Risks! Love them or fear them, rarely, it seems, are we indifferent.
The prevailing belief that risk taking is a masculine trait and women are risk averse has been slammed by scientific evidence. But the myth lingers.
Well, here’s a woman who’s more than comfortable taking risks. Let down shamefully by her employer, she suddenly quit her high status, high salaried job, took a massive pay cut and started a new career – from the bottom. Several years later, when she disliked the way her employing organisation was unraveling, she jumped from her highly paid job into self-employment – little security, no regular income.
Meet Julie Brown, my risk taking, energetic, smart, business owning Page 1 Woman, who gets an idea and immediately runs with it. Not that she’s impulsive; she’s more, gutsy; a quirky individual who gets off on variety and dipping into different things. Note her business interests – an assortment of offerings for visibility challenged business owners. And when she’s not working, she’s an avid biker, who’s biked across America three times.
But how has she achieved success? Keep reading and find out more about Julie Brown.
Julie Brown
What do you do?
Julie: I’m a visibility and mindset coach, a storyteller. I help entrepreneurs get more eyes on their business, including through press coverage. I’m also a journalist of 17 years, an experienced editor-in-chief and publisher and I still work as a freelancer.
As an editor of a magazine being pitched into by business owners, and now a business owner pitching into the press, I've experience on both sides. Having seen thousands of pitches and press releases, I know what’s good and what pitch or press release will have editors reaching for the delete button. So, I help business owners break through the barrier of reaching relevant editors by teaching them how to do their own powerful PR.
I also use my writing experience to help entrepreneurs improve their writing skills and create powerful, compelling content to sell their products or services – landing pages and marketing emails for instance.
My clients, mainly entrepreneurs, often come to me with problems in their business - maybe they're not growing or have issues with engagement. I often find it’s because they lack confidence, have low self-esteem, or they're scared of technology. That’s where my life coaching skills come in. I’m an accredited coach too.
As a freelance journalist, I’ve written for many publications and websites such as Top Sante magazine, The Metro, The Guardian, Happiful magazine, The Writing Co-operative, Thrive Global, Elephant Journal and numerous specialist magazines like Trail Running, Country Walking, Group Travel World, Classic American, Back Street Heroes and a fair few female orientated websites.
Alongside all of that I'm teaching business basics in a programme for business owners with an undeveloped business idea or who are stuck because they haven't got the business basics in place. And I co-teach life coaching at award winning coach Carole Ann Rice’s Pure Coaching Academy.
I’m a trained make-up artist too, specialising in the over 45-year-olds. It’s my mission to help them be confident about who they are. My YouTube channel is Still Sassy.
What essential steps did you take to get to where you are now?
Julie: I started out as a general nurse and then trained to be a psychiatric nurse. My next move was into the field of Aids and HIV during the 1990s when it was a little-understood, awful disease. I was in Manchester, where there's a big gay community. It was tough because although I'd done grief counselling as a psychiatric nurse, in this job not only was I was working with individuals dying, which is hard enough, their friends and partners were dying too. Such a terrible time for many people. Thankfully, this disease is now controllable.
From here I stepped into management undertaking various roles including for the government as a hospital inspector where I had the responsibility of recommending what quality star status a NHS Trust should be given. I later returned to the NHS as general manager then decided to leave completely.
I became disillusioned with the NHS, which was becoming a tough place for front-line staff. The death of my mum was the final straw. She’d been ill for four years and as she neared the end, those I worked with weren’t as supportive as you’d expect. I wasn’t allowed time off to see her, with no-one happy to cover some of my responsibilities when I was getting daily messages from my dad about mum nearing the end of her life. Eventually, somebody agreed to do this and I spent time with her on the last day and a half of her life. I felt robbed of more time with my mum and decided I’d had enough.
The day mum died, I saw a journalist job advertised. Although I’d no training in writing, as a hospital inspector, I’d interviewed people, collected all sorts of information and data and reported on it, with the final report published on the government website. And I was nosey - a good trait for a journalist. I gave this interview my all and persuaded them I could do it. And so, four months after my mum died, I left the NHS and became a journalist. I took a massive pay cut, started at the bottom and worked my way up to editor -in-chief and then publisher.
Whilst working as a busy publisher I opened a sewing shop in the Lincolnshire town I lived in. One of my passions is sewing. I employed two part-time assistants to run it Mon-Fri and I worked there at weekends, running workshops too.
So, the essential step was having the courage to apply for that job as a journalist. It wasn't on my radar, but with my mum dying, I knew I had to change my life. And change it did.
What was your greatest challenge on the journey?
Julie: I took my mum's death badly. And that was followed very closely by my mother-in-law's and then my father's deaths. It was tough. I had a few sessions of grief counselling, but it didn't work out for me. So, I worked through it alone with my friends and my husband supporting me.
Life got better after bringing a dog into our family. Jack needed focus and attention, which gave me purpose again. That might sound strange, but my mum was like my best friend, the person I told everything to and that stopped the day she died. Jack did a good job of pulling me round.
Another challenge was having to get through an ingrained money block when I became self-employed. I’d worry about how much I’d make and whether I could afford things or go on holiday. Ironically, a few life coaching sessions got me over this and I then went on to become a life coach. Carole Ann, my coach helped me realise that I had my journalism experience to fall back on and could make money from this anytime, so, I would never go without.
What was your greatest lightbulb moment?
Julie: I had a massive lightbulb moment when I realised that I should use my past experiences in my coaching business. When I started out, I wasn't thinking about using my writing or journalism skills in the business. I would be a pure life coach. But as some of my clients were entrepreneurs, I was asked a lot about press coverage and writing skills for business. After chatting with another coach, it became obvious the right path was to include these things and offer a wider range of services. It’s worked well.
What one resource was crucial to your success?
Julie: Reaching out to people was crucial. When I popped out of corporate life, I was alone and knew nothing about using the online world for business. I joined a few membership programmes and Facebook groups and networked online and offline. And that's been crucial for getting me to where I am now.
I was well known in journalism, but not in the solopreneur world. And the only way to get known was to network and tell people online what I was doing and reach out for help when I needed it. I found the small business community so supportive and now I can offer this same support to others.
My husband, Steve has also been important to my success. He knew how much I needed to do this and he's taken care of lots of things to allow it to happen.
What’s your understanding of leadership?
Julie: Good leaders inspire, understand other people's points of view and are empathetic. They’re visionary, know where they’re heading and how to get there. And they bring their teams with them.
They’re assertive because often people try to knock leaders off course. They communicate their vision to help people get on board with it and are clear about what needs to be achieved and what role the wider team plays within that.
Leaders delegate and empower others. Some of my past managers would delegate, but not empower you to get it done. Leaders enable people to take responsibility whilst offering a guiding hand and support when needed.
Strong leaders are inclusive and involve people in what they're trying to do. They take responsibility for things going wrong, and don’t blame others. A leader leads from the front, pointing the way forward and getting everyone on the right path, until such time when she can get behind and push the team along, so they become leaders too.
Leaders recognise and use the skills of team members. They’re tenacious, honest and authentic, otherwise people see straight through them. Leaders set boundaries so everybody knows what they're doing. They take risks, and fail sometimes, but get up and move on quickly before things get dire. Fail but fail fast.
As a woman leader I've worked with men who’ve made my life unpleasant, particularly if I was their equal or superior. I’ve had my opinions trashed, been shouted over, ignored but I always stay calm, assertive and focused on what I need to achieve. It’s the only way to deal with this sort of behaviour. Getting angry doesn’t help.
What are you three top tips for women who want to be leaders in their field?
Julie: First, find a mentor. Being a leader can be isolating. A mentor supports you in developing your leadership skills while keeping your confidence intact. You’ll learn to handle tricky situations and she’ll help you with any roadblocks too – which can include your mindset. It doesn't have to be a paid mentor. It could be somebody from your community who has the experience and skills that you need. Reach out and you’ll be amazed how many people are happy to help.
Second, identify the skills, attributes and daily rituals of leaders you admire and emulate them. What do you need to do to have similar success? Is it knowledge, skills, courage?
Whilst working with the NHS and government, there were times when I needed to be very direct. This was something I had to learn as it didn’t come naturally. But the roles I was involved with meant there were always difficult situations to deal with and quickly. I would ask myself how the world’s most skillful leaders would deal with this, then try to do the same.
Third, believe in yourself. Believe you have the skills to lead in your area of expertise. It's about building confidence. This will see you through tough times, when your team is being disruptive or the CEO tells you to do something and you don’t know how to. It’s the same if you’re self-employed – you may get a client asking for help with something that you’re not experienced or skilled in. Just learn quickly as it’s a shame to miss opportunities. My philosophy is “Say yes and learn about it later”. Just don’t tell the client!
To learn more about Julie's business, I am Julie Brown, click here.
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