A few times in Mario Barge's life, he thought he knew where a successful path would take him, but then he listened harder. It seemed that some of his experiences were trying to give him the perspective that stuff is just stuff and the outward trappings of success might not really be what we're after anyway. Find out how paying attention and being self aware can help us see that life is for really just for living.
When Mario Barge got to college, he was thinking medicine but eventually realized his love since childhood for the outdoors was leading him to environmental law. Once at law school around others with deeper environmental roots, he found another way to serve and advocate through labor law. Initial stumbles in the law firm track pointed him to the legal and compliance side of corporate human resources. He served in a variety of HR capacities within Nationwide and had other corporate experiences before hitting it out in his own firm.
Along the way, however, he had a number of unorthodox life experiences that made helped give him the perspective that stuff is just stuff and the outward trappings of success might not really be what we’re after anyway.//In this episode, find out from Mario how paying attention and being self-aware can help us see that life is really just for living, not perfecting…on Roads Taken with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest
Mario Barge is Co-Founder and Principal at Geneva Executive Partners, and is an expert in human resource development, coaching and consulting having previously served in a variety of HR leadership roles for Fortune 100 companies. He spends lots of time with his family and continues to learn more about himself.
For another story about someone who hones self-awareness and helps others do likewise, listen to our episode with Jennie Tranter.
Mario Barge: I think that the 18-year-old me thought it was kind of an all-or-nothing type of thing. This is how I'm supposed to be, this is what I'm supposed to do, you know. I think at this point, at 49, life has shown me that that's not the point. That doesn't matter. That it's, life is about living.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: A few times in Mario Barge's life, he thought he new where a successful path would take him, but then he listened harder. It seemed that some of his experiences were trying to give him the perspective that stuff is just stuff and the outward trappings of success might not really be what we're after anyway. Find out how paying attention and being self aware can help us see that life is for really just for living on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today I'm here with Mario Barge and we are going to talk about ways to buck the system, make the system, and help systems for other people. So Mario, I'm so glad that I could finally get you on this program.
MB: Yeah, happy to be here. Thank you.
LJR: Great. So when I talk to our classmates, I ask the same two questions at the beginning, and they are these: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
MB: Oof. Those are very good questions. It's funny, I interview people and do stuff with people all the time for a living, and I ask a lot of questions. And it's funny when people say, oh, that's a good question. Maybe that's why you ask it. So, I'd say, who was I in college? I was a young guy who didn't know himself, didn't know what he didn't know, didn't understand that he didn't know a lot of things, and that was trying to kind of exist and you know, trying to make good choices, do good things. Who did I think I would be when I finished? When I went out into the world, I thought I was gonna go out and be an attorney working in a law firm eventually be a partner doing labor and employment law.
Well, actually, at the time, when I finished college, I thought I was going to be an environmental lawyer. I'm still going to environmental law school. So I thought I was going to be an environmental lawyer, championing the rights of trees.
LJR: Okay, so let's get back to where we, where the love of the trees came from. So what was your journey? Where did you grow up? How did the trees fit in? What were those mental models for you to say “Okay, this is the way I think I'm my life's gonna progress.”
MB: Yeah. So anybody that hears this that went to law school with me will laugh because the trees…the trees is a, it's a funny story. So I grew up in Ohio, played soccer for most of my life, ran track. And I grew up with a pretty big family. I was pretty much one of the youngest in our family, extended family of people. And I spent a lot of time outside as a kid, a lot of time, I'd say, you know, of the waking hours, I spent 90 percent of them outside. And it was kind of like we woke up family members, older family members of ours would be like, okay, you got your clothes on. You had your breakfast.
LJR: Get out.
MB: Get out, get out, you know.So, and I had great grand…I was fortunate to grow up with grandparents and great grandparents. And my great grandparents had about an acre of land here in Worthington. And it had fruit trees and all kinds of stuff on the land. And so we'd climb the trees and if we're hungry we'd just eat the fruit and that sort of stuff. So as a kid, I grew up really kind of loving being outside and loving the outdoors and which is, was a common theme when I went to Dartmouth. A lot of my friends and classmates like being outside, you know, kind of similar loves for nature and stuff like that. And so when I went to college, I actually was going there to be a surgeon. I was pretty certain I wanted to be a surgeon. And then, you know, after a couple of years, realized, no, that's, that's not what I want to do.
And so I thought about what do I think would be a good thing to do. How can I do something that would be positive, help, that kind of thing. And the environment felt like, you know, that's the right way to go. And at the time, I had started playing golf. I played a lot of golf with my dad. And it was a way for us, one of the ways that we would interact with each other. But we have a lot of ways that we interact with each other. But that was a really fun way. My mom plays as well. I really kind of developed a love for golf. I go off to law school, and the school I went to—Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon—was, you know, one of the top environmental law schools in the country. It was, you know, the place to go if you want to be an environmental lawyer, and I got there, and I thought that I cared about the environment.
LJR: Relatively speaking.
MB: Man, I encountered some people who were, you know, warriors, warriors for the environment, you know, chaining themselves to trees and climbing up the trees and living in them and stuff like that, you know. And, you know, I, I felt like, okay, that's great. That's awesome that you want to do that, but I'm probably not going to go to that extreme. And I was sitting with some folks at some point in my first year, and this guy was just going on and on and on about golf courses and I was just like, what's, what's this guy's problem with golf courses? I mean, you know, Tiger Woods, life, you know, golf is good.
What's wrong with you? Right?
LJR: That's right. That was at the pinnacle of Tiger, right?
MB: Yeah. Yeah. This is like way, way long time ago. Right? Late nineties.
LJR: When we had water.
MB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We weren’t rationing water and stuff like that. And so, he, he went on and on and on, and young me was like, Well, that's absurd. I like playing golf. I didn't say this when having this conversation in my head. And I was just kind of like I, maybe I'm not as hard at core into this as I thought, you know? And I think the one thing the young version of me did a lot was pay attention and I unknowingly was challenging myself on how I thought about things and how I saw things. And I also, early on, I think was more willing to accept myself for who I was at the time, but not be satisfied with that, if that makes sense. So, you know, I learned to understand that, hey, I wasn't as interested in environmental law as these other folks. I do like playing golf and that's okay. It doesn't mean that I don't care about the environment. Some people will say, I don't, they'd say I'm killing the world and okay, that's fine. And you can have that opinion, but I disagree and that's okay. But I think that the 18 year-old-me thought it was kind of an all or nothing type of thing. You know, like this is how I'm supposed to be, this is what I'm supposed to do, you know. And life, I think at this point at 49, life has shown me that that's not the point, that doesn't matter, that it's life is about living. And, you know, one of the things I've come to understand about me is that I feel like self-awareness is critical. I feel like, to me, that's, if there's a golden ring—a Lord of the Rings reference—if there's a golden ring, but not one that, that is like, creates envy and anger and all that stuff, like in that movie but that actually is sustaining and fulfilling and helps you evolve as a person, I think it's self-awareness. And so that's been kind of a component of focus for me, over my life.
LJR: So, that experience of figuring out, okay, I don't have to embody this the way they're embodying it. But even so, I might want to pick a different strain. Labor and employment seemed to be the next thing, because I'm a warrior still, but for, you know, people. How, how far did that go?
MB: So I, I went to law school. I actually got an amazing mentor. Her name is Corba Gordon. She ended up arguing in front of the Supreme Court, an ADA case, Americans with Disabilities Act case. So she, you know, etched herself in the history of the law. Just an absolutely incredible woman. And I just have, I can't say enough about how she influenced me. I was in Portland. I was considering opportunity with the firm there and I met my ex-wife and she was in Ohio and so I went back to Ohio and I didn't, it probably was the least strategic decision that I made from a professional standpoint because as many people who are lawyers know you need to plan to live in the area where you go to law school, because that's where you really kind of establish things, unless you're a straight A student in law school, which I wasn't a straight A student, I was a good student, but not a straight A student. And so otherwise, it can be challenging to, you know, form connections and all that kind of stuff, which then produces, you know, opportunities and, you know, jobs and, and things like that. And no one, no one told me that, and intuitively I didn't figure that out I didn't have any bias in my family that was an attorney or anything like that. You know, advanced degrees or stuff like that. So I didn't know that. So I went back to Ohio and it was hard to, to find a job in a firm. You know, Ohio has like a crazy number of law schools. So I automatically was competing with like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in Columbus, which is one of the largest cities. So I pivoted, looked at what other opportunities there could be for using the law and human resources was an ideal area. You know, I got in with a pretty big company—Nationwide—and you know, went from there.
LJR: And that's when you were kind of establishing how you were going to use this, who you were going to be. And once you're in a national company, that's pretty, you're kind of set, right? Like that's an easy road, not easy road, but kind of stable road for the most part. And one could live out their lives there. You did not do that.
MB: No, I was there for a long time. I relocated with them a couple times, worked my way into different positions, leadership jobs and things like that, expanded scopes and had opportunities to build programs for them. And, you know, evolved programs for them and things like that. And so it was a great experience and I made a lot of friends, you know, people that to this day, I, you know, still have, you know, fond relationships with. So, I think that, you know, the experience in Nationwide was a really good experience. And, you know, sometimes people say, Oh, I stayed there too long. I should have left earlier. And all that kind of stuff. And back to like the young versus the current me. Like, younger me would have said, Oh, I should have left after so many years and gone on somewhere else. And that kind of thing. But I really believe that the journey you're on is the journey you're on. And you make choices on that journey. And I don't think there are any bad choices. There are just choices. And every choice has a consequence. Every choice has a result. And you know, I think the worst thing that can happen is to never learn from any other results or choices. So I feel like me staying there for 18 years was part of my journey and it's, you know, helped me grow and evolve and I've seen a lot learned a lot and you know, it helped prepare me for the next thing that I you know would do in my life.
LJR: So yeah, and the next thing or a couple of other Kind of HR roles in established companies, but you decided you were gonna hit it out on your own. [MB: Yeah.] What is that decision process?
MB: You know, I think over the course of my career, I've been fortunate to do a lot of things for companies. I have been fortunate to create a HR Compliance Governance Program for Nationwide that did not exist and oversee that and lead that. I was able to develop Nationwide's ADA FMLA program, leave management program, and I oversaw them moving to a third party administrator for certain aspects of lead management. I created a sexual harassment program. I created, I did a bunch of stuff there. And it's interesting to have the opportunity to do things that you haven't done or to use your knowledge in different ways. And then to be able to realize, okay, I can do that. Okay. That makes sense. That worked out. Okay, good, good, good, good. And you just kind of keep moving forward. That's kind of a theme I say a lot: keep moving forward. And I think that for me, probably the really cool thing about the Nationwide experience was that not realizing it set me up for whatever I would do next. So going to Centene, I was able to use experiences from Nationwide to help that company and to do things at that company and to expand my experience. Leaving Centene and going to Unified, same thing. And when it was time to move on from Unified, it felt like, you know, maybe this is the time that we, that I go do this.
And so I talked to my wife. So I was married, I got divorced and then I met my wife and we've been together for 10 years now. And we have two kids, so I have an 18-year-old daughter and then I have a son who's 7. So, 18-year-old daughter graduated from high school, she's out living life and our son just started school. [LJR: Oh gosh.] So, he's in first grade. So so yeah, I came into my daughter's life when she was about eight going on nine. So my wife is a social worker. She's an extraordinary woman. She's been doing life coaching and counseling for almost 25 years. She's worked in hospitals. She's worked in schools and she is just a pretty amazing person. And when I was deciding kind of what I wanted to do next, like, you know, at that one year mark at Unified, and I was kind of like, I want to continue to do this, want to do something different. She and I talked about it and we were just like, you know what? As I said, I've done a lot of things for companies, really big companies, multi-billion dollar companies, Fortune 100, Fortune 25. There are a lot of small companies out there, medium sized companies that don't have, you know, certain levels of HR support and it's not because those individuals aren't excellent that are there doing HR It's that there aren't enough of them. They don't have enough people and so I felt like, you know, I could help Organizations I could help them in different ways and in addition to that, you know, I could help build programs That exist at Fortune 100 companies for small or medium sized companies and not do it in a way where it's going to cause them to have all this cost because, you know, a lot of small businesses like, you know, obviously having a small business, you know, you don't have money for all of that. You have money for what makes sense. And the key is helping them understand that this makes sense, but doing it in a way that, you know, financially makes sense for them, too. So we decided to kind of move out into that, but we wanted to make sure that our business was diversified, that it wasn't just kind of one vertical and all your eggs in one basket. And so our company really has kind of three verticals. We have a coaching component to our company, we have a development arm to our company, and then we have HR consulting, which is a bunch of other things that we also provide. And so we've been going now for almost a year and you know. Things are coming along.
LJR: So yeah, that's great. And was any of that calculus to kind of precipitated by the fact that you were putting a little one through school, and you're in a different place to kind of prioritize fatherhood and all of those family things?
MB: It probably had less to do with that because I think over the course of me working, I've always tried to be there for my Children. You know, I had, I had kids later in life and I became a dad when I was 40. And so, you know, it's a heck of a thing to live 40 years where you're really just taking care of yourself. And, you know, if you're married, you have one other person. And it's a completely different life. As you know, you have a couple of kids. It's a completely different life when you have children. And you know, you just kind of learn that life is bigger than what you've ever known. And I think, conceptually, I think most people understand that. You know, you understand when you have kids, your life changes. But I don't think there's a full appreciation for it until you find yourself staring at yourself in the midst of understanding that you Hey, I've got children now. I've got a kid and where a kid is coming or, you know, I'm going to marry this woman and she has a child, like you start to actually realize, okay, okay. This is a bigger, bigger world than you quite understood.
LJR: And maybe I have it completely wrong because I do know that small business owners like live, sleep, eat. So maybe there's even less time kind of being your own person. But I'm sure that you're working out that juggle. Are you getting outside?
MB: Oh, now I see what you're saying. I…let me, let me address that. So I, I think I think that as a small business owner, you are right. You're, you're working hard and you're doing certain things. But I think for me and my life, what matters the most to me is my family, my son and my daughter and my wife and my extended family and my grandmother, you know, all the other members of my family. And so, you know, for a long time, I would relocate for a position. We'd move here, we'd move there. And early on in our marriage we were here in Ohio most of the time, and then we relocated to Georgia for a position. We were there for about a year, and then we relocated back here to Ohio. And after being here for about a year, determined that, you know, We do this, we, we do this business and there are some different things that we need to be able to do personally schedule wise and things like that, that having this business has allowed us to do, it's allowed us to be able to do whatever is necessary for our family, whether it's go take care of something for this family member. Go take care of something for that family member. Have the flexibility to do what's necessary for this child or that child. And so, I think being a small business owner has all these different things that it provides you. But it is, you know, it's a grind. It's challenging. And you're, you're continuously pushing yourself in a way that I don't think I fully understood I was going to be doing. But it's helped me grow and evolve and all those kinds of things. And, you know, I will say that you know, as a small business owner, when you start to get your clients and you start to, you know, be able to do what you set out to do versus preparing for that to happen, which is what I'd kind of say is a lot of in the beginning, what you're doing, when you're building your business, you're preparing for getting those clients when you. When you start to get them, there's just a feeling like, okay, this is, this is the right thing. It's like validation, I guess is the best way to put it.
LJR: Yeah. You know, like validation that you've been on the right path and doing the right thing. MB: You know, in my life, I've done some unorthodox things like when I was married before, I sold everything that I owned. I sold my house, sold my cars, and only kept what could fit in a 10 by 10 storage unit, bought a fifth wheel and a truck and lived out of it for a year with my ex wife, and we traveled and went different places and stuff like that. So, that was…
LJR: Was that like taking a sabbatical from We were, we were looking at it that way. [LJR: Okay.] Nationwide offered me a position that would allow me to work from home before remote was a thing. Ooh. And I could work from anywhere on the West Coast. And so we were in Dallas at the time, went from Texas to the East Coast. Then we went back across the country to the West Coast, went up through like Vegas and California, settled outside of Seattle in a place called Paulsville which is on the other side of the Kitsap Peninsula. So, that was an interesting experience.
I think growing up, you see your parents, like your parents are your frame of reference. They're your, you know, whatever you want to call it. Positive, negative, whatever it is for each individual, but it's your frame of reference and it fuels you in different ways. You know, I want to do this. I want to do that.
I want to be like this. I don't want to be like this, whatever it is. And then you're off and going and for, you know, really high, high achieving people, there's a financial component in there for a lot of them. I want to make a lot of money or I want to make enough money. I don't have to worry about money, whatever it is. And as you go and you maybe you achieve this, you achieve that, or you make whatever it is, you are able to then do whatever you want to do. I can buy this. I can buy that. I can go here. I can go there. But I think that what, at some point you come to understand that all those things you can buy, all that's all those things you have, it's just stuff. And I got a glimpse of that in law school when I was working for a law firm, I was going to school, and I was making more money than I'd made before. It wasn't a lot, but I was making more money. I had all this money that was in the bank that I could just spend. And I'd never had that before, and I went out and bought a coat, a bunch of pairs of pants, all this stuff, all these clothes, and I had them sitting in my closet, and I remember sitting, standing there looking at it, and I was like, wow, I've never had the ability to do this. And it was satisfying for like 10 seconds, and then at the end of those 10 seconds, I looked at it, and I was like, oh, this is just stuff. And I just, I walked away from it and was like, what do I want to do now with my time?
It was like epiphany is not the right word. It's like a realization or an understanding that if you put all of your focus and efforts in achieving something that has no substance to it, then once you achieve it, you realize there's nothing else there. So now what's the point, you know? And so, you know, and I was like 22, 23 when, when I had that experience.
And even younger when you had another experience, a different experience about realizing stuff is just stuff and you kind of have to keep going no matter what. Talk about the fire.
MB: When I was a senior in college, I, I got a, a message. I was spending time with a, with a girlfriend and hanging out. And I got an email that said, Hey, there was a message for you that you know, you need to call home. So I go back to my room. I call the message. And it's a friend, a former teammate from when I was in high school, whose mom, they lived in the same neighborhood, basically said, Hey, you're, you're, Your house, there was a fire in our neighborhood and your house was affected, you know, your parents are okay, you know, they're, they're staying with friends, you know, here's the number and all that but I'm so sorry and I was like, Oh my gosh, okay, thank you. Thank you. And I call my parents, I talk to them and I find out that, you know, our house burned down.
LJR: With everything in it.
MB: Yeah, everything, everything, you know, there was a fire in the neighborhood. A couple blocks over that house. And back then the roofs were wood shingle roofs and in Dallas, Texas. So it was just crazy. And it just kind of jumped from house to house and our house caught fire. And yeah, that was completely devoured. And I remember, you know, anyone who, who plays sports as a young person and, you know, has some success in it and stuff, you play in tournaments and you travel and you do all this stuff. And if your team’s fortunate, you win tournaments. And so you have trophies from that. You have trophies from your league, you have trophy, you have medals, you have all these things. And so we had this trophy case in our house that probably had 50, 60 trophies on it, and it was kind of like a reminder of, you know, how hard you've worked and all these different things and all of that, and you know, that was gone. Gone and everything I owned was gone. All I had was what I had at school. And I remember I was in the midst of applying to law school and, you know, financially that was a huge hit for my family. I remember not, not having the money to be able to pay for the application fees for law school and having to, you know, write a letter that said, I don't have the money to pay for this. Can I still apply to your school? And so there's kind of a fine line between how your life is today and how your life, what your life can become. And it comes down to circumstances and things that happen and that fire was something that happened to our family. We got through it and we're okay today and my parents are doing well. They're living in another part of Dallas and doing very well. But life is going to throw a lot of stuff at you. And the question is, you know, you just, you gotta be able to weather it, and not let it beat you down, and not let it define you and understand, you know, that it's gonna be alright.
LJR: Yeah. And, and realizing a lot of that stuff is just stuff, and…
MB: Yeah. It is. It is. Those trophies that were so important, I can't, I can't even remember what they look like. I don't remember what they look like. I don't remember what tournaments they were.
LJR: But it doesn't diminish the hard work that you put in.And what you got out of being an athlete and all of those things.
MB: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But in the end, when you win a tournament, people seem to covet the trophy. You know, there's the whole, hey, yeah, I got the trophy, you know, but that trophy can disappear in a second and it's more about the experience and what you took away from it than the, the souvenir.
LJR: Right. And I mean, I guess that gave you perspective that you were then able to just kind of look in that closet and realize it's just stuff and then put all this stuff in the back of a trailer and adventure and you have a different look at that. So there are lessons learned. But gosh, it's really hard, particularly at that age.
MB: I think for younger people, I think it's important for them to understand that you just have to keep living your life and trying to be the best version of yourself that you can. Like, I wish someone would have told me when I was 21 that it's going to be okay. And it's a simple statement, but it's a very strong statement because I think we have challenges that happen in our lives, whether it's a divorce, or it's a family member that gets really sick, or it's realizing you have a child that has chronic illness, or it's a child that has challenges with certain things, and, and you, you don't understand in the moment that it's gonna be okay, but it's gonna be okay.
And when you're in the midst of struggle, it's very hard to see that. And I think that if you can learn that at a young age, As almost kind of like your own fortification that, you know, Hey, it's going to be all right. It's going to be okay. It's hard. It's tough. It sucks. It's whatever it is for you, but it's going to be okay.
You just have to keep moving forward and you have to believe that it's going to be okay.
LJR: Yeah. Well, I'm so glad it's been okay for you.
MB: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think life is, life has been very good to me, right? IWhen I was going into high school, I didn't think I'd go to a school like Dartmouth. I mean, I thought I'd go to college and I thought I'd play soccer and, you know, I'd go on a full ride somewhere and do that. But I didn't think I'd go somewhere like Dartmouth. I didn't even know Dartmouth existed when I was 14. I had no idea. And I remember I went to the college night at my school and we walked by that, that table, my parents were like, what do you think of this school? And I said, what school is that? They said, it's an Ivy league school. And I was like, Ivy league, Like Harvard? Ivy league? And they were like, yeah. And I was like, Oh, I don't know if I can go to school like that. And they're like, you're smart. You can go there. So the concept of imposter syndrome and the concept of, you know, self doubt and all of that, like it's a deep thing in people.
And I've learned that over my coaching, learned over my career and stuff. But you know, it starts very, very young. And if you don't have people who help you understand what you can do, there's a lot of people that, you know, maybe don't, don't think they should push themselves beyond what they know.
LJR: Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you, I mean, I feel like you've always had that kind of self-awareness of like taking a step back and saying, what, why am I doing this? What is going on here? How does that fit in? Which is a big help for those situations too.
MB: Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to do. I was coaching a client not too long ago. And I was telling them that I think one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself is to be self-aware. You know, I meet people who are in their fifties who are not self-aware. They're not willing to. And, you know, I tell people. One of the hardest things about being self-aware is that you have to first be willing to understand yourself. And then once you understand yourself, you have to be willing to accept yourself for who you are. And once you can accept yourself, then you can say, I want to work on this. I want to work on that. Oh, I'd like to develop this. But if you can't accept yourself, then you can really never achieve self-awareness. And I know a lot of people…it's very hard to accept who you are, because then you have to really admit that, hey, I can't do this, or I'm not good at that, or I've fallen short on this. But the truth of the matter is, it's okay that you're not good at that, or that you can't do that, or that you've fallen short on that. That's all right. There's nothing wrong with that.
LJR: It would be so boring if we were all together, right?
MB: Well, yeah, yeah. But I think there's a lot of people, right? Like a lot of high, high achievers, or just people who want to go do this, who want to go do that. They're hard on themselves. And if they admit that they can't do something, Well, then that's a bad thing, you know, and there's really nothing wrong with that. It's okay. It's alright. Everything's gonna be okay.
LJR: Well, I believe you. I want to believe you at least.
MB: Yeah.
LJR: All right. Well, I think this has shown that self-awareness really does, like, let you be who you are going to be and show up for people the way they probably need you and the way that you can give the best of yourself. So I love that we could finally talk. I love hearing this and who knows what the next steps will be for you, but I'm sure it'll be great. So Mario, thank you so much for your time.
MB: Yeah, sure. Thank you. I appreciate it.
LJR: That was Mario Barge, Co-Founder and Principal at Geneva Executive Partners, who is an expert in human resource development, coaching and consulting having previously served in a variety of HR leadership roles for Fortune 100 companies. He spends lots of time with his family and continues to learn more about himself.
We always love when we learn a little bit more about our listeners, so please do consider dropping us a line through the Contact Us link at RoadsTakenShow.com or leave a comment or review wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe or follow there, too, so you won't miss any new episodes with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on Roads Taken.