Transcript by Descript:

 We have a very exciting podcast today with someone that I have literally known for more than 20 years and well-recognized in the industry. Julie Bernard. She has a distinguished, interdisciplinary career in strategy, marketing, merchandising, consulting, and technology, and she’s currently the chief Marketing Officer at Lily ai.

We’ll learn from Julie why she considers herself the Pied Piper and the importance of hydrating your network. Lastly, we will learn her great view about how humans we are, not trees with deep roots. So if it’s not working for you, get up and find something else. Hi, Julie. Oh my gosh, it’s so great to have you here today.

Hi, Shelley. I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for doing this. I mean, you are an amazing female leader and you have a story that needs to be told. So I think I’ve known you like 20 years. Is that possible? It’s a little longer. Yeah. We’ll go with 20 that we stopped counting after 20. Okay. More than 20. I’ll say yes.

But I think you have a great fascinating story because your background is particularly interesting. It’s interesting because you went into merchandising, you did merchandising systems, you did it. You’ve done FinTech and marketing and in various types of companies, so department store startups, small companies.

So tell us about your journey and how you went from merchandising it to chief Marketing officer. Absolutely. Thanks Shelley for asking and thanks for thinking it’s an interesting journey. For me it was, it’s just life. It’s just the life I have lived. And so it’s interesting when others see you differently and, and kind of see that that interest, and I’m happy to share it.

As you’ve mentioned, it’s been a non-linear, quite non-traditional career journey, and I think this journey has been a function of a number of things and there’s internal, there’s kind of internal hard, hard wiring for who I am, and there are external forces of. Some other things that I would say. So I’d start with the internal hard wiring.

For me, I think it’s been first and foremost confidence. And that’s family instilled. That’s parent instilled, and I feel blessed that I’ve had always my whole life, very supportive. Parents and a family unit, siblings, et cetera, kind of that nuclear family that has instilled confidence, which is an important characteristics that.

I get sad when I meet others, particularly women that don’t have that, and I, I wish I could give it to them as a gift. I also have always had curiosity. I’ve always had curiosity with something new and, and learning, and that has always served me well. And lastly for me, I’m extremely comfortable with change.

I know there are a lot of people that are uncomfortable with change. I am almost to the point comfortable with it where I would say I possibly could be disruptive for some organizations because I’m so forward looking and in what makes me, you know, just what is interesting to me and how I like to think about things.

Yet there are external forces that took my confidence, curiosity, and comfort with change, and really started to harness it for me that I didn’t even know. Briefly, I’ll close with what that first in external force was where people see things in you that perhaps you don’t even see in yourself. And when I was young, around the time when you and I first met younger and there was a particular initiative at the time I worked at Sax Fifth Avenue.

So it’s been so long, I don’t mind sharing it early in my career. And you’re that 20 something young go-getter. I would change a lot of how I used to communicate back then versus how I communicate now. And the company had moved, relocated a distribution center from one state to another state. And as we all know, nobody wants to have products sitting in a distribution center as a warehouse.

It needs to be in a store, available on an e-commerce site, available for sale and for high price point goods. 10 dresses do not age well in a distribution center. Yeah. And I was very cranky still in merchandising. That product was sitting in this DC for 8, 10, 12 weeks. Wow. The warehouse management system implementation had not gone smoothly.

Be careful what you complain about in life because I got a phone call up to the chief operating officer’s office and he had heard that I had some thoughts about how this was going. And it was one of those first moments where he said, you’re gonna go down with a group we’ve assembled to assess what we could do differently.

And I remember saying, I know nothing about robotics, warehouse management, systems, distribution, like zero. All I know is how to complain. And it was a goal also, by the way, a good moment in terms of complaining come solution oriented. So I traveled with this small group of people to assess what was happening in, in the situation.

And we were all told to come back two weeks later and to provide points and, and a point of view. The fast forward on it is he ended up asking me with a couple of other people to actually make that our new day job for the following year. And, oh my God. And I remember saying, I don’t know anything about this.

How am I gonna fix it? I was able to observe, connect the dots of some things that were opportunities to resolve, and he said, you’ll figure it out. And it was from that experience. And I won’t give every other linear moment I’ve had throughout my career to let others see the potential you have in yourself.

And when they’ve identified that, just say yes, love, be gracious that they gave you that moment and just say yes. Oh my gosh. That’s a great story. I love that. So, um, let me ask you a question. So you do a ton of board work. It’s super impressive. I mean, you serve on boards, you’ve served on. Many different types of boards.

So tell me, is this rewarding work for you and how do you manage your time in the industry and serving on boards and doing all these, you know, great things? Is it rewarding? Let’s start there. Absolutely. And it is rewarding, first and foremost because of the human connection, the giving back and helping others is always rewarding and we should try to do as much of it in our lives as we possibly can.

It also brings me and affords me the opportunity to broaden my own perspectives. Kind of comes back to that curiosity quotient that I think I overindex on to hear challenges and perspectives from others. And it really is helpful for me to bring back to whatever I’m working on at that point in time.

And frankly, I’ve learned things both professionally to bring back to businesses I’m supporting, and even personally, from the opportunity to meet other people with varied perspectives and context, I. For me though, getting on my first independent board director position was a bit of accidental providence.

I didn’t pursue it. I hadn’t put it out into the universe that I was looking for it, and to this day, I still don’t even know the person who advocated on my behalf. That referred me to the executive search firm that was doing the search. It’s a good moment where I learned that my reputation precedes me, and there were.

Certain characteristics that apparently I had exhibited over time that were brought to the attention first of the search firm, and then for the private equity firm that was leading the search for this company. And it all had to do with a proven track record that had metrics associated with it, the variety and the breadth and depth of experience.

And so having a lot of different cross-functional experiences that I could lean on and bring and. Strategic agility, you know, and so again, this is where people give feedback on who they perceive you to be. And this, this ability to connect the dots between seemingly disparate pieces of information and help people think things through in a really collaborative, healthy, proactive way.

It’s, you know, it’s interesting though because I think about, and some of the other things were, I sat on a lot of trade boards, industry association boards, and that was really, it was a part of the job. So there was a bit of that accidental piece of it. Looking back, I would tell you I would do things a little bit differently because it has been so rewarding that I would start sooner with the intentionality behind it and start to think about targeting companies and hydrating the network with intention for people, organizations you would love to be a part of and connect with and start thinking about things that I’d never heard of, I’ll never forget, they said, can you send us your board bio?

And I remember thinking, oh. What’s a board bio? Gotta go Google that. I have to go figure that out. And so, you know, start thinking, but it’s a really interesting, the board bio, I would say, I would leave for our listeners is a great exercise to really think about what are your superpowers and what do you bring be, you know, the tangible and intangible characteristics and strengths and accomplishments that you have where you would bring value to the potential board you seek to be on.

Wow. I’ve loved that. Yes. I think I’m gonna do that immediately after our podcast here. Um, so as a prominent leader in the industry, how do you prioritize your time? And more importantly, how are you deciding like which projects to work on? So, the time one is an interesting one to me. Time is a scarce resource and we all waste it too often, myself included.

And I like to think about the return on investment of my time. Time has an ROI. One of the simple things I like to do is really be thoughtful and again, intentional about how I am scheduling things, the things I focus on. And one of the little techniques I employ that has helped me is I don’t check email that often.

One of the interesting things I often think about is people seem to think work is sitting in front of your computer and checking, and I’ve even been amused when people say, oh. I stopped, I’ve had dinner, and then I come back and I work. And really work is just checking Email. Email of course, is an activity we need to engage in.

Yet it, it can be done better. So for me, I literally check it at 8:00 AM whip through things. I check it in the middle of the day while I’m eating my lunch and I check it once in the evening. And that’s it. Same with Slack, by the way. I don’t sit in front of it responding all day long. And I also employ rules of there are, there’s.

We’re not allowed to have a fourth email sent on any given correspondence because it’s an you can. I always say there’s the first email to communicate information to others or Slack. Then that person responds if they’re confused about something, or perhaps because of their own context, they become a little snippy and they just write back a quick TSE note to try to clarify.

Then the original person writes back. Yet, of course, in this world that we’re in today, everybody copies and includes 20 other people. The minute it starts to. Fall apart like that, I always say pick up the phone. If you’re in a physical space, go visit the other person and resolve the issue. And the only reason you’re allowed to have a fourth email or Slack communication is to tell the other 20 people that you had copied how you resolved the open issue, because we rely too much on it.

And I think that there are a lot of other things we can be doing with our time. So the way we, the way we choose what to do in our day, the way we plan our time and use our time is a choice. And so be intentional about it. In terms of the projects I work on, as with so many things, I think in life it’s about people.

It always starts with how, and it’s, it’s almost intuitive. It’s how I feel about you. You know, Shelly and I, we’ve known each other for a long time. As we said at the beginning of this podcast, you make me feel good, you know, and we bring energy to people’s lives and, and positivity and uplift, and I wanna be around people that do that.

Yet. The second part of it then is always around the potential for impact. Because I am impact driven. I like to know that something accomplished something. I’m such an achiever that I also need the potential, the particular thing I’m working on, to have great potential for impact, not only impact broadly, yet also my ability to impact.

So those are, those are how I think about some of those things. Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. I’m gonna employ your email strategy ’cause I’m not really good at that. So I’m starting that tomorrow. And by the way, I actually log out of it because otherwise you get tempted to check. I know I’m do that. So it forces me to type in the, the password, which is a difficult one, so it takes some time.

That’s a really great idea. I love that. So, um, I don’t get distracted exactly. What type of environment do you thrive in, and how can our future leaders find that sweet spot for themselves? I think first you have to say what is that sweet spot for yourself? And then think about doing some research and your homework on the types of places that have those characteristics that are important for you.

There are really many great places out there in the world, and it could be a large company, a small company, publicly held, privately held all the different variations within For me. What I have learned over time, it’s really important for me. I need independence. I need empowerment. It’s just the way it is.

I cannot be micromanaged, and I need to be an environment where through me proving myself for you, we trust each other. So I need trust and I need authentic and legitimate integrity. I need fairness. The true definition of integrity of someone doing the right thing even when no one else is watching. I.

Even when no one else is knows. Right. And those are really important things I look for in businesses. And I think it’s important for, for everybody to not settle if you’re not finding that experience for yourself, you know? And I’ve had that independence, empowerment and trust. I’ve been very fortunate my whole career.

Whether it was in retail at Saks Fifth Avenue early on, I already shared a story of trust, whether it was at with Macy’s, trying to drive a change initiative for them. For many of the different startups, scale ups and speed ups I have worked for since I have always had the benefit of that. Yet that trust piece is through proof, and it’s through delivering on the things I promised to do.

It’s that sense of responsibility. If I say I’m gonna do something, do it. And you build that trust and then you earn the independence, you earn the empowerment, and you really can have that great impact. That’s important. And if you’re not finding it, we’re not trees with deeply, you know, deep roots. Get up and go find somewhere else.

I love that analogy. Can you share an example of a difficult decision you had to make and kind of the thought process behind it? This was an interesting. This is an interesting question for me. There could be very specific work ones, but here I’ll share one that’s a bit different. At the beginning of the pandemic, we all heard about keeping our elders safe and all of these different things, and I had the very good fortune of having my company exit in January 22.

Went skiing for a few weeks because that’s my favorite thing to do. So I was out west and it was whilst skiing an opportunity I had, I had a. New CMO role, ready to go. We were talking about contracts and start dates and all of those different things. It was paused and for all the reasons, right? Furloughs and businesses are difficult, et cetera.

And at that time I was living in New York City and with all of the context that existed at the time, I moved out to the east end of Long Island where my parents had retired to care for my, my mom. And my father had passed away shortly before that. Not related to Covid, but they had been together for almost 60 years, and it was a really tough time and I wasn’t planning to move out of New York City yet.

I chose to leave corporate America and to launch my own business so that I could focus on family. And I can’t even say that there was an intentionality to the decisioning. It was just something that needed to be done. And I never expected it. The idea of launching my own business was, I had never even mentally prepared for it yet.

Back to curiosity, confidence, and change and comfort. You know, there was a bit of courage maybe being added this time. I said, well, just go for it. And it has served me well. And frankly, the, the positive thing, not only do I have this richness of, of being with my mom at these times. Also it has opened up some of these opportunities to explore into FinTech and spatial web, and not just artificial intelligence, but artificial general intelligence with a client I had for over a year in the space of the spatial web and a a future 3D internet.

So those have been enriching, expansive experiences that I completely value and they wouldn’t have happened had this other moment not happened. So again, be confident that the moment you’re in the decisions you’re making, they’re the right decisions for the moments that we’re in. Only, you’ll only find something new, just a different pathway.

It doesn’t mean it’s a bad one. I love how you, you really have to listen to yourself, right? And, uh, that’s so important. You once told me a story a while ago. You may not remember this, but you told me this story and I swear it stuck me, stuck with me for years. And I tell other people the story. Of course, I don’t use your name or the company, I.

You know, hide it a little bit, but it’s a story about how confident you were of yourself at the time, and it really paid off big for you. It was a big payoff for you. And I see my story playing out in my head because I think it’s a great example of having. Knowing, knowing your stuff, having great confidence and articulating a compelling case and winning.

So can you tell us about the time you approached Macy’s and don’t even laugh about the need for a CRM insights analytics team? Sure. So, yes, it’s funny if this, uh, this goes back into the memory banks, um, making sure I’m getting all the details correctly. ’cause I wanna honor my, my retail alma mater there at Macy’s.

I actually was working in management consulting. And you know, even, I’ll have to go back a little bit. It had been, I’d been brought into a boutique management consultancy by some former Deloitte partners that were starting off with their own new business. And most of my background at that point had been merchandising, supply chain finance, merchandise planning it.

I had not yet done marketing, so I need to be clear on that. That needs to be a part of this. That’s interesting. We become consultants. We beat out some very famous, globally recognized consulting brands, and we get this project, and in this project we’re startups, so we have two people, yet we’ve staffed it.

We’ve told them we have 10, we don’t even have 10 employees yet. So I remember with that partner who’s now the CEO of another retailer who will go unn, but he’s an amazing, amazing person. I say to him, how are we gonna do this project? I said, we have you as the one person who’s ever worked in consulting.

We have me as an operator, and somehow we’ve just won. Helping Macy’s with this gigantic organizational structure project. We were hired in by their then chief marketing officer, a woman named Ann McDonald. And I said, and we have no team, we have two people. And one person had come out of, I don’t know, Federer’s air conditioning or something, and one worked at JP Morgan Chase.

And uh, he said, don’t worry, we’re gonna follow the consulting process. And he said, and we’re gonna tap into two things. He said, you and I have two things. He’s, and this is you gotta, you know, again, time it felt uncomfortable. Now he’s like, we’re smart and we’re gonna figure it out. We have, we have work ethic.

We’re just gonna figure it out because we’re gonna listen. He said, you have a superpower, you’re an amazing listener. You hear things. I do too. So we’re gonna listen and we’re gonna help. So the fast forward, to your point about the Macy’s, it was even less about CRM in particular. So we’re there for this org structure.

They had acquired the May company. They had all of these, they were trying to become a, you know, national one Macy’s brand across the country. And the org project was really at its essence about who got to place media. Interesting. At the time, Macy used to spend well over a billion and a half on media a year.

And I said, so that’s all we’re talking about here. It’s who gets to influence the content, the promotional calendar. It’s really about the sales promotion calendar in many ways and that the big media buys. And I remember saying to the leadership team, so we were meeting with Ann again, an amazing, amazing woman and other members of the leadership team, and I said, it’s almost a shame.

We’re here for this organizational structure project because there are so many other opportunities in this business to meet this moment, to meet this moment of growth, to meet this moment of the need for profitable growth, and, and yet we’re focusing on the power play, the dynamics between, at the time still many CEOs of all the different divisions, and I said, and we all know in this room, you already know what you’re doing there.

You’re gonna consolidate this down to one. You’re just using us to say that these people told us to do that, but I know you’re gonna do it. You’re gonna have to. It’s obvious for all the reasons we don’t even need to get into. So at the time, one of the other C-Suite people in the room said to me, okay, give me an example of something else that you would be advising us on if this was your company.

So of course you always remember the most recent meeting you had. So that particular day I had met with the, uh, head of database marketing and he was taking me through. Work. They had already done the size of their database, which had over 40 million households, 55 million individuals, and already that database was harmonized against a single record for online behavior and store behavior into a single, unified customer record.

No one was doing that yet. This was 2000, 2000. Macy’s was doing it to optimize things like direct mail and email and at the time, so now people can do the math. Here on this podcast, I’ll let you take out your calculator and do the math on what I’m about to say. 40 million households, but they would send 2 billion pieces of direct mail year, 17 million emails in their email file, and 4 billion emails in 12 months.

And I remember saying, and yet the data are all harmonized against this single record with a continuous process in place to continue to enrich, augment, and validate for accuracy. And you’re using it to bombard the American people with direct communications. Imagine what you could do to inform assortment.

Imagine what you could do to inform your promotional calendar, to inform pricing, to inform dynamics between online and offline to inform so many different things. And of course, the easy marketing use cases. And so the fast forward is come join us, help us do that. And. Launch a group around this idea of extracting greater strategic value and very actionable insights to help move the business forward in any capacity in that business Yet, I wanna close what the most important part of what this was.

It was about most businesses I would even submit, from what I’ve seen outside of retail, everyone is data driven and people have been data driven for decades. Yet they’re really great at reporting on the what, the what happened. Most companies are not good and could really strengthen the muscle of talking about, so what does it mean?

And now what do I do with it? What? So what now what? And I would say, because to their credit, Macy’s was one of the most data-driven businesses I’ve ever had, the experience of collaborating with and working with. There was an opportunity for the customer database to move a little bit further and say, so what do these behaviors and insights mean?

And now what could we do with it? And the so what now? What requires two things, really importantly for people, the critical thinking and the creative assessment of the data to even have a point of view about what it means and the courage to propose the action. And I think that’s something that all businesses.

Have an opportunity to still, to, to really work on that strength all the time. That’s unbelievable. I just love that story. And then you were like, uh, weren’t you head of CRM for how many years there? Yeah, I, I ran a lot of things. I had credit marketing. They give you everything, you know, so it’s, be careful what you start.

Right. So I had customer strategy and intelligence, which was dominantly the use of customer insights for merchandising, all sorts of merchandising use cases. I did have the CRMI did have loyalty. I had credit marketing, had a bunch of bunch of different things. The tech, it’s so fun. More tech stuff. So yeah, it was great.

It was great. I love that because you just walked into this meeting and you saw something, you were very confident. You said something and you know it, it’s a great story. But let’s shift gears here. Let’s talk about leadership. Although they deserve credit too, for knowing. So I wanna give credit though, to the people in that room.

They knew what they wanted to do, they just needed someone to help them do it. Right? And so that’s, that’s the beauty of also recognizing. I had a role to play, yet they had a role to play as well in the receptivity and hearing the moment, which was really great. No, that’s true. Absolutely. So let’s talk about leadership and leadership influences.

So let’s start with mentors. Have you had any mentors or role models who influenced your leadership journey and how do they impact your approach to leadership? Absolutely. There have been people who have influenced my journey yet. Let me tell a story about how I think about the word mentor. Many moons ago I was asked by Accenture to join a panel they were having for the development of their women executives at Accenture.

There were three of us on the panel, two other were women founders of some brands retail brands, and they’re amazing. And they spoke about their mentors. One spoke often and deeply about her mother. I could do the same. Absolutely. Another, uh, female professional she knew. And at the time, I remember saying, and they were talking about female mentors.

And I remember as I was sitting on this panel waiting to answer, I thought, well. I don’t know if it’s a single mentor. It’s a series of moments. There are a series of moments, and I want to also honor the men in my career because in that moment when I was trying to think about these series of moments, to be fair, the moments were with men and I know we try to, and again, here was a panel, all women, people in the room, all women, and I, I just didn’t wanna forget that I could remember their names.

It was Alan Grossman, and I remember the particular moment when he shared some feedback with me that I have kept to this day, a man named Tom Marada, who did one of the nicest things for me ever on my first trip to Milan, Scott Schramm, Brian Kendrick, rich Shano, most importantly, someone who’s a friend to this day.

Dan Smith and I. Frankly struggled to find the women who created those moments at that early part of my career because there was a lot of competition and interesting, some other things there. And so I like to think about it as where have you had moments of impact with people that gave you the gift of advice?

Jay Redmond is another person, like the Gift of advice, the gift of moments, and for each one of these, without taking up time to do this today, although it makes me think I should write a back book about these people. You should, I can remember the exact sentence that they said to me that I still use to this day.

In fact, I am gonna use one. Let’s use Jay. Um, he’s a wonderful person. I don’t think he would mind me sharing his story. He’s, again, so early in the career, you’re fierce year, you know, you’re intense. You’re kind of like doing the thing. I wanna get things done. I wanna have impact, I wanna drive results. Um, I remember it being in a meeting.

Someone gave me some feedback on something. It was business-wise, not about me. And it was just, I guess I must have rolled my eyes. Again, you’re young in your career. I would never do that now. And he came into my office and he said, can I close the door? And I said, yes. And he said, here’s the deal. I was a, a, you know, rolling my eyes about a, an idea I had that they were not so keen on, which is fine, right?

’cause I was young and stupid. I would not do it again. He said, Julie, I’m gonna give you a technique I want you to use for the rest of your career. I. When someone says something and you just wanna say you’re an idiot, he said, ’cause I can see it. And you feel that way. He said, I want you to smile and I want you to say thank you for the feedback and that’s it.

And I said, I’m not grateful for their feedback. He said, you will be. He said, you don’t know this yet. Say thank you for the feedback with a smile and move on to the next topic. I do this to this day. I literally received that advice back in like 1990. Love it. That’s, and it has impacted me to this day.

That’s great advice. I love it. Yeah. That’s so funny. With the eye rolling. It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrass, but we’re not, it’s not, we have to grow up. I did it too when I was young in my career. Yeah. So, um, okay. What steps do you take to ensure that you’re getting diverse perspectives? From people that you work with and how do you integrate that into your decision making process.

Most importantly is to give everyone around you the space to share their opinion and their perspectives, and to also hear comments and feedback through their, your understanding of their context. And if you don’t understand it, to ask, and I think that’s really important, is to make sure that you are reading a room ensuring everyone is feeling heard.

Creating a space that everybody can feel heard. I would be honest though, that early in my career, I don’t know if I did this intentionally as much as it was how I was always taught, and so I kind of brought that to my worldview and how I interacted with people. Yet there was a particular. Moment. Macy’s, to their credit, had one of the first chief diversity officers in the United States, um, a band by the name of Bill Hawthorne, and they were great about it.

And I remember receiving from the Human Resources Department a report on how diverse my team was. It turns out I had one of the most diverse teams in the company, and we don’t need to get into the data on it, but there’s a point about the data and I didn’t know. I was like, oh, great. So I, I scored, well, I didn’t know we were doing this, but that’s great.

We should, um, it happened because there was intentionality to their credit about candidates that were presented and the mapping of both skills and having, um, having metrics. And so ever since then, I’ve really focused on a data-driven approach to which, not just speaking the speak, but really monitoring.

That we meet our promises. A company I’d like to call out for their transparency and authenticity on this is if you go to Loom slash dei, loom reports on all of their DEI data on their website and it’s bi functional area along a lot of different dimensions and I think, I think they are great for doing that and I’d like to see a lot of others do the same thing.

They’re holding themselves accountable and their transparency is to be applauded. I love the transparency piece too, so I’m definitely gonna be sharing that with our students as well, that website. So, um, what’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as a leader that you’d like to share with aspiring female leaders?

All right. I have one thing I will say. Here it is another moment from someone named Tim Teran, and it is a mantra I live by, people know I say this. Almost to the point where they’ll like stop saying it. Champions adjust. And it came from a moment back in consulting. We made a recommendation for something.

He was the client in this context and it was presented to a team and it, the recommendations were fell on deaf ears. And it was just so obvious to me. It was one of these things like, doesn’t everyone see it? And we went into his office, we were debriefing and I said, I’m sorry. You know, I feel like we let you down.

Right? Because we’re consulting, he’s the client. He said, don’t worry about it. I said, whatcha talking about, don’t worry about it. Such and such is not gonna happen. We’re not gonna move forward with this particular proposal, this initiative. And he said, no, no. We’re gonna go back with the exact same. We’re gonna get to the desired outcome.

We’re just gonna take a different pathway and talk about it differently so that they can hear it. And I said, what are you talking about? He said, Julie, champions adjust. Okay. Now, funny story on that. Uh, and we did, we actually went back with pretty much the exact same recommendation. Just told differently.

And sure enough, we launched the initiative. So champions do adjust. So there’s that. So it’s also how you are heard and how you present things. So there’s a lot of lessons in that in and of itself. However, quick funny side on that. So my whole life I’ve been saying champions adjust. I’ve been hearing this for 15 years and somewhat recently, I decided, I, I said something to him about it and we were reconnecting and he’s like, you know, I didn’t come up with that.

And I was like, you didn’t say that. He’s like, do your research. So anyway, everyone can research it. It’s Billie Jean King. It’s a fantastic and famous sports interview. Early in her career. So I highly recommend you go research the champions. Adjust and pressure is a privilege, which is the second part of the, the mantra, but it’s really great.

Oh my gosh, that’s so funny. I love it. Okay, now we’re into what I call my rapid fire questions. So this, I’m just gonna like rapidly ask you quick questions and you’re just gonna give a quick answer for our listeners. Okay. Are you ready? Ready. All right. What one piece of advice would you give female leaders that are currently working hydrate your network to build alliances?

Love it. Excellent. What three tips would you give students or emerging leaders? Time is a precious resource. Don’t waste it. Busy, doesn’t mean impactful. Be result driven, and don’t get distracted by the supposed success of others around you. Stay focused on what’s important to you and your own life priorities.

Not looking at someone else. That’s excellent. And then lastly, what do you want to leave behind for the next generation? Hope. Life is good. Most people are really good People Just believe that to be true and have hope. Because hope and happiness endure. Love it. Okay. This is the last question and you kind of already told us, but you might wanna change your answer.

So it, and it can be anything, it doesn’t have to be work related, but. What is your secret power? I think my secret power, from what people tell me, there’s so many things you wanna say that I wanna be known for. That’s my secret power. Yet, I once had someone say to me, Julie, you’re really like a pied piper.

And this has come up in both work and play. So a couple years ago, even before I had launched my own consulting business, which I’m no longer doing by the way, I should just say on a separate note, I’ve, I’ve joined one of my clients full time because they’re amazing Lilly ai. But someone had said to me.

So I, on my team, two people on my team were having a staff meeting, and at the end of it, these two lingered in my office and we were talking and one of ’em said, would you ever consider leaving here and letting us come with you and just starting your own business and we’ll follow with you? And I’m like, what’s, what’s the business?

And she said, I don’t care. I’ll come with you. And literally, this other guy that reported to me at the time, I won’t say their names, to pre protect their uh, right to privacy in the story. He’s like, I would come and I said To what? I don’t. And it has come up on many times where people have said, I’ll come with you.

I, I stay friends with people I’ve known for these 20, 25 years of my career and I have had the, the great honor of having people work with me again and again. But also I would say that in the fun part of this, the Pied Piper extends to my personal life. I mentioned already I love to ski and my ski friends will often say, be careful about following Julie.

cause I always come to the top of a run. I’m like. I’m sure it’s fine. Let’s just do it and they’ll all follow me. The Pied Piper. And then we have often found ourselves in precarious moments jumping off cliffs with rocks and not enough snow. So they’re like, don’t follow Julie. Why do we always follow Julie?

She’s so convincing in the moment. So be careful with the Pied Piper. Oh my gosh. I love that story. And I’m just gonna say right now, I’m gonna come all out here. If you said to me, Shelly, let’s go do something, I am there every time I get an email or a phone call and you say, Hey, I need, or would you? I’m like, yes, I’m in.

So, um, thank you. I think that actually is your secret power, so thank you for sharing that. Thank you with us and thank you so much for being here. It was so great having you. What great advice you’re giving to all the future. Leaders that we have. Well, thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share and for anyone that’s listening, I’m always happy to connect.

So, and to give back. It really does, it does fulfill me, so I’m happy to do that. Thank you for, for welcoming me. Thank you.