How Julie Boll Overcame Imposter Syndrome and Doubled Her Value

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santia Esteban, and I am your host. Our special guest today is Miss Julie Bull. She is the founder of Julie Bull consulting, and we're going to talk about , the emotional side of business. So Julie, welcome to the show.

[00:00:19] Julie: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I don't know how often we talk about this, but I think we need to talk about it more as entrepreneurs.

[00:00:25] Hector: it was one of the first things that I learned about getting into business. I kind of got into self employment, if you will, right as a, as a 17 year old, a high school graduate and, and realized exactly that, how emotional Lee, of a wreck I was by being in control of my own business. all of a sudden I'm the CEO, I'm the janitor.

[00:00:47] Hector: I am the, I'm kind of wearing all of the hats and, and that kind of put me on a, on an emotional spin. So, kind of, Knew that. And then ever since then, it's been sort of a, an ongoing battle because it feels like you never really put the emotional side of it away. , there's levels to it and starts to graduate.

[00:01:05] Hector: I'm curious for you what your journey in business has been and why. this not so talked about side of it has kind of been what you've built your work around.

[00:01:15] Julie: Yeah. So I never intended to be an entrepreneur. I was not a 17 year old who was like, let me go build my business. No, I was like, someone else is going to keep me with a roof over my head. And I'm always going And about six years ago, I just got in a point where my career and this is actually really common where we start businesses as a trauma response.

[00:01:37] Julie: We're like this. I can't do this anymore. I'm not being heard. My ideas just aren't, being hurt. And so there was a number of reasons that led me to the decision to start my own business. And, I'm a huge fan of Brene Brown. She teaches about courage and emotional agility is a big piece of that. And I had her in my ear the whole time I was making the switch from internal employment to external employment.

[00:02:07] Julie: And it was really just like believing that you have something of value And going out to the marketplace with it, and that's, the piece that's where we have to fight the scarcity thinking that we all face as entrepreneurs that nobody's going to want what I have. Nobody's everyone's done it before.

[00:02:25] Julie: Everyone's done it better. All of those things. So I, Loved Bernie's work. I ended up facilitating her work for a few years and then realizing that I wanted to help other entrepreneurs that battle that scarcity thinking that idea that if I step outside of what I know and what I have a track record on, I can't be successful.

[00:02:47] Julie: So I had a 10 year track record or so in grant development for nonprofits. And I thought, Oh, I'm going to take that track record, use it to build my business. And then I didn't like it. I didn't like the business I built. I was like, No, I don't want to do this. it's different being internal than it is being your own consultant.

[00:03:04] Julie: And I wanted to do different things. And so I ended up walking away from my content expertise and what I had a track record in and coaching. And just saying, I want to help people really operate in their sweet spot and believe in themselves first. And then I just see that as the sacred weapon to growth for us is that we have to believe in ourselves first and we have to believe that whatever it is that our heart's telling us to do.

[00:03:33] Julie: Is worth pursuing.

[00:03:35] Hector: Yeah. I want to honor you , for doing that because I'm sure it takes a lot of courage to, to set off on that path. And so if the social media algorithms or whoever is not raining validation upon you, I want to take a moment to, affirm what you're doing because , it's necessary.

[00:03:53] Hector: And I think that. As a business owner, had a realization that my business was only limited by myself and that I was, I, I would put the cap on my own business and at a certain point. The things that, you know, when I look and reflect , on me, a lot of the things that are driving me or, limiting me, or, , the kind of underlying factors are these are the emotions that are kind of driving us.

[00:04:17] Hector: And like you said, we want to pretend that it's not part of business, but it's like saying, gas or fuel is not part of a car. When you look at it, it may account for a small piece of it, from the outside, but it's actually a big proponent of things actually moving.

[00:04:31] Hector: So, I'd love for you, to ask sort of a question here. When you see yourself, yeah. Looking from the outside in and the fact, the opportunity that you get a chance to have a larger sample size. What are the themes or the common problems with the colleague? What sort of common things do you see coming up when you're working with, different people.

[00:04:53] Julie: Sure. So the people that I work with now are two fold. It's non profit leaders and then it's the consultants that serve them. Because I've been a consultant in this space where I think we make up a story that we shouldn't charge well for our services because we're serving the nonprofit. So it's a, it's a limiting belief that comes up a lot with the consultants that serve it.

[00:05:14] Julie: And then I serve nonprofit leaders with this facilitation work that I do. It's coaching and facilitation around courage building. And so to answer your question about the themes, it's the stories we make up. It's the stories we make up when we're experiencing growth. Our brains are wired to keep us safe and back to safety.

[00:05:37] Julie: So when I see consultants that are often successful, but completely trapped into these lives and businesses that they hate. The first thing we're doing is why are you, why are you here? Why are you still working with the clients that you don't like? what's keeping you small and usually it's so unoriginal what our brains do for us.

[00:05:57] Julie: They'll tell us, like I'll never get more work. basically I'll become destitute. That's always what our brains are doing. They're telling us that if I take this risk, if I say no, if I, push back on a client, then I'm going to lose the client, then I'm going to lose all my clients and they're going to blacklist me and then I'll never get work again.

[00:06:16] Julie: And it's sometimes we have to get these stories out and fact check them. That's one of the things that we do is we just, it doesn't matter if you're safely employed for a nonprofit or if you're running your own business, you still have to get these ideas out. So you can look at them on paper and say, I'm probably going to be okay.

[00:06:34] Julie: I've been putting a roof over my head for 20 years. I'm probably going to continue. And it's okay for me to say, no, it's okay for me not to let someone else make me small. I've had several pivots in my business. I was thinking about that coming on this show where I was comfortable and I had built in revenue, but it was keeping me small and that cost is too high.

[00:07:00] Julie: Whatever keeps you small, whatever keeps you stuck. keeps you showing up for stuff you don't even like to do. That's the stuff that the emotional agility is going to help you break through.

[00:07:11] Hector: Yeah. I host another show. It's called modern masculinity and we won't go too much into it. But one of the themes that kind of emerged was like this, this trauma response that you had talked about and, and abandonment, is something for me that, I was dealing with my own personal relationships and family and all that sort of stuff.

[00:07:29] Hector: And it being, a big core wound. And I remember talking with my head of operations a while back and we were going over pricing and cashflow and we were like, why it just, things aren't making sense. And essentially we were undercharging our clients grossly and we were actually losing money. And I was thinking about why was I, what, what were we doing?

[00:07:50] Hector: And I was like, Oh, it's the same abandonment wound. . It's just coming up here. And,like when we put it out there, we were like, are we afraid that they're going to leave us? And we're like, okay, if they leave us, that's actually net. Cashflow positive. And, and there's still this fear.

[00:08:06] Hector: It was weird. Cause there's still this fear of should we raise the prices? It's obviously that's the only answer. And yet there was still that like stickiness from the emotional sort of You know,

[00:08:18] Julie: And it will keep you small and you will do amazing mental gymnastics to pretend that it's all rational. But it's keeping you small and it's losing you money very, very often. So what's interesting about your story is you're basically describing a process we go through called SFD. I don't know if it's okay to use it here, but shitty first draft.

[00:08:39] Julie: Your brain is going to make up a shitty first draft when it feels threatened. And that shitty first draft is usually what's keeping you with this grossly underpriced product is if I raise my rates, everyone's going to leave me. My business is going to collapse. I'm not going to be able to all those things, but then you actually, you write it down and you write it down in that 13 year old version of yourself.

[00:09:02] Julie: That's like the most dramatic, the sky is falling version. You write it down and you look at it and you say, what do I know is true? And that's what you described. Wait a minute. What do I know is true? What I know is true is we're undercharging. We're not making money off this. Our clients are not likely to all drop, and the ones that do drop, probably we should lose them anyway.

[00:09:24] Hector: I don't know if I told the ending of the story, but we doubled our prices for most of our clients and not a single one left

[00:09:30] Julie: See, that's so fun. You could have easily said suck. We do. We, we don't even let ourselves play because we're like, nope. Where it's too risky, it's too risky, but your story is such a classic story and double your rates and no one blinks an eye.because your, your selling has value. You know that, your market, you know what you're doing.

[00:09:52] Julie: Absolutely.

[00:09:53] Julie: Huge.

[00:09:54] Hector: one of the big things that I think a lot of people, it's come out and I think if they can, if they can attach this emotional side, because I think even we, it's a loaded word, right? People hearing, I'm not emotional. I'm, that's, this is where I, this is where I come to not be a mode, that sort of thing.

[00:10:12] Hector: But one thing that I think a lot of leaders have, especially at the place where they're at, when they're listening to a show like this. This is imposter syndrome.

[00:10:19] Hector: And, we talked about kind of, leaders being their own sort of ceiling. And I think that imposter syndrome is. It's connected to all of this.

[00:10:28] Hector: It's, it's attached or it's, it's, humping the leg of these things like, like they are, they are definitely attached to it. And so I'm, I'm curious how, and if you've seen, the ability to work these, I think you call them emotional agility. If emotional agility can actually help someone overcome that imposter syndrome that seems to happen to people at every single level of, in every stage of business.

[00:10:53] Julie: Absolutely. So there, there's a couple of bodies of work that I really like. One is emotional agility, which is Susan David's work. And one is Dared to Lead, which is courage building with Brené Brown. And Susan David's work is really centered around allowing ourselves to experience all of our emotions and not letting one be, A lot of times we just tell ourselves that we shouldn't feel a certain way.

[00:11:13] Julie: We shouldn't have a certain emotion, and that does nothing for it. So when you think about, imposter syndrome, emotional agility is going to, agility is going to help us, one, just be compassionate with ourselves for whatever we're feeling. Even if it's this imposter syndrome and two, there's an element of mindfulness that happens where we can detach a little bit from the emotion and start to reality check and that's where we can choose the beliefs that we want to hold.

[00:11:47] Julie: It's really powerful work. You can take that scarcity belief that's been or that abandonment wound that's been keeping you stuck for years and years and years and you could really truly reprint that. reprogram your brain to believe something different. And, a lot of times I'll work with clients on mantras, but my voice is valuable.

[00:12:07] Julie: My work is valuable. My, my work is needed in the world, whatever it is to counter it. , There's this need to say, Oh, I need more experience. I need more expertise. I need more education. I need more something before I , can I charge this or do this or be this? And we don't, we absolutely don't.

[00:12:26] Julie: It's a belief that we need to hold.

[00:12:28] Hector: So I had never really connect beliefs and emotions.

[00:12:34] Julie: Oh my goodness.

[00:12:35] Hector: I had put beliefs more in sort of an intellectual sort of box and emotions separate. I'm I'm obviously wrong, which is why I have these conversations or I'm thinking about it a different way. How do you see those two connected or what is the link between those two?

[00:12:54] Julie: So, They are absolutely connected. The thoughts that we have drive the emotions that we have. And, when we do the SFD practice, and I just told you about a minute ago, those SFDs come up when we're triggered by emotion. But when we unpack them, we usually get to some root belief that, and it's a thought that we have, that we, maybe we got early, early on, and we just kept.

[00:13:20] Julie: But we'll get to a thought like,here, I'll share a story. I wear two cochlear implants. I was born deaf and, I started podcast guesting a couple years ago and I just could not get on. I can teach, I can coach, I can do all that stuff, but I couldn't get on and record. And I was talking to a therapist.

[00:13:40] Julie: I'm like, I don't know what the problem is. this is all news. I'm, I've accepted it. I'm fine with it. We're good. But what we ended up. Landing on is my voice has always been an indicator of my disability. I remember when I got the cochlear implants, I was working at a public library and this old lady was like, Oh, your voice sounds so much better now.

[00:14:03] Julie: And I was like, Oh, I didn't know it sounded bad before, but thank you for that. I mean, it was a little bit of but it was always this tell, if you will. Oh, she's deaf because her voice is different. So then the idea of recording my voice. On a podcast, I had this visceral reaction to, I cannot do this.

[00:14:21] Julie: I could not make, I was like the worst student in Dustin's podcast crew because I was like, I can't record a podcast. Like I can talk about it. I can teach. , but what we got down to was the belief that my voice was an indicator of my deafness. Like I was broken. And so I rewrote it to my voice is beautiful.

[00:14:40] Julie: And I truly hold that because it has scars. It has nuances. It represents who I am, but truly all that emotion that was keeping me paralyzed was tied to this belief that my voice was this shameful thing that I didn't want to record.

[00:14:56] Hector: I appreciate you sharing that Julian. I'm honored that you that we would get a chance to do this.yeah. When we get back from break, I want to talk about some of the, some of the steps, cause I've got some questions. I'm like, how do, all right, how do we do this whole

[00:15:12] Julie: That's right. Let's fix

[00:15:13] Hector: and, yeah, because I think people are like, they're ready.

[00:15:16] Hector: So, we're going to take a quick break and, get into that right after this.

[00:15:21] Hector: Hey, y'all. Today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media, and we are a podcast and content production company. Well, guys, we like to think of ourselves as like the media arm for your company, because chances are you probably have a passion, a product, a mission, a message, a service, something that you're trying to get out to the world, but you might not have the time, the team, or the tech skills to be able to do it.

[00:15:38] Hector: Well, if that's the case, we can help. Go to amplify media. com. That's a M P L a F Y media. com. You can also check the show notes for the link. And with that, let's get back to Julie. So Julie, as we were going through that before the break,

[00:15:53] Hector: when we're attacking this problem, if you will, is that I've kind of treated it like a generalist where it's like, all right, I'm going to try and generally get better. I'm going to meditate and I'm going to kind of journal and I'm going to read my mind, I'm going to I'm going to do these things.

[00:16:07] Hector: But as you were talking, it seemed like you kind of go in and instead of having a widespread buckshot sort of approach, you have a very Laser focus sort of, here's what we're going to focus on. We're going to really improve on this sort of thing. Cause that's gonna, move the needle or unlock this.

[00:16:24] Hector: Am I off based on that? Or, or how do you approach, sort of, tackling for another violent word, the sort of, emotional sort of things.

[00:16:32] Julie: So we frame our work around the context of what do you want in your business. And a lot of times people will describe and I'm speaking specifically of working with business owners, but they'll describe their lives as though they're not. In charge of them. I have one client. I'm like, man, it sounds like you built this beautiful thing.

[00:16:54] Julie: This train is on the track and it is taking off and it's dragging you behind it. And so we just start with what do you want and see. It always comes up that there's a belief and there's that emotional visceral reaction that's keeping us in a place that's not good for us anymore. it doesn't feel great to be drugged behind the train of your success.

[00:17:17] Julie: So, let's, stop for a minute and assess the situation and see why you keep saying yes when you mean no. And it always ties back to you're holding on to either the classics, which are kind of the scarcity thinking, which we're all guilty of, or you've got some sort of root belief in there that's keeping you from speaking on podcasts, whatever it might be.

[00:17:43] Julie: So very often naturally in conversation, when someone's talking about something they don't want to do, an SFD comes up and I get to ask. Okay, what's the story you're making up right now? tell me the whole thing. And people kind of chuckle because it usually ends and then we'll be destitute and homeless.

[00:18:00] Julie: like it usually, especially as entrepreneurs, like our businesses will crash and burn. And then we get to look at it and distill it down and bring in our rational brain and say, what do we actually know is true? I actually know that I've been successful ever here than I've been. In business.

[00:18:18] Julie: Okay. I've had bad years. That's what we know is true. How did I come back from those bad years? So we just go through this process of examining what we just held us.

[00:18:29] Hector: Yeah. , I would consider myself with more of the intellectual type, right. And, very practical and logical and pragmatic. I think that this sort of process is even more important for someone like me.

[00:18:45] Julie: Absolutely. Absolutely. So when we teach very specifically the dare to lead work, we talk about shame. And so shame is that deep belief that you're not enough. So shame comes up for me when I talk about having a disability. We all have shame. It's a human emotion. And so for people who are like, no, I'm, I'm an intellectual.

[00:19:06] Julie: I don't do emotion or I don't do shame. And the answer is always you either do it knowingly or it does you. Like it is showing up in your life, it's showing up in your pricing, it's showing up in your decisions. we just may not be aware of it.

[00:19:21] Hector: is there a framework? You kind of had started it a little bit and kind of talked about, sort of the different approaches. , maybe that's where we can go , or I feel like people we've, we've kind of wet their appetite a little bit and we've probably only got, I don't know.

[00:19:34] Hector: Less than 10 minutes to go. So how do you, how might we use this next best time or this next part of the episode to give people a few more steps in the right direction or a few more things that they might be able to take away

[00:19:46] Julie: Yeah. if we focused on entrepreneurs, which is who your audience is, we can talk a little bit more about, the framework I use anyway when coaching them, which is to. Obviously we all have vision and goals for our businesses, but to really work with people and giving themselves permission to have really big ones and really audacious ones.

[00:20:10] Julie: I really enjoyed being part of Dustin's Accelerator. You guys produce this podcast because I was around people for the first time. You have these audacious visions and women in particular, you have these big, beautiful visions for something really. so I work with them on actually giving themselves permission to have that big vision for themselves and giving themselves permission to pivot outside of their area of expertise.

[00:20:39] Julie: So I had a 10 million dollar track record in grants. I knew I knew grants. I could help people get grants. I didn't want to do grants. I find that so often as people, get trapped by their own success. You've got a transferable skill set. Okay. That's not your track record. so having permission to dream big and dream your own unique dreams, some people don't want big, businesses with lots of people.

[00:21:03] Julie: So, I mean, there's all different ways that we want to live our lives. I really think it's important that we get really honest with ourselves about what we want and who we are, getting clarity around your values can be huge. I think decision fatigue is really difficult as an entrepreneur.

[00:21:18] Julie: Like I could do a million things. What do I choose to do? when we know what our values are, we can you. Use that as a bit of a framework for decision making. So then, maybe it doesn't make sense for me to get bigger. And maybe it makes sense for me to get smaller. Who knows? We check in on our values and see if we know exactly where you want to go.

[00:21:38] Julie: And then we, check in on those beliefs that are holding you back.

[00:21:44] Hector: of perhaps off the wall question that sort of came to my mind because personally, I'm sort of trying to fight this struggle, violent words. I don't know where it's coming from. I don't know if it's me or if it's today thing or at all the time thing. I don't know. But it's the social media.

[00:22:02] Hector: And scrolling and comparisons and the whole thing of social media. , and the challenge that I see for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially as they say, but my business is on there and I have, so much of my, and I, I can't tell you how many times I've deleted the apps and had to. Download them because I need to need to do something on there for my business, right?

[00:22:25] Hector: And then it doesn't get deleted again, for another couple weeks. But is that something you see coming up? Or \ how do you fit social media into this whole ecosystem of emotions with regards to entrepreneurs?

[00:22:40] Julie: I think it comes to the story we're making up around it. the story we make up is we have to have it to be successful. The story we make up is other people are doing the story and make up it. What, what is the story we're making up about it and challenging it? Because we can look at the marketplace and see really successful business owners who have chosen,a nontraditional path who aren't personally on it, but still have businesses that operate that way.

[00:23:06] Julie: So, checking in with ourselves about the stories we're making up about. Social media can be incredibly helpful and then giving ourselves permission to do things differently than other people do, to, yeah, to, to go against, the grain and, and choose with your intuition rather than what I think social media does for a lot of us is, fuels that comparison and that never just, it never drives the conversation.

[00:23:36] Julie: Positive behavior. So when we dig into the shame work, there's four emotions. You can feel around, it's called self conscious affects. You can feel shame, which is the idea that I am bad. I'm, I'm broken. You can have guilt, which is, I did something bad. You can have embarrassment, which is fleeting, or you can have humiliation, which is, I didn't deserve that.

[00:24:01] Hector: someone did something. I didn't deserve it. So we want to know, are you doing this? Because you feel like you have to, or what's driving your choices, to participate in social media?Really good stuff. I wish we had hours to dissect some of this stuff because I'm I imagine we could have a whole podcast about it. I got one more question for you, Julie, but before I do that, if people want to go deeper in your world, get connected with you. Where's the best place to go?

[00:24:34] Julie: jimleybowlconsulting. com. I love supporting people in , their growth journeys, whether it's a solopreneur that serves nonprofits. It's very specifically who I typically help, or it's a business leader in the nonprofit area. We're always working with what's keeping us small.

[00:24:54] Hector: Amazing. And we'll link that up in the show notes as well. My last question for you, Julie, is in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a business?

[00:25:03] Julie: I was thinking about my business journey and I was making up a story that I wasn't big enough to be on this podcast. And then I realized, I think my story is probably very similar to a lot of entrepreneurs. Shoot, I don't want to be employed anymore. I'm in a small town and I had such a niched skill set.

[00:25:22] Julie: That I couldn't find employment in the area I wanted to be in. So I started my own business. And I think that's a common way to start your own business. And so then I was thinking about, okay, when have you scaled? and I have, and just as all small startups do. I think for me and my own growth in the support that I've provided to others, the key to scaling is. Believing you're worth it. Believing you're big enough to have a team. Believing you're big enough. Mickey Anderson is someone that I really love that's in the circle that I met you through. And she just had these big audacious goals and she was going after it and she was being a boss. And I just. I didn't realize it was possible.

[00:26:07] Julie: So believing it's possible for yourself and believing that you are worthy of the growth, I think is, for me, it's the logistics we can always get help with, but the belief we have to do ourself.

[00:26:21] Hector: Fantastic. Fantastic stuff. I want to thank all you listeners for sticking around with us today. We would be forever grateful for a rating or review wherever you get your podcast. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, hit that share button and score the community together, but go get connected with Julie and myself.

[00:26:38] Hector: If you're not already, you can check the show notes for all those links, but, appreciate you hanging out. We'll see you on the next one.