In this relaunch episode of the Million Dollar Grit podcast, host Julie Chenell reflects on an 18‑month hiatus caused by personal crises, including a frightening extortion attempt that left her paralyzed about publishing. She explains why she feels "consistently inconsistent" and how fear of controversy and perfectionism kept her from creating content. Julie shares two key realizations: (1) you don’t need to wait for the storm to pass before speaking candidly, and (2) inconsistency is human and can be leveraged as a strength. She outlines practical steps she took to restart her podcast—learning audio editing, designing cover art in Canva, using ChatGPT for an intro, and buying a microphone—while emphasizing imperfect action. Julie then offers concrete advice for creators: give yourself permission to quit if the format isn’t right, build a content system that doesn’t consume all your time, rely on accountability and mentorship, and re‑energize by teaching beginners. She invites listeners to engage via DMs or email, and closes with a motivational call to embrace struggle, harness grit, and keep moving forward.
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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 Chenell, 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. Hello. Hello everyone. This is Julie Chenell, and I am so excited to welcome you to the Million Dollar Grit podcast. Now, this is not my first go around with podcasting. I actually have produced over 100 episodes on an older show called Create Your Laptop Life, and I have been on sort of an 18-month hiatus. My whole life has sort of switched around, my name has changed, and so I decided this was a perfect opportunity to relaunch a new podcast with a little bit of a new focus. If you are brand new to my world and you don't know anything about me, I actually encourage you to go listen to the Create Your Laptop Life podcast. There's a lot of business advice, funnels, copywriting, growth, social media, and there's some personal stuff sprinkled in there. You'll get to know me. If you are a returning listener and you are glad that I am back to podcasting, I appreciate your patience as it's taken me quite a bit of time to kind of get back on my feet. So today I actually want to talk to all the people out there that feel really inconsistent. I think I am probably the most consistently inconsistent business owner on the internet today. And I know a lot of you on here will probably compete for the title of most inconsistent, but I struggle with any sort of routine in my life and especially in business when it comes to creating content. And I find that when I fall off the wagon and I stop producing content, it's a feedback loop where I get more and more paralyzed as time gets on. And so this is what happened to me over the last year and a half. And I went through sort of a life crisis, a business identity crisis, too many competing priorities. And I really wanted to make sure I was all cleaned up, and I'm using air quotes here, and through the storm and back on my feet before I returned to the mic. And I had an event here at my house last week, and I was supposed to be the host, and I'm supposed to, you know, oversee the hot seats and the masterminding. And there were about 22 people here, and we started talking about content creation and social media, and I decided to open up and just say, you know, I feel really paralyzed. And I proceeded to kind of fall apart in front of everybody because I had a very, very scary episode where someone who I was close to, someone who I trusted, who was a professional, tried to extort me. And so this has created a fear that if I come back out and I say something controversial, or I say something polarizing, or I amass some haters, that they're going to be people at my doorstep. And so I sort of fell apart in front of all of these folks. And, you know, I thought that I could get myself out of this sort of fear bubble. I thought that I could just muscle my way through, but it wasn't until I let myself, uh, be encouraged, be validated, uh, be understood by all these people that I finally felt like I had a breakthrough. And so here are the two things that I came away with in that conversation. And you don't have to have gone through a really big crisis to feel burned out, paralyzed, unsure, all of that. I realized that number one, I don't have to wait until I'm through the storm. I've been so afraid that if I talk too candidly, I'm going to somehow get myself in trouble. But all of us are trying to grow businesses in the midst of real life. And real life is rarely clean. It is rarely put together. And if you even just look in nature, any kind of ecosystem, garden, you go out there, it's messy. There's mud and water and bugs and sometimes disease and people eating people, groundhogs eating your vegetables and like real Real life is very, very messy. And so why am I expecting myself to be all buttoned up and cleaned up? And because I may never get there, you know, I may get to them at the end of my life and I'll look back and be like, well, you know what, that was kind of a train wreck for like 70% of the time. But who wants someone to show up on the mic totally cleaned up? Now I think we've all been taught, you know, share the scar, not the wound, and, and those kinds of things. And so if you're going through a hard time, or maybe you just don't feel motivated You feel like business content doesn't really mean much these days because everybody has a podcast and everybody's talking and nobody's gonna wanna hear your voice. And so we can talk ourselves out of showing up for the people that wanna hear from us. The second thing I realized is that it's okay that I'm inconsistent. In fact, it's part of what makes me human. I get to decide how and when I show up online, and I don't have any rules that I have to follow. Yes, the algorithm likes it when you post Yes, you know, social media wants, you know, more video than audio. And we have all these rules and things that we get saddled with, and then we just don't do anything. And so my own advice, which I give to my clients all the time, is imperfect action. Whatever you're going to do that's going to put you into motion and put you into action is the thing you should do. And so that means usually lifting restrictions, lifting the idea of what it should be like, lifting that fear of like, What if I show up and I make a mistake with my words? And once those things get lifted and you keep moving, you're gonna find that momentum comes in action. So even the starting of this podcast was a big, long lesson in procrastination because I knew, you know, first, first off, I knew it had been a year and a half since I had published, right? And so I felt like I can't come back online without explaining where the hell I went. And secondly, I didn't have a podcast person anymore, right? I eliminated that role in my business because I wasn't podcasting. And thirdly, I'm hoping to start a podcast with my business partner, Kathy, over at Funnel Gorgeous. So I kept telling myself, I'm just going to wait. Kathy and I are going to do it later. I don't have a podcast person. Nobody cares what I have to say anyway. Maybe I should do a video podcast now. I don't want to put makeup on. Never mind. Right? And so I had a coaching call with one of the, one of my coaches. I hire lots of people and right now Steve Sims is currently trying to help me get back out on stages and back out on podcasts. And he said, you know, how are your podcasts going for you? And I was like, well, interviewing is great. The problem is that when people say, where can I find you? I can't say, oh, go to my podcast, you know? So he said, well, 'Get your podcast back up.' And I thought to myself, 'Yeah, okay, sounds so easy,' you know? And I started to rehash all these things about why I couldn't get it done in that time. And he said, 'How about this? I'm gonna give you some really interesting guests if you get your podcast up and get me your calendar.' And I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I need new cover art, I need a new title, I need a new intro, I need a new feed. I don't know how to do any of this stuff.' I could I could, you know, spend money and waste time and he's waiting on me. And so I sat down, I thought, okay, well, what would I tell my client? Because I'm really good at helping clients take action. So now what would I tell myself now that I know, you know what, it's okay, I can do this. I'm not through the storm and that's all right. I probably will say several things on this podcast that I shouldn't, and it is what it is. And I get to decide how often and how frequently I publish. So now what do I do? And so I have taken a crash course in audio editing. I took, I took to Canva to create my own cover art. I used a little ChatGPT to help me get my podcast intro. I got myself a microphone and I thought, you know what, here we go. So I know what it feels like to take really imperfect, scary action. And if you are tired and you have been inconsistent and you're not showing up, I just wanna tell you that there are a couple of things that you can do. Number one, you can pack it in if you want. Like you have permission to decide that this business that you have, that's sort of front-facing with you as the face, you don't have to do it. Like go ahead and start a business that doesn't have a face. The second thing, which is the most popular advice is, you know, create a content system that doesn't eat all your time, you know? And a lot of people do that. We have a, there's a lot of agencies and coaches coaches and stuff that teach you how to do that content, uh, in batches so that you're not thinking about it all the time. The third way, which doesn't work, uh, even though it may be temporarily, is to try to like push through when you're feeling unmotivated or paralyzed. That never, ever, ever has worked for me. Um, so far what works for me is accountability and other people speaking into my life, which is reason number 1 out of 7,564 that you need a coach or a mentor. But the last thing to do if you really want to get reinvigorated about speaking up, this is my favorite one, is get in contact with a beginner. A lot of us are bored. We're bored of our content. Once we become an expert, it's no longer exciting or challenging for us, so we don't like to talk about it. So we sort of fall off the hamster wheel of content because we're just not inspired by the stuff we have to share. But if you find a beginner and you start teaching them and you start giving them your wisdom and you see their eyes light up and they get so excited and they feel like, wow, like, you know your stuff, you're gonna be reinvigorated for your own content. So I have committed myself to bumping into beginners as much as possible so that I can stay fresh and excited about my content. I'm gonna produce as consistently as I can, which will probably be inconsistently, and I will not be afraid of showing up as I am, even though things are still not buttoned up or perfect. So, So if you are along for this ride with me, I would appreciate and love a share, a tag, or a review. As always, I hope you're doing amazing. And if you have any topic ideas or people you want me to interview, I am always open. My DMs are open. My email is open, julie@juliechenell.com. I'm excited to take this journey with you, 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.
