103 - Leadership Strategies: Empowering Teams for Growth and Success - Julie Fox
Feb 07, 2024Episode 103
Marija Skobe-Pilley
My guest in this episode is Julie Fox - one of the Top 100 Customer Success Strategists, and one of the 25 Creative Leaders. She is a people leader who deeply cares about her team; and cares about them as humans, taking care of their wellbeing at work. Her current role is Sr Manager of Customer Success at FloQast.
Julie's story is far from ordinary, with roots in special education and strides in commercial real estate. However, with a special interest in coaching and a growth mindset, she managed to transition to a completely different career i.e. what she does now.
She says that being a leader is endlessly fulfilling, as you are in a position to help others unlock their full potential. And it's a privilege to be part of people's stories.
Here's what we covered in our interview:
Creating opportunities for yourself and changing careers
How to motivate your team as a team leader
The benefits of a feedback-driven approach
Lessons learnt from our careers
Developing teams by fostering human connection
I am sure you will enjoy this episode and our conversation.
__________________________________________________ About Women in Customer Success Podcast:
Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.
My guest in this episode is Julie Fox - one of the Top 100 Customer Success Strategists, and one of the 25 Creative Leaders. She is a people leader who deeply cares about her team; and cares about them as humans, taking care of their wellbeing at work. Her current role is Sr Manager of Customer Success at FloQast.
Julie's story is far from ordinary, with roots in special education and strides in commercial real estate. However, with a special interest in coaching and a growth mindset, she managed to transition to a completely different career i.e. what she does now.
She says that being a leader is endlessly fulfilling, as you are in a position to help others unlock their full potential. And it's a privilege to be part of people's stories.
Here's what we covered in our interview:
Creating opportunities for yourself and changing careers
How to motivate your team as a team leader
The benefits of a feedback-driven approach
Lessons learnt from our careers
Developing teams by fostering human connection
I am sure you will enjoy this episode and our conversation.
__________________________________________________ About Women in Customer Success Podcast:
Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.
In today's episode, my guest is Julie Fox. She is one of the 100 top customer success strategist, one of the 25 most creative leaders, and currently she is a senior manager of customer success at Flowcast. Julie is a people leader that deeply cares about her team members. She cares about her team, their well-being at work and also about them as humans. She says that being a leader is endlessly fulfilling. As a people leader, you are in a position to unlock somebody's full potential, and it's a privilege to be part of people's stories. In this episode, you will hear about Julie's approach to people, leadership and strategies for developing teams in a fulfilling way.
Speaker 1:
I'm sure you will love this episode, so let's dive in. Hi everyone, this is Maria Skobepile, and you're listening to Women in Customer Success podcast, the first women-only podcast, where remarkable ladies of customer success share their stories and practical tools to help you succeed and make an impact. If you want to learn more about customer success, get career advice and be inspired, you're in the right place, so let's tune in. It is an absolute pleasure to welcome my guest today. She is one of the top 25 customer success creative leaders. She's also one of the top 100 customer success strategists. Her name is Julie Fox, senior Manager of Customer Success. Hi, julie, it is wonderful to have you on the show, welcome.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much. I am so excited to be here. I am a huge fan of the show and have honestly learned a lot from it, as well as learned about some great leaders in the space. Really excited to be here with you today.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for that. The whole audience can be happy to learn from you today and be inspired by your story in your career. Julie, for the beginning, are you an extrovert or an introvert?
Speaker 2:
I would say I am an extrovert. I'm very comfortable in public settings and crowds, but I definitely do need some downtime, especially as it becomes conference season. That's something where it's like I go, go, go. I want to get the most out of it because I really look forward to those times. But then I come home and I am just physically exhausted. It's not even just like a mentally drained. I physically feel like I cannot move, just because I think I give all of my energy and I have nothing left, which is sometimes nice.
Speaker 1:
You have all the energy for the conferences and it's fair enough just to be by yourself later on and have some rest. That's absolutely right, julie. If you had to completely change your career tomorrow, what would that be? What would you do?
Speaker 2:
It's an interesting question because I'm really really happy in my career. As somebody that changed careers earlier in my life, it's just an interesting question to think through. If I were to do this again, what would I want to do? One thing that really intrigues me years ago, I worked with a mindset coach where I learned more about growth, mindset, different tips and tricks for how to perform at my best and as well as lead a happy, healthy life. That is something that I think I would really enjoy being a coach in that way where I would be able to help other people in their journey.
Speaker 1:
That is actually wonderful. Interestingly enough, it is so related to your current career because, as a manager, I am sure that you are having coaching opportunities every single day, just without label. It is coaching bad. That's what happens when you are building and growing the team. People need help and I'm sure that you're applying lots of those growth mindset strategies with your teams.
Speaker 2:
Yes, that's absolutely right. I think that's something that, as a leader, part of your duty to your team is to share your own experiences. So definitely the experiences that I gained and what I learned along the way. I definitely share that with my team, but I think doing that in a bigger way would be really cool. You never know maybe one day.
Speaker 1:
So, julie, talk us through your early days in your career. I'm really interested to know what did you do previously and how did your part led you into customer success. Also, was it really intentional or did it just happen?
Speaker 2:
Great question. So as far as my career journey, yes, I changed careers. About five years ago I actually studied special education in school and I couldn't get a job right away in education, so I took a job which eventually turned into a whole career in commercial real estate working with Class A office space. I dabbled a little bit in sales, account management, even marketing roles, and ultimately I kept finding myself in leadership type roles. You know it's funny. Early in my career I think there was such a stigma about moving roles in companies, Like if you weren't in a role for five years, why even bother putting it on your resume? Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:
I would have a publisher for anything, then Right, exactly, and I'm a builder, I'm a creator, kind of by nature, and early in my career that meant that certain opportunities would come my way. So, for example, I had a client that wanted to start their own local office. They brought me over to help set it up. Then, as that team was established, everything was going well. I had someone reach out to me that they wanted me to come in as their director of operations to do it again.
Speaker 2:
It was a really exciting time of my career, honestly very exhausting, because I was working crazy hours and pouring my heart and soul into these companies Very similar to kind of that startup mentality and mindset and environment and I then was leaving a few years later versus sticking around to feel that impact. And I remember feeling self-conscious about my resume because of all of those shorter stints. But looking back, wow, what a learning experience In less than 10 years. I was a part of building numerous teams and having such an incredible impact on these companies. I was challenged and able to learn skills and sales, account management, marketing, people management. Really, prior to getting into tech and customer success, I had been a director and VP. Before making that change and truly looking back. I think it helped prepare me for where I am today. And how did you?
Speaker 1:
make this transition from even leadership roles going into something completely different, into customer success.
Speaker 2:
Yes. So this is a part of my story that at one point it felt like a smudge, I guess, in my story, and now it's something that I'm so proud of, and so I'm excited to kind of share this story with you. So I had been, I was VP of services with a commercial real estate company and I was actually let go while I was on maternity leave, and it was one of those kind of life defining moments, looking back, where I could have let that be something that defined me in a negative way or with something that you know I was the victim. I, you know I had this bad thing happen to me at a very vulnerable time of my life, but truly it turned into the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I was in a job that I wasn't crazy passionate or fulfilled in and by then, making that decision for me while you know, the timing wasn't something that was ideal it pushed me to really want to take control of my story, and one thing that was important to me during that time was that I didn't want to. I kind of made this decision that I didn't want to stay in the same career that I didn't feel immense passion and fulfillment from, and I really wanted to make a change, so I threw different research and different things.
Speaker 2:
I made the decision that I wanted to get into tech first and foremost for a number of reasons, I'd say. The big thing was that I wanted to be surrounded by innovation. I wanted to be in an industry that is constantly evolving, where, you know, not just the product is evolving but the people, the processes, everything is just constantly changing and evolving. That was something that really excited me and through networking, through talking to different people gosh, it took me about six months to land that first job and a whole lot of rejection, but through that process, I had a couple of different mentors that led me to customer success, and once I learned more about customer success and talked to a few people that were in customer success roles, I just absolutely fell in love and narrowed my search specifically to customer success.
Speaker 2:
Now, one thing that I went through during that process was that I kept hearing you know you need to have tech experience to get into tech and I was like, gosh, how do I do that?
Speaker 2:
And so it was very frustrating because, like I said, I had a whole career. It's not like I was fresh out of college and trying to get my first job. I had a lot of experience, but it felt like that was just being kind of pushed aside because it wasn't tech experience, and so I had to be really relentless in my search and trying to find somebody that would take a chance on me, and what that kind of ultimately meant was that I started out as a CSM. I took a role where I was able to join a team as an individual contributor, and it really ended up being such a blessing because I was able to learn the job hands-on. I was able to go through the challenges that a CSM goes through, especially as a company is growing and the team is being built and play big books or being built. I was a part of that building, and so that was really exciting for me and something that then led to me being able to grow into leadership roles.
Speaker 1:
Wow, I can connect in so many different ways. Your story really resonates A few things that I picked up. You said you wanted at some point to really take control of your further path, which I really, really love how you described it, because I'm still seeing lots of people very often just going through the motions to their careers, accepting life and career almost as default, whatever happens, whatever comes. My way, that's okay.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, all these things are just happening to me and I have no control. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1:
But actually we all can have control. That's why I'm very much passionate into that whole idea of taking control of your career. Because in a few years' time, if you don't have even an idea, what are your intentions, where do you want to be? Of course you will not be, but you will just get somewhere. But you will not get to the place where you could if you just had that intention and strategy and built some path towards it. So I really liked that you were taking control of your career and it was done by design. Later on, I also like your transitions because I've been through it.
Speaker 1:
I went from music and education into SAS, landed in a project coordinator role as the very first role and I needed to convince people for so long that I can do it just because, as you said, you had the whole career before. You know what you're doing. But people don't feel that you can do the role just because you don't have that relevant experience. But I also feel just so blessed at the moment because I don't have a traditional background. As you said, it is so interesting that at some point, especially in customer success, all of those other perspectives just mean so much and that can bring so much benefits to your customers or understanding all sorts of different customers. It is such an amazing thing to have rather than having everybody in the team following same paths and coming from the same background. No one wants it anymore.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's interesting because I think kind of that difference between a manager or a leader. It's often especially first-time managers. They look at their team and, maybe to a fault, sometimes they may almost look at the people as like a cog in the wheel or as a you know, you've got to fit into this box. And if they're building out a team of CSMs, they want them all to take notes in the same way, send emails in the same way, do their business reviews and presentations to customers and everything in the same way. And they're trying to create almost these copies of each other.
Speaker 2:
And it's interesting because, while by all means I think that there is value in a team having certain consistency and having consistency and approaches that you're working with, especially as you're kind of you are the face of the company, you are kind of that brand but I don't think people should lose sight of their personality as well as what their strengths are. And where I've had a lot of success with teams is getting to know the individual people and really understanding what their strengths are, what their skill sets are and experiences, and being able to lean on those people and instead of saying, okay, every single person has to be a Wizard Excel and a Wizard this and a Wizard this. Instead, let's work smarter. Let's work together and lean on the people that have that are really good at these areas, and let's work together instead of working separately, individually.
Speaker 1:
I've seen it working well, so nicely, in so many companies when leaders are firstly, proud of their teams and they are telling them they're showcasing how they are proud that each of them has unique skill set and unique strengths and how all of that make them a perfect combination to be, you know, that customer success team.
Speaker 1:
It is just amazing and it works so much better with customers than when everybody are kind of similar. I don't know, maybe depends on the product and the platform that your company is at, but that diversity in thoughts and in different backgrounds for us in Europe, even in languages, that just brings so much charm to customers. And the more diverse customer base is, you want to have your team being more diverse in every single way, just because they will be able collectively to serve those customers much better than, rather, if they all were coming from the similar parts and being exposed to just very similar type of customers or size of customers. Like there are so many diversities that we could go around and making sure that the teams are complete and that work together nicely.
Speaker 2:
And it really allows people to learn from each other.
Speaker 2:
I mean, I think that by leaning on a team in this way, it really allows people to not just shine in their own area but also learn from their peers and learn those and kind of have those then shared experiences where they're able to learn from one another in that way, and I mean, I'm one of my favorite kind of areas of coaching is really focusing on kind of that do more style of coaching.
Speaker 2:
So really looking at a team, looking at what's working well and instead of just completely ponying in and kind of micromanaging the nitty-gritty details of what could be better, making sure that you're spending as much, if not more, time on what they're doing well and sharing that in a way, not just with the individual but with the larger team, so that the team can learn from each other. The wiggle or what good looks like of hey, here's an example of this in action. Here's a gong call snippet of somebody doing a really phenomenal job here, or maybe they got a really tough question from a customer and here's how they handled it, and I think that's it's really nice to be able to see that, instead of me just kind of giving feedback to an individual, which I mean. I do that as well, but being able to share the good, I think, helps level up the entire team. Oh, absolutely, shout out to our partner Guider, the leading mentoring, peer learning and upskilling platform.
Speaker 1:
Women in customer success teamed up with Guider to deliver all year round mentoring programs for our new power up tribe members Now feature this a dedicated platform where you choose your mentoring goals and skills that you want to develop. Then you can also use the platform to help you develop your own skills. You choose your mentoring goals and skills that you want to develop. Then you browse through mentors profiles and you can choose amongst hundreds of remarkable women who are mentors. When you choose your mentor based on their skills or expertise and experience, there's a match and you can schedule calls directly on the platform, write session notes, capture resources and monitor your own progress and goals all in one place. So isn't that great? And also you will find resources on how to prepare yourself for mentoring sessions, what are the benefits of being a mentor, how to approach your mentoring relationship as a mentee or how to become a first time mentor, and so much more.
Speaker 1:
So don't leave your career to chance. Work with experts who will help you develop the skills and mindset needed to thrive in your career. Join our power up tribe to access our flagship mentoring program with Geiter. Find the link in the show notes and probably easy way of doing it is if there is a shared Slack channel and then a manager can really highlight some of those goodies and goodness among the team members and showcase it. What have been some of the actions that you were taking as a manager to allow for all of that good learnings to happen? Because sometimes team operating a way that learnings happen very spontaneously, but if it's not always the case, you have to make a little bit of adjustments so that they can naturally learn. What is something that you did that really worked well for teams to learn together?
Speaker 2:
Oh my gosh, I could spend hours talking about this subject, but I promise for our listeners I will not do that. I'll give you the highlight reel here. Okay, so a couple of different things that I've done, that I've worked really well. First and foremost, I think establishing and building a culture around giving and receiving feedback is really important to me, and that doesn't just come from the top down or from a manager to their director ports, it's also from peer to peer. It's caring enough about the success of your team and your company and your customers that you want to help your team get better, and so that's something that I work with my teams on giving them opportunities where they can listen to each other's calls and provide feedback, either CSM to CSM or even cross-functionally, where an account manager is listening to something, especially if they're not able to join a call live. That might be kind of an opportunity for them to say, hey, I would have dug in deeper here, I would have asked these discovery questions. Or when the customer said this, here's some questions in the future that you could follow up with. And so I think just kind of building that culture of continuous improvement and understanding you know one of the lessons that I kind of always kind of hone in on is around radical candor. I actually fell in love with the book by Kim Scott, radical candor, and it has evolved and kind of improved me as a leader, in the sense that that's something that I really Teach my team is how can you give feedback in a direct and kind way, because you care deeply, because and it's actually it's by giving them feedback, that's that's showing that you care versus you know. If you hold that inside, whether it's good feedback or bad feedback or constructive feedback, I should say it doesn't help people evolve, and so that's one thing.
Speaker 2:
One of my favorite things that I've done is I think there's always this mix of, like Bigger picture learning that you can do with the team, so things where we do Trainings on specific topics. I actually have an amazing Enablement team here at flowcast at my current company, where we have kind of our our head of enablement has put together some different courses around Risk mitigation, effective communication, things like that, and so that that's been really cool seeing stuff like that be built out, where it's kind of a hey, here's a course on this topic, and so again, that kind of emphasis on learning and development is great, but the flip side of that is I think that it's just as important to get really in the weeds with people. So One thing that my team does is we do something called account reviews, where we have different themes, different months, where maybe we're saying, okay, let's look at all of our customers that are that are within this product adoption score or this, this health risk or something like that, and so we come up with kind of a narrow, specific topic that we're going to discuss and they come to be prepared with two or three examples of customers that they want help on, and so that really allows us to get super in the weeds on and in the details on a spit on a couple of counts. But we do that not just in a one-on-one setting but where it's a couple of CSMs and myself, and it allows us to learn together. So again, if somebody is going through Maybe their first customer that's being acquired, other people are going to encounter that. It's going to happen at some point and I would love them to learn together instead of Feeling like they have to wait until something happens to them or until they're Experiencing something for the first time to learn about it.
Speaker 2:
So this type of setting really allows not just the person that is sharing and getting the advice and feedback and kind of ideas from each other, but also the other people in the room to really learn from one another to say, oh, you know, this is when I encounter this type of a scenario. Here's a couple things that I can try and so I think that type of thing works really well. I'm also just absolute raving fan of gong. Yes, I think has it has made me a better leader. Truly being able to provide call feedback as well as kind of share those, those snippets as we talked about, and Setting like slack channels and being able to say, hey, here's an example of this is really great.
Speaker 2:
But one one thing that I like about gong as well is that I'm able to create folders where I can say, hey, here's some examples of what good looks like for a business review or for a optimization call, or here's some examples and you can get really granular with snippets where you can say, hey, when a customer asks this type of thing or when they give this type of feedback. Here's some examples of different ways that people have answered this and again, it's not to say here's the one way and you must answer it in this exact way and have it scripted. It's to say, here's some different ways, that that leaders or seniors or you know just exceptional CSM's have done this, and that, I think, allows people to kind of Honestly, by seeing other people style, it kind of helps them practice and figure out what their own style is and it's wonderful to have those tools to Allow you to really do it in a proper way.
Speaker 1:
I mean, gong is a phenomenal tool. I really love it and it's not only revenue, intelligence, but it's just wonderful coaching tool and I like how Some of your like thoughts on the way of how to develop teams are recognition, feedback, allowing those opportunities for learning. But all of those examples that you said, especially while taking some of the call recordings, almost fit all of those boxes. You know, by showcasing somebody's call, you're recognizing that they have done a great job. You are Basically publicly giving the feedback, saying you know those things were really good. You know other team members, please have a look at you know Some of those snippets to understand what you can develop and they all learn from each other. It is just wonderful to have that as as a tool and start using it in a way that really allows everybody to learn and feel good about it. I really like how, yeah, you have those examples that like fit all the boxes and really propel teams to learn properly and Succeed as a team.
Speaker 2:
Yeah and it's you know, I think when it comes to coaching and developing teams, it's really difficult to do that if you don't take the time to get to know your team, and so one of the first things that I do just as kind of another tangible nugget of something that somebody can do immediately is I've developed, and it's simple, it's basically just this spreadsheet and I have tabs for each of my people, but I asked them all. I have like a 60 to 90 minute session with them. Typically it's either when I first come into a team, so within maybe the first 30 days of me meeting them, or, if it's a new or higher, it's maybe once they're in the role for a couple of months, so that they they've been in it and they feel they're not just kind of that new hire. That's still kind of figuring out where they are and how the company works. But I go through a series of questions where I'm really getting to know who they are as a person. I'm getting to know kind of what motivates them, what they care most about, what brings them the most joy in their job as well as what brings them the most frustration. I'm getting to know what their short and long-term goals are, and there's definitely a lot more to it, but I feel like in that, what it has allowed is for me, in a relatively quick amount of time, to understand kind of the core of who this person is and what their strengths are and where they want to go.
Speaker 2:
And then that allows me, as their leader, to go into action mode and really figure out okay, if you're wanting, if you're here today, these are your strengths or these are the things that you feel like you need to develop and work on, and here's where you're trying to get to. I can then work with them to develop a plan and really be very intentional of okay, here's the things that, here's the projects that I want you to get involved in. Or, you know, maybe they want to be a people leader, so I give them opportunities to be a mentor with a new hire or something like that. But whatever they're trying to go, I help them to develop the skill sets so that they can truly unlock their potential. And I think that's what has been.
Speaker 2:
One of the most kind of exciting parts of being a leader is really seeing people that come to me maybe at a certain point of their career and they may kind of feel like they're hitting their head or feel like, hey, you know, I again that full circle of you know they don't feel like they are in control because they're either waiting for an opportunity to be posted or something like that. And it's what I really want to do is I want to do everything in my power to help them get to where they want to go, whether that's on my current team or another team at the company or or another company entirely, and it's really important to me to help help them build the skill sets and everything that they will need so that, as there are opportunities like it's no question, they are the natural fit because they're already acting in that way, they're already doing the job, and I think that's something that I've had a lot of success with and have really oh my gosh just had so much fulfillment from of just seeing that development of people.
Speaker 1:
I can definitely imagine, and I believe that's one of the most important role of a manager or of a team leader to really develop skills for every single individual and, as you said, even if that means they're going out of the company. But you have done a great job developing them and they're following their career path and that's awesome and you've done your job and it's fulfilling because they feel good about it. You have relationship really good even later on and as a manager, if you don't really develop team members just because maybe you are afraid and I know of many managers like that people are afraid that some people may become too good at particular skills and meaning they will go somewhere, but you have to develop them because, again, if you don't, what if those people stay in your team for a long time and you don't develop them?
Speaker 2:
You haven't developed them. Yeah, so what a risk to your business. And I think one of my favorite, I guess, leaders that I've learned from was actually my past Chief Customer Officer, fran Cruz. She is one of those people that I mean. I just remember meeting her and just being blown away by her. She's incredibly smart and personable. She made our team feel very informed about what was going on, but also there was no limit to what we could do. And something that she would say often actually is where she would joke about it, where she would say you know, none of us are going to retire here and that's okay.
Speaker 2:
And I think it's something that it kind of took the pressure off of people to be like okay, if I'm hearing this from my leader, from somebody like a Chief Customer Officer, that is giving that acknowledgement that we are working on some really incredible, powerful stuff and so what we were doing we had a medical device quality management software and it was endlessly fulfilling because we would hear these amazing stories and impacts about our customers and what they were building and doing.
Speaker 2:
And she really I mean she leaned on building a team with transparency and vulnerability, but in a way that you know nobody's forced to stay, but they should want to stay. But ultimately, I mean, even when I made the decision to leave, she was incredibly happy for me and there was no awkwardness, as she was like, oh like, she was like drilling me, asking me questions about the role of the company and all of this, and she immediately was like wow, this is going to be a great experience for you. I couldn't be more proud and she just made me feel that sense of relief of this is okay, this is a part of developing as a person.
Speaker 1:
What a great call out. Yeah, just showcasing others that you are happy for them to move up in their careers and make different choices. It's absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1:
In some of my experiences as being in a startup, I remember once when my boss told me oh Maria, we both are not going to be here in under five years, most certainly. And I just thought about it and realized, well, yes, probably because we all like it's startup people last for two-ish years or whatever. But I just felt again immense sense of relief oh, wow, that's coming from you. That means that it is just okay to develop yourself and then find different career paths. It was just really like somebody put the weight of my shoulders. Not that I was thinking of going at that point anytime, but it was just amazing to hear something like that from a boss, because it almost gives everybody, it empowers you just to start thinking about different career paths. Absolutely so, julie, talking about career and as we are wrapping up this episode, I want to talk about how I would really like to hear from you what were some of the lessons that you wish you knew earlier, that you know now.
Speaker 2:
Oh gosh, there's a lot of lessons, I'd say. Some of the things that I've learned over time are really that I don't have to do this alone, that I can learn so much more when I lean on other people, and I think that's one of those big lessons, especially in my first many leadership roles where I thought I had to know everything, I thought I had to have an answer and be the person that could have an answer ready to go, and I think that's truly something that I think customer success kind of taught me is this idea that you can still provide so much value and not have every single answer, and that that's okay. But one thing that I've really done in the past couple of years is leaning on the CS community, so kind of working and thinking out loud. So if there's projects that I'm working on, I'm not just keeping it to myself and to my team, I'm talking to other CS leaders about it. I'm getting their opinion.
Speaker 2:
I have a recent example where there was something that I was wanting to try out with my team and it's something that I had no experience in. So I really leaned on and I probably talked to 20 different CS leaders about their experiences, learning from them, and it's not to say that I'm going to because of their experiences. I'm going to come in and have it all figured out and everything's going to be perfect. But at least I'm not starting at the beginning. I feel like by learning with the help of others, it really allows me to start maybe in the middle, learn and at least kind of gain from their experiences and then, yeah, then I can iterate along the way and kind of figure out what works.
Speaker 2:
But that's one thing, as well as being more vocal about what I want, what I care about, what I'm passionate about, I think that's something that has come with years of different challenges or experiences, where I'm a lot more willing to say what I want or stick up for myself. And I think that's something that I have seen so many amazing opportunities come up just because I, just because I asked for it or because I said this was something that I wanted to do, and somebody says, great, go for it. And so I think that's something that, while it's nice to have everything figured out and thought out and planned, sometimes it's nice just to have those conversations and say, hey, this is where I'm really wanting to go, or here's something that I'm really interested in and see where that takes you.
Speaker 1:
Those were some awesome lessons. I wish I knew some of them before as well. Definitely about being vocal. That's really another one that resonates with me. Julie, at the end, where can listeners find you online?
Speaker 2:
So LinkedIn is the best place I definitely have. I've kind of amped up, I guess, my presence, where I do try to share more there as well, as I've had podcasts and blogs that I've been a part of. So LinkedIn is a great place and please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm a real person. I love nothing more than when people reach out to me and ask for time and I'm able to have that human connection with people.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much for coming to the show, julie. It was really a pleasure, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Next week new episode. Subscribe to the podcast and connect with me on LinkedIn so you're up to date with all the new episodes and the content I'm curating for you. Have a great day and talk to you soon.