

Barbara Rapaport:

But sometimes she ruins the moment. So I've got GI Jane.

Chelsie Wyse:

Yep. Yep. I love it. So the homework for our listeners today is to give the like who's your Bert? Who's your GI Jane? And just become allies with that part of yourself because you're not getting rid of it.

Barbara Rapaport:

No.

Chelsie Wyse:

Might as well become a friend with it and understand it and ask it questions.

Barbara Rapaport:

Yeah. And the best question to always ask is what are they protecting us from? And can I still get that? But not do what I was doing before... that has other problems, right? Is there a way to still get what I want, but in a different way? You use the term'reframe' and that's the kind of thinking that gets you to choose different actions and reactions.

Chelsie Wyse:

Thank you so much for your time today. It was so good to see you and just...

Barbara Rapaport:

Thank you.

Chelsie Wyse:

...scratch the surface of the work that you do. Everything can be found RealtimePerspectives.com. If they wanna learn, learn more about you. I'll include that in the show notes too, both on YouTube and on Apple Podcasts and all of the things. It's this new world that I'm in with podcasts, making sure everybody has links to everything just in case.

Barbara Rapaport:

Thanks for inviting me.

Chelsie Wyse:

Thanks so much, Barbara. It was great to see you.

Barbara Rapaport:

Take care!