Meet Julie

When I look back on my career, I’m sometimes staggered by the diversity, the breadth and depth of my professional life. I’ve been hashtag blessed - as the cool kids say, of which I am most decidedly not - to have had a career that has traversed not only industries and sectors but the globe.

Last year, I sold my bookkeeping and business management consultancy to a dear friend and colleague who blended my business into his accounting firm. I wrote about the experience of metamorphosis by way of a love letter here, but it’s this concept of metamorphosis that I find incredibly fascinating. Not just my own- but the metamorphoses I witness every day in my work as a business mentor.

For over twenty years I’ve helped people grow profitable businesses. I’m no accountant (perish the thought) but my bookkeeping and BAS agent roles gave me the skills and expertise to dive headfirst into a business’ data to translate their numbers into a story of the health or otherwise of the business. The numbers are just a launch pad to what comes next- true transformation. You see, when people are clear about the baseline performance of their business, they are then informed to take strategic, practical action to have their numbers tell a different story. They transform from a struggling business to one that is thriving. They go from working 80 hours a week, in some cases with very little in the bank to show for it, to a life of clear boundaries, dedicated time off and healthy cashflow. Metamorphosis, if you will.

I adore working with small businesses and the people who have the drive, commitment and motivation to show up every day, to work in their zone of bliss, to serve their clients and customers. You know what I love even more? Being part of their adventure to having their hard work and dedication reflected in their bottom line and their results. My philosophy is that if a business isn’t sustainably lucrative or if it’s causing undue stress, then together, let’s work out how to turn things around.

My career diversity and hard won expertise enables me to blend everything I love about successful small businesses into my services, programs, workshops and courses. Every day, I work with people to change things around- be it bring more balance into their life by not working in every waking hour, or by making their existing services or products make sense financially, or by looking at their systems or operations for ways to enhance their effectiveness and streamline and reduce inefficiencies.

I love my work, no doubt about it, but I’m also more than a little impartial to blocking out my calendar for a day to nick off for a long hike with a friend to fill my cup. In fact, in my business planning and mentoring work with clients, I encourage them to have goals that are financial, non-financial business-related and personal. Burnout should never be viewed as inevitable.

As I look back, one of the most startlingly obvious things about the diversity of my professional life is that everything I’ve done has an element of teaching, of supporting, of mentoring and of advising, all with the goal of improving facets of peoples’ lives. My work now as a business mentor continues that ethos. If you’d like some support to move from surviving to thriving in business, please reach out.