Show Up as a Leader with Dr. Rosie Ward - Julie Perkins Transcript

3:18PM Oct 26, 2023

Speakers:

Julie Perkins

Keywords:

purpose

people

leaders

conversation

work

passion

growth

values

founder

love

company

vision

business

talk

organization

grow

big

customer

person

energy

This is short as a leader, a show from people forward network helping you maximize your positive impact on the world by becoming your best fully authentic self.

Hey, everyone, I am super jazzed about this awesome conversation I had with Julie Perkins. She is such an amazing ball of energy. She is the founder of a company called wise minds. And they provide support to female entrepreneurs to grow their business on their own terms. And she is passionate about helping to have a purpose filled growth in organizations. And while she works with entrepreneurs make no mistake, we talked about the applicability of whether you work for 100 year old company, a big company, small company, whether you are a team member or a former leader, or anything in between. And we talked a lot about how much in our work where we mistake energy, busyness working for belonging to a purpose. And I think that is such an important distinction. She talks a lot about the power of making ourselves redundant. And you're going to want to listen for four key drivers, she talks about with purpose driven growth, we also had a really great conversation around when we asked the question too soon about how we're going to get there. From a business standpoint, from a project standpoint, from an individual standpoint, and how that short circuits our ability to dream bigger and go bigger, there's just such richness in this conversation for so many different types of businesses, I think you're going to get a ton out of it.

All right, Julie, I am super excited to have this conversation on multiple levels for how much value is going to edit the show, but I'm just gonna say for me personally, as a business owner, so I'm just gonna dive right in. Because one of the things that I love about your focus is you focus on purpose led business growth. And I think so often, we think about business growth and purpose maybe as being separate, but how can we really look at growth in a purposeful way. And one of the things that struck me when we met is I know your focus is with young female entrepreneurs, I think that there's a lot of synergy of whether we're talking about 100 year old company, or a brand new company, there's a lot of places where as business owners or business leaders, we get in our own way. And so before we get into all of that, I would love it, if you would share what got you into this? Why are you so passionate about this?

Actually, I should say, because Thank you for having me. I'm very much looking forward to this conversation of being here today. So I think sometimes we're just passionate when something's happened to ourselves. So how did I get into it? From my failure, there's so much learning that we have in our careers, I started off very young, and I was opening up a brand in the Netherlands, everything was right on paper, but it was really chugging. And after 10 years it grown, it wasn't that journey that we thought we would take. And of course we do what all entrepreneurs do, and more people, we end up doing more and more, because we think the fault is ourselves or something is wrong. So we end up compensating for that. And really what happens, and this is why you're absolutely correct. Age has nothing to do with that at all, whether you're a new business, an old business, or a young founder, or whatever, there is this curve, where you start off with this passion and this purpose, and you're so busy trying to get it off the ground, that passion at the beginning is what holds it in what drives it, then that fades away, but you still carry on with the assumption that everybody gets it, and that everyone thinks the same as you. And what we do is we mistake this energy for belonging to the purpose, this excitement. And it's not at all it's just a lot of people mirroring your energy level. This is where the founder is running around, which is what I was doing that old ATL week. And of course, everyone around us was mimicking that energy level that you mistake it for this belonging and this unity. And when you actually sit down as an example, what exactly they're working towards. It's not the same thing, apart from a lot of energy going some way. And I think that was the biggest learning of my working leadership career where I sat in the garden it's 3am in the morning with a hands the errors if I say what more can I do? And there was some sort of message and ultimately the answer is less and ask the right questions. What is everybody working towards? And it hurts when people said we don't have any idea anymore. What has happened was, there was a lot of energy and a lot of efforts. But were we really unifying these incredible people, I was surrounded by amazing people. And the answer was probably not the greatest effect. So that's why I'm passionate about it. Because if it took me 10 years to realize that working with young entrepreneurs who have an unbelievable passion, how do we make sure that never with us, that's how I got into it, because I know it will bring the growth that they want, it's forever, not just for this moment when they start off, and it's all fresh. And it's amazing.

I love that on so many levels, I can literally right now, as you were talking thinking of five people that I know who in the last year have talked about, I want to fall back in love with my work, and they are business owners, and even Simon Sinek talks about that he had fallen out of love with his work. And whether you're a business owner or not, how many people have lost sight of that passion for what they do. I do a lot of work in healthcare. And so many people are frying or like, gosh, I've invested all this time, or teachers or whatever, like you have these professions that people went into with a really clear purpose of what they wanted to do and how it fit into their life. And they're becoming disenchanted and disheartened with it. And I think that's such a missed opportunity. And I will say that we have one of our clients and we write about them in our book, they are 100 year old company that did the work to get reconnected to who they are, what their purpose is, and search to really help people align to it because it does make a difference. So it doesn't have to be a startup entrepreneur, it can be a very established company. So I want to dig into that a little bit. Because one of the things that you talk about is regardless of what life stage, what businesses and if you talk about how do people figure out how do I fit in? And do we all have the same answer, we have to be able to figure out what the problem is, but where that misalignment sits, and how do we correct it? So how do you go about identifying what do you have misalignment? And then how do you go about correcting that misalignment? Because it sounds nice to say, but in practicality, it's really hard.

It's really hard because you have to ask yourself the right questions. And it always starts with the founder, which at the time was me, it's very difficult for entrepreneurs to answer this. Are you still in love with what you do? Because there's so much passion at the beginning. There's a guilt for falling out of love and admitting, actually, I'm not sure if I do love it anymore. I think there's a massive guilt, you put up this little baby and you're really saying to her pick it love this anymore. It's very difficult. And I think by asking that question, are you still in that position where you can be the best that you can be? And I say the first job is really to come to terms with the answer, being actually I'm not, I always do it is to say, Listen, this isn't your fault. You are unique in your business, but the way businesses grow is not. And your lack of love is misaligned. Because your business is trying to tell you something and you're not listening. It's not your fault, not ultimately, but you're in the way of saying that needs to happen, and you're fighting it. And that's why you're feeling unnerved with it. So I think that's the very first question is, is turned off with what you do. And you have to battle with it. Because there was a guilt to say, don't love it anymore. Yeah,

there's one person that's coming to mind that I've had conversations with. And there was a lot of emotion and a lot of guilt. Because what they're doing and what their purpose is for their company is extremely noble and extremely needed. And they're growing, and they're making a massive difference. And they're getting all kinds of accolades, rightfully so for it. And then you have this founder who's having this existential crisis getting caught up in the machine of the doing and the growth, I want to circle back to something because you said, it's normal, don't beat yourself up about it. And whether you are a founder or not, whether you're just like I have grown this project, or I've grown this division, or pick whatever you've been working on in your organization has been like your baby, because you put so much effort that you don't have that initial passion. You said something like your business, or also your project or whatever is trying to talk to you. When you say it's trying to talk to you like what should we be listening for? What is it saying to

us? It's a great point. And I think to summarize, it's not just about being founders, it's like people in a job because if you're stagnant or you're not moving, and you're trying to make this world better for you, then nobody around you is moving either. That very first question, and I do it on a regular basis. Now every six months, is I make myself redundant. And that's a very important thing to do on a regular basis because you take yourself out of the business and ask yourself that hard question, am I still doing what I love? And then to say, Where do I need to position myself best for the growth as a company and where fits my purpose and values? And I know that's a huge passionate so the beautiful conversation means that you've had in the past with speakers about the importance of purpose and values. But when the business is talking, when there's a misalignment, it's your purpose and values that are trying to connect into what you're doing. And if you have this passion to change something for the better, and suddenly you end up playing whack a mole, with everything like that, that's not what you signed up for. So it's a very important thing to actually start from purpose and values, where am I disconnecting? Where am I fighting? Because at that moment, it probably seems like a huge drama. But when you can break it down like that, it's not the whole journey. It's something so you can reposition yourself regularly. It doesn't have to be the sort of dramatic Oscar performance, you evolve himself. That's really the very first step. Where do I want to be? And what do I have to do in order to be able to achieve that position? Who do I have? And quite often, you'll find that if the series of waves of growth go like this, you've got one foot on one, one foot on the other, and slowly you're drowning, and everyone stood around wondering what to do. So this is a beautiful, very first step, having the honest conversation and asking yourself who found? What did I sign up for? What was this all about?

Well, I love that. And again, going back to if you work for a long established company, you may not be able to go back to the founder, a couple things come to mind as you say that, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Julie one, as you were talking reminds me of anyone who's not familiar with Kristin Hadid. I love her, I interviewed her in the first season of my podcast, she wrote a fabulous book called permission to screw up, it was all about her cleaning company. And she's been very open the last two years talking about how she fell out of love with the cleaning business. And really, again, going back to Simon Sinek, start with why you're clear about your purpose and why you do what you do what you do in service of that purpose, or why has an opportunity to evolve. And she realized that it was a conduit for actually developing leadership skills and students because they primarily employed students, she realized that was the part of her job that lit her up, it was developing leaders. And they made a decision to actually sell off the cleaning business and go do a complete 180 and put all of their eggs in one basket into development and completely downsize. But really, this is who we are type of thing. And I think that's hugely bold. And it also could seem really risky for people. But again, if you've fallen out of love with part of your business, it doesn't fit them anymore, or you know what they're going here. And maybe it made sense at the time. But again, they feel bad about selling it off, or sunsetting it or getting rid of it. You're right, we just add on more and more, rather than taking some things off of our plate. I know we've even been through that as a company, there are parts where I started, I was the founder, it was a side hustle for a while then had business partners. This is where the passions lie. So I feel like whatever stage of business, we can have that fun. And so one of the things that I've been doing that I would love your thoughts on if this is a good practice, or not one of the conversations that I've started deliberately having quarterly that I try to have with my team, really looking at the work itself and ask them, what's the stuff you're doing that absolutely fills your bucket lights you up gives you energy and put it in a one column, and then put stuff that you're neutral about like you could go either way you don't mind it, if we had another person, or if there was a way to offload it, you wouldn't be happy as a clam to let that go, regardless of the job description. And what it started to open up is like, wow, we have someone on the team that actually has this skill set that wants to grow into this and how can we help nurture that because if people are stuck, if you look at your job description, or you look at your daily duties, and the majority of it sucks the life out of you. I'm intentionally asking people to do that in starting those conversations. But I wonder if someone's listening, and they're an individual contributor at your mid year review, can you start to have a conversation with your leader around had been looking at my work? And here's the stuff that lights me up? And here's where I want to grow? Here's the stuff that I'm just not loving anymore? Is there any way to start to look at this differently? Like, what are your thoughts about taking that approach to look at our work?

I'll talk a little bit about the Powerball later on. But just to respond on your grid. You could even add a fourth column, which is what no longer serves, I always tell the story of Mount Everest, and I've had a lot of female entrepreneurs. And I'm sure it's the same as leaders. If you look at the camps have you got this base camp, we've got the site and the journey up there. And we've got the one before the death zone, which is kind of cool. And often we're just watching people pass us and wanting to summit wanting to go on to that next level. But all I say is one of the challenges that you have is that you're too heavy to climb. What takes you to where you are today will not take you on that next growth wave. And we're always good, especially sort of energetic leaders and passionate people and founders, especially shiny new things. And what we do is just add an add. What we find is have we added people are the people that no longer are are with us on this journey? Are we over engineering our product? Are we serving a customer who's no longer clearly defined? This very first step is really shaking this tree and taking out what no longer serves what you're trying to do. And then this part of the formula is who you're doing it for your customer? How aligned are you to them, who you're dealing with? What's your team date? How are they working? And that last one is, what do you celebrate together? That that really defines this purpose, because it's what unites and if marketing and sales are doing weekly sales or improvements on different measures, you're missing that point of change, that vision is interesting. But I would challenge the fourth column, what no longer serves you, you've got to let go of things. Because otherwise, you'd have to have me to apply or go the next wave or however you want with it.

I really love that. Because I do think again, going back to like, starting with why and having clarity of the purpose and values. As an organization, you haven't done that this is critical. We call it like a lighthouse, if you don't have that lighthouse to cut through the fog, it becomes really hard. Let's be honest to say, we've done this for so long. Or I know we have customers who like it, or I know we have team members who like this. But in the grand scheme of things, this is dead weight, it had its time, but it doesn't serve us anymore. And I know when we went through some transition, we let go of a couple programs, we had a few people who asked us about it. But when you just start getting clear about who you are, it made sense. This is a fit. It's easier said than done again as well. How do you come to that conclusion that this doesn't fit? And so one things you talk about is the natural growth of being able to do that, versus maybe being in conflict? Maybe you have people who don't fit your team anymore? People who don't fit the organization, can you talk a little bit about how we can distinguish because so often what I hear in organizations is there ends up being a lot of unnecessary conflict when we're trying to talk about growth, because you do have some people who are clinging tightly to either what is familiar, regardless, if you've come to a conclusion, it doesn't serve, and there can be a lot of just angst and turmoil. And reframing of this doesn't have to be conflict, this is about natural growth. Can you speak a little more to that?

It's a passionate wine value based recruitment, especially after COVID, where I think we all sort of had the important discussions with ourselves about who we are and where we wanted to contribute. It's a key part. And that values drive in the workplace, if you get people that fit your values, and having somebody who's not fitting the values starts to become this ripple effect to the organization. So we had some people who were around 10 years, some people were in five, and we re grounded, we set an understood what the vision of change, we were trying to do what the organizational values and purpose was. And we dropped all other celebratory measures other than purpose. And we measured that we actually set a value for purpose members can set values for purpose, I think you can, it's just got to be something that's beyond the every day. So we said the likelihood, closer spectacle brand than likelihood to buy spectacles in two years time. That was a very important part. This is what we were trying to change. And this is how we would measure it. And this enabled everybody to think about here's the vision, here's the values. And here's how we are different from everybody. How do you as an individual and a team contribute towards making that happen, and just resetting everybody and getting people to have the open conversation about values and purpose and how they fit in, hopefully capabilities, you can train anyone to do anything really, there is a training element to it. And I think that united part is step one, if you get somebody who loves celebrating through themselves, or loves taking glory, or loves this way of celebrating quite often after a while, you will get a natural departure. If everything is unified and you celebrate change, you'll get a natural departure for people that fit. That's the starting point. People want to work for a company that celebrates the way that makes them feel good. So quite often, you'll get a natural departure for sure.

There's a quote from sai Wakeman, that we use in the purpose and values work that we do with organizations, she says people can either opt in, or they can opt out, right. But there is not a false third option that somehow people think exists, which is staying and hating. It doesn't mean things are perfect. You can say we either have people and it's not about not having diversity in an organization, we can have all kinds of diverse thoughts and backgrounds in every way, shape or form. But we fundamentally believe in the purpose of what this organization is trying to do in the world. And we believe in the values and we want to try to help make that a reality or we want to try to help do that better or we want to help realize that or we say You know what, this isn't for me, and either one is okay. But I think what I see happening is in this tighter labor market, I see so many leaders that enable that statement hitting because The fear of being short staffed, or the fear of not having a person in that position is scarier. But what they don't realize is they're actually making it worse because the people who do believe it starts to get eroded. And they start to say it's watered down. It's not consistent. And I just think it does more harm than good. What do you think,

without a doubt, because there's such a ripple effect, especially in small teams, even if in a large organization, you have a small team, the collaboration between teams, and this today's world, nothing's achieved and functional departments win anymore, all comes from that working collaborative way, especially in the small businesses I work with, there isn't a functional definition really. And then you often bring in alliances and surprise from the outside. So you have to have that value alignment. And that can even happen when you take on a wrong supplier. That can also be a drag, when you get burden and this collective value pain you collect on values is absolutely essential. Uh, we use the Powerball for it as well, me in the CDT will Powerball wise minds on a quarterly basis to see where the misalignment is. And we're very strict with ourselves. And we'll take the blame if we're that deflation. So there's four key drivers who you're doing it for your customer? Are they aligned to the purpose? Are you aligning to what their needs are? Then you have your team? Are they lined to the values of your company, the purpose are they they're not team can be your suppliers and your alliances, and then the way that you work? And the real one, that purpose is the one that binds, which is how do you unite and celebrate what is the vision that you're all working towards. And if you can get all of those aligned, which is the 20 to 40% improvement, and during lockdown myself, of course, in our separate attics, myself, a financial consultant or behavioral consultant, put monetary value to a very simplistic Apple, because if you think about it, if you are misaligned, going back to your point about the teams being misaligned with values, you'll get onto performance not only from that person, but also from the people that really are aligned. And you can understand the lack of productivity. Or if you're misaligned with your customer, that you're doing all this great stuff for somebody who doesn't want what you're supplying, that's cost of sales damage from day one. So there is huge monetary value. So you're making it to simple purpose, both companies is N bedded in everything you do, how you look at things, how you recruit, and how you connect. And that is true purpose. And I think that's what the world needs. Nowadays, I think it wasn't just for COVID ever worked very purpose, like everyone would have benefited during COVID. But good solid purpose led organizations have led the way for many decades. There's good ones, and those the ones that could pivot quickly, during COVID. Because they're all agile and ready to go. And they knew their customer and what their pain was. And I was selected that I loved reading the stories. Oh, yeah, it was

fabulous. It takes deliberate practices. It's not just oh, we identify our purpose or we identify arrives, I was taught about, you know, cultures like a garden, right? You have to tend to it on a regular basis, you have to have deliberate practices. I love each habit from recruiting to daily operations if we don't find or we don't create deliberate practices to embed this so that our purpose and value is that lighthouse, the analogy that we use becomes a way of life. How do I approach this situation? How do I approach this decision? How do I approach treating my colleague, if it doesn't become like a filter we use, like, if it's a pair of glasses, if everyone is not using the same filter of how they show up, it does dilute and watered down that purpose. There's a term in the ESG movement called purpose washing, you know, when people come in, and they get excited about all of your marketing, even your recruitment efforts, and they're like, Oh, I really want to be a part of this company. And then they get out of whatever their orientation or their first few weeks, and they go to their respective department or location. And it's completely like one ad, the research shows it doesn't matter what the generational group is. But we all know that millennials and Gen Z's have very little patience for smoke and mirrors and will say this is not what I signed up for. They don't have the patience to wait for a company to work out their crap. Basically, they're like, I'm gonna go somewhere where it's actually real and align. And maybe if you get your stuff figured out later, they'd reconsider you, but they're just like, I don't have the patience for it. I think it's a really big missed opportunity to not look at, I was just having a conversation last week with leaders where they had to have some growth feedback conversations with people on their team who really were showing up antithesis of their purpose and values, and they've ignored it for far too long because this person has been there forever because this person has a lot of industry knowledge because this person is deep in their technical expertise, but they are eroding the culture and you're letting everyone else know that their behavior is actually okay. But what you've also told me is all these other people now won't go talk to that person, they avoid them because they don't want to have to deal with that. I'm like, That's not okay. When we think about celebratory, and we think even about having to have some of those growth feedback conversations are people showing up in an aligned way where we have agreed upon commitments of how we behave to our customers to each other. I had another guests on my show a year or two ago, they fired some clients because they were mistreating their staff. And they're like, that's not okay. So I love that your approach of being deliberate because sometimes we have to have those difficult conversations in order to be in integrity with who we say we are.

That's the beauty of de papel. Because it calculates it for you just for 60 questions, once you get that becomes your cultural ball to a certain extent, especially with the young leaders, which I'm often working with the startups etc. And they're getting their team for the first time. And so it's not going right. That's a really difficult thing to have that challenging conversation that comes with experience. And this togetherness is very passionate in your incompetence. But with a Powerball you can have a very third party conversation going, Okay, where do we feel that it's deflated at the moment? What part are we played in that, and you can have this very non confrontational conversation about poor performance, or even where does the problem set? The problem was, it's never once in misalignment between functions, marketing, sales, product stores, it's when something didn't go well, where does the issue coats in the way that we work? And you automatically can have this more together? Conversation? This, it's never one person, one department and how you can look at this third party? Yes, I think it's the way that we work. I think this is a starting point for our discussion. And it's a beautiful way of also understanding where the problem begins, without having to make it personal or going after that. And I think this alignment, especially when it comes to people, is where do you play a part in that so that they can actually see that this vision of change is something that we want, it's not about you, it's about how you contribute towards the bigger picture. And I think it helps your leaders have that confidence to have the conversation, it does work for them, when they can work together, and not just talk about the great things, they will avoid it.

Yeah, we'll make sure we have links in the show notes as well, because I got to get a nice preview of your documents. One thing you talk about the Powerball as one of the drivers for growth, I want to go to the flip side of that, because we talk about the drivers for growth, but we also inadvertently block our own growth. And we don't realize we're doing it, whether it's a fear of success, or whether it's this. So talk a little bit about how do we block our own growth, and we might not realize we're doing it. Yeah,

I'll have to go back, as you said, there, when you say whether we deserve that success, that can be a really big block of growth. And we work with our leaders to understand what their sort of past has bought them in terms of do they deserve success, and what had they been taught about money and success in their past. But when you get down to it, the patterns of the past how you watch your parents and your peers, etcetera, grow up, and how they teach you about roles and stuff in life can have a subconscious effect, I come from a very high performing entrepreneurial family. But subconsciously, that sort of said to me going, oh, have we had a lot to say, Never take wealthier than what you give, have, we had our lots and subconsciously that was probably having a little pull on me that they've had the success. Don't shout too loud, that success can be for everybody. So that's a big one. And the other big one that I come across is where we look at the vision of the change that we want to make. And we block it by trying to keep asking how we're going to get there too quickly. You're not going to get there your job as a founder or a leader is to inspire curiosity towards that vision. It's to inspire it, what will it look like? It doesn't matter? Your job is to make it curious and to inspire people so that they go Do you know, I could contribute towards that. That's exciting for me, that is yet to be discovered. But that person knows exactly where they're going. And I want to join them. I love this story. Because I have to tell the story of my mom quickly because she taught me this word coming for big entrepreneurial family and I interviewed her. I said to her, what would the letter B that you would send to your founding self, that woman who sat there day one on this journey? And her immediate reply was never tell her how big it would be? She would have been absolutely terrified. And I think that's such a beautiful way of how she had this vision of change. But they didn't know how they were doing. They just were really focused on that vision and those people came towards it. It never said 13 countries they never said this. They never said that. They just had This absolute belief that something had to change in the optical market, and they didn't ever ask themselves how they're going to do it to get there. And I think that's such a beautiful example of always remaining curious and making sure everybody remains curious. As soon as you stop becoming curious, that's maybe when you start to fall out of love with that moment. And maybe it's that time to make yourself redundant and replace yourself. I think that curious is very important.

There's a great story. You know, what's interesting, as you were saying, that is, I literally was just leaving a session prior to this conversation. And we were talking about listening and creating space for other people. And we were talking about one of the listening tools where you're just giving a person a chance to sit with their thinking a little bit longer. And one of the rules and coaching that I learned years ago is that if you are asking somebody, how are you going to get there? You're asking the question too soon, because it means that you haven't given them enough space to really expand their thinking, get clear about what's important, get clear about what they're wanting. And if you spend enough time getting clear the next steps, they will start to make themselves reveal, they will start to show themselves. And I feel like I've been thinking as you're talking back and forth in my business journey of having this vision. But then really short circuiting that chance to really visualize because we go, Well, how are we going to get there and you go, either it's not practical, or you start to play it safe or whatnot. And so I think there's so many areas where we sell ourselves short, because we do start to jump in with practicality, you can have that out there and getting clear about why is that important to you? And what about that matters to you? And then let that inform. And you know what that vision might be 20 years from now, right? Or maybe it's going to happen more quickly. And maybe it's not going to happen exactly as you envisioned it. I love your idea about being curious, because it's people what's the next step that makes sense? That's gonna be that flywheel that's gonna move us towards it.

Absolutely. And I think that's such an important point that you brought up about, one of the most important things for the leaders is to understand what listening is, and that it's different for everybody. How do you hear people whereas you get someone like me, and my dad, who will get so excited, and we'll talk ourselves into where we're going, and you get the people who reflect you don't know where they're going yet, and my business partner is at wise mind. When we first started working together, he says, Why are you looking at me strangely, and have I upset you? And he gets? No, I'm thinking, and that's what I thought, Oh, that's true to thinking book that understand how people think. And that's all to do with understanding this thing. I think it's a valid point. It's so important what you brought up, because how can you grow your business when you're only hearing coffee or tea?

Yeah, how are you going to have the breakthrough? Like we work with some clients that write that they're big on like innovation and whatnot, and they're stuck? And it's because it seems counterintuitive. Sometimes we have to pause and slow down to speed back up. And if you're not giving yourself space to be curious and reimagine or have a good filter, like your purpose and values to take that really solid look of what is serving the purpose and what isn't. That's why I love periodic off sites. And you have to have that time. And you have to have that this is what we're focusing on. Are you having quarterly off sites as a team, our purpose of the team and how we serve the organization? What do we need to do? Like I think we can have that concept of off sites and have that deliberate time to process and think and be curious envision, whether we are a startup company or what team inside of a bigger organization? I think it's something we don't use enough. Because we might think we don't have the time or like you said, we get caught up in that machine. And then we have so much on our plate that we fallen out of love with work, and we don't even know why we're doing it anymore. And then it feels too overwhelming to go, what do we let go of. And if we let go of something that might mean someone's job changes or someone's job isn't needed? And that feels too scary or risky? Versus Well, what if it evolves look like Kristin Hadid who'd hugely downsize her company, because said, this just isn't where my heart is anymore.

It's right. And having an honest conversation, has that ability to actually expand yourself because your inhibitors is doing the stuff that you don't want to do. It's not necessarily a matter of size is to say in terms of how do you keep yourself small, how do you not fulfill what you're best at? Because you're trying to hold on to what No, no, God says.

So speaking of how we sometimes block our own growth, right are some of that self limiting narrative. One of the things that I am obsessed about is normalizing the messiness of being human, and that we all have ways that we get in our own way. We all have self limiting stories that can hijack us. And when we're in that space, we think it's just us. And so I always want to have all my guests share. So people go, it's not just me up, they get it too. So Julie, what is the self limiting story that you still tell yourself sometimes and when it shows up? How do you move beyond it so that you can still show up as a leader in your life?

I have a history of over engineering when things aren't received with the joy that which I give them so I'll just add more things. And once you're aligned with what you want to do in life, that passion Is there but you have to also be careful, it doesn't keep you small because one passion served in a very enthusiastic way can push people away. It can be overwhelming invention of new things, it can be exhausting for teens. And I have to be very careful of keeping to an agreed path to keep to the core to actually do what the customer wants. And not just because I wake up and have a fun, new thing. And I think that is something I have to constantly be doing, does it serve. And that's why the power of purpose and values is very important. That doesn't mean I don't do them. I just don't put them in the mix for wise minds. Like I want to be able to take stuff and dirt for other people. But I don't confuse the wives mines message for that. But passion can be my overwhelm. It can frighten people running for the hills.

It is funny because I think sometimes it's the energy that goes with a passion. And then if people are wooed by your passion that then you can start to doubt yourself and like you said, then you start taking on more and get into this vicious cycle versus not let me reconnect to purpose.

Definitely, you've got to really focus in on that purpose. I have to reground quite often.

I think re grounding is a skill that most of us think oh, what we do have to do it once Newsflash, sometimes you have to do it many times a day, many times an hour, many times a minute. All right. Are you ready for quick questions?

I have so ready for your quick questions. I

love it. Fill in the blank. living authentically is

living my values in every role I have in my life. I think that's what gives me balance. Love that

when the world is presenting an opening, but you don't feel like showing up as a leader. What do you do?

I remind myself of the difference that I make to people that gives me energy. I imagine the entrepreneur who goes oh my gosh, that's it. And I sort of re picture that and get back in line with the vision because it's impossible to feel energetic every moment.

We're not Energizer Bunny, right? We're humans. All right, what is something people would be surprised to know about you?

I think I'm gonna have to say that I'm planning to backpack and take my gap year at 60 and backpack around the world.

Oh my god, I love it so much. All right. What is your favorite go to movie?

Ask Africa. And I always laugh with this. I will say when we were young we used to sit there and used to say Meryl Streep let him go let him be free. Let Robert Redford roam the plains. And then I always laugh because you find out what you relate when you go. What a selfish person.

I love it. All right. What is your go to song?

I have to go for tape. Now. I grew up with it. It reminds me of the concerts in Hyde Park Middle aged and stuff like that was fun. I'll throw in a bit of Fleetwood Mac go your own way as well.

There you go. All right. What's something you can't live without?

Well, obviously family but outdoors nature. Clearly

you're gonna go backpack for a year. All right. What is something in your ordinary daily life that makes your heart happy?

When I make my student to be teenager got some love? Because he always hides his face. He can't hide his laughter because I can't be funny because I'm too old. But secretly deep down it gives me a thrilled I can still make him laugh even though he tries to hide it. And I have my son. He goes, No,

I love it. All right. What are you grateful for right now?

I think I'm just grateful for the balance summer I've had working with wise mind seeing family again, even though the weather's been rubbish just hanging out with God. So it's the balance of life. I think that's what we aim for. I would say I was very grateful for that.

Yeah, absolutely. Last question, Julie, if you could challenge leaders everywhere to practice this one behavior that will create more human workplaces and equip everyone to show up as a leader, what would that be? I have to say

it's to put vision on the table every day and measure purpose. Find that way to remind everybody of why they traveled through traffic jams, etc. Give people a purpose and a joint recognition every day. Make equal. Absolutely love that.

Julie, thank you. This has been such a delight and I'm so appreciative of the work you do and the insights you've brought to me as a human being and as a business owner, and that I know you brought to everyone else. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm Rosie Ward, and this is show up as a leader. To learn more, head over to people forward network.com And of course, hit that follow button.