Special Guest Expert - Julie Collins: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

Special Guest Expert - Julie Collins: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Daniel Aaron:
What does it take to create a vibrant, thriving life? First, the sad news is that Thoreau was right most people are leading quiet lives of desperation, lacking in meaning, fulfillment, and vitality. But we choose more. We choose to create extraordinary lives and the art of vibrant living. Show entertains you with inspiration, empowerment and education to create your life into a masterpiece. It's time. Let's vibe up. Aloha, y'all. Daniel Aaron here I am, your host and this is the Art of Vibrant Living show. And I am delighted that you are here. Whether it's you're with us live or by rebroadcast. We've got a phenomenal show today with an extraordinary guest. You're going to love her. And maybe even better, you're going to learn some cool stuff from her and what this show is all about. What is the art of vibrant living mean? Well, it depends on you. It's up to your definition. What is for you? A vibrant, thriving, passion filled, love filled life. Because the more you activate that yourself, the more we together are changing the world into greater and greater vibrancy. We can do that. And y'all, this show please take it in as entertainment. That would be wonderful. And I ask you to also commit to taking at least one of the many gold nuggets coming to you and apply it in your life. Like take something that Julie shares today and say, yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm going to put that in my life. And by the way, if you are not entirely thrilled with where your life is right now, or if you're thrilled with where it is and you want even more, whether that's business, personal, both health, income, whatever, please reach out for some support. Just send me an email. Daniel at Daniel aaron.com I would love to meet you, love to connect with you and guaranteed I will be able to be of some support for you, whether it's a fit for us to work together or otherwise. I would love to meet you now though. Today this show we got something awesome for you, which is Julie DeLuca Collins, who is a speaker, a an author with an award winning book. She is a business coach. She has been a pilgrim on the El Camino de Santiago. She has overcome so much in her own life, but even better, she's so dedicated to the service of empowering others and does it so beautifully. She's all over the place these days with speaking, receiving awards. She's really being recognized. We're so lucky to have her with us today. Julie, thank you for being with us.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Wow. I've been looking forward to this. Thank you for having me. It is great to be here with your audience and hello everyone!

Daniel Aaron:
Yay! Awesome. Well, cool. So I have the of course, distinct advantage over the audience at this point, which is I've been blessed to meet you already. I know a little bit of your story, but for those who don't yet, how did you get to this point where you're, you know, you have a great business. You are a voice of aid for people in the world and for business. You're really doing some amazing things. Um, how did you get there?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
You know, I have to tell you that I've been made to do this, and every single place that I've been in the journey has led me here. I started my career as a teacher, and I loved it, but I knew that that was not necessarily for me because I don't like to get up early. Well, I do much better nowadays, but back then it was not for me and I knew I wanted more. And then I pursued a career in education and again, not as a teacher, but mainly as someone in the education industry. And I love that because I still got the opportunity to work with students, work with parents, administrators, and I grew through the ranks of a couple different educational companies, and I loved it. It really challenged me. It helped me come into my own as a speaker as well. I used to represent these companies and national conferences, and most importantly, it really helped me define what my values are. And I knew as I got higher and higher in the corporate ladder that I wanted to make sure that other women, other Latina women would have opportunities. But many of them didn't feel the confidence that it takes to put yourself out there. So I knew that at some point, eventually, I would try to do what I can to help them. And my intention originally when I got my coaching certification was mainly to help me because I am my best client, and then I wanted to also work with women in the corporate arena. The funny thing that happened when I launched my business is that individuals who knew that I've helped to build successful businesses for the organizations that I worked for would say, hey, I am building my business, I'm starting my business. Do I need an LLC? How does this email, what do I market? What is personal brand? And all of this is the stuff that I love. That is really my jam that I've been really good at learning and implementing for these organizations. And I thought, huh, I really can help these women. Gain the confidence that it takes to be the CEO of their life and business, because sometimes we forget that we need to be that person, embody that person in order to make the impact that we want and also go after our dreams, live the life we have imagined. So I began with Go Confidently Services, which is what I have as my organization, and I help women build the life of their dreams through creating the right strategy programs to build the business that is sustainable and it's run as a business. So that's what I'm doing.

Daniel Aaron:
That's fantastic. And I love I love the way you said that, you know, run the business as a business which on on one level we might hear that and go, uh, duh. Yeah. What do you mean? But I also know from my own experience, um, and and not pretty some of it and the experience of so many of my clients and colleagues like the, the e-myth. Right. This myth that, oh, I have things to offer and I'll just create a business. Well, actually, a business is something that's perhaps not intuitive necessarily for a lot of us. So learning the systems and the ways of creating it into a business that's reliable is just so valuable and important. So I love that you're doing that. And I love your you know, I see I hear the strain through so much of what you do, which is. How can I help? Like, you know, they're asking me about do I need an LLC? And what about the email and branding and and, you know, your way of taking that all in is saying these people need help. And, hey, look, I've got I've got some knowledge and even some passion on this, and I can share. Right. To me, that's the real the true essence and nobility of entrepreneurship is saying, I want to help, you know, people got issues and problems. I want to help them. So yeah, but you also speak so much about confidence, right? And you talked about, you know, realizing early on that some of the women that you were helping, they need a boost in confidence to be able to really step themselves forward. Um, how how did why did confidence become such a factor for you?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
You know, this is a great question. Most people think that maybe I'm working in helping individuals gain confidence because at one point I lacked it. And that's partially true. But for the most part, I am the first born. I have always been very outspoken. Uh, people called me that very gregarious child that sometimes hung out around the adults and always had something to say. So confidence has been a part of my life. At one point I had some pivots, some changes in where I lived. I grew up in El Salvador and came to live in Miami, and then all of a sudden things kind of turned for me. I lost my way when it came to confidence, and I realized after being this introverted for the first time in my life, not putting herself out there, that that's not who I really was. Um, my dad shared the quote from Henry David Thoreau go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. And from a very early age, this became my mantra. And by the way, there's a misconception that people think that it's the feeling you're born with it. But confidence is not necessarily something you have. It's something you create and you create by building the evidence that maybe I'm scared I'm a beginner. Well, I'm going to put myself out there and when I see that I can do it, I can become more confident. So when I realize that that was kind of like the secret sauce, right? You have to, um, find that you're uncomfortable, awareness, understand and say, okay, I'm uncomfortable, but I'm going to take the next step. And that's how you continue to build your skill, build your confidence. And once you have these two components, then you're more motivated to put yourself out there and do the work. So as I found this from myself and I saw that other women and they kept saying, Julie, you're so confident, I wish I was. And here's the reality. Yes, there are many moments and I have that, but there's many moments in which I second guess myself. There's many moments in which my husband can tell you I sit in bed, I'm like, what am I doing?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
How am I going to do this? We all have them. We're human. I want to normalize for others that when you see someone on the outside doing the really cool stuff, it's not because they're better or they have it together. It is because they create the consistency, the actions, the evidence that, hey, I'm going to try. I'm going to move one step forward and build the evidence that I can do it. So that's how confidence and how I like to approach it, how I teach it to other individuals and share what has worked tremendously for me and my clients now, as I help them define what confidence means to them as they're doing the work and putting themselves out there.

Daniel Aaron:
That's beautiful. And I'm glad you brought all that up because I agree with you. There's often a misconception. I mean, the the the most obvious misconception that I encounter so often with clients and sometimes with myself still right, is I will do X, Y, or Z when I feel confident about it, right?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Absolutely.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. And of course, that's the same logic is like, well, I'm going to go to the gym when I'm really in great shape.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Yeah, exactly. That happens a lot. And I think that in our world again, we we live in a curated world more than ever. We are seeing really what people want us to see. So it is very easy to compare and despair. But when we decide, hey, this is the person, right? And I share this a lot. When I sat in a classroom and Daniel, I want to tell you, I sat in a seventh grade history class. It was the wrong classroom, and I was there for almost half a year because I was too afraid to raise my hand and say, hey, I walked into the wrong class. I had been picked on by other kids, and I didn't want to be the center of attention. And then I thought, that's not how I was raised to be. I want to be the person, right? And I created this picture, this aspiration. I want to be the person that can speak up for herself, the person that says, hey, this is not where I belong or this is how it is. So once I created that picture, I knew that I could go and start to work on it. And by the way, it doesn't happen overnight. And this is the other thing that people need to know. It's about taking one step and always saying, okay, I did it. I showed up, good for me. Now I can show up tomorrow and my goal is to show up and to do it at least one tiny percent better. And when we do that, then we become more confident that we can do the work. But again, it's a practice. It's something that requires us to commit to the process, and it also requires us to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, which a lot of us are not willing to do.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah, absolutely. Nicely said. So I'll share a quick thing with you on this. And then I got a question for you. Related. When I, when I was in my first year of college, I had up until then I'd been like shy, painfully shy. And when I got to college it was even worse. It was just so many people. Yet I had one college professor, philosophy teacher, uh, Doctor Peel was his name. Um, and I really connected with him. At the end of the year. I'd done two classes with him. The end of the year, I'm about to transfer to another school, and we'd really connected. So he brought me into his office and he said, I want to share something with you. Okay. He's like, well, I don't know if you know who my father is. I had no idea. His father is Norman Vincent Peale, right. Who is one of one of the more famous thought leaders of our generation, or maybe just, you know, the generation just before us. And he's the one that that coined the expression the power of positive thinking. So, so my professor, his son, tells me about who his father was, uh, or he still was alive at that point and says, you know, and he's written all these books and bestsellers, but I want you to read his, um, his autobiography. Nobody's read that, really. I said, okay, I said, I don't know, but I'll do it. And so I read the autobiography, and when I found out was that Doctor Norman Vincent Peale had been painfully shy. Right. And he had to. But it's like, similar to you in a sense. He saw a vision for who he could become, and he saw a vision for how he could be helpful to other people. And that's what pulled him out of himself and allowed him to just put himself forward and take the actions, you know? And I think sometimes it's the just having the decision that enough confidence to get in the game and then we find out, oh, I didn't die. I guess it's okay. Maybe I can do more of this.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
That's so good. That's a great story. You know, you mentioned the Camino de Santiago, and that's a lot of what happened for me doing this pilgrimage. I got to the Pyrenees mountains and I thought, oh, yeah, I don't think I can do this. I don't know if I can climb, but it really was about putting one foot in front of the other in not focusing on the big picture of the big mountain ahead of me, or all the distance that we still had to go. But it was about saying, okay, I'm just going to walk and put one foot in front of the other and give myself props for doing that, and the next thing you know, you get to your destination for the night. You look back and you think, oh, look at that. I went a long way and you surprise yourself. But it's about the willingness to put yourself out there, which many people avoid because they don't want to fail. And we see failure as a negative. But I want to kind of rewrite that for all of us, because, by the way, I've also seen failure as a negative, and I'm really working at rewiring myself. Rethinking that failure is more of an opportunity and learning.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Hallelujah. Thank you for saying that. So. I mean, well, let's go a little further on that then. Do you have any examples or ideas of ways that we can help bring that more clear, like how to redefine failure?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
You know, the. First step is in normalizing that it happens to all of us. We're all beginners. A lot of times, especially in this online arena, we are hearing of everybody's success. And I like to everyone really normalize and say, hey, I didn't get it right away, or I had an offer of coaching people and nobody signed up. And these things, the more that we begin to share them, and this is one of the reasons why one of my groups, my Confident You group, it's really about sharing with each other the lows so we can learn from them and we can come together and again surround each other with the right support and mirror back to the person that maybe is not feeling very good, very confident is at a low point mirror back to them. Their gifts mirror back to them their potential and allow them to then continue to try again and keep going and working at becoming that person that they want to become. So that's what I would love to see, is just an arena in which we're not celebrating, just the big wins that we're really celebrating. The person that comes in last in that marathon. I don't know if you saw the video of the New York Marathon. Oh, it made me cry. The the runners, you know, I used to live a block away from from Central Park and used to watch all the runners come in, and it's so exciting to see these people coming in mostly within a certain amount of time. But there's also the people that started at the same time, and now it's dark, they're starting to tear down, but they're still running. And I saw this video of the last five runners coming in, and in particular the last woman coming into to the finish line of the New York City Marathon. And she was you can tell you can see she was tired. She was probably hurting. She could see the finish line. And then all of a sudden the people that were there started to clap, started to cheer her on. And you can see she got a little bit of second win to go forward. And that's really what I want us to celebrate. Let's celebrate the person that's coming in last, because that's going to help them become more, um, prone to moving forward as opposed to, you know, sitting in the in the feelings that we could tell ourselves, oh, I'm last. I can't believe this. Everybody is still is going home and I'm still here. And I can't believe. Right. There's all that that happens to us. But let's celebrate the marathoners that have the endurance to stay, even if their last.

Daniel Aaron:
That's beautiful I love it. Yeah, it's and I mean, when it comes down to on some level is if we can just train ourselves to say the only failure right is giving up, the only real failure is not learning and not continuing to move forward.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Aaron:
I. Go ahead please.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
No, no. You I don't know if it was you who said this to me, I maybe because I knew it was a gentleman and I know we spoke. Um, the black belts in karate are black belts were white belts at some point, but there were white belts that never gave up. Is that something you said to me, or was it another brilliant gentleman that said that to me?

Daniel Aaron:
You know the thing, there are a lot of impostors out there. I gotta say. Um, no, I didn't say that. But it's funny as you as you said that, and I actually am a martial artist, so it could, um, understandable confusion, but I never thought, amazingly, I never thought of it this way before. But on some level, what is a black belt? But a white belt that's gotten dirty? How does it get dirty through use? Right through practice, through, you know, getting thrown on the ground or whatever? Um, that's that's great, I love it.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Um, yeah, absolutely. So I need to remember who is it that told me that then, because I loved it and it was sort of like, whoa, wait a minute. Yes, that is so true. And I think that there's times that I kind of gave up the thing because I'm a high achiever. So of course, if I'm not very good right away, I'm like, oh, forget it, I'm not doing that. Um, point is, I hate, uh, knitting. I haven't been able to get it, but maybe I am just a white belt at knitting that needs to stick it out and keep trying.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. Well and you know and it depends. Right. Because the flip side of what we don't give up on is what we care about. Right. What what is meaningful to us.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Absolutely.

Daniel Aaron:
Yeah. So let's go back though for a moment because you, you spoke about the Camino de Santiago and you had that journey. And at first it really brought you to a bit of an edge. What? Um, well, actually, maybe say a word about what it is in case there's anybody that doesn't know. And what drew you to it?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Well, thank you for letting me talk about one of my favorite topics in the whole world. The Camino de Santiago, is a pilgrimage that has been going on for hundreds of years. And basically the apostle James, one of Jesus's 12, he was in Spain and he was returned to Jerusalem, and he died in Jerusalem as a martyr. Eventually he wanted to have his remains brought back to Spain. So his disciples brought it back. But for many years the relics of the Apostle James were missing until they were found. Um, and they create they build a cathedral where they found that and for many years, and this goes back to medieval times, people have been doing this pilgrimage, and there is a main route that goes again, you can go from Jerusalem. There's an entire route you can take through all the way up to Spain, uh, to Santiago, which is James in Spanish, the, the city of Santiago de Compostela. And you can walk this pilgrimage. And most people that are doing the French route begin and at the border of Spain and France, in the Pyrenees mountains. So now I heard about the pilgrimage from my very good friend, my best friend Melissa. And we've been in each other's lives since we were in high school. And she's my adventure buddy. We were talking about doing Kilimanjaro, believe it or not, and she said, hey, I heard of this other thing we got to do before we go to Kilimanjaro. And I'm like, okay, what is it? And she said, we got to walk in Spain. And I'm like, Melissa, what do you mean? So she's like, okay, go watch this movie. And she sends me to watch a movie that was directed by Emilio Estevez and has Martin Sheen, and I'm not giving away anything of the movie. The name of the movie is The way, but basically the plot is the young man decides that he is not going to finish his doctorate in sociology, but he's going to travel the world because that's how he is going to learn about people better. His dad, Martin Sheen, is not very keen on that idea. So they had been estranged at the beginning of the movie.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
And the movie begins with Martin Sheen getting a call that his son has died and he flies to Spain and he's wondering, well, what the heck was he doing here? And then he begins to discover that his son was about to begin this pilgrimage to Santiago. And as he is grieving as a father and wondering, you know what could have been better? How come he didn't reconcile with his son? He decides then to do the pilgrimage with his son's ashes. And when you watch the movie, I mean, it's would they just rereleased it? It it just called to me. And anybody who has done the Camino de Santiago will tell you this. The Camino calls you. And I began to get that call. Come. And many people do the pilgrimage for different reasons, some very spiritual, some to find themselves. And every reason is valid but really personal to the person. And my friend Melissa and I set off to begin that pilgrimage, and we did a part of the walk, and it was an incredible experience. It was one of the most wonderful times to of self-discovery. It was a time of really again, pushing limits, being able to see the beauty of the human spirit, the gratitude that you can feel from people that you're interacting with and building relationships. And then, um, I did the second portion, and I still have to finish the whole Camino because I'm doing it in stages. The second portion I did with my husband, and again, that was an incredible experience. We had so much fun. And you really learn so much about yourself, about relationships, that I can't wait to go back. But unfortunately or sadly for me, I had intended to go back in 2020. We know what happened, so I've had to kind of put it on hold. But I believe this might be the year that I go back. And this is the beauty of being an entrepreneur, that I can decide when and how. And I don't have to ask for my PTO. I can just do it because I'm the CEO of my life and business.

Daniel Aaron:
That's beautiful. I love it. And and that's great. And having actually lived in the town of Santiago when I was a kid or kid when I was a young man, I didn't even know about that movie. So thank you for that. That's gone on my list. Yeah. And and you did a beautiful segue, because something else that I've already had in mind that I wanted to ask you about is this relationship between business, entrepreneurship, being the CEO of your life and business. And the title of this show is the Art of Vibrant Living. And a lot of our listeners, not everybody, but a lot of our audience, are people who either have their own business or would like to, or are in process of creating it or ramping it up. What what's your feeling about? What do you see as the the link between being an entrepreneur, having your own business, and creating a vibrant, amazing life?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Well, I one of the things that I'm starting to learn is that entrepreneurs. Just like in the Camino de Santiago. Get this call. You can't really say how or when, or maybe it's been inside you for a while and something on, you know, on opens this to all of a sudden really tapping into, wait a minute, I have this gift, people have this need. And that intersection of believing that you can go out and you must share your gifts with the people that are looking for that transformation, or they're looking for that service or product. There's also the freedom that a lot of people are looking for in the intersection. For me, of vibrant living, right? And being the CEO of your life and business is knowing specifically that you have a call. You're putting some service or product out into the world that brings value, that has value. But in turn, you are also doing it in a way that allows you to live again the life of your dreams, the life that you imagine with freedom, with the capability of making the investment in other things that are important to you. Giving time to your family, to the community. And it's not easy to be an entrepreneur. I don't want people to think that this is a, you know, sunny road, but it really is a road worth doing, because if you have this intrinsic and really deep calling that you know that you love doing this and you want to do it and you want to call the shots, this is how you do it. And but you need to really create the margin. You need to really create the space to run both your life and the, the, the business side of it in a way that allows you to one stay consistent with what you were seeking first. And that's to serve, to put your your transformation out there or to your product. But also you're looking to stay really true to the calling of having the freedom, both financial and of time, because that's ultimately, as an entrepreneur, we can leverage that, but we need to really treat our life in prioritize. We also need to treat our business with the same capacity to plan ahead, the ability to also, um, make difficult choices, make some investment of time up front to be in that discomfort, because in the long run and staying that course, you will get to what you're looking for as an entrepreneur.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. Beautifully said. Okay, I'm with you on all that. I want to dig a little deeper, though. And it do it in a silly way. I'm going to throw out a couple quotations to you and see how they land and what sense you make of them. Right. So one is, I remember years ago, I sort of accidentally found myself in a leadership position. I was living in Bali, and I started running these big events. And then before I knew it, I had a staff. And and then I had all these guest teachers and, you know, everybody and all the students, everybody's looking at me. I'm like, oh, I guess I should figure out something about what it means to be in a leadership position. So I started reading and studying, and I came across a quotation there that when I, when I first read it, I was like, I had to double take on it. Like, what? What is it? And the quotation is this as far as your leadership goes? No, sorry. Let me, uh, take it back. Your leadership ability is the glass ceiling on your life, success and happiness? Um, I remember when I read that I was like, what? No, wait, that can't be right. You know? Okay, okay, okay. Maybe success. Like, sure. As a leader that determines something about your success in business, say, but your life, happiness and success is measured by your leadership abilities. So I thought, wow, that really struck me on a deep level. And so and then I'll toss one other one out and see where the combo goes. You can speak about anything you want with this. I'm curious to see where it goes for you. There's a saying that an entrepreneur is someone who's willing to work 80 hours a week for themselves, so they don't work 40 hours a week for someone else.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Mhm. Absolutely. I, I want to unpack this. This is so good. You know, as you were saying this, I was thinking about a conversation I had earlier last week with somebody in which they said I love that. I don't have to ask somebody, hey, is it okay if I go to lunch at noon and come back at one? And I. I looked at her and I said, yeah, that is the beauty. And however the other side of the coin is that we will write because we were having this conversation past, uh, you know, regular working hours. She was working, and I happened to be in the office. And, and it doesn't happen 100% of the time. But if you're really excited, we tend to be here doing the thing that we love. But at the same time, there comes a time in which we can see the beauty of the of the sky, the blue skies ahead. Right? Yet we can't seem to get high enough. We can't seem to get past a certain place. And that's because we we don't see the barriers. It's a glass ceiling. Like the quote says. It's there's something there that's preventing you. And really what you need to do is just keep trying, keep pushing, keep going, and just focus on the fact that it's not about I'm going to reach the sky. It's more about I'm doing it, I'm working. What is my mission? What is that thing? Many, many of us have goals, dreams, and somewhere along the line we disconnect. Somewhere along the line, what we're doing is entrepreneurs becomes part of that white noise of life. And that's what allows us to stay stuck. That's what gets us discouraged in many ways. But as a leader, you have to start with yourself. You have to start with investing in yourself. You have to start with believing in yourself. I just watched, uh, Niecy Nash, by the way. I don't know if anybody else watched the Emmys. And again, I cry a lot, I guess, when I watch TV. But I was watching the video of her acceptance speech, and by the way, I wanted to stand up as if I were a church. Hallelujah. You're right, girl, go for it, she said. I want to thank me. And that's exactly what we need to do. We need to be our own cheering section, and we need to say, hey, you're having a hard time, but keep going. You're having a hard time. Keep going. Stay consistent. It's not about getting to the sky, but it's about just doing the thing because eventually that glass will give way. But we have to really be invested in our purpose and reminding ourselves of the greater reason why we're doing that, and not so much in the discomfort that we may be feeling.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. Beautifully said. Yeah, well, I mean, and what you point to is, is the same the wisdom, right, from Simon Sinek made it famous with the start with why. Yeah. Um, and I the phrasing I use often in helping people with goals and dreams is dump the disaster of discipline. Meaning get your why. Get clear on what your motivation is, what your purpose is. Because that's like that is in my experience, that's the only thing that keeps us going when we hit obstacles. So in I mean, you've had, uh, quite a journey like. And I love the way you took us through your early part of your life and work, and that you've got the perspective now where you can look back and say, oh, I see how that related to now. And I see how that step related to now and all of that kind of groomed me for who I've become. Now in, in your your process up to now, have there been times as an entrepreneur where, where it got hard for you, where you thought about quitting, where you thought maybe you should just go get a job?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Yeah, of. Course I it would be a total lie if I didn't say that it didn't happen. Um, when I first, um, when I first got laid off. It was definitely a very difficult conversation and multiple levels. Number one, I'd been with the organization for a long time. The founder of the organization, she became my friend, my mentor, someone that I admired and I just loved. Incredibly, she, um, sadly passed away. In 2017, and I stayed with the company, even though that voice kept saying, Julie, maybe this is the time. Maybe this is it for you. I started to already do some coaching here and there, but I still was following this path that, um, because the fear was there, right? Well, what happens? What will people think? Am I good enough? And all of that started to come up. And, you know, the universe took it upon themselves to say, okay, this, this is what you want to do. We're going to make it happen. And when I got the call to say, hey, the company is struggling, we really need to offer you a separation package because the pandemic and everything. Um, my first thought was, yeah, I know exactly what I'm going to do. I know exactly what I'm going to do. And I knew that I was going to go and pursue this, and I didn't really know how. Then my second thought was. Wait a minute. I don't know if you should do this. Well, maybe you should need to go get a job. Maybe you need to go and tell people who you know you're going to be able to get a job right away. People, you've been in this industry, you know, people make the calls. And as I was doing that, I was reminded of my friend, the founder of the company that I was separating from. And she took the leap. She took the leap to start this company out of nothing. She took the leap to follow her dreams. She took the leap to create something that was greater than her, that remained and impacted the lives not only of the people that worked with her, but of the people that we served.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
And I thought, hmm, let me pursue this. Let me build this in. You know, Daniel, it has been not a rosy road. It's been scary. It's been, um, challenging. And yeah, I thought, wait a minute, what am I doing? I could go and get a job in, you know, have a have a salary or surpass what I was earning. And yet I knew that it's not about the giving up. It's about the consistency. And I go and I go back, right? I go back and I, um, always reminded of my dad and he would say, honey, Babe Ruth, it's not the greatest because he had so many home runs. He was the greatest because he had the highest strikeouts. And in the times that I felt like, okay, maybe I need to do this. And and by the way, I've done some consulting that's outside of this and maybe some part time work, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. But I didn't see it as a failure. I saw it as an opportunity for that work to invest back into my business. I saw them as outside investors, into my business, and it's really a matter of seeing the gift in things. And if you have to go get another job while you're still building your dreams, that's okay. It's not a bad thing. It's something that is part of the process that will help you get to where you want to be.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. Beautifully said. I love that. And so something that came up before. And you can't kind of came to me again as you were speaking just then. Um, and I appreciate your honesty in terms of some of the challenges and struggles for you. Um, I think it is a challenge for a lot of people. They start into entrepreneurship and they think, hey, this is gonna be great. I'm gonna make a lot of money, and I'm gonna have all kinds of free time, and nobody's going to tell me when to go to lunch. Um, I have a friend who is a he's a former MMA fighter. And then he turned, uh, entrepreneur. And he said to me, you know, Daniel, when I was an MMA, MMA fighter, I expected it was going to be hard. Like, I expected I was going to get knocked down. When I got, nobody told me it was going to be hard as an entrepreneur. Right? So what what are you we've talked about, you know, what it takes in a in a way to to keep going. And that's really the, the opposite of failure or the fail safe that keeps failure from being a word we need to use. But what what do you what's, I guess, what's kept you going or what helps people to keep going when they do get knocked down?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
So here is where the mindset is really important and really surrounding yourself with those believing mirrors, because all of us are going to hit the point in which we don't think we can do it. But really leveraging the people that can remind us, hey, you did it, or you're you're on your way or keep going. It's worth it. The other thing, too, is, you know, your friend, the MMA fighter, he he said something very key. He probably knew exactly what it was going to take. He needed to physically train. He needed to really have that mental focus on fighting the, the, his opponents. Right. When it comes to entrepreneurship. The opponents or the fighting or the training or the steps that we need to take sometimes are not very clear. For that reason, I really strongly feel in creating I'm a teacher at heart, so I do, we do and then you do. And that's the process that I teach you. I'm never sharing with my clients something that I haven't done, that I haven't experienced because I want to be able to let them know I've been in your shoes, and I want to give them a clear plan because nobody is giving you a clear plan. At times this person says, do it this way, this person is doing that way, and then you become so crazy and you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing that then you get stuck or you don't build the momentum towards something because you take a sideline and nobody also tells you that you need to run. I go back to this, your business like a business if you wouldn't, if you're running a business, if you're working for somebody else, you wouldn't show up late. You wouldn't have, you know, oh, you know what? I'm going to take the day. No, you're going to intentionally plan your day. You're going to have some clear strategic points that you're going to hit. You're going to have some clear tactics and what you need to do to get there. You're not going to haphazardly just show up. It's like, okay, I'm a business owner. What should I do? Oh, you know what, let me go check out on Facebook to see what people are doing.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Oh, you know what? I don't know how to do that. Let me go and I'm going to take a course or you know what this person is teaching that I'm going to download their free tool. If you're an entrepreneur, you're going to decide, number one, what is it that you want to do next. You're going to decide, how do I need to do that? And what are the investments of the support system that I'm going to make and then begin to work it, work the plan. It's not just creating a plan. My dad used to say, you know, my dad was full of wisdom. Perfect. Previous planning prevents problems, and that's the reality. I used to hate it when he would say that, but it's so true. In my business, the perfect previous planning helps me. Decide, okay, where am I going and what could be the obstacles that I'm going to face? How am I going to deal with that when it comes up? And what am I going to do when I fall and how do I keep going? Right. That's an incredibly crucial for an entrepreneur, and many of us are not doing that. And that's what makes us get discouraged and maybe pivot or go back to doing something else because it gets hard.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. Thank you. That's beautifully put. I agree with you completely. Two things come to mind as you say that. One is something that I feel like I've. I'm learning now, almost for the first time. I've been working with people for 30 years, um, teaching and coaching in different ways all this time. And in the early part of my work with people, I was really a hard ass. Like, I was so focused on pushing people and challenging them, you know, and there's, there's good that came of that for sure. The more I go on, the more I learn now is that that my bigger role really is encouraging people. Right? It's just loving, encouraging. Help them realize that, yeah, they can keep going with, with, with what they want to do. Um, so the other thing though, that that came to me as you were speaking, there is this idea of running the business as a business and having professional standards for oneself. Like can you gave a great example, right. It's so easy if we don't have a boss just to say, well, I'll, I'll start when I wake up, I'll, I'll start at a certain level, you know, I'll spend the first 20 minutes. Oh, wait, it's an hour and a half looking at, um, social media. I think social media is part of business, isn't it? You know.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
I got to. Put myself out there. Yeah.

Daniel Aaron:
Gotta learn what's going on. So in terms of, um, professional standards or professionalism, what what do you find is the role of accountability, um, or integrity. Right. And there's a lot of different ways you can go with that. To me, it's one of the most important sort of concepts. I'm curious how that relates to what you're speaking of, though. For you.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Yeah. You know, a. Lot of people think of integrity and a lot of people think of accountability is something that you have when you're in relationship with somebody else. And yes, there is a level of that as an entrepreneur, but you need to have the integrity and the accountability to yourself, because if you don't, you may be telling people you're doing the thing and then you're, oh, I'm not really doing it right. And then you that's that imposter syndrome that you're you're in a cognitive dissonance that, um, then knocks you down. It's important to understand what is it that I want again, going back to your why like Simon Sinek says, right. Understanding what does it take to get there? Do I need someone to guide me? Right. I think that if you I, I want to talk about Star Wars because I love Star Wars. And again, my dad took me to see this at a young age. And I remember I just thought, you know, Luke was such a hero. And yes, he was the hero in the first movie. Um, but really what he had is he had a guide that said, I've been there, I've done it and allowed him to learn that accountability to himself, learn that way of mastering himself, but still giving him the example of how it's done. And I think that that's the same thing for entrepreneurs. You are so excited we're going ho, oh my God, I'm going to go attack, you know, the Imperial guards, but you're not qualified. Why don't you start off doing that what you're capable of, or spend time with the master so they can teach you, and then you can then go practice and then watch the tape. That's the other thing that many entrepreneurs don't do. And that's part of that accountability when you are. Let's say, you know an athlete and you're playing football, right? We're about to go into the Super Bowl when you're playing football, all of these athletes go back on Monday after the Sunday games, whether they won or they lost, and they watch the tape. They watch it over and over and over again is entrepreneurs. How many of us actually go back and look at what we did last week? How did it go? What worked? What didn't work? What should I do different? Wait, maybe I can do this the same way. But I need to have these circumstances kind of shift a little bit. And who do I need to support me? Do I need the coach to help me practice my throat's or my catches? And that's the accountability to yourself, to your goals, to your dreams, is knowing that you need help, knowing that you need to watch the tape. Staying consistent with connecting again to the reason why you started.

Daniel Aaron:
Hallelujah, I love it. That's beautiful. Yeah. Well. And and that's for me one of my favorite things in, in my role as a coach is when, you know, when the clients who have gone out there, they've gotten in the arena, they've gotten their face marred by dirt and sweat. Right. And, uh, and maybe they didn't get the results that they wanted or all the results, like those moments of being able to say, okay, so what happened? You know, what did you say? What did they say? What did you do? What was the response you got? Like, that's that's to me, that's a version of running the game tape back. Yeah. Right. And so often. Right. And this goes both ways. Like when I do this with my coaches and they ask me these questions and I say, well I did this and, and then, you know, they'll say, well did you try that. Did you think of that like yeah. No. You know, as you say it, it seems really obvious. And it's like we don't have to be sometimes that brilliant as coaches, we just have to ask questions from a different perspective. That allows allows our clients to see from a different point of view. It's so valuable.

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
Yeah, yeah. If you ask the right question, you're going to get the right answer. I had a coach, Daniel, who in the very beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, he, um, I came back and I was really down and out. I said, you know, I tried to get this person as a client. And then I asked this other person, and I don't want to work with me, what's wrong with me? And he's like, I want you to go, and I want you to ask 100 people to work with you. And I'm like, what? What do you mean? Ask a hundred people and and and I didn't understand. He said, I want you to go and do that. And I thought, all right, fine. I was not happy. The reality is that he wanted me to stop associating a no with my value. And many entrepreneurs associate the nos, associate the walls that they hit with how valuable they are. But the reality is that it's not about us. It's about where that person is. I'm sure you've read The Four Agreements, right? Never assume that you know what is going on to somebody else. And if it's a no, it doesn't mean that it's not a no in the future. It's no for right now. And if you're serving, if you're doing it, if you're staying true to what you offer, what you want to do, then if it's the right time that person comes back and you're able to change lives and you're able to reach the things and do the things and serve the people who you want.

Daniel Aaron:
Nice. That's awesome. Holy moly. Time is flying by, Julie. But we got, you know, uh, a couple of things that we'll wrap up with in a minute. But first, I got to go here for a second because. You. What? You spoke nicely earlier in response to my question about, well, what's the relationship between entrepreneurship and a vibrant life, right. And what what would you say now in terms of. Right, we were just talking about. Um, the ability to dissociate someone's no from ourselves, not take it personally. Right. And there's a great, uh, Ted talk. Gosh, it's been so long. And I think he actually wrote a book to a guy who had a similar challenge. Maybe it's where your coach got this idea, and it was to get, uh, I remember the exact game was he had to make proposals so ludicrous that people would say no, and he had to get 100 of them or something. And so he would just go up to strangers and say, you know, would you give me $500, you know, and people would look at him like he was a nutcase. But what part of what he found out, in addition to getting, you know, uh, immunized against the nose, which I'm sure was part of what your experience was like, you started to not take it personally and not care. Um, he also found that, surprisingly, sometimes people just said yes. Right. So this idea of putting oneself forward without being attached to the outcome or to what people say, um, how how is that related, if at all, to creating a great life, a vibrant life?

Julie DeLucca-Collins:
You know, I go back to to the Four agreements if and and I will tell you that I think it should be required reading in, in high school, middle school and college because it's such a simple book. But we we can only control ourselves. We can only take charge of how we decide to show up, what we decide to think, what we decide to do. And for many of us. We don't do that. We we, you know. Oh, that person hurt my feelings. No. Not really. They're just going about their life, doing their thing. You're making assumptions. And you, you are then thinking outside of yourself. It really you have to take responsibility because what you are thinking is going to create your results. It's going to create your results. And if you want different results, you need to start shifting and deciding who do you need to be to get those results. I just read the book um, Be Your Future Self Now. And by the way, I love the future self concept. It's phenomenal. Is by Doctor Benjamin Harding. You need to read his book. You need to read all his books. I love them and that that is really what happens. We.

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