From Shakespeare to Sourcing: Finding Purpose in Procurement

STACY JOSLIN 0:06

Welcome to ProcureAbility's Procurement Pathways. A journey into the dynamic world of procurement told through the voices of its most trusted leaders. Here, every story, every lesson, and every hard-won insight reveals how personal passion fuels professional impact, and how those moments taken together shape the future of our field. Today's guest is Kelly Barner, Art of Procurement co-founder and head of content and operations. Hi, Kelly. I'm so excited to have you here. Thank you for doing this.

KELLY BARNER 0:39

Absolutely, Stacy. I'm glad to be here. And based on our pre-conversation, I have a feeling we're going to blink and all of the time has going to have gone by, but we will have had a really fun time together.

STACY JOSLIN 0:49

100%. So I think most of our uh listening audience will be familiar with you as part of Art of Procurement. But please do tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your background. I'd love to uh talk more about your academic background too, because that was a neat aha for me.

KELLY BARNER 1:07

Sure. And it will make absolutely no sense, even to the people that know me from procurement. So plan one was to be a Shakespeare professor. Um I think already, though, my my decision not to go ahead with that showed early signs of a tendency for things that would make me successful in procurement. So I was actually accepted to the master's degree programs uh in English for for both Boston College and Boston University, which is very exciting. The issue is it was $50,000 per year for two years, terminal masters. No guarantee that you get to go on to the doctoral program. And I did some quick math and I thought this is a terrible decision. So I actually walked away from what had always been my plan. Um, I scrambled last minute. I managed to get accepted to the Master's in library science program at Simmons College, so staying Boston. Um, and while I was there, I discovered that there's such a thing as corporate libraries where you get to do research. And it was like my first professional love. It brought together everything I liked about learning and research, but then writing up what you found. Uh, that landed me my first professional job, which was working for at the time Ahold USA. They were the company that, if you're in the Boston area or New Jersey, New York, stop and shop. But there's a number of other chains up and down the East Coast, across Europe, even Central America. Um, I was part of their knowledge management program. And what happened, unfortunately, is that they had an Enron style accounting scandal, and it thrust the company into major disruption financially. So they looked at their list and they're like, okay, we're gonna have to let some people go. And if you're a supermarket company, operations comes first. Last on the list said knowledge management. So basically, my whole team was disbanded, everybody had their date. But because I love education, I had taken the company up on the opportunity to get a full boat sponsored MBA at Babson College. Um, and I was like two-thirds of the way through the program. If they laid me off, I was gonna walk. There was nothing to make me stay. I didn't owe them the money back. And some very clever person in HR was like, uh-oh, this is bad. And approached me and said, How do you feel about strategic sourcing? And I was like, What the heck is strategic sourcing? Right. Like, I don't even know what this is. Um, but you know, having a job is kind of nice. So I was like, I'll figure it out as I go. And just like first time around with finding corporate libraries, finding procurement and strategic sourcing, and not for resale and professional services. I loved it. It was like being, I don't know, four years old again and watching Mr. Rogers tour factory. It was all over again, finding out how a business works from sort of the backroom forward. Um, and and that's my twisty path of how I went from uh Shakespeare to sourcing, um, not necessarily having a plan, but at the same time, kind of enjoying every step along the way.

STACY JOSLIN 4:22

So we are following in the grand tradition of nobody planning to be in procurement, right? 100%. Everybody, I'm sure everybody you've talked, a lot of the folks you've talked to have been the same thing on art of procurement side. But you may have the award for the biggest jump from what you what you did academically and where you gravitated to originally to procurement. Um that's a that's a big, and I kind of did the same thing. I was in, I was an English major, English and Spanish in college. And then my first go at grad school was in a master's program in Latin American literature. Oh, yikes. Okay. And then I thought, I thought to myself, am I gonna be a Spanish professor? No. So that's when I went to business school, and then you know, just happened upon strategic sourcing. So it's the same, you know, really engaging a different part of your brain.

KELLY BARNER 5:16

Yeah.

STACY JOSLIN 5:17

But what are some of the gifts that your natural proclivity to Shakespeare, literature, education, all those things have given you when it comes to the job you have now?

KELLY BARNER 5:31

Well, and it's interesting too, because I think it's it's two things, and people probably would not expect these things. One, frankly, is storytelling. You know, and I think that applies, I mean, yeah, I've been hosting podcasts forever, interviewing people forever in person and webinars, all that. But procurement as a whole, even if you think about, okay, you've got a meeting with the CFO, oh, you've got a meeting with six people that are going to help you make a decision about which suppliers get this contract, they probably don't know each other. They might not like each other. They completely disagree about which supplier they think is best. And although procurement doesn't necessarily have a dog in the fight from the perspective of making a decision, you need a decision. And so using some of those storytelling skills to get people to hear what each other is saying, to help them rationalize all that down to a decision. I think that's one piece of it. But the other piece of it, I didn't appreciate until much later. Even in undergrad, when I was an English major, my advisor would tell me that I read literature like an analyst. Because I would read a play or a book or whatever. And I would come back and I would say, Hey, did anybody else notice that after act three, so-and-so is never alone and always only has one woman with him, but it's never the same woman. So I would start to almost chart these plots. What are the actors doing? What's happening with the dialogue? Where do things shift? It certainly helped me from needing to comment on the pieces and get into very engaged discussions. But I think being analytical is another one of those things that you need to be in procurement to make recommendations or to answer questions or to support decision making. If you combine that with storytelling, there's almost nothing you can't do. So, not part of the plan. And it's funny you talk about this. We we ask people all the time, like, you know, was it your plan to end up in procurement? It's actually scary how many of us were in procurement before we knew what it was. So, not even like, oh, well, it wasn't on the plan to own my own business or go into procurement or work in supply chain or no, no, no, no, I had the job, I still didn't know what it was yet. It's a little bit alarming how common that is.

STACY JOSLIN 7:48

That's yeah, good point. I've been doing it, but I didn't realize I was doing it. That kind of thing. No idea. That's crazy. That's I can see it though, especially back then, right? If you're talking to people who've been in the biz for a number of years now. Yeah. That's fascinating. So here you are moving into strategic sourcing from the unique background that you have. How did you get from there to art of procurement doing the wonderful work that you're doing now?

KELLY BARNER 8:22

So I had gotten the job without knowing what I was doing, continued on, finished my master's degree from Babson in Business.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

And you know, you put all that work in, you're thinking, like, okay, now I have an MBA. Probably I should have the expectation of a promotion.

KELLY BARNER 8:39

And it didn't work out for me to stay at the company where I was and get a promotion there. But we had just finished implementing this thing called Amptoris. And at the time, Vem and Ariba and CombinedNet were sort of like the really big procurement technologies. E-sourcing, nobody invented orchestration and intake yet. But all the talk was about spend analysis, e-sourcing, auctions. Um, we just finished implementing, and the director of consulting found out I had gotten my MBA and approached me about joining the consulting team. So, depending on your perspective, I went to the dark side. Um, but from a career standpoint, it was amazing because it gave me the opportunity to use what I had learned as a practitioner and instead do it across companies, across industries, at different maturity levels. We called it program design. So you've just bought this technology. How do you help your team understand what structures and frameworks and reporting and communications need to sort of back it up? We were doing procurement transformation. Um, it's just at the time it was looked at as being putting a supporting framework in place to make the technology deliver the ROI that had been promised. So I did that for, gosh, I think it was like two, two and a half years. I actually loved that job. Um, I bonded with a lot of my clients. Um, probably the most notable client. Um, I spent 18 months helping Conway, which is now part of XPO, um, set up their professional procurement program. That's where I officially got bitten by the supply chain bug. So that's sort of my connection there. Um, but the hard thing about that job was that it was like 136% travel. So when the time came to start a family, it was kind of like, okay, well, time for a new idea. Um, one of my former colleagues had started this thing called Buyer's Meeting Point. And she's like, hey, come join me. We'll do this. I was like, okay. You know, once again, I have no idea what we're talking about, but I'm like, sure, you know, show me where to sign up. Why not? Um, we did that together for a few years. I had just written my second book, and this very friendly guy with a British accent reached out and said, Hey, I'm starting a procurement podcast. Would it be okay? Like, would you mind? Could I interview you about your book for my new show? Um, so Philip Bideson and I connected to record the podcast. It was episode six, which still kind of tweaks me to this day. Cause if I had been one later, I would have been AOP 007. Like, oh man. I'm so close. Um, but he and I connected to report the podcast. Not even kidding, by the end of like the 40 minutes, it was like I had known him forever. Um, and I basically just never went home at that point. I it took us a little while, like buyer's meeting point ran in parallel to art of procurement for a number of years. We consolidated one thing at a time, um, and eventually got to the point where now you blink and we're in year 11 working as a team, um, keeping art of procurement running. You know, we've we've changed what we do, we've changed how the structure is, we've changed what the business does. But for me, from sort of a continuation standpoint, it's always been that every time you're presented with a decision, what seems like the most fun? What seems new? What's interesting? And so my decision-making basis has always remained the same, even as the options that I've been presented with have changed. Um, man, and in those early days, Phil was such a good sport. We would arrange webinars around meeting to pick my kids up from preschool. I mean, it was like you did what you had to do. And this was, you know, before everybody went home for COVID. So we were all still pretending like we were sitting in big glass offices someplace. Um, but we we managed it. You know, it's like fake it till you make it. We managed to pull it off and work together enough that now we've built a team and it's it's absolutely fantastic to think back over that 10, 11 year period and all the things we've experienced and all the stuff that's changed. But it's to me, it's all very connected, even right from Shakespeare to where Phil and I are today.

STACY JOSLIN 12:57

It's a beautiful story and it's an example, it's a really good example of when it's right. Yes. You know, and I think the world of Phil, I truly do. And I can understand that knowing what I know about you and and knowing what I know about him, that it's a true partnership, and you're building this together. And one of the other things that I'm sure is a strength for you based on your background is listening. I know it is for him as well, that you really actively listen to each other and you take on each other's feedback and you work as a collaborative team and help make each other better. And you can see that in the end result, that it's a true partnership and collaboration.

KELLY BARNER 13:40

And you can't fake that, right? For anybody that's ever gone to our website or or maybe even had a conversation with us about it. Number one corporate value, no jerks. We don't allow jerks on our team. We don't work with customers that are jerks, we don't partner with third parties that are jerks, we're not jerks to each other. Like it's it's like you take on enough risk to go out on your own and make this whole thing work. There's a lot of stuff you have to do that you don't know how to do or that you don't feel like you're great at, but you figure it out. But we agreed from almost day one, nobody should have to put up with poor treatment at any point. It's it's just, it's not a trade we were ever able to make for any kind of gain.

STACY JOSLIN 14:22

And that's good leadership too. You know, you're you're as you co-lead this, that's good leadership. And Howard Richman talked about this on a past podcast. People aren't your most important asset. They're your only asset. Yes, it's a Stephen Covey thing. I don't, he didn't, you know, create it, but it's all about the people. And you can see when you do something like you're doing where you're out there in the public eye, different from, you know, writing a book or staying, you know, behind closed doors. You can really feel the vibration of that. And it's critical. That's how you how you build a business. You can really tell that's what you've done.

KELLY BARNER 14:58

And and we're grateful to have it, honestly. I mean, yes, we and we purposefully invest in building that, but we also recognize how grateful we are to have been able to maintain it for so long. Because it's it's not necessarily an easy thing.

STACY JOSLIN 15:11

It's not. And that's, would you say 11 years now? Yeah, 11 years. Wow. That's fantastic. Congratulations. That it is. And it's it's rare, Kelly, to your point. It it absolutely is in this space to have something like this with the legs that you have. And it just continues to grow and evolve.

KELLY BARNER 15:28

Yeah. And it's flown. I mean, it's been a really fast, we've been very busy, I have to say. We've been very busy. So you don't have a lot of time to like look up and and sort of like, oh my goodness, how much time has gone by? It's like you blink and it's been 11 years. It's crazy. That's it. It's like raising a kid, right?

STACY JOSLIN 15:44

Like, when did you get tall? You know, why are you driving? Oh, don't even, let's not even go there. I would love to go back to what you said a little bit ago about sure. That was the word that I wrote down. When you got the job opportunity, you said, I it was risky, I didn't know what to expect. But sure. Um, I know you have some some more to share with us around that concept of maybe it's not the right time, don't know what I'm getting into, but going with your gut, because it that's that's such a theme and it's worked out for you. So I'd love to hear more about going with your gut in your career.

KELLY BARNER 16:23

Yeah, absolutely. And and this is, you know, when you and I had talked previously and and talked with Kathleen Pomento, who we adore working with, um, one of the things that I was very clear I wanted to be able to do for this is Phil and I are on mic and camera all the time. And I wanted to make sure there was something new to say. And so I had been thinking back, what are all the things I the decisions that got me to where I am, but that I haven't talked about. Um, and there are a couple along the way. One particularly crazy decision that I made is at one point um I was working still at MTORUS, and um, you know, companies go through different cycles. And the decision had been made to reduce headcount at the company. And at this point, I'm, I don't know, eight, eight and a half months pregnant with my daughter. I'm driving into the office and my boss calls me, which is sort of weird. So I pulled over and I answered, and he was like, Hey, where are you? Um, in my car on the on the way to work. And he's like, Look, I need to tell you something before you get here. The decision has been made to reduce headcount. Um, our our team is being affected. And uh, I was assistant director of consulting at this point. One of the people that had been slated to be let go was also personally one of my best friends. And so I think that's why I was getting the heads up on the way into the office. Nobody wants the pregnant lady seen in the office on layoff day, right? That's just not good for morale. So he's telling me this, and I'm sitting and I'm thinking, and literally my first thought after I had processed what he was telling me was my husband is gonna kill me for doing this. But I said to him, lay me off instead. I'm I'm going to have a baby. I can't work this job full-time, I can't travel. Sure, I could contract or consult or go part-time or whatever, but like we know this is happening. Lay me off instead. And and he said, Kelly, that's not how it works. Like metrics, you're really profitable. Please just try. I'm still coming in, I promise I'll keep my head, but please just try. Go make the offer. And he's like, Okay, okay, I'll try. So I went to the office, I'm maintaining poker face all day long. Every once in a while, somebody gets called to go upstairs. And you're thinking, oh, it's it's just it's horrible for anybody that's lived through that, right? Back in the in-person layoff days, all day long. We never knew when somebody was going to get called. I never said a word. The day ended. We were told it was done. And the person I was concerned about never got called in. So I still don't know the rest of the story because I was terrified to ask. I didn't even want to get back involved in it. But what I hope is that my willingness to go instead did get delivered. And maybe it made somebody with decision-making authority rethink what happened. Um, and it was never discussed again. I didn't bring it up with my boss ever again. This person never found out to this day, still does not know. Um, but in looking back, my sort of self-reflection of that was like, okay, so you're less logical than you thought you were, because that was not necessarily a logical, rational thing to do. Um, but it was interesting to me that when faced with something so uncertain, that was my instinct. And I've come like, you know what, whatever it is, I'm always gonna figure it out. Uh, and it doesn't matter if it's too much work, too little work, good situation, bad situation. Um, whatever it is, I'm gonna figure it out. It's more interesting and more comfortable for me to go with my gut than to have to like explain it to myself or live with it later.

STACY JOSLIN 20:32

Yeah.

KELLY BARNER 20:32

More authentic. It's just, it's easier to live with. And I'm not somebody that walks around always, you know, blurting the first thought that comes into my head. Um, the elementary school that my kids all went through, they called it the thought bubble. So, like if you say something that probably should have stayed in your head, you know what? That was a thought bubble comment. And even though obviously not in third grade, that concept stays with me. So I'm not somebody that like doesn't have a thought bubble and I just walk around blurting things. Um, but but I do think sometimes when the moment is right, you have to not overthink it. You have to just go. Um, and and anytime I've been faced with a really serious decision, I've always leaned on the side of just go, trust your instinct, you'll figure it out later. And in some way or other, it has always worked out.

STACY JOSLIN 21:23

It's not something that a lot of people have the, I'm gonna use the word courage to do. Because even when your gut is is telling you very clearly this is the look at that example, right? Of the path to take. Here you are literally about to give birth. And the right decision is to say, take me instead. But that is opening up a whole Pandora's box of uncertainty in your life. But because I just said deja vu, but because it it was the right decision. It sat well. And because it sat well, that's what you did.

KELLY BARNER 22:04

And I don't even know, like, I'll be honest with you, Stacy. I'm not necessarily comfortable with the word courage on that. I get where you're coming from. Interestingly, to me, it actually goes back to the analytical point we talked about. The math was clear. It did not make sense to leave me in that spot. I was more expensive. I was about to expire, right? Just the math for everybody involved in that situation. I didn't make the decision based on thinking about courage. I also didn't make the decision based on emotion, frankly. And I think that's part of what helped me in that moment go sort of like click, click, click, the gears fell into place. Okay. Analytically speaking, what puts me in a position where I'm being honest? What's best, I think, for my team that I'm leaving.

STACY JOSLIN 22:52

Yep.

KELLY BARNER 22:52

What's best for this other person who did not do anything wrong to bring upon themselves this thing that's about to happen? It was very clear math. And I'm bad at math, but like in this case, like the analytics of the situation, it was just so straightforward to me. You know what? I'll be upset about this later. Like I don't have time to be upset right now. Right now, this is just the right decision. Time is limited. Let's see what we can do. That clarity.

STACY JOSLIN 23:19

That's that's that's fantastic.

KELLY BARNER 23:20

And look how it ended up. Look how it ended up. And that's the thing. Like, that's the reward. At the end of the day, right? You you end up in the right place. And some of that, frankly, is about um oh, who sang the song? Love the one you're with. It's like a classic rock. Oh, yeah. And the eagle flies with the dove, right? Okay, this can be this can be the interactive portion of this. As people are listening, go find wherever you found this and stick it in the comments. Exactly. I can hear the song now.

STACY JOSLIN 23:45

I just cannot call it up.

KELLY BARNER 23:46

Yeah. But be happy with where you end up. You know, I'm uh maybe it's what let me make the choices I did. Once I let go of the Shakespeare thing, once I let go of the corporate library research thing, I was both directionless and free to make whatever choice I wanted in every single situation. And so it's like, okay, you know, everywhere I go, there I am. And I'm gonna be happy about where I am. I'm gonna find a way to make the most out of it. And it's all gonna be okay.

STACY JOSLIN 24:16

That's that's it. You give yourself the freedom to find something new. You're not like mired into a certain thing with a certain set of expectations that keeps you from doing what from something like art of procurement, right? If you hadn't been open to finding or doing something a little bit off the cuff or finding something new, right?

KELLY BARNER 24:38

Yeah. And it's it's something that has continued to kind of come up along the way. Um, I did think of one other story, please, that I've never shared. Um, I will just say this woman's name was Julia. I won't go into more detail about company or anything than that. But back when I was just at Buyers Meeting Point, this woman, Julia, who did work in marketing, approached me and said, Hey, I like, I hope this isn't a rude question, but I just wanted to know all of my writing that I was doing at the time ran under my own name. Would you be willing to go straight? She's like, I don't mean to like take away from you that you can do this or whatever. I'm like, okay, well, it doesn't feel rude. Like, I don't, I don't feel particularly bothered. You know, you're gonna pay me for it. That's pretty great. And it and it was another one of those things that led me down the road. But I think what what I appreciate the most about that in retrospect was not even like a new line of revenue. It's that somebody looked at me when I was little and single shingle and by myself at Buyers Meeting Point and said to themselves, this person has value beyond what they are presenting to the outside world. Yes. And so I'm gonna approach her with this idea. And let's see what she says. And I think the flip side of that is that I was doing the exact same work, basically, at Buyers Meeting Point that I'm doing now with Phil and the rest of the team and Art of Procurement. The difference was, and granted, it's it's been 10 years, but you know, we're not talking about, you know, decades and decades and decades. My initial articles, I wrote for $250 each. $250, and it would take me four hours, six hours. I mean, I was making nothing to write these articles. And still, I would get on like, you know, business development calls or whatever with people, and they would turn it down because they didn't feel like the price was right. Yeah. Now, change that, join Phil. Now it's art of procurement. We've added on like some other capabilities. Even in our very earliest days, it instantly was a 10x difference. And so the other side of value is, you know, this woman, Julia, looked at me and said, okay, this is an under-leveraged resource. How can we work with this? But then there's also what is it that other people look at to set their scale on value? My writing's not different. My writing's the same. Why did it go from $250 to $2,500 practically overnight? Different brand. I will say I think the British accent has a little something to do with it. I'll just throw that out there. But but really, like perception of value. Yes. Where do people assign value in individuals, in service offerings, in product offerings? It's it's always been such an interesting thing to me because it continues to evolve. And even as we, you know, generative AI and how things get delivered and how content gets created keeps changing. I still think this human assessment of who has value, who's worth time, what do you want in exchange for what sum of money? It is so interesting to me to keep revisiting that and thinking about the human decision-making process that goes into it remains the same. The numbers change, the deliverables change, the people involved in delivering change. But there's still, if the more you can, you know, maybe back to your point about listening, the more you can get inside someone's head and logic and figure that out across people. I mean, that becomes an enormous competitive advantage. So I always procurement talks a ton about value, value beyond savings. What kind of value or business outcomes or whatever did we drive? Understanding assessment of perception of value is like the big uncracked sort of secret to me. And it's, I think it's good that it's uncracked because it means we keep coming at it from different ways, trying to solve it or satisfy it from different angles. So it's it's one of those things nobody's solved, nobody's ever going to solve because it's a moving target. But it's so interesting how people look at things and make decisions about what they want to do. Absolutely.

STACY JOSLIN 28:54

And the word value is such a gray area. I would like to follow up what I think is a really critical point about understanding your own value with this question. If you are talking to people in our audience who are struggling to share and make possible employers, possible partners understand their value, exactly to your point about writing the $250 article. What would you say to them? How would you advise them to support themselves?

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Oh, that's such a big question.

KELLY BARNER 29:32

Let me think for a second. So it's it's people that are trying to demonstrate their value to current or prospective employers.

STACY JOSLIN 29:41

Yeah. And coming up against a brick wall. You are only this, you are only this, you know.

KELLY BARNER 29:47

I think one of the mistakes that's really easy to make is staying in familiar terms. You know, and procurement gets knocked a lot. We have like our weird TLAs and nobody knows what we're talking about. You know, language is very important. And if we try to make things so clear that we boil them down to the wording that everybody else is also using to explain themselves, and you can no longer differentiate, I think it's a massive risk. You can only go so far along the continuum towards clarity that you start to lose anything that's individual about you. So for this, I would personally go back to the storytelling thing. You know, what is unique about the way you approach this category, this group of suppliers? What is the background that you had before you ended up in procurement that gives you different eyes for looking at the same situations everybody else is going to see? I think it's, you know, you still have to be clear. You can't leave somebody going, well, this person seems nice, but I don't actually know what she does. Like that's that's not helpful. It has to be a parent, what you're good at, what you're like. And I do think that what you're like is increasingly important. You got to fit into culture, you have to come across as energetic and professional and friendly and cooperative and all that. But what really is unique about you and keep telling that story until you find the organization that it clicks with. Um, I think it's easier to go through that exercise when you already have a job and you're just trying to sort of demonstrate total value.

STACY JOSLIN 31:32

That's so true.

KELLY BARNER 31:33

That's so much easier than when you're trying to like find an end to get a new role. Um, that's that's tough because I think digital has really made the whole recruiting and retention situation a little extra complicated.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Yeah.

KELLY BARNER 31:49

Um, but I think perfect your story. I mean, you think about elevator pitches on something like Shark Tank, they've got a very brief window of time to come in and sort of do theatrics and tell some story and win the sharks over. If you are not putting that same level of prep into getting ready to tell your individual story, but keeping the personality alive and the way that you communicate it, it's never going to land. And you have to be willing to take a risk, not just in terms of going after an opportunity, but you also have to be willing to, oh, and I'll just say it, be a little bit ridiculous at times. It it took me a long time. I can now actually listen to and watch my own recordings. I'm numb. My nerves are all finally worn away, like I'm good. But I can remember in the early days, and you'd watch this recording and you're thinking, oh my gosh, yeah, ridiculous. But like stage makeup, if it doesn't look ridiculous up close, nobody can see it from the back row, and then they're not getting the full experience, and you don't know who's making that decision. So you have to kind of get past the point of wanting to be so cautious about what you project. Um, when I was in high school, I was not big on public speaking or debate or anything. Um, but I actually competed in our space and debate team in the children's literature category. And my story was the Polar Express. And there were very specific rules about what you could and could not do. So, like you couldn't show up in a bathrobe. Anybody that knows the story of the movie will get that reference. No costumes were allowed, no props were allowed. You just had your face and the sound of your voice and a limited amount of time to hook your judge. And I think if you can, this is probably not advice you expected, Stacy. If you can do a small group children's story hour and hold them, there's nothing you can't do. Like that is the hardest but most rewarding, most demanding thing I can think of doing, but it's good prep for every boardroom meeting, every time you're trying to win over stakeholders, every negotiation with a supplier that's as unreasonable as a cranky seven-year-old. Like, if you can master that, those are transferable skills. And my example is children's story hour, but people are musicians, people work on cars, people paint things and go to art sales and put it all on the line for somebody to walk by and either laugh or make a joke or pay them a ton of money for the painting. You have to be able to, whatever your thing is, learn to put yourself out there, start to develop that callous. You have to be able to take the criticism. Absolutely. You have to be able to talk to people that don't agree with you about your value and yet keep going without your perception of that value being diminished. Absolutely critical, but you have to put yourself through the fire to get there.

STACY JOSLIN 35:01

Stay tuned for part two of our interview with Kelly Barner. For more than 30 years, ProcureAbility has been the leading provider of procurement and supply chain services, delivering best-in-class advisory, managed services, digital, and talent solutions across industries. Global organizations trust us to transform their procurement operations, drive growth, and reimagine what's possible. To receive our latest thought leadership, subscribe to ProcureAbility's Insights at procurability.com/insights.