113: Pivoting from Breather to Practice While Setting Better Boundaries with Julien Smith

Sometimes it seems like being a jerk pays off. Society often seems to reward the leaders who don’t mind stepping on others en route to the top. But if you don’t want to live that way, you’re among friends here and with today’s guest Julien Smith. We’re talking about avoiding leadership traps and creating positive boundaries in your business.

More About Julien: Julien Smith is the co-founder and CEO of Practice, a business management platform for coaches. He was the co-founder of Breather, and is a New York Times bestselling author of three books. Two of these, Trust Agents and The Impact Equation, were written with Chris Brogan, and his third, The Flinch, was published with Domino Project in 2011.

🌟3 Key Takeaways:

• Listen to people—more of them, and more often. Your clients and customers often tell you exactly what they want and need from your business.

• Consider reducing instead of expanding your income streams. Each brings new processes and systems to manage. You might see great success with fewer offerings.

• Experiment until you find what works, then kill everything else!

📝Permission: Look up: Have you experienced the sacred recently? Connect to something bigger than you, especially when you’re feeling stressed or stuck. 

✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Open up your life again by eliminating drudge work through software. Create a boundaries document that contains the things you do and don’t want in your life: the people you want to work with, the things that matter to you, the things you no longer want to deal with.

📘Books Mentioned:

• Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business

• Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One

• Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

• The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?

• Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible

🔗Resources Mentioned: 

• Julien on the web, Twitter: @trypractice, LinkedIn, his article: Open Coaching: $100,994 in 18 months as a part-time executive coach (3 hours/week)

🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 

• 097: How to Find Your Perfect Problem with Jim McKelvey, author of The Innovation Stack (Part One)

• 099: How to Find Your Perfect Problem with Jim McKelvey (Part Two)

• 043: From Start-Up to Grown-Up (and Coach to Author) with Alisa Cohn

• 057: You+ vs. You 2.0 with MBS

• 085: Building an Aligned Audience with Brian Clark

• The Accidental Creative Podcast: Advice for Builders (with Julien Smith)

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