Mastermind, Book Launch, & Personal Update!

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey everyone, this is Julie. Welcome back to Million Dollar Grit. Today is kind of a personal update where I've been. It's been about 2 weeks and it has been a whirlwind. Weekend over here in my neck of the woods. I just finished hosting my 15th Digital Insiders Mastermind. I had a busy weekend at home with kids and animals, and then I turned around and went to New York City to celebrate Selena Soo and her book launch, Rich Relationships. So I'm just gonna go through what I've been doing, what I've been thinking, feeling, and I'll recap the mastermind and the New York City trip. So first and foremost, if you don't know what Digital Insiders is, it is my hybrid mastermind and coaching program that has been in effect since 2017. So we are on year 7 and a half, year 8, somewhere, somewhere in that ballpark. It is an amazing group of entrepreneurs and business owners that are in the online space with courses, group programs, coaching, service providers, agencies. We even have some e-commerce businesses in there as well. and we meet twice a year, sometimes 3 times a year, as a group to brainstorm, hot seat, and to kind of rest and recalibrate, if you will. And then I also do a lot of private one-on-one coaching with all of the Insiders. So I have one-to-one access with everyone, which gives me a vantage point that is really unique and can't be, you know, touted by many other people in the space because they just aren't willing to have one-on-one access to so many people. But I do it and I love it. And I love it for so many reasons. So I rearranged my mastermind flow this time, definitely differently than in the past. And in the past, we've done 3 full days of peer-led presentations on all kinds of things, from, you know, YouTube to email marketing to funnels to mindset work. But I knew that that would be a lot, and I knew that given sort of the time and season that we're in with lots of things changing, I wanted to make each day have a theme. So Tuesday was the rest and recalibration day. And the goal of that day was to help bring us all back to our center and really just recover from the grind of being online. Wednesday was the more classic mastermind day that most of my members are familiar with. This was the momentum day. This was the day when other presenters came up and talked about different strategies and tactics that were working. And then Thursday's theme was action and acceleration. So the goal of this was, okay, you've rested, you've recalibrated, you've come back to center, you've gotten inspiration and momentum, you know, that dopamine rush that we all love as entrepreneurs, and then Thursday is, okay, it's time to take action. So what I spoke on on Tuesday was all about this concept of drift, and it was the rest and recalibration day, so it's You know, if you see a boat in the water, it's going to drift if there's no anchor. And so businesses have drift as well. And I went through a whole bunch of different types of drift that you might feel. And the idea is that, like, you're never— you're never sitting still, you're never standing still, even if you think you are. The natural order of things is to kind of go towards disorder. I mean, that's like a law of the universe, entropy. but it happens in business as well. And so you might have offer drift, where, you know, your business starts out with like a really clear offer, but then it gets really bloated and complicated and disconnected from your original intention. You could have vision drift, where you had clear vision and then you lost it over time. You could have financial drift, you know, where profitability is no longer a key value, and so all of a sudden you're growing and revenue's coming in, but but your profit margin is less. You could have client drift, boundary drift. You could have team drift. This happens a lot when you're scaling and you hire a lot of people, and then you realize that your team is not really sharing the values. You could have product suite drift where your business just gets overloaded with products, right? And so we talked about the symptoms of drift and what happens and what the cost is if you don't recognize that drift is actually happening. And I think a lot of people don't want to address it because they feel like it's their fault, but it's just the natural order of things. It's not wrong or anybody's fault, it just is, right? So we have to— just in the same way you put a boat in the water, you know it's going to drift if you don't steer the boat or you don't put down an anchor. So you're not going to get mad at someone for drifting, you're just gonna solve it, you know? So we went through diagnosing what kind of drift they were dealing with, and then we went through core anchors. And core anchors actually was a part of the mastermind in the fall. I brought back the old presentation. It was all about mission and vision. We brought it back in for this time, and we went through and really worked our core anchors. I made a GPT that helps people work through their core anchors, and then we shared it, and it was really, really moving and powerful for people to be able to work on that and then be able to share it. And we did a lot of getting to know each other. We talked a lot about our nervous system and how, um, you know, my mindset coach in DI, she says, uh, she quotes James Clear from Atomic Habits, who, um, is quoted as saying like, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And he's teaching habits. And Helen has sort of co-opted that, that quote to say you don't rise to the level of your goals, you actually fall to the level of your nervous system. And, uh, so that was Tuesday. Now Wednesday, we started with my priority pillars, and I set this intention at the beginning of 2025, like, here's what I think you should focus on as a business owner for 2025. And I would actually argue it's probably going to carry right over into 2026. And there were 6 priorities that I wanted to focus on, and it was about high— it was around high-value problems. It was around crystal clear messaging. It was around daily marketing and sales. It was around in-person and face-to-face connections and relationships. It was about personal investment as a leader, and it was also about the field of AI. And those were the 6 presentations that we were focusing on. So I chose 10 people from the mastermind to speak on one of those priorities, right? So I asked Kathy to speak on messaging and branding. I asked Trina, who's a YouTube expert, to talk on daily marketing, and Erin on Instagram. You know, I brought in Amber who's great with retreats, in-person retreats. Nicole and Ashley talked about personal development as a leader, and then I brought in Brittany Long and Nuno for AI. And so it was these rapid-fire presentations that happened, you know, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes. Sorry if you can hear my dog. And it was great because for like about 90 minutes you could totally pay attention, right? You could just— you could pay attention because each presentation was like a little bit less than a TED Talk. And so then what we did is in the afternoon I said, okay, you're feeling all this momentum. We've been talking about mission and vision. Now we need to go and be in pursuit of the one thing. So we talked about the value of understanding the one thing, the one thing, the one lever that's gonna actually make a difference. Uh, and I brought one of my clients up, Lindsay Williams, who is an amazing case study of someone who focuses on the one thing. So she went through the one thing that she's been working on in her business since August, really pretty soon after we started working together. And just what kind of leverage she's been able to get. It's a weekly live webinar. And so that was fantastic. I could see all kinds of light bulbs going off. And then we had hot seats for about an hour and a half, and then, uh, that was Wednesday. So then Thursday I wanted to bring everybody into, okay, you're inspired, you've got momentum, you know there's one thing you've gotta work on, so now let's build action. And so we did a lot of coworking that day. We got things done, we checked in, had some accountability, and then in the afternoon we did a a, um, a priorities statement for the next 6 months until the next mastermind. And anybody who wanted to participate got up and shared with the group. I went ahead, I recorded it. I've now deconstructed it all into ChatGPT to get some amazing insights. And then we had an awesome dinner. It was an amazing mastermind, very excited. So in 6 months we're going to meet again, and, uh, rumor on the street, which is not confirmed, but rumor on the street is that I'm taking my mastermind back to Disney Disney World. I did that in 2021. It was about 4 years ago. It was post-COVID. It was a crazy awesome mastermind. This one's going to be a little more chill. Um, you could probably go back to my old podcast and hear about how crazy that Disney mastermind was, um, on the Create Your Laptop Life podcast. But I feel so filled up, and I noticed that so many people who left the mastermind weren't scattered and overwhelmed. They were clear, they had action steps, they had a priority statement, and they had actually gotten work done. And that was just, you know, it wasn't as like glitzy as, you know, a notebook filled with new ideas, but sometimes that notebook filled with new ideas doesn't actually help you. So it was an amazing event. I got a lot of awesome, awesome feedback. So the weekend came and man, oh man, I have my daughter home from college. I have my son who's going to be moving back into the house with me. We have coyotes trying to get at our chickens. You know, it was just like this crazy weekend, and I was actually supposed to go to New York on Sunday night so that I could be at Selena's event Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but I just— I made a really hard call. I said, "I'm going to miss Monday because I need to regroup," and The old Julie probably wouldn't have done that. The old Julie would have just grounded out to try to get there in time, but I decided no. So Monday was actually, I was in my office, I was working, I did a whole bunch of stuff. I was definitely a little stressed. I mean, if you could talk to my team, Monday's team meeting wasn't the greatest, but I got a lot done, and then I headed to New York with AC on Monday. We had a great little dinner at a French place, and then Tuesday I went to Selena's event on Tuesday and Wednesday. So she basically taught a bunch of ideas from her Rich Relationships book, and I highly recommend you go buy it. Not only is it a priority in business in general to build a network, but now with AI it is like critical and urgent because it's going to get harder and harder to do so. And I love the way Selena just lays out so clearly her process, which feels very natural. I mean, Selena has been nurturing a relationship with me for the last 6 or 7 years, ever since I joined her Impacting Millions course. And I can see how she's done that and how she's done such a good job of that, um, over the years. And this book, I think, is really going to help a lot of people who know that they need to build a network, but they just don't really know how. Uh, so I recommend you go to Amazon, you buy Rich Relationships, leave her a review. I'm not getting paid for this, I'm not getting affiliate commission, nothing. I just, I, I value her friendship, I respect her as a leader, and I think she's got something very valuable to offer the world. So that was my week. We had some amazing parties. There was a party the first night on Tuesday, and it was at this mansion on the Upper East Side. I mean, I, I don't even know how to explain how, uh, elegant it was and just like breathtakingly beautiful and just abundant wealth. Um, I was sorely underdressed, and I realized this probably, I don't know, midday on Tuesday when I heard about the event. And I am just known for not following instructions, like I just won't read instructions. I don't pack too far ahead of time. I just kind of like go as I can. And so I realized real fast that I didn't have the right outfit, and I tried to go find one. I couldn't. I got really pissed off in Zara because all their sizes are too small. It's a very stressful afternoon, and I decided, you know what, I'm just gonna go to the event in the outfit that I have on. I am not going to sit here and pretend that I wasn't insecure, because I was. And I was kind of annoyed that I was insecure, because I live and die on the hill that you should be able to wear what you feel comfortable in. And as long as you put time and effort into your hygiene and how you look, like, it doesn't matter what your style is. And that is like, I live and die by that. But I showed up in my blue sundress with my jean jacket, and even though I looked, you know, perfectly pretty, I felt super insecure. I did. And I, uh, lots of people had cocktail dresses on and heels, uh, beautiful makeup and hair. It was stunning. But what was really interesting is that there was a woman who I ran into, and she came up to me, and there must have been something on my face that said, you can talk to me. And she came up to me, she was beautifully dressed, you know, great makeup, everything. She looked at me and she said, I feel really unworthy to be here. And I thought, isn't that so interesting that she's dressed perfectly appropriately for this event and she still feels uncomfortable? And how we just have that spotlight effect where we think everyone's paying attention to us. We had a good laugh. I told her about my Zara escapade, you know, and we bonded, and it was, it was a great night. The next night, uh, my husband decided to go to TJ Maxx and buy outfits for me while I was at the event, which is such an act of love because I I hate shopping, and he nailed my style. I came back from the event in the afternoon to get ready, and there were 4 dresses lying on the bed with 2 new pairs of shoes. 3 out of the 4 dresses fit perfectly. I had a choice between 2 outfits. I chose one. I was, I was so grateful, so, so, so grateful. And it turns out that the second night event wasn't even anywhere near as fancy, so I could have completely gone in my, uh, in my original outfit that I was wearing. But I wore that new dress. I felt great. I had a great night. I met Kelly Roach, um, Rameed Saidi was there. Sorry, I can never pronounce his last name. Um, Selena Jordan Gill was there. There were just a lot of people that are really well known in the space. And so we had a great night. We got up at 5 this morning and got the train out of New York City, and now I'm back at my desk. So this is a podcast in real time, and I just wanted to share with you where I've been, what I've been up to, and hopefully you've gathered some nuggets from this very, very personal update. But as always, thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.